Did you see?
I had a bit of fame in The Australian’s Entrepreneur section on Friday. Anyone catch the photo in the printed version?

By applying this formula to writing website articles, you will get great success with the search engines. Follow these 5 easy steps and experiment for yourself now.

Fred Schebesta’s Article Writing Formula

Step 1 - Choose your Keyword
To begin, choose your article’s keyword target. I suggest focusing on getting results for just one keyword for each article. Use a keyword selection tool or check your web stats to figure out which keyword you want to rank highly for.

Step 2 – Research what is out there
Go to Google and research: type in your keyword and figure out what other people have already written and see what websites they are referencing. The internet is filled with plagiarism so you will usually find common source articles. Once you have the core idea, give it your own spin. I include my own experiences to talk directly to my intended audience.

Step 3 – The idea and the benefit
After researching , I come up with my article’s main theme. It usually comes from extending another article, a wacky idea I have been thinking about applied to the topic, or a question a client has asked me during the day. From this idea I focus on what key benefit a person could get out of this information and make that the title of my article.

Step 4 – Title, article, links, pictures and resources
My next steps just flow:

Title – Write the title of your article. I might adjust this during this process or at the end, depending on what might work better for the target market and what type of content I write.

Article – The actual body of the article. I try and write like I am writing to one person. I think about that person reading it and also imagine myself reading the article and what I would want to know. I try and use dot points and bolding to communicate key points.

Links – Links to related pages are gold because you don’t have to rewrite supporting information, allowing the focus to remain on your core subject. I try and keep these to a minimum so as not to distract the reader.

Pictures and Diagrams – I love putting a picture or a diagram in because it brightens up the piece and makes it less boring. I hate big wads of text. I want pictures and diagrams because I know a lot of people are visual people.

Resources and Call to actions – At the end of the article I normally include either related resource links or a relevant call to action. Normally if you write an article a call to action to browse another page of your website is easy to sell because you have built trust and credibility.

Step 5 – Proof read, send it live and promote it
I always give my articles to someone else to check. Other people see things you don’t and their final finesse can turn your article from being good to great. Also consider how you might promote the article.

3 quick ways to promote your article:

1. Post it on a free articles site – www.goarticles.com is an example
2. Send it as an enewsletter – Send a mail to your database describing a problem your article will solve.
3. Give it away to a related website

Remember back to when you first logged onto the internet and the first types of things that you used to do. Compare that to the things you do with the internet these days. Now think about the internet as an object and think about the feelings that come about it? When you start something you have initial experiences and these experiences tend to guide your feelings about it. Notice how you still have some latent feelings about the internet and how to use it. I can assure you now that many users are the same. What I have discovered is that these feelings also tend to guide the way in which you use the internet and therefore dramatically effects what marketing you are exposed to.

Here are my first impressions of the internet:

1. Slow to download things
2. Sent emails and wanted someone to send me one.
3. SPAM was always in my inbox.
4. I would search the search engines for basic terms trying to find information or things of interest.
5. Normally I would be given a homepage and the extent of my browsing started and finished with that website I began on.
6. Banner ads opened my eyes to different things that were available on the internet.
7. I looked at pictures and quickly scanned for links.
8. I was always in search of something that was out of this world that would interest me. It was like there was a treasure hunt on for things which were undiscovered on the internet.
9. When Google became available the results were much cleaner and so I decided to set it as my homepage. Cleaner in that less spammers came up in my results.

What were your first impressions of the internet? I met a girl yesterday who said she bought 20 minutes of the internet and just sat in front of her computer and waited for something to happen!

Mobile marketing insights for your internet marketing

I spoke at Cebit last week and met a mobile marketer there and I learnt something that will help you clarify this idea of the internet. He was telling me about the early people who are using mobile as a content source and what types of things they do. He said most of them are just starting from the website they are provided with and clicking on links. The reason I would infer from this is that most people who use a new medium are not quite sure how to use it and what is possible. They are more just thrown into the deep end and just asked to have a crack. People don’t know what is possible and how to locate places that are of interest to them. Super early users are less likely to search for things and find them, although with the internet as they have become a little more experienced and seen how some other people use the internet they will learn to search. This brings into play search engines and I can imagine the first search engine to crack the mobile market perhaps only spidering .mobi domains will be a real winner. The key here will be having a very light page weight and being exceptionally fast as these users will be on the run.

3 insights to consider for your online marketing

1. Target your marketing to where the fish are already swimming - Are your users basic or advanced? Do they search.. If not cover those early portals and websites that users are provided when they join an ISP or first get a computer. Usually in Australia that will be Ninemsn or Any of the ISP websites.
2. How can you take advantage of the mobile revolution on our doorstep? Is there are part of your business that will adapt well to people on the go. Is there a little niche that your business can own? Just like with the internet the first movers have done the best. Google may not be a better search engine that Yahoo although now it has the brand and people use it because they THINK it’s the best. Remember that a mobile website is just like an internet website only its smaller, the same principles will apply to getting traffic and getting repeat visitors.
3. What is the history of your market that everyone remembers and still perceives your market to be like? In the website development game our first clients used to come to us not knowing why they needed a website or what they were going to do with it but they knew they just needed one. A lot of businesses are still at that point and haven’t learnt much more and that is why we give seminars to teach marketers how to use the internet as a tool for their business. When I first got a mobile phone I thought text messages were impersonal until I realised they were a quick way to tell someone what is going on without disturbing them now as they might be in a meeting.

