American Writers & Artists Inc.

Optimize Your Website With SEO

Speaker: Heather Lloyd-Martin

Host: Denise Ford

Recorded: January 14, 2010

Denise Ford: Hello everyone! Welcome back to

AWAI’s Web Copy Training Program. This is Part 2 of

our SEO program, and I’m delighted to see all of you

logging in this afternoon.

A brief introduction for those of you who are

joining us for the first time, this is a hands-on

workshop with Heather Lloyd-Martin. Many of you may

know Heather Lloyd-Martin as the author of AWAI’s

SEO Copywriting Success program. What you may not

know is she also is a 20 year plus marketing

veteran, who looks younger than springtime. She is

a recognized SEO author and definitely a pioneer in

SEO copy writing.

The workshop today is part of the offering of

the SEO Copy Writing Program, so I want to welcome

you, those of you who have purchased the program. I

also want to welcome our Web Copy Workshop folks.

These folks will be meeting with Heather at the Las

Vegas Intensive this March. Briefly when someone

says, what is it that Heather does when she’s not

writing programs and speaking, and writing books?

Well, the best description is one she’s has on her

very own website, I’ll quote it here, as she

describes her own work she says, “Heather splits her

time between watching the search engines dance and

pin pointing the exact direct response copywriting

response strategies that make people buy.”

With that in mind I am delighted to turn this

webinar over to Heather Lloyd-Martin.

Heather Lloyd-Martin: Thank you Denise, and

hello everyone and welcome to being on the seminar

today. It’s really exciting to be able to talk to

everyone like this because me the opportunity, I

know there’s a lot of folks that have gone through

the program and maybe started working with some

clients, maybe their own site, but they still have

questions, and it’s always nice to still be able to

have these check-ins to be able to not only meet you

guys and be able to talk more about this topic that

I’m so passionate about, but also to hear what kind

of questions you have and to be able to answer those

in real time.

So, the first slide I’ve got up is on the

chat. We will have some time at the end most likely

to answer your questions. I will be showing some

examples of some sites for some folks that have

wonderfully agreed to let me evaluate their site for

how it looks for search engines, as well as

everything else we will be going over, but if you

also have other questions along the way, at the end

we will be answering those so, please let me know.

So, one of the reasons that we decided to have

this particular topic today is, one of the first

questions I’ll get from people who are new to online

writing who want to go in to this as a career, and

are new to SEO Copywriting is, what’s the first

step? What’s the first thing I should do after I’ve

learned how to everything in order to get clients?

And, I know that folks a lot of times will expect me

to say, okay, well, start networking, start meeting

more people, and start sending out… and although

that’s real and it’s valid, the first step is

probably, in a way, the easiest to figure out and

sometimes the hardest to implement is coming up with

you own website and making sure your website is as

good as it can possibly be.

I don’t know how many times throughout my

career that I’ve been on the phone to someone as

they’re talking to me about their website, and

they’re going through page by page and asking me

questions about it. As writers this becomes really

important because does the website give us the

opportunity to showcase what we do, and to be able

to show clients that we are experts in SEO

Copywriting, but we can provide them with emails and

newsletters, and anything else they might need.

But, also clients are looking at our websites

as examples of how good we are going to be when we

write for them, and it makes a lot of sense because

will figure that we should be spending a lot of time

on our own website because that is how we get

business. That should be the best of the best of

our writing, and so, if we create websites, which

granted, is very, very, easy to do especially when

you starting out, especially when you know that you

need to get something up, and you want to do it as

quickly as possible and when you create websites

that are so, so, you’re really not happy with them,

they’re there to basically be a place holder, but

it’s not perfect; not only do you feel weird about

that, but when you start talking to clients because

it always feels strange to show a client a site that

you’re not particularly thrilled with, but also your

clients are going to look at that and think okay, so

if this is the best that they can do, if this is

truly the site that is showcasing their skills, this

is, okay, I can expect this level of writing. So,

you want everything to be as clear, and compelling,

and persuasive as possible along with doing all the

things right for the SEO, and it’s something that we

will talk about in a bit, but it makes a lot of

sense that for clients that are coming to you for

SEO Copyright and they’re expecting you to be

experts in it, and be able to help them along; if

they’ve done their due diligence as a client, and

they know enough about SEO Copyright to be

dangerous, if there’s stuff going on with your site

that’s not good for search engines, or stuff going

on you can’t explain how you might have done it a

certain way, they’ll ask you about it, call you out.

And, I’ve had people say, well, why are you this

ranking for your page and this person is this

ranking? And, granted at the end of the day it is

never anything you can definitively answer, but you

should at least be able to have an idea of things

that you can say so you can overcome that objection.

Even if they don’t flat out say it, it can be an

unspoken objection.

