Last week we talked about how content marketing is helping small businesses build traffic to their websites. Content marketing is all about creating good online content that attracts the attention of the search engines, social network users, and other websites like blogs. Eden allows small businesses to do content marketing, with one easy-to-use system, on their own.
I recently spoke with Keith Bouchard of The Healing Arts and Massage School in Raleigh, North Carolina. Keith launched his website on Eden in November 2009 and it has been a big success.
Keith has done a great job of attracting new visitors to his website with content marketing and his business is growing quickly in result. In fact, his traffic has grown by over 400% in his first six months on Eden and he told us that his phone is ringing off the hook with new customers.
Learn how Keith is using website content marketing with Eden to build a steady flow of qualified prospects for his business. Read the full interview with Keith on our website.
Sonny at Shoeboxed, the online receipt and business card scanning company, had a great post last week about four web tools to help you calculate your taxes in a jiffy. We’re big fans of helping small businesses do things quickly, easily, and at a low cost. And what’s more of a hassle than calculating and filing your taxes? Quarterly estimated taxes are even worse since they come around four times a year.
Get back to working on the parts of your business that you actually enjoy and get your quarterly estimated taxes done with these easy tools put together for you by the folks at Shoeboxed. We hope to continue to see more innovation around age-old problems being solved with really elegant and low-cost online apps. Very cool.
Since content marketing is very important for building visibility for your business. You need to be thinking about content and how you can continually change or update it. If the search engines see your website’s ever changing landscape, they will pay more attention to it. This will get you spider-ed more often, leading to more relevant search results. Content means adding lots of pages on your website and creating a large, robust website. Your website must grow to be noticed!
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This blog post was brought to you by the Eden Platform.
When optimizing your website for the search engines, nothing is more important than the right content. Your content should include key-phrases that match your business’ core offering. Each page should focus on a maximum of three key-phrases so the search engines know exactly what the page entails. The search engines should not have to guess what your pages are about. You can remove the guess work by keeping the focus narrow on a per page basis and by building your site out using a well-structured navigation.
The key-phrases should be placed in all of the most important content areas of your site. These areas include:
- The page title.
- The meta description and meta keywords.
- The main headings and sometimes sub headings.
- The body content.
You can change each of these content areas easily within Preation’s Eden Platform.
The amount of content you have on a page can also be a factor as to how the search engines rank your page. If you have over 500 words of content on a page, consider shortening it to around 300-400 words and creating a new page with the remaining text.
Another key factor is the freshness of your content. Lewis of WebMastersHelpGuide.com states on his blog that by updating your website with fresh new content frequently, you will improve your ranking in the search engine. Plus, if a visitor arrives at your site and finds that you have outdated content, they may immediately go elsewhere. Don’t risk becoming a boring website to your visitors and the search engines. Update your website at least weekly.
Landing pages aren’t exclusively reserved for search engine optimization and cost-per-click marketing campaigns. You need to consider them for all online marketing opportunities, for instance, email marketing.
When it comes to email marketing, landing pages are special pages that you create as the destination for links in your email newsletter. If you’re promoting a specific product in your newsletter, you’ll want to make sure that your landing page is relevant to that particular product and offer. Continuity is the key. Marketers often make the mistake of directing all of their email newsletter links to their website’s homepage which can easily lead subscribers away from their intended focus. Confusion reduces conversions. Building landing pages specific to each marketing campaign reduces confusion and in result increases conversions.
As a best practice, you should consider split A/B testing your landing pages. With split A/B testing you compare different landing pages against each other by sending traffic to each and then comparing the results. If the goal of a landing page is to get a visitor to submit an information request form then the unique landing page that generates the most form submissions will be the winner. Testing is very important because it lets you get more results from your existing marketing campaigns. Once you’ve determined the best performing landing page you can link to it from all future email newsletters.
There are many A/B testing software solutions available that can automate this type of testing for you. But most are too expensive or too technical for small business owners. If you don’t have access to this type of testing software, you can conduct a split A/B test for your email marketing campaigns manually in just a few minutes.
Here’s how:
- Create two landing pages on your website. Use different text headings, descriptive text, and images in each landing page.
- Divide your recipient email list into two different lists. The easiest way to do this is to export your list into Excel, move half of the list to a new Excel file, and then upload the files into two new lists.
- Create two versions of your next email newsletter where the only difference between each version is the link to each specific landing page. For example, this might be a link or button with the text “request a free information packet.” Make sure to keep the rest of the newsletter identical including the subject.
