There will come a point in your business strategy that you will begin to analyze the advantages of complimenting your current strategies with SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) as a possibility to grow if you have not already. There are many who assume that simply because they have a website, it is going to be enough to generate leads and expand their endeavors. Unfortunately, a website unequipped with SEO and SEM acts as a plain brochure on the internet today.

The internet today is saturated with competitive intelligence. Think about how many websites are available online, and how many more are developed each day, it is staggering. Now let us go a step further and compare advantages and disadvantages these competing websites are in.

SEM is the most comprehensive way to make your website work for you. It is important to know that SEO is not an internet marketing tactic that can stand alone, contrary to popular belief. It is crucial to realize that SEM actually includes SEO, as well as Paid placement which includes pay per click ads, website banner ads, and Press Release Placements. SEM also includes Paid inclusion, with website directory submissions for inbound links, all of which are supplementary forms of search engine marketing.

Without SEM working for you, your website and therefore possibly your business will go largely unseen online, if not invisible as the name of your business does not appear on page one or two of search engines. Most people utilizing search engines want instant feedback and rarely scan past page one or two of the search results. With today’s clients going primarily to the internet for their needs, can your business really afford to be a simple brochure with all the effectiveness of a piece of junk mail?

When designing a website, many people want to cut corners when it comes to the copywriting that will appear on the website. While it is logical to assume that since you know your company best, you should best be able to write the content that appears on your website - however, there are many things about website copywriting that the average person may not be aware of. As follows are the reasons that you should employ a professional copywriter to create the content for your website:

Conversion Optimization. Conversion Optimization is a process of writing content in order to guide the visitor to the action that you want them to take or to at least stay on your website long enough to learn about your company and what makes your company special. Professional website copywriters are experts at appealing to the 4 different personality types and capturing your visitor’s attention. With the average attention span rapidly shrinking, the lack of good, well written copy will decrease the amount of visitors that turn into customers.  

Call to Action. Professional copywriters understand the importance of working in a call to action within website copy. If somebody is on your website you want them to contact you immediately or at the very least submit their contact information to you so that you can add them to future marketing campaigns. If a visitor comes to your website and doesn’t call you or give you their contact information they might as well have never been there.

Web Content is read differently than Print Content. A good professional copywriter understands that web content is read in a much different way than any other medium. Eye tracking studies have shown that the average website visitor does not read web content in depth but rather skims it. Your website copy should have the most important points in bold and italics and heavily utilize bullet points to enable users to get to the point and move forward to take the action you want them to.

At Deep Blue Computers we offer professional copywriting for website design, blogging, press releases, emails, pay-per-click campaigns, and much more. To learn how professional copywriting can improve your website conversion call us today at 954.779.2801.

In today’s world of spam, email service providers are protecting their users by filtering for spam and blocking images in email, making it harder for email marketers to get their message across. Here are a few simple rules to follow to make your email as clean as possible so that your email gets to the inbox and your potential clients will be inclined to click the “display images” button instead of the “delete” button.

 Rules to Email by:

Do not use images only! Emails should always be done in html and incorporate a 60:40 image to text ratio. See the samples below – Proflowers’ email has text that you can read to give the customer the gist of the marketing message before downloading the images but in the Smart Bargains email there is no text whatsoever and the email is much less appealing before downloading the images.

Use alt tags for your images – Alt tags should always be used to define what the picture shows so that the user has an idea of what the image will be before downloading instead of seeing X’s in every image box (again, see how Proflowers has done this correctly as opposed to Smart Bargains).

Subject line Optimization– The subject line should be catchy, under 40 characters, and consistent with the content of the email message

Beware of the Spam Traps! Certain words are big spam flags and should be avoided as much as possible if you want to make it into the recipient’s inbox. The following words should be avoided: Free, complimentary, cash, prize, no cost, win, etc

Use a white background – Colorful backgrounds raise the spam score considerably

Your landing page should mirror your email – Studies have shown that linking to a landing page that has a similar look and feel as your email greatly increases conversion and keeps users from exiting the site immediately

Always include an unsubscribe link in your email – All credible companies have to include a way for users to opt out of receiving future emails

Include your address at the bottom of the email – CAN-SPAM Policy states that this must be done or your company could be labeled as a spammer

In today’s world email marketing is the most regulated of the internet marketing mediums. While it can be an effective marketing tool to add to your portfolio, there is a substantial amount of risk involved if you are not savvy about the CAN-SPAM regulations. For help with your email marketing plan contact the experienced internet marketing professionals at Deep Blue Computers who can help you set up a complete email marketing plan, create html emails as well as corresponding landing pages, and write the content that will be sure to convert email opens to sales. 

Press Releases have obvious SEO benefits. If you are putting something that is exciting and newsworthy on the web then other websites will pick up your content and post it to their site while giving you an inbound link to your website (inbound links = SEO benefit). Services such as PR Web allow you to, for as little as $80, post your press release to several websites including Yahoo News.

 With such an easy way to generate inbound links, many companies may be tempted to want to develop a press release schedule similar to the way a company would manage a blog. However, this is precisely the wrong thing to do…..press releases cannot be scheduled, they should be sent out only when something happens in your company that is newsworthy.

 In order to avoid press releases from your company being taken as seriously as the warnings from the boy that cried wolf, you should limit press releases being sent out only when something genuinely exciting happens. “Sending multiple newsworthy press releases over time can help to keep your company’s name fresh in their minds. Sending too many press releases just for the sake of sending them (as opposed to disseminating real news) will also keep your company’s name fresh in their minds… just probably not the way you’re hoping for. ” - Jennifer Mattern, Redflymarketing.com

 If you truly feel that your company would benefit from more regular press releases then you should make sure that you have newsworthy events happening in your company on a regular basis. Some ideas to get your company on this path include: set up regular contests for your clients or website visitors, put out a regular report on industry issues, or get your company involved in charitable efforts.

 To learn more about how the right kind of PR can help your company and your SEO efforts, contact Deep Blue Computers today.

The single most important part of a website is ANALYTICS! Without analytics your website might as well be a tree falling in the woods with nobody there to hear it. Did it make any noise? Nobody knows. Without analytics on your website you have no idea how many people are visiting your website, how long they stay on your website, where they lose interest and leave your website. In short, you don’t know anything!

Analytics provides insight to your customer’s actions and is the key to optimizing your website. You have to know where the problem is in order to fix it. Does everybody leave your website on the homepage and never visit any of your secondary pages? Are you getting visitors to your website but not converting any of those visitors to fill out the form on your website? Everything you need to know can be answered through an analytics package which Google provides for free. 

Once you have determined where the problem lies, Google then allows you to do A/B testing to determine the best remedy. If customers leave your site or landing pages, theorize as to why, then test variations to confirm or refute your insight. Once you fix one problem, move onto the next. The more holes you find in your website that you are able to repair, the more optimized your website will be.

At Deep Blue Computers we understand that creating a website is not a one time project that can be finished in a month and then left untouched. Websites are ongoing projects that require analysis, testing, and changes to optimize your website so we offer 3 packages of services to handle this and all of your interactive marketing needs for you.

For more information contact Deep Blue Computers today for a free analysis of your website and a plan to increase the optimization of your website.