So, what we are going to be doing today is,

I’m going to be leading you through the 5 steps of

how you can supercharge your website, and to be able

to look at your own website and figure out if you’re

doing everything that you can do for your target

audience to make your website shine. I will also be

showing you some examples of folks who have done it

really, really well, and showing you why I like what

they’ve done so you guys can go back and do that

too. I want to caution folks here that if I’m

saying something and your cringing back there behind

your computer screen and thinking, oh man, I didn’t

do that or I did do that, and now I’m realizing that

that wasn’t too great don’t worry, we’ve all had

that thought. There are certainly things that

everyone can do with their websites to make them a

little bit better. What this provides today kind of

like a road map, sort of a strategy of things that

you can work on down the line to make your site the

best that it can possibly be.

So, today’s goal is to transform your site in

to a lead generation machine. We want to make your

website so good and so compelling and so cool that

when prospects see it the first thing they are going

to do is give you a call and send you an email.

We are going to be starting off, and I

mentioned with pointers, as well as looking at some

websites so that way you guys will be able to, the

ones that have submitted their website for review to

see some things that you have done really, really

well, and see some things that you can improve and

make a little bit better for next time.

So, the first thing that I see is, are your

services well defined? Don’t assume that your

prospects know what you offer, tell them. It’s

really important to tell them, and when I mention

this to people sometimes I’ll get this look that

it’s kind of like, duh! I’m a copywriter. I’m

going to tell them that I provide copywriting

services. And, yes, of course you provide

copywriting services, but there’s a whole host of

lots of different services that you can provide

especially for different target audiences. I’m

going to show you an example of a site that I really

like, and we’re going to hope that all of this works

and we’re going to be working with the computer gods

to make this happen, here we go, and I know she’s on

the phone call and I could have told her I’m going

to do this, but I was afraid it was going to

embarrass her so, sorry Pam!

Pam Foster, who a lot of us know at AWI, is

one of those folks who has provided a lot of really

good educational materials is going to be at the

session in Vegas. I like her website because she

makes it very, very clear who her audience is and

what it is that she does. She talks about, if you

look up here in the title where it says Pam Foster

B2B Copywriting, Web content, lead-generation, SEO,

newsletters, it makes it really simple to

understand what she offers, and also very

importantly the target audience. For some

companies, they will like to know that you

specialize in B2B or B2C, and for folks that are new

to that, B2B is business to business and B2C is

business to consumer. It doesn’t mean that if you

specialize in 1 that you can’t do the other. But,

certainly for folks that decide that they want to

specialize in a particular type of market - it’s a

kind of a good idea to put that front and center.

So, that way when those B2B folks come to your

website they’re able to see okay, this person, this

is what they do. They don’t work for catalog

companies that create websites about women’s

clothing. What they do specifically has to do with

business.

Another person that is also an AWI person is

Camy, and let’s see one thing that we have here is,

we have on the services tab, let me go back to it,

we talk about copywriting, graphic design, print

management, commercial photography, It’s a good idea

to outline each individual service that you offer,

and if I were going to do picky changes to this

particular website one of the things that I would

suggest is, making specific landing pages for each

one of these areas. So, a graphic design landing

page, a copywriting landing page, maybe there’s a

SEO copywriting so she might differentiate between

what might be print or email, versus what might be

SEO. The reason for that is two-fold. It allows

you to talk more about services you offer to be able

to provide specific examples, or pull in things

like, on this email campaign we were able to provide

x response rate.

But, also for the search engines because when

you have separate landing pages or for every service

that you have you are able to optimize for those

specific types of key phrases, and it helps increase

the probability that page will come up higher in the

search results. So, that will give you a kind of

idea of what you can do for services. It’s a really

good idea to show them and tell them.

The second thing that I would suggest for

folks is to showcase their skills. Offering

testimonials, case studies, samples, blog posted

articles, really help position expertise. I

understand for folks that are brand new to this they

might not have clips yet. Another common question I

get is, what do I do for clips? How do I make this

happen? And, there’s a few ways you can go assuming

that you have no clients and at this point you

aren’t quite sure how to get your clients so, let’s

look at that scenario.

One of the things that you can do once you’ve

figured out how you want to structure your writing

business is you can set up a blog or start writing

articles, or maybe even put out Twitter Tweets.

That way you are able to start seeding the

environment in which you want to start getting

business, and putting your name out there and

getting folks familiar with your writing and with

your expertise. Don’t worry about having to be

completely brilliant right off the bat and come up

with things that are incredibly, like market-

changing, when you are first learning. It’s okay to

start off slowly and just start writing and get

yourself used to being in that expert position for

getting new clients in the door. You know, some

folks, if they’ve left a “real job” and I’m using

air quotes, which no one can see, sometimes they are

actually able to get business from their employer,

and that’s one of the first places that they start.

For other folks, if you are in a local area

that has a pretty good amount of businesses, there’s

a few ways that you can do it. You can certainly

start cold calling. You have relationships with

business owners and you can start talking to them

and start figuring out way that, you know, you can

discount your fees and give them a special rate.

I’ve heard of some people even bartering so they are

getting some services from folks that they would use

anyway, and in return for that they are able to

write a few web pages or do things that would, that

their client would allow them to showcase and use as

a clip. So, clips can be very difficult in

beginning to get as far as brainstorming in how to

get them, but once you have one or two clients under

your belt and you have something that you can

showcase, and that also includes your own writing;

then that helps build up that expertise and

showcases what you guys can do.

