Split-Testing : The Secret Weapon of Experienced Online Marketers
Since the early 1900s, the best direct marketers have used some form of split-testing to improve their sales messages. Marketers like John Caples split-tested with coupon codes to tell which of a number of separate ads produced the best response, changing one item at a time until they found a winning formula. Split-testing is how direct marketers continually increase their profits over time.
With the ease of tracking on the Internet and the advent of low-cost or free software programs, split-testing is something that all online business owners should be implementing each month. It is an ongoing process.
What Is Split-Testing?
Split-testing is the process of creating two separate variations of anything that a visitor or a prospect is exposed to which requires them to take an action, such as a web page, a PPC ad or a banner ad. An action required for measuring a split-test can include the click-through-rate on a PPC ad, submitting a form to request a free consultation or purchasing a product online. Splitting traffic between the two variations of the same element shows you which one produces the best response rate.
Twitter… Does It Work For Small Business?
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard or read about a new website called Twitter.
Although Twitter is a relatively new service, it has been receiving some great press and is starting to be used by many small businesses and large companies around the world – including some major media companies, marketing companies and computer companies…
In fact, ABC has its own Twitter feed, which they reference at the end of some of their shows.
So a few months ago I decided to see for myself what this Twitter thing was all about…
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a “microblog”. Think of it like a blog, only smaller… in fact you only have 140 characters (not words, characters) to communicate a message, so what you say has to be short, concise and of interest.
How To Grow Your Business Online
In the current economic climate, the Internet represents one of the strongest and most cost effective marketing channels available. An online marketing campaign has the ability to transform a business even in times of recession, if it is implemented correctly. Whether you have a limited budget of $1,000 per month or a substantial budget in excess of $20,000 a month, the Internet has opportunities for you to gain maximum return on investment to take your company to the next level.
Here is a proven process of growing your business online that we have used time and time again to grow businesses online in a variety of different industries.
High-Performance Website Design
All online marketing begins with a website. Your website provides the foundation for your online marketing campaign, because everything you do to advertise and market your business online will drive people to your website. It doesn’t matter whether you use search engine optimisation, pay per click advertising, affiliate marketing, email marketing or banner advertising, everything leads to your website, regardless of what industry you operate within.
How Search Engine Rankings & User Behaviour Affect Website Traffic
We all want to be number 1 on Google. For most people that is the only target, but what does that actually mean in terms of results, and how do the different ranks affect traffic to your website?
There have been a number of research experiments conducted by universities over the last decade testing user behaviour on a number of search engines with many using methods unique from the others. However, one technique has been more successful than others – eye-tracking.
Simply put, eye-tracking is a type of software that records and measures eye movements. This method has been used in several experiments for measuring attention given to each site in a search engine results page.
Of these tests, only a few tracked the searchers’ click rates for each position, and of these only one was conducted using Google (‘Eye-Tracking Analysis of User Behavior in WWW Search’). And let’s face it; Google is the most popular english-language search engine around. It has even become a part of our language (have you ‘Googled’ something before?)
In the above experiment, the researchers at Cornell University used a total of 397 queries and recorded the average attention time and number of clicks given to each of the 10 search results on the first page of each query, and the first result on the second page.
The Psychology of Web Design
Good website design is noticeable to almost everyone that will visit your website, not just web designers. For people that use the internet frequently it is easy to identify valuable websites from the rest. When you see a website for the first time you make an instant judgement on its quality and relevance. Even if it is done subconsciously, we are able to take a fairly accurate impression very quickly. In fact, in 2006 the BBC News website reported on a study which showed that the brain makes decisions in just one 20th of a second of viewing a webpage. This first impression is then carried over to other parts of the website, like content and professionalism. So you can see why it is essential to make a good first impression.
How is all this possible, you might ask?
It is simply recognition – the mind is able to recognise a combination of general human psychological and website design factors (which are not actually independent of one another) at extremely high rates of speed, in the same way that you are able to to recognise several letters jumbled together as a specific word and assign meaning to it. Psychology has always played a part in internet usage, but we are only recently beginning to understand the depth of its effects. When you break it down, web design is simply the manipulation of content and images on a website to appeal to the perceptions of a target audience.
How is this useful in your web design?
Google SEO Guide & Mindmap
Google has released a ‘Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide‘ for website owners who want to improve their website’s ability to rank in Google’s search engine.
The newly released guide mostly covers on-page optimisation, and only briefly talks about link building strategies, which are the real key to SEO. Reading this guide put a smile on my face as it reaffirms that our on-page optimisation strategy is right on the money.
Here is a mindmap of what the SEO guide covers:
You can download the Google SEO Guide Mindmap here.