- Send one version of the newsletter to the first half of your recipient list. Send the other version of the newsletter to the other half of your recipient list.
After a few days you can use your email marketing software to see how many subscribers clicked on the link to each landing page. Divide the number of form submissions that each page generated into the number of clicks that it received from the email newsletter to determine the conversion rate for that page. After a while you can delete the page with the lower conversion rate and link to the page with the higher conversion rate from future email newsletters.
Creating and testing landing pages has been shown to increase the number of conversions that email marketers receive from their email newsletters. Increased results typically range from 30% to 150% after the first successful test.
We suggest that you use iContact for your email newsletters and Eden Platform to create your website landing pages. But of course, we’re biased. You can use any email service provider or website content management system to run a split A/B test on your email marketing campaigns.
The Importance of Email Marketing Landing Pages
Landing pages aren’t exclusively reserved for search engine optimization and cost-per-click marketing campaigns. You need to consider them for all online marketing opportunities, for instance, email marketing.
When it comes to email marketing, landing pages are special pages that you create as the destination for links in your email newsletter. If you’re promoting specific product in your newsletter, you’ll want to make sure that your landing page is relevant to that particular product and offer. Continuity is the key. Marketers often make the mistake of directing all of their email newsletter links to their website’s homepage which can easily lead subscribers away from their intended focus.
As a best practice, you should consider split A/B testing your landing pages. With split A/B testing you compare different landing pages against each other by sending traffic to each and then comparing the results. If the goal of a landing page is to get a visitor to submit an information request form then the unique landing page that generates the most form submissions will be the winner. Once you’ve determined the best performing landing page you can link to it from all future email newsletters.
There are many A/B testing software solutions available that can automate this type of testing for you. But most are too expensive or too technical for small business owners. If you don’t have access to this type of testing software, you can conduct a split A/B test for your email marketing campaigns manually in just a few minutes.
Here’s how:
- Create two landing pages on your website. Use different text headings, descriptive text, and images in each landing page.
- Divide your recipient email list into two different lists. The easiest way to do this is to export your list into Excel, move half of the list to a new Excel file, and then upload the files into two new lists.
- Create two versions of your next email newsletter where the only difference between each version is the link to each specific landing page. For example, this might be a link or button with the text “request a free information packet.” Make sure to keep the rest of the newsletter identical including the subject.
- Send one version of the newsletter to the first half of your recipient list. Send the other version of the newsletter to the other half of your recipient list.
After a few days you can use your email marketing software to see how many subscribers clicked on the link to each landing page. Divide the number of form submissions that each page generated into the number of clicks that it received from the email newsletter to determine the conversion rate for that page. After a while you can delete the page with the lower conversion rate and link to the page with the higher conversion rate from future email newsletters.
Creating and testing landing pages has been shown to increase the number of conversions that email marketers receive from their email newsletters. Increased results typically range from 30% to 150% after the first successful test.
We suggest that you use iContact for your email newsletters and Eden Platform to create your website landing pages. But of course, we’re biased. You can use any email service provider or website content management system to run a split A/B test on your email marketing campaigns.
Earlier this week I spoke at the International WWW2010 Conference in Raleigh, NC on the topic of The Future of Entrepreneurship on the Web. In honor of that topic in this newsletter I’ll share a few thoughts on what the web application revolution means for your business.
Whether you’re a first time business owner or a seasoned business executive, knowing how to get things done quickly and at a low cost is a skill that anyone can benefit from. A new generation of web-based, low cost, and easy-to-use tools is changing the way businesses are formed, organized, and promoted. In this short article I’ll show you how you can launch a new business, brand, or product line in one week for less than $1,000.
Incorporate a New Business: LegalZoom.com. ($250) When you’re starting a new business it’s always a good idea to incorporate a legal entity. Read on LegalZoom.com or take a free one hour phone consultation from an attorney in your area to learn which type of corporation is right for you.
Design a Logo: LogoWorks.com ($300). Every business needs a brand. Start with a logo created by a professional designer. LogoWorks.com has created thousands of logos and they can provide you with a few initial concepts within three days. You pick the concept you like best and then send them suggested revisions until it’s perfect.
Print Business Cards: LogoWorks.com ($150). A number of companies can help you with business cards but if you just got your logo created at LogoWorks you might as well have them work on the business cards as well. Or, to save even more money go to VistaPrint.com and add your new logo and colors to one of their business card design templates which start at just $20.