I’m going to go back and show you again what

Pam has done because she’s done a really excellent

job with this. Okay, it’s doing something… there we

go. She talks about with the testimonials, they’re

right there on the home page. It talks about a

planning guide written by Pam Foster there on the

home page, and that could be very powerful. Some

people choose to have testimonials that are on a

separate page that people can click to and say,

there’s your big old list of testimonials, but what

I suggest, once you start gathering them is, at the

end of every client relationship or every project to

see if you can get a testimonial from that client.

It’s a good idea to sprinkle those testimonials

throughout your landing page and throughout your

entire site, and the reason why is because there is

no guarantee that somebody immediately sees your

home page when they reach your website. In a

perfect world actually, they wouldn’t see your home

page. They would go directly in to a landing page

that has exactly what they are looking for. And,

say that you have a landing page on SEO Copywriting

and you are showcasing your skills there. If you can

have testimonials that talk about SEO writing on

that landing page that helps to reinforce your

expertise.

Then if you say, you have an email landing

page have testimonials about emails that you have

created, or a newsletter landing page and

testimonials about newsletters that you have

created, helps reinforce your expertise as well as

when people are looking at say, SEO Copywriting,

those testimonials are related to what they are

interested in. When you can do that it can actually

increase your conversion rate so it is a very

powerful technique.

The third thing that I would say to check on

your site is, are your benefit statements front and

center? This is so important. What can you do for

your clients? Tell them and then tell them again.

It is amazing how much we as writers can have a

blind spot around our own writing, and I’m laughing

about it because I think every writer I have ever

know has done this including myself. The reason why

is, we are so used to thinking about benefit

statements for clients that when we start writing

things that it is very easy for us to be very dry

and boring and say we offer copywriting service and

we are able to provide you with x,y, and z. So,

here is where gathering those testimonials, and

tracking your clients’ campaigns, and doing

everything that you can do in order to show benefit

statements can really help.

So, on one hand I’m looking at benefit

statements; know what you have done for your clients

because that will help you create those benefit

statements. If you consistently are able to pull a

good conversion rate off of your SEO copy, you’ve

got a testimonial there that can back that up. That

can be a very powerful benefit. Also, when you are

thinking about benefit statements, and thinking of

your unique sales proposition, you’re USP, ask

yourself what makes you different from all the other

SEO copywriters out there? What in your toolbox of

skills or in your background makes you such a good

copywriter that they should hire you versus someone

else? As an example of that is, somebody that I

have been talking with has a huge background in B2B

as well as technology firms. Technology and writing,

writing for technology companies is very different

and a very specific kind of writing skill. Not

every copywriter likes to do it, and not every

copywriter can do it. When I was looking at our

website and trying to figure out how to help, one of

the first things I realized is, although she talked

about really enjoying how writing copy for tech

firms, it was something in her brain that came

really easily, that was nowhere on the site. So,

when you are thinking about your own website and

yourself, think, what kinds of life experiences do

I have in order to make this a very powerful benefit

to my clients, because at the end of the day your

clients want to hear about what you can do for them.

Not necessarily your process, if they’re interested

they might ask, they might double check, but at the

end of the day they are hiring you to get results.

When they are looking at you versus all the other

SEO copywriters out there, they are also looking at

what you can give them that might be different, and

as we know, folks are busy. They might be doing

their vendor due diligence. They might be looking

around as long as they possibly can in order to find

who they want to work with, but they might not have

a lot of time to do it well.

So, if you are able to create good benefit

statements that appear, not just on your home page

but on every page that you have. As we mentioned

earlier one of the things that is really important

to remember is, although you really want to have a

killer home page, you want that home page to be able

to showcase your services.

At the same time, people aren’t necessarily

coming in on your home page. They might come in on

an email page. They might come in on a blog post,

so make sure that you have some sort of benefit

statement there, something that will tempt people to

think “Ooh!, this person sounds really, really

smart and would know how to do what I need.” That

will help the conversions as well. So, don’t just

figure that putting that on your home page is good

enough, or just putting it on a testimonial’s page.

Things like that it can be really great when you can

show your benefit expertise and at the end of the

day when a client calls you and says, “Why should I

hire you?” One of the things that have got me more

gigs than I can think of is, “Alright, so you’re

into conversion oriented writing, right? Yes. Okay,

I want writing that converts, and that’s important

to you, that’s important. Alright, so you called

me. Obviously my writing works.” And I have gotten

so much work off that just because the client

realizes, “Okay, there is enough benefit statements

on her site to make me call her, alright this firm

and they probably can do a good enough job for me.”

So, the next check is, are you practicing what

you preach. If you are an SEO copywriter you own

site SEO should sing. This is a big thing and it is

another blind spot for SEO copywriters. It could be

because they created their website before they were

a SEO copywriter, and so the key phrases weren’t

there. It could be that you just started writing,

and you wanted to have something up on your site and

you didn’t necessarily worry about the SEO aspect of

it yet. You just wanted something and you wanted to

go back and revisit it.