11 of the Best (Free) SEO Tools and How to Use Them
Just as a there are tools which make the process of building a house easier, there are tools which make the process of ranking a website at the top of a search engine easier.
Every seasoned SEO professional has their own arsenal of SEO tools which they use every day to help them rank websites. It saves time, effort and provides a strong advantage against those competitors who do not use the same tools.
Here are 11 of the SEO tools which I use on a regular basis to rank websites at the top of the search engines. You’ll note that there is a strong focus on Google – this is because ranking a website at the top of Google will, in my experience, drive anywhere between 10x and 100x the traffic of a top ranking in Yahoo or MSN combined.
1. Google Adwords Keyword Tool – this is a free tool provided by Google, which provides keyword suggestions based on ‘descriptive words’ or ‘website content’. Although this tool is made to assist Google Adwords advertisers, you can use it to research SEO keywords as well, by selecting ‘Exact’ from the ‘Match Type’ drop down menu. The best thing about this tool is that you can see estimated traffic volumes for exact match phrases within any country where Google has a search engine. And what better place to get keyword suggestions than from the search engine which controls the lion share of search engine traffic online?
2. Google Adwords Traffic Estimator – this is a free tool provided by Google, which provides Adwords advertisers with an estimated cost of running a PPC campaign using specific keyword phrases. Use it like this: export the exact match keywords from the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, paste them into the Google Traffic Estimator, select the country you are optimising in, run the search and then sort the keywords in descending order by ‘estimated cost per day’. This is a great way of identifying the keywords which may have high traffic volumes but don’t convert very well, because those phrases which do not produce revenue for advertisers will have a low cost-per-click and an overall lower estimated cost per day as a result.
3. Google Webmaster Tools – this is a free service provided by Google to provide information to website owners about how Google views their website. You can see the top search queries which produce traffic for your site, as well as the top keyword rankings which you have. You can also see how many back links each page on your site has, as well as which sites are linking to each page. Other features include uploading an XML sitemap, generating robots.txt files, removing URLs and finding broken URLs on your website. Use every tool available in the Google Webmaster Tools service.
Organic Backlinks - Search Engine Gold
With search engine algorithms ever changing, it is difficult to know what will be considered valuable by search engines in the future. In saying that, we touch upon a very common discussion regarding link building; is it better to build a large quantity of back links or spend more time to get better quality back links?
If you are involved in any kind of search engine optimisation you should constantly be considering how to spend your time to get the best results and, if you are as busy as most people, you may not be able to use both methods of link building. Now many online marketers may still be advising you that the number of links is what search engines value the most, and they will proceed to build as many links as possible, as quickly as possible, and by any means necessary. But, with the release of Google’s updated Historical Data Patent in March this year, it is clear that this is not the case.
In this document it is stated, among many other things, that the dates on which the back links first appeared for the search engine are taken into account when valuing a website. This means that if too many links are detected at times very near to each other, the algorithm may consider these links are the result of SPAM.
In addition, when building a large number of back links without considering where these links are coming from, there is always the possible issue that these links can be dropped at any time, for any reason. In the patent document, this is suggested as a means of devaluing a website. If back links disappear to quickly, the search engine may consider your website to have become “stale”, or non-valuable to its readers.
Aside from the rate of back link build-up, search engines also consider the content of the site from which a link is received. The more valuable the content on the link source website, the more valuable the link to your site. And the more related the content is to your site, the better.
Did I Just Order Pizza Online?
Well we all know Alex is the power house of the Web Profits blog space. A lot of great content, value, and insight that I am sure we have all enjoyed.
My name is Jason May, and I have been meaning to contribute in here for a while now, simply offering my own experiences and perspective on the big wild world of online business.
I consult for online business strategy here at Web Profits, and in general style up the place! I hope I can give some value, and I respect all feedback and welcome comments.
And so there is never a day that the Internet does not impress me these days…
And I know, that come 10.30pm in the evening, I should already have eaten dinner. Something nice, healthy, green. But I am male, I am single, and I do not like supermarkets.
So what can a guy do?
6 Lessons We Can Learn From Barack Obama’s Online Marketing Strategy
Watching the US presidential coverage on the news always provides entertainment, especially considering how intense the democratic nomination was. While watching one of these segments they mentioned that Barack Obama had raised 100% of his campaign funding through online contributions.
He has not accepted any campaign contributions from large companies or lobbyists. Instead, Barack Obama’s campaign has been one of the most profitable in history, with the majority of campaign contributions made online through over a million small contributions.
In fact, Barack Obama has raised nearly $200 million online, with a record $55 million raised in February alone, or nearly $2 million per day.
That hit my button.
It was a Saturday night and I immediately jumped on my laptop and brought up www.barackobama.com. The next hour was just spent in admiration of the level of detail and expertise implemented by Barack Obama’s online marketing team.
