21 Landing Page Optimization Tactics

The best 21 checklist to optimize your landing page.

1. Does your landing page have multiple offers for a visitor to choose from?
2. Does your landing page get targeted traffic? (from PPC campaigns, search queries, etc.)
3. Do you think most visitors on the landing page are actively interested for your offering?
4. Does your landing page contain a screenshot, demo or sample of what is being offered?
5. Is there a clear, concise and prominent headline which describes benefits to the visitor?
6. Does your landing page lists benefits (not features) in the first paragraph?
7. Is your landing page long? (more than 2 pages)
8. Do you offer anything for free on your landing page?
9. Is there more than one call to action (or possible next steps) on the landing page?
10. Is your call to action large in size as compared to other elements on page?
11. Is color of your call to action different than other elements on the page?
12. Does your call to action contain persuasive text (as opposed to generic "Submit" or "Click Here")?
13. Is your call to action below the page fold?
14. Does your landing page have more than 3 outgoing links?
15. Is your call to action and ad-copy (benefits, headline, etc.) located close to each other?
16. Is your landing page spread across multiple steps/pages?
17. Does your landing page requires a lot of information to be filled?
18. Does your landing page contain testimonials (or logos) from existing customers?
19. Does your landing page shows proof of benefits (that you promise)?
20. Do you prominently display icons/images to assure safety and security of data?
21. Is your landing page on HTTPS (secure protocol)?

Change in title tags & snippets of your website in SERPs

While doing research, I have noticed that Google is NOT showing the title tag in the Search Engine Result Page (SERPs) for our website. I got shocked and started wondering why this is happening. Why Google is just ignoring our page title tag and displaying their own. I thought Google may be just testing or about to launch some new algorithm. But if it is happening, it could be a scary thought.

Here we go, below is a result when I did a search for “pepper square” query.

Now see for yourself: Try a search for “digital agency bangalore”.

Look at the sixth result: www.peppersquare.com

Notice the title in the SERPs, this is the actual title of the page: “digital agency bangalore, interface design & web development.”

Don’t believe me?  Check the snap shot below:

Google actually altering the title tags we created. Matt Cutts discusses this in a video of Google changing the Title tags and Snippets: - 

I am not finished yet; I started digging bit deeper and found another SERP snippet change. Found another example: now search for “Interactive Agency” and see wikipedia’s snippet description (highlighted below) with a Jump to interactive agencies link.

What will happen if Google will do this kind of updates and ignore the number one factor of on-page optimization the title tags? 

Have you notice this and do you have an example to share with? What is your thought? Please comment.

Hands-on SEO Audit

Website audits are a great way to figure out what might be keeping your site from ranking well in search engines for a given keyword.

This post is not comprehensive, but definitely it will help you quickly identify major problems and also tell you what the current state of the website’s health is.

Here are some three basic steps to conduct website SEO audit analysis:

1. Check Google indexed/cached pages:

To do this open http://www.Google.com/ and enters site specific search “site:example.com” and clicks the search button.

By using above specific site search command you can see how many pages have been indexed in Google. My suggestion would be to check the cached page’s text only version and see how Googlebot is crawling and affecting the site. See how Googlebot crawls and indexes your site which will assist to identify issues like website homepage isn’t showing up as the first result.

2. Website Homepage Analysis:

This approach will help you critique your site and improve the performance of the site. Your home page is one of your most valuable assets. Below homepage analysis checklist will cover mostly every area that can impact your site’s online success.

• Does the homepage have enough content, at least one paragraph? 

• Does the page have good magnetic headlines which grab attention and draw users in? 

• Does the page have proper targeted keywords

1. Keywords that you think can drive traffic to your business?

• Does the page have heading tags (H1, H2 etc) used? 

• Does the page have images, if yes does they have alt text and image title? 

• Does the page have title tags used?

• The best practice format for title tags is one of the following

• Primary Keyword - Secondary Keywords Brand
• Brand Name Primary Keyword and Secondary Keywords

• Does the page have meta description used? 

• Run a quick check on the URL change or URL is canonical (e.g. from your-domain.com/ to www. your-domain.com or from www. your-domain.com to www. your-domain.com/lame-keyword-in-URL-trick.html etc.) 

• Check domain, sub-domain and microsite for duplicate content.  

1. To conduct that, search the engines for title tag (in quotes) or the first sentence of the content page (also in quotes). If there is more than one result from the given domain, sub-domain and microsite, then there is a duplicate content problem.

• Has the entire site, or important content being blocked via the robots.txt file?

• Check for XML Sitemap.

1. Sitemap: www. your-domain.com/sitemap.xml
2. You can examine the content of a sitemap.xml file by http://validator.w3.org/

• Check for Broken links.

1. Are 301’s being used for all redirects?
2. Custom 404 error page.
3. Call to action button. 

3. Website Statistical Analysis

This is an important phase, analyzing the data from your website is very important. According to a book “Measuring the Success of your Website” by Hurol Inan. There are four phases of customer engagement. These phases are 1. Reach, 2. Acquire, 3. Convert, and 4. Retain.