As I mentioned earlier, I can guarantee you

that if you are talking to a client who has enough

knowledge to be dangerous about SEO copywriting and

if there is anything that is not SEO perfect on your

site, then they will probably ask you about it, and

you need to have a good answer about why you didn’t

do it, or you need to ‘fess up and say you didn’t do

it.

So again, I’m going to go and pick on a couple

of AWI members when I show you some examples of

things you need to look for plus one person, who is

not an SEO person. So, with Pam, if you look up

here with the title and I am on Mac so the title is

appearing centered, right here, Pam Foster, B2B

copywriting, Web content, lead-generation, SEO,

Newsletters. This is also what appears as the

clickable link on the search engine results page,

and for those who have gone through the program know

that is was really, really, important for search

positioning because not only do the search engines

look for this, and they want to make sure that the

key phrases are in there. It’s also important for

the, uh, for getting conversions in there as well,

because when prospects are looking at that search

results page on the clickable link it would be like

a headline. So, it should be as compelling as

possible.

So, things that you can do are, when you are

looking at your SEO; do you have key phrases and

hyperlinks? Are you using your key phrases in your

headlines and throughout your copy? Can you tell

what your key phrases are on your page? So for

example, one of the things that I would suggest for

Pam, and it’s just a simple little tweak is right

here we have a little hyperlink that says, read more

testimonials. That’s great; you want folks to be

able to read more testimonials. What might be more

powerful from an SEO standpoint is being able to say

something like “Read more testimonials about my SEO

copywriting services” and SEO copywriting services

would be the hyperlink.

So, look at our own content and see if it is

as SEO friendly as you can possibly make it, and

where to think about it again is, look at your

titles, these are really important just for the

people who come in to your site, the actual human

visitors, but also the search engines. Look at the

words that are in your hyperlink, see if you have

things like learn more, read more, it’s very common,

and sometimes you can’t have a key phrase in the

hyperlink to make it make sense, but if you can do

it make sure that you do. And, look to see if there

is anything else that you can tweak on your site to

make it better for SEO.

One thing that I would also suggest on your

titles because they are so important to conversion

and it’s actually the first opportunity for

conversion off that search engine results page, and

it’s after someone has done a web search and they

are coming to your website in order to learn more

is, when you can make your titles read like

headlines. To be able to take all of these words

and string them together in as much of a sentence as

you possibly can in order to get more click-through.

Let’s say that Pam, her average response rate

on everything that she writes is, she has a 97%

response rate, just throwing that out. Pam is

awesome and she is rocking with her copy. That is

something that maybe even putting in the copy for

the title. That maybe from a search engine

perspective, the search engines don’t care, but

imagine like, SEO copywriting that gives a 97%

response rate. Imagine that as the clickable link

on the search engine results page. It can be

really, really powerful.

Another thing that folks can do, and this

isn’t a writer, this is someone in the industry who

focuses a lot on local is, you see right here. I

don’t dig how he has his titles right here, but he

is focused on a geographical area. If you want to

work local, and that’s important to you, and maybe

you care about national or international business,

but your heart is where you live, then place where

you live in your title. For me it would be SEO

copywriter, blah, blah, blah, Portland, Oregon. Put

it in your title and also make sure it is somewhere

listed on every single one of your pages. Maybe as

footer, and I’m trying to figure out if he had it as

a footer but he did not. So, it would be down here

just like what Pam has. What that does as well is,

assuming that you want that local business, you are

okay with having your physical location listed in

Google. You can go in to Google for their Google

Maps local and you can type in your entry like, I am

a copywriting agency in Portland, Oregon and Google

will verify the listing, and that helps you not only

be in the regular search results, but also in terms

of how they would read for local results. So, an

example of that is, if I were to go in to Google,

and let’s say wanted to find web design in Portland

Oregon, of course, now it doesn’t do it... alright,

let’s try this, there we go. What I was looking for

are these results right here, and this is, this

shows all of the local companies that are in

Portland, Oregon for that particular type of web

search. So, if you are comfortable with having your

physical location listed in Google, its not

something that you have to worry about, you know,

you can certainly make sure you get your rankings

here in the regular search results, but this

provides you with different opportunities to be seen

a different way in the search results.

And finally, the last one is, does your site

have that WOW factor? And, this is one of the

biggest, biggest things. At the end of the day,

clients are looking for a reason not to hire you. I

did not say that wrong. They are looking for

reasons to bounce you out as a vendor so they can

move on to someone else. So, in order to overcome

that objection its okay if you let your personality

shine on your website or in your blog, absolutely

fine. You have the type of personality that is

really bubbly and really energetic and that’s how

your writing normally is; its fine use it on your

site. You know, granted you are going to have to

target it for a particular audience, but as writers,

people coming to us, they want to know that we can

make their lives better. They want to know that we

are able to get sales, get conversions they might

not have had before.