What other insights have you gained from this idea?

* Picture from The History and Future of the Internet

Look at the mastery of this ad. I stand humble at the feet of the master of copy and direct response. Look at the story value of this ad. I believe that man exists. Look at this call to action in this ad.

David Ogilvy Quote: “P.S. If your favorite store or bar doesn’t yet have Schweppes, drop a card to us and we’ll make the proper arrangements. Address Schweppes, 30 East 60th Street, New York City.”

I just want to flag 1 line “make the proper arrangements.” David Ogilvy always said, “Turn your clients into premium brands, make them a first class ticket.” This ad encapsulates that for me.

More Ogilvy Gold

Imagine a website which was super easy to use and continued making usability the top priority in updating the website. You would infer that this website was not setup for marketing or selling anything. A website that persuades users to take specific actions and provides them with relevant and timely information to make decisions and purchases does not put usability as its top priority. Sure the website needs to be usable and when users go to your shopping cart and checkout its important that they can do this seamlessly. But let’s face facts, who wants a website where users have an experience but don’t purchase? I would prefer if they purchased but had a bad experience. We can fix the experience with the funds from the sales made but its tough to fix the sales without any proof of concept.

Let’s get our priorities straight:

1. Sales
2. Usability

Don’t get me wrong I believe in user centred design for processes and functions but I place marketing and persuasion above usability. If the website is completely unusable you are not going to make any sales in the first place. But if your website isn’t selling for you now I wouldn’t suggest that you burst out of the sheds and make the experience of browsing through and using the website better. This will just get happy tyre kickers lurking around your site. I would instead suggest go back to some core principles within each of your web pages.

Here are 3 questions you need to ask yourself before you design and populate a webpage with content.

1. What action needs to be taken? Buy, Upsell, Upgrade, Renew, Install or Download are actions you want your users to take. Define this and be clear as to how best you could represent it on the web page.
2. Who needs to take that action? What personas (types of visitors) need to be persuaded to take the above action? Each persona will have different ways of interpreting information and required actions. E.g. A transport expert might view the action “Download” different to an Internet Service Provider technician.
3. How do we persuade that person to take the action we desire? – What information, images, diagrams or text do they require to take the action? Depending on your answer to the 2 previous questions your persona you are targeting and the particular action will setup some key questions they might have when challenged by the action you want them to take. E.g. If you want to persuade a single male to apply for a credit card they might look for the benefits program. Where as a single mother when applying for a credit card might look for how many days interest free you will receive.

Here is a quick check list of things to do to make sure you get the best results when integrating for your campaigns.

1. Put the website address on your offline materials – Sure that sounds easy but make sure that you put your URL with caps of each beginning letter. Here is a comparision www.onlinemarketingsydney.com.au versus www.OnlineMarketingSydney.com.au
2. Give them a reason to go online – “Free article when you visit www.OnlineMarketingSydney.com.au” give them a free listing on your directory. Some sort of little enticement is going to lengthen your campaign just that little bit further and engage them with your website.
3. Put a screenshot of your website – Show they what they are likely to see when they get to your website. Put an enticing screenshot that builds interest in the users mind e.g. a big “FREE” or a Hot looking girl or an interesting diagram. Usually they will see something and this will tip them over the edge to take action and go online to your website. A little teaser preview of what they can expect online might just be what entices them.
4. Keep the creative consistent – Make sure that when your user enters your online site it is still relevant to what they read offline. E.g. Keep the same headline image at the top as the one in your TV ad, perhaps use similar fonts and iconography or even just put your TV ad on your website. A little bit of consistency here with a good simple call to action will extend your relationship with this visitor a little further to take some more action.
5. Buy multiple domain names to capture mispellers – Most people including myself can’t spell. So it’s a good idea to buy multiple domain names that are centred around or close to the spelling of your main domain name. E.g. if you go to www.blogge.com you wont go to blogger.com. In my mind this is a bit of a debacle and a blunder. A website which does this well is RSVP.com.au they own every which way under the sun domain near and in their space.

1. Websites statistics resolution stats - What resolution do most of the people that visit your website already use? Use these stats to determine what size you should do it in.
2. Internet trends - Check the current resolution stats, although keep in mind that this is the entire internet and your particular website might have very specific trends. Again use these 2 pieces of information together, i.e. the trend of the internet users and your specific website.

Google Conversion University

3 quick tips to improve conversion

1. Add security logos - Your SSL provider will normally provide a logo you can use to show that you are using their SSL certificate. If you use Verisign then you can use their logo.
2. Provide a telephone number - Providing the phone number is good but making sure it is answered within the first 3 rings is even better!
3. Keep your website up to date - Add something fresh and new to your website all the time because you never know when that one client you have been looking for is browsing your website.

What has been your best tactic to improve conversion?