I do statistical analysis to determine the amount of visits to each web page. This helps me to understand where the traffic comes in and what keywords or phrases used to find web pages. There are several steps, some of the ways that I use to analysis includes:

1. How many visitors are coming to the website?
2. What are the top paths that users use to navigate site?
3. What are the traffic sources and where do visitors come from?
4. If search engines, what keywords and phrases they are using to find website?
5. How long do visitors stay on website?
6. What is the bounce rate?
7. What referral websites are sending the high visitors traffic?

The next step what I perform is to assess what changes are required in terms of visitors behaviour, time spent on various pages, most requested content and most requested keyphrases to improve conversions. This analysis helps me to build better digital marketing strategies to drive more traffic to increase conversion ratio.

There are lots of powerful, flexible and easy-to-use tools to analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. Every aspect of a website and website marketing campaign can be measured and analyzed to ensure that maximum efficiency can be attained.
 
As a web strategist I help businesses and organization to be success online. I would highly recommend you to create a document that says what needs to be done. Instead, create a document that says what’s wrong with the website.

Happy Auditing!!

Google Search Error

When I conducted a Google search today, Google displayed the error page “To continue, please type the characters below:” and blocked my search results.

Here is what the complete error message looks like:  

Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. Please try your request again later. Why did this happen?

This page appears when Google automatically detects requests coming from your computer network which appear to be in violation of the Terms of Service. The block will expire shortly after those requests stop.

This traffic may have been sent by malicious software, a browser plug-in, or a script that sends automated requests. If you share your network connection, ask your administrator for help — a different computer using the same IP address may be responsible. Learn more

Sometimes you may see this page if you are using advanced terms that robots are known to use, or sending requests very quickly.

IP address: 123.201.130.114
Time: 2011-06-29T08:10:23Z
URL: http://www.google.com/

=======================================================

I cleared the cookies from my browser and now things are fine... :)

Steps To Remove this ERROR: Source: Google support

If you don't see a CAPTCHA image or if you continue to encounter the CAPTCHA over and over, try these steps in order:

1. Check for malware on your computer.

Malicious software, sometimes bundled with other free downloads without your knowledge, can trigger Google to show this message. We've suggested some well-known programs below that can detect and remove such applications. Please remember that we have no connection with these companies and can't guarantee their effectiveness.

• Google Pack

The Starter Edition of Spyware Doctor is included free with the Google Pack

• Sunbelt Software CounterSpy
• Kaspersky Lab Internet Security
• Norton Internet Security
• MacScan (for Mac users)

If these programs don't resolve the problem, you might want to try an advanced troubleshooting program such as HijackThis.

2. Contact your network administrator.

If you tried the steps above and haven't resolved the issue, it's very likely that a user or a computer in your network is sending automated traffic to Google. Your network administrator may be able to locate and shut down the source of the automated traffic; feel free to refer them to this page. Sending automated queries of any sort to Google is against our Terms of Service. This includes, among other things, the following activities:

• Using any software that sends queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage ranks on Google for various queries
• 'Meta-searching' Google
• Performing 'offline' searches on Google

Once the automated traffic has stopped, the ban on your IP address should be automatically lifted.

3. If the problem persists, your network administrator should contact us.

If your network continues to experience this message in error, please send us additional information.

Article Marketing Strategy Secrets

Article marketing and blogging can be a perfect match if you do it right. Getting traffic from articles is a great way to get, blog visitors, or just great targeted traffic to your website.

This blog post contains the basic steps involved in creating an "Article Marketing" campaign and the effective way to recycle old blog posts.

Here are few more simple steps to take when spinning an old blog post into a new article.

1. Write Articles on topic you're familiar with, or Re-purpose older blog posts into articles.
2. Find an older blog post that performed well - older posts that were popular with your readers, attracted a lot of comments and got a decent amount of social buzz.
3. Create an outline based on the post- Write down the main points of the old blog post, add any new points you can think of, and create an outline for a new article. Try switching up the format to make sure it’s completely different from the original.
4. Write according to the outline, not the old post - Always make sure that quality content should always be your first concern for Search Engine. Once you have created an outline, stick to it. This way, your new article will have a life of it's own, even though it’s based on an old piece of content.
5. Insert one or more links to build more backlinks and attract more visitors to your blog.
6. Double check to ensure there is no duplicate content - Feel free to double check your new content with duplicate content tool.
7. Create Article Marketing Strategy.
8. Promote your articles - now broadcast your articles to hundreds of sites and create an abundance of good back links to your blog.
9. I strongly recommend you to convert Article into a PDF file and submit the PDF file to document sharing sites.

Also, feel free to contact me if you have questions. I'm happy to help! You can email me by the "Contact Me" link right here on this page.

Web Strategy to Beat Google’s 2011 Panda Update

Use Mr. Ping Attack Against Google’s Kungfu Panda. Here’s an extensive list of items to look at.