So, if a prospect is looking at your site, and

they are practically falling asleep because it’s so

darn boring, then you’re not doing yourselves any

favors. Granted if you want to be working in the

corporate world, then you want to be exceedingly

corporate, you might to have that exceedingly

corporate tone and feel, but even then I argue that

a little bit of personality in writing can go a

long, long, long way. What some folks do is, they

might have their regular website, which is

corporate, or it sounds a particular way in order to

gain clients, and then they might have a blog where

they are a little bit faster and looser in how they

say things and what they say, and that actually

works okay because at that point you can

differentiate in your head like okay, if I want to

just write straight up sales copy because I’m

launching a new service that goes on my site, but if

I want to rail about all the bad SEO copywriting

information out there, and stand on my soap box and

scream and yell that’s something that is really

great for the blog. And having said that, it is sort

of a side bird walk topic, if you feel passionate

about something, and if you are working in the

business-to-business world and one of the things

that you are talking about is direct mail, and you

write direct mail along with all the other SEO

copywriting things that you do. You might be really

passionate about how powerful direct mail can be

despite all the stuff that people say about it.

About how you’re clients benefit and have complete

business turnaround from using that kind of

marketing, it’s okay to sound passionate. It’s good

to be passionate because it sounds like you care.

One of the things I’ve noticed, especially in

the last 3 years, as relatively recent as that is, a

lot of people have come online as online whatever

gurus. Online copy gurus, online marketing gurus,

online affiliate gurus, and the market is really

saturated. So, once upon a time, an actual real

guru could kick out a blog post and it would get a

lot of press because so and so like Leodan has

written a blog post, but now it’s not so much

because there are so many people out there. One of

the ways that you can totally differentiate yourself

is not be afraid of controversy. If something

bothers you or if you’re passionate about it, put it

there. Put it on your site front and center in the

blog, but also at the same time, make sure your

website that you have created for your target

audience, is very targeted toward that audience.

Like we saw what Pam’s site was. It specifically

mentions B2B. It really makes sure that folks know

that they are in the right place if they are looking

for a B2B, or copywriter, and that way if they are

looking at your copy versus all the other

copywriters out there; I’ve never even done a search

for how many people are SEO copywriters. Actually

let’s find out. Let’s go to Google right now, oops,

let me go back and find out how to do this, and find

out how many SEO copywriters there are out there,

and you know, you will find that there are a lot of

them out there, and in order to differentiate

yourself it is really important to have that WOW

factor.

So, that is the checklist that you can use for

your own site, and to go back and really take a peek

at, are there things that you can do from an SEO

perspective. Are there things you can do totally

from a tone and feel perspective? Nothing to do with

search engines but everything to do with conversion,

and as I mentioned earlier, if you’ve missed some of

these thing that I have been talking about please

don’t feel stupid because it happens. We all are

trying to do all we can do in order to get business

through the door and build websites, and make them

the best that they can be.

Just know that it’s an opportunity for you to

be able to improve, and make tweaks along the way,

and it’s okay if it’s not perfect as long as you

know what would make it perfect, and you can strive

for that.

So, there are some people that have been very

kind, and have agreed to let us take a peek at their

websites and start evaluating them under these kinds

of things. How is there SEO? Does the site have

the WOW factor? And, although I wish we could do a

live call with them to where I could get some

feedback verbally, rather than chat. I wanted to go

through some of these just so you’ll see some things

that you could do for your own site. Think about

some things that we have talked about. Are those

sites really, really good? Are there things that we

would improve on them? Are there things that we

would not improve on them and go from there?

Here is the first person who has suggested

their website and this is Writers 31, and I’m going

to slowly scroll down the screen so this way you

guys get an opportunity to look at it as well. I’ve

had an opportunity to look at it a little bit more.

So, the headline: “Exploded your website profits

with these proven techniques” We’re scrolling down.

“Allow me to introduce myself”, that’s where it

starts off. It talks about his name, profile, find

more information. “What would you give for the real

solution?” So I’m going to continue scrolling slowly

so you are able to see what’s going on. This is a

screen shot from Bing that shows how the ranking is

on the website. As a side note on screen shots, I

like doing this on one hand because it truly shows

to a client, alright, in Bing on January 12. 2010 on

online copywriters it shows he pulled in at 11 out

of 70,000 results and that’s really rockin’, and

here’s an example of a really good title, Online

Copywriter Boosts SEO. What can happen as a

downside on that is that know that the search

engines all work with what they call a number of

data centers. So, if you have ever talked to a

client, you might have been taking about search

engine rankings, and you type in a key word search

and you get x, and your client types in a key word

search and they find your site is #7 and you’re

seeing it as #4 that’s very normal. It just means

that they are getting results from a different data

center than you are. It doesn’t mean that they’re

wrong or your right or vice versa, it just shows

that in Google and in Bing as well it’s like

stepping on a scale. You can step on the first time

and you weigh what you weigh. Step on again 10

minutes and suddenly you’ve gained 2 pounds, and

there’s no compelling reason for it.

