The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

You know a strong call to action is a very important part of your sales literature. If you don’t ask your prospect to take action, they might just sit and listen and not take any action. You have to let them know what you want them to do and when to do it.

Here are 5 dynamic ways to use a good call to action.

1. Your landing pages – Here’s an obvious one. You have a great sales page that describes your product well, includes photos and maybe even a video. But does it have a call to action? A strong call to action will increase conversions.
2. Anchor text – Does your anchor text motivate people to click or does it just provide some keyword-based bland text for SEO effect? Nothing wrong with SEO, but give it a call to action.
3. Meta descriptions – Your meta descriptions will appear in the SERPs as search snippets. Do they motivate searchers to click on