1. SEO Strategy – Get it Right!
2. Focus Toward Producing Highly Original And Useful Content
3. Increase the Length of Your Blog Posts
4. Review And Develop An Approach To Article Marketing Strategy
5. Pay Attention to Your On-Page SEO
6. Get Active, Stay Active: Branding Using Social Media
7. Don't Put Too Many Advertisements On Your Website
8. Analyze Visitors Behavior And Activity
9. Use Your Own Site For Deep Links
10. Encourage Repeat Visitors To Your Website.

And below are a few of the more well-studied examples that Google may be using to identify poor or weak quality:

1. High % of a number of pages on a site with duplicate content (in this case the entire site is penalized not just the page)
2. As mentioned above high amount of inappropriate advertisements, ie ads that don’t match the target content
3. Keyword stuffing, over-optimized SEO resulting in unnatural language
4. Page content and title tags not matching search queries which increases high bounce rate on page or site.
5. Low visit times on the site with low % of returning users to the site
6. Low or no quality inbound links to a page or site (by count or %).
7. Low or no links to site from social media or from other sites.

Google Instant Previews On Its Search Results

Google added latest addition "Instant Previews" on its search engine. Now Google lets you preview search results before you click them. The new feature can load preview results in less than one-tenth of a second, while many of today's websites usually take four or five seconds to load.

Google accomplishes this by taking a screenshot of every webpage in its index and giving users access to it via a magnifying glass icon that sits to the right of every search result.

Instant Previews Features:

Use Instant Previews to see what a webpage is like before clicking a search result.

To use the feature, people can click on the "magnifying glass" next to the title of any search result and a visual overview of the page will appear on the right. After clicking once and opening a preview, you can hover over other search results to preview those pages. For some previews, highly relevant parts of the page will appear in text call out boxes over the preview image to help you see where your query appears on the page.

To dismiss the preview, click the X in the top corner of the preview bubble. If you find a preview that contains content that you want to remove, learn how to remove a page or site from Google's search results.

Benefits

Quickly Compare Results

A visual comparison of search results helps you pick which result is right for you.

Pinpoint Relevant Content
Text call outs highlight where your search term appears on the web page so you can evaluate if it’s what you're looking for.

Interact with the Results Page
Page previews let you see the layout of a web page before clicking the search result. Page previews let you see the layout of a web page before clicking the search result.

Friendship on Facebook & 5000 Friends Limit

Is there anyone who could tell me what the meaning of social networking website is? Well today am talking about Facebook, man just now i came to know that you can't reach 5,000(5k) Facebook friends in your profile. Is this called Social Networking??

I think we need to think again about virtual social networking sites. I was figuring out with my friends and one of my colleagues told me that Facebook doesn’t think you can handle or have more than 5k “real” friends on Facebook. So might be coz of that they don’t allow you to have such a huge list of friends.

You know what my concern is, I think people may or may not have more than 5k friends but they have a option to join social networking sites to interact and to add unknown friends whom they don’t know. I mean, these websites are meant to be for that. I know it is their rule; we have to agree with them and the site is not meant to be used for business or spam.

Someone told me to start a fan page. Facebook allows you to have an indefinite number of fans at this time so start a fan page for all your friends to follow you. But guys, am not a big shot or celebrity.

Seems like FB is more about friends and family. Connecting with everyone around you in a very user friendly way through wall posts, pics, vids, chats and even apps are bu!!s@#t. There have been rumors for the last couple of years that they would change it but they haven't yet. Social networking is conquering the Web, and the leader in this growing market is Facebook. I just hope that Facebook eventually releases some official information and I hope they lift this 5k issue.

Gmail spam filter problem

I regularly receive spam from the shadan nabegha. I knew that, by clicking that report spam will not only help keep my inbox clean, but it will also potentially keep my inbox cleaner in the future. So I always mark the mail then click on "Report Spam". Well this moves the offending mail to Spam, but does not stop me getting the mails in the first place.

I don’t know what’s wrong with Gmail. Seems like spammers are using trusted Web sites, Web mail and social networking environments to host spam content or my Gmail buttons "Report spam" doesn't work.

I have never visited any sites connected with this promotion, so don't understand how or why I'm getting the mails in the first place. How can you help in the fight? Is there a way of blocking these emails?

Facebook Down ?

It appears social networking site Facebook is currently out of action. Reports are coming in rapidly that the site is either completely not loading and/or the service is loading very slowly. I am unable to access Facebook currently from multiple Internet connections.

Not even two weeks after its worst outage in over four years, Facebook is down once again.

Even from last couple of days I’ve noticed the facebook is having photo managing problem like when i click upload or view photo nothing happens. I can't upload photos to facebook pages or profile anymore, I keep reading discussion thread after discussion thread, in the facebook help section of so many people with this problem and FB does nothing to solve it. Now i have seen that people started uploading one photo at a time through their wall instead of uploading batches.