So, as a client, if you ever talk about your

results and the client says, I don’t see you as #1,

I see you as #10, and you’re looking at your results

and you’re still seeing them at #1 explain to your

clients it’s a data center issue. It happens all

the time.

So, and scrolling down, and scrolling down,

and scrolling down… alright. So, one of the things

that I look at with a site like this is, I start

looking at the headline, Explode Your Web Site

Profits With These Proven Online Copywriter

Techniques. The headline to me, although “website

profits” is a really powerful word, it’s not really

telling me anything about what it’s going to do for

me specifically. In fact, it talks about online

copywriting techniques, but it doesn’t really talk

about what those techniques are. In fact, it goes

into I. “I know potential and existing clients. I

know I can boost your potential conversion rates. I

know science”, and at the end of the day that’s

great. It’s good that they’re showcasing their

expertise; people are looking for the word you. What

are you going to do for them?

So, as far as WOW factor on this one of the

things I would do is rather than starting with

picture, the graphics of writers 31 and then going

in to who this person is. Then instead of switching

that around, looking at, talking about how that,

what the client is going to see it as a result of

working with you because this is good in order to

get an idea of who the person is, and for a lot of

clients, they really like to know who they’re

working with, but this is also possibly also for an

About Us page. And, that instead the home page be

focused more on what types of services and what

kinds of things can be done for the business. And,

where there’s a lot of copy that is on this page

that isn’t quite making that clear to the client.

It’s talking about a list of things you need. You’re

able to find your websites they should be buying

from you, but it’s not showing the benefit

statements. So, one of the things this person might

could do is look at how to turn this page around,

and then make it really hard hitting in terms of the

benefit.

It doesn’t look like local business is a thing

for them, which is fine because I’m not seeing

anything that has to do with local. For this, this

looks like a Go Daddy site, I’m guessing, yeah it

looks like godaddy.com. Be really careful if you

are, if you have things like this on your website. A

lot of times free sites, free hosting sites,

sometimes hosting sites that don’t charge you that

much money, and hosting doesn’t cost that much

anyway, they might want to throw in their links,

they’re own stuff on your website. It can depending

on the website make your site look really

unprofessional and at the end of the day, how I look

at a website like this why would there be a link to

a Super Bowl commercial on a copywriter website? How

is that useful? In fact, you want somebody to go

from your website in to a completely different

website that’s not at all related to you.

So, something that you might want to consider

is if you are on a free hosting service, and you did

that because it was free, and free is a wonderful,

wonderful price, is start looking at other

alternative hosting that that won’t necessarily do

that kind of stuff to you. Throw up links or add or

other extraneous information that takes away from

your messaging because at the end of the day that’s

what’s most important.

Sometimes too some folks will put in Google

adds on their website and they do that through, with

what’s called Adsense as a way to monetize their

website even more. And, so if people click on the

add if I click on one of these links, then this

person would receive maybe a penny a click, maybe

more depending on what kinds of links where there.

That’s a judgment call on how you would want to

proceed with your own site. If you are going to be

working with large corporate clients, if you want to

work in that arena to where it’s heavy branding,

heavy corporate, where they’re looking at

everything very carefully I would probably go, not

looking at doing any kind of Adsense on my site

because it makes the business look small. It kind of

implies that you need to get extra monetization

through Adsense some people decide to put that on

the blog instead if they do decide they want to do

Adsense for sure. I left it off. I left Adsense

off of my corporate site after getting advice from

people who said it would make my site look cheap,

but that’s with my particular target audience, in my

particular situation so, it’s something to consider.

I want to show you another website is,

somebody who has submitted before, and this is What

Makes People Tick and Why? This isn’t a writer’s

website. In fact, this is somebody that has written

a website for someone who is, I believe they had

created a book so, there is the author, and I am

going to do the same thing as the last one is just

start slowly scrolling so people can kind of get an

idea of what’s going on. Scrolling again, scrolling

again, scrolling again, and that’s it, we’re at the

end.

So, things to think about for this particular

page:

1. This happens, here the size equals 3 in

quotation marks. This is something that got coded

incorrectly, and it’s rendering funny. It’s, for

those who have coded their site in html, or played a

little with html, you know that html is easy to

learn, and when you are tired and you are working on

no energy it is also easy to forget to do something,

or to add an extra space and suddenly your entire

formatting is messed up. If you see anything like

that you probably want to change it because it looks

bad on the site. It looks bad; it doesn’t look

professional.

Same thing if you have font changes. This is

another probably coding issue that somebody had,

when they were playing with the site, coding the

site they probably did something just slightly wrong

and then it messed up the formatting. It’s something

to easily check.

2. And also, one of the things I was thinking

particularly with this website, and I want to make

sure also that we have time for Q & A at the end of

this is, we have this website about a book, and this

is this person. This is Naomi Tickle who is talking

about, she’s authored It’s All in the Face; You Can

Read a Face like a Book. They’re talking about how

she’s a professional speaker and to learn more. The

goal of this is to add to cart.