Build a Website: Preation.com ($0 upfront, $10/month). For some new businesses a website serves as a brochure or a reference point for prospects and customers to find information. But savvy entrepreneurs also use their website to market their business and attract new customers. Preation’s Eden Platform product allows you to build, update, and optimize a website for the search engines with no technical experience required.
Sell Your Product or Service Online: Volusion.com ($50 upfront, $25/month). Showcase your products and services on your website and then provide ‘buy now’ links to let your visitors actually make a secure purchase with a credit card.
Tell the People You Know: iContact.com ($0 upfront, $10/month). Reach out to your friends or existing customers, anyone that you already have permission to contact by email, and announce your new company. Easily create a professional looking email newsletter, send it to your existing contacts, and view a report of who opened the message and how many times it was forwarded along.
Tell Everyone Else: PRWeb.com ($80). Lastly, tell the world about your new business with a press release on the Internet. Web-based press releases will reach readers across the globe and can direct prospective customers directly to your website. You may also catch the interest of journalists who could contact you for more details so that they can include your business in an upcoming story.
Using this new breed of online applications and services any entrepreneur can launch and market a new business to a worldwide audience for $875 (including upfront fees and first month service fees). Just five years ago the average new company would have spent $25,000 or more for the same services and it would have required months of meetings and delays before the first dollar of revenue could be collected.
Today’s small business SEO tip:
Do a quick Google search for your core product or service offering. If your website doesn’t appear on the first page of results, click on the very first result and study their website. Look at their page titles, site organization (pages and content), and calls to action. Apply this same structure to your own website’s pages. You can learn a lot about and improve your site’s search engine optimization by thoroughly studying your online competition.
This tip was brought to courtesy of the Eden Platform.
One great feature that comes standard with Eden is the ability to add files directly to any page of your website. This feature allows users to easily manage and share documents with their visitors. Some primary uses for this feature include adding printable pdf forms on your website and adding Powerpoint presentations for your visitors and colleagues.
To add a document to a page, follow these steps while editing a page:
- Drag a Content element and drop it in any zone on the page.
- Remove the default text.
- Click the Insert Document Icon in the Text Editor. The file manager will load in a new window.
- Browse the folders and then click on the file of your choice in the file manager.
- Click the Select This File button beside the proper file.
- Your file is now placed within your Content element. You can use the features of the Text Editor to align the image around any existing text.
- Click the Save button to save the Content element to the page.
Sometimes users do not want to include the icon that is automatically added when you add a pdf or other file type. If this is the case, you can follow these steps to create a text link that when clicked will open the pdf in the same manner as clicking the icon.
- Find the file you’d like to link to in the files module.
- Select the file and then click the “Download/View File” button. This will open up the file in a new browser window.
- Copy the URL of the file in the new window.
- Go back to the Pages module within Eden and edit the page that will contain the text link.
- Add or edit a content element on the page.
- Type and/or select the text that will become the link and then click the “Insert/Edit Link” button. (This looks like a chain link in the rich text editor)
- Select the “Manual Link” tab in the “Insert/Edit Link” popup box.
- Paste the copied URL in the “Link URL” field.
- Click “Insert” on the popup box.
- Save the content element.
You’re all done!
If you plan on including multiple files on one page of your website, using this linking method to access files in an unordered list will save valuable web page real estate and create an aesthetically pleasing page.
This week, we released some broad improvements across several key areas of Eden.
First, we’ve improved our Google Sitemap feature so that our clients can now register their website’s sitemap with Google in just one click. Eden creates a sitemap for their website automatically and registering the sitemap with Google completes the process. Our clients only have to do this once and from that point on Google will always know when they add new content to their website. Eden customers can register their sitemap with Google from the My Domains interface available from their Eden account dashboard.
With this release we’ve also completed a suite of features that allow web designers to build websites on Eden in standards-compliant XHTML and CSS. Designers and customers can click on the Theme Admin link at the top of any administrative interface to manage their themes and enable FTP access for their web designer. Web designers who are interested in becoming an Authorized Design partner on Eden may contact us.
Finally, when Eden customers log in we’re now automatically checking their web browser to ensure that they have the most recent version of Flash. If their browser is out of date they’re not getting the best Eden experience. Eden will now let our customers know when their version of flash is out of date and will provide them with a link so that they can quickly go get the most recent version of flash (which is free).
Preation has recently won the Interactive Media Award for Outstanding Achievement. As this is our first IMA, we’re extremely excited to share this news!
I recently spoke with Keith Bouchard of The Healing Arts and Massage School in Raleigh, North Carolina. Keith launched his website on Eden in November 2009 and it has been a big success.
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