You go up here to What Makes People Tick and

Why and you see these people, and my first thought

is, who are these people, when actually the branding

is on this person? If you want to brand yourself as

an expert don’t be afraid to put your photo on the

website. I know that nobody loves to have their

photo on the website, I mean, I certainly hate

having my picture on the website, and I hate doing

video and Denise is probably laughing because she

knows that I grouse about it every single time, but

it also helps people become more comfortable with

you. They’re not going to probable meet you in

person, so having your photo there is great, and

having your photo there can me more powerful than

just random clipart photos where these people are

great and all, and it’s nice that they are all

smiling and happy, and you get the feeling that they

are smiling and happy because these folks have read

this woman’s book and they’re feeling comfortable,

but it’s not really helping anything from a

conversion standpoint. As well as looking in terms

of just key phrases, just flat out SEO, what kinds

of key phrases are here. This one is hard because

What Makes People Tick and Why; Understanding People

Brings Success in Careers and Personal Lives,

there’s probably not a lot of key phrases in that,

and so if somebody is searching for what this person

does, we have personology here. They might find it

on the site, but it’s only if they know to search

for personology. So, if you haven’t done key search

research on your site, and there could be a myriad

of reasons why you haven’t done key search research,

and they are all okay if you haven’t. Then go back

and think about rewriting your webpage, and make

sure that you are able to put those key phrases into

the copy because at the end of the day that’s what’s

going to really, really, really, help you get the

maximum amount of web traffic in.

And, I’m showing you Cami’s sight because she

had done… let’s see if we go into, uh, we have

Anchor Creative client so, somewhere on here she was

talking about where the key phrases were really

integrated into the content, and it made it very

easy for folks to find the website the way we want

to find it.

So again, go to your own website, take a fresh

peek. If you are so close to your own website that

you couldn’t figure out anything wrong if someone

paid you to, which is very, very common, and nothing

to be ashamed of; if you have a copywriting buddy

who can be very honest with you, have them review

your website. Have them, and have them pretend that

you are a client, and to have them say everything

that is wrong with the website and everything that’s

right. When you do that, the person from the

outside can also provide you incredible, incredible

perspective that you don’t have on your own stuff.

It’s very possible to be too close to it yourself,

and that way you have somebody else giving you

marching orders a, b, and c. You know exactly what

to do, exactly how to precede then you can go from

there.

So, I realized here on the chat, we have some

questions. I’m going to scroll down to where one of

the questions is, and this is from Stacey Morris and

the question is, “I have a client who is insisting

on putting up pictures of his technicians fixing

machines, and it seems like a waste of space to me,

but how much influence can we wield over clients

design choices? I’m laughing because sometimes you

don’t have much influence at all.” At the end of the

day, no matter how smart we are, no matter how good

we are at what we do, no matter what kind of

expertise we have established out in the world for

ourselves, our clients will do what we want them to

do, and in this case putting up happy pictures of

happy technicians fixing happy machines to Stacey,

she’s thinking okay this is just waste of space.

What can we do here so the client doesn’t make some

horrible mistake? Sometimes no matter what that

client is going to make that horrible mistake and

put up stuff we don’t like. Here’s what we can do

to try to educate:

1. Educate. It’s usually more than, I don’t

like this, this sucks, because it doesn’t provide a

really good reason why. Sometimes what client’s will

do is they might have, in this case have pictures of

happy technicians all over the page, but any of the

benefit copy is pushed down too far for people to

see. So, that’s something that you can point out

and say, in my experience here’s what I can tell

you, if you can get other sources, so, if you can go

online and talk about, show them a source and you

know, here’s why a web page doesn’t have to be 750

words and include those links so, it’s something for

them to consider.

2. If they are doing something, and this

actually came out in The Wealthy Web Writer, I

believe yesterday or the day before. If they’re

doing something that can actually hurt their SEO

campaign, say you have created content that is

really, really good, and they went back and took out

the majority of key phrases again, the best you can

do is educate, and show them what they’ve done and

give them an idea of what the ramifications could

be. “I understand that legal took out all of the

key phrases here and I understand why legal did this

because it’s legal. At the same time, this could be

what happens with your search results.” That gives

you a good CYA so, in case they come back later and

say, why didn’t you tell us that removing every key

phrase was going to hurt our SEO campaign and you

can say, well I did.

3. If the client is open to testing one of

the things that you can do is a split A/B test. You

can have one page showing the happy technicians

fixing machines, and a page that has one picture

but not a bunch of them, and see if one page pulls

better than the other. And, at the end of the day,

that kind of evidence is really irrefutable, the

client can’t come back and say that’s your opinion.

You’re actually showing, alright, the page without

the pictures taking up most of the screen space,

that is actually converting better and getting you

better sales, which one would you prefer now?

So remember, clients do things that we don’t

like sometimes for reasons that we don’t understand.

Sometimes, it, and a lot of times it’s not anything

that we can change, all we can do is educate them

and try to show them the error of their ways to

provide that other opinion, but at the end of the

day if they are going to change everything the way

they wanted to then pretty much all you can do is

back off and say, alright, that’s not a problem I’ll

make the changes you need, or I understand why you

want to have the technicians pictures up there

that’s great. Here’s testing if you want to do it,

but if you don’t want to do it I understand too, and

how about an email that we can put out to promote

that new page?

Another question, let’s see, we’re scrolling

up, we have lots and lots of questions, here’s

another one,” Most of my content is located on other

people’s website should I provide active links, or

just the names of companies that I’ve worked with?”

If it’s on other people’s website that’s fine and

you can provide links. You can also provide say a

PDF sometimes that clients can download. It shows

screen shots of what you have done as well so,

that’s absolutely not a problem.

Ideally it is nice to have something on your

own website to keep people there at the website and

to be able to show them your expertise, if nothing

else, like testimonials, case studies, and things

like that. If you are able to create a case study

around a really killer campaign that you’ve created,

that can be a great way to get conversions as well

because people like reading case studies. It is

really powerful.

Another question, which is kind of a geeky

one, but one that your clients are probably going to

ask you occasionally is, what causes searchers to

use different data centers? Is it due to the

different search phrases, or due to the different

search engines? Data centers are… Google, I don’t

know how many data centers they have, but they’re

scattered all around the world, and it depends on

how your search is routed to a particular data

center so, it’s not anything that anyone can

control. It has to be, and if you think of the

millions of searches that Google gets every day what

they are getting is they are basically getting

system redundancy out. They’re making sure that no

matter where you are you are able to access Google

as quickly and accurately as possible. So, it’s not

anything that you can control, it’s not anything

that your client can control or do, it’s just

something to be aware of.

One of my clients once upon a time was in the

top 10 results for one of the main key phrases, but

only on the East Coast, and when I did the same

search from my computer at the same time as my

client I had them on the 2nd page of Google every

single time, and never on the 1st page. It’s just a

little glitch; it’s nothing you can do.

Here’s another one, “A designer checked my

headline and superimposed them over a very pretty

picture. When I searched the source under view you

can’t see any of the copy. I tried telling the

client that the copy is invisible to the search

engines, but he doesn’t believe me, am I correct?”

Without looking at what specifically you are talking

about it sounds like you are correct. One of the

easy ways to tell if the search engines can see that

copy is if you can highlight the copy. If you can

highlight the copy like you can any word in a work

document it’s probably something that can be seen.

If it’s not, if it’s a graphic text box, or if it’s

superimposed and it’s all pretty like that, there’s

a good chance that it can’t. It depends on what

kind of page this is. If this is just one instance

on a page somewhere you may just want to tell the

client this is what’s going on, that you are able

then to find resources on online that talk about

copy and graphics SEO, and you are going to find a

myriad of resources that you can’t, that the search

engines can’t. The other alternative that you have

especially if the entire page is a graphic say a

home page is, find that home page in Google in the

search results, and then there is a little line

underneath the search results that will say cashed

and when you click on that it will show what Google

has in their index at that particular page, and at

the very top of the page, and I would show you an

example if I could think of site that was like this

right now. You can click something that will say,

show it without images, and what will happen is that

page will come up blank, and it’s a very easy way to

show the client, okay, do you see this big blank

white box? That’s what the search engines see of

your page. They don’t see anything at all other

than a big white box, and that can also be a very

powerful way to have the client realize that what

they are showing, although the readers can see it,

the search engines cannot.

So, at that we are bumping up right on 1

o’clock Pacific time, 4 o’clock Eastern. So, I just

want to turn this back over to Denise, and thank you

all very much for being here today and asking, I

know there are a lot of questions here, asking your

questions, and I know that we are going to be doing

this again, and also I’m sure I’ll be meeting a lot

of you folks in Vegas. Thank you very much for your

time, and if you need anything just let me know.

Denise Ford: Thank you Heather, that was

very, very insightful. I love the sort of 5-point

tool kit. I think anybody on the call could take

those five points, look at their own site and just

immediately make improvements. And, I think that’s

something, you’re right, we create something and

then we always have some sort of blind spot in the

sense that we are not looking at the whole picture

all of the time.

Heather Lloyd-Martin: Exactly, and a lot of

times we are moving fast and furious, and the last

thing we have time to work on is our own website

because we are so busy working on clients websites.

It’s a great problem to have…

Denise Ford: But, I want to encourage everyone

to call all the folks that have this program, it is

really a remarkable benefit, every other month

Heather is taking you through some sort of seminar

related to search engine optimization, and remember

as she said in the announcement about these

sessions, she’s going to build theses webinars

around your questions and your SEO challenges. So,

we want to remind you to send in suggestions for

webinar topics to us, and you can send them to

webinarquestions@awaionline.com. I’ll be sure to

gather them up and send them to Heather.

So, thanks again Heather, we really, really,

appreciate you being with us.

Heather Lloyd-Martin: Excellent, thank you so

much

Denise Ford: Everybody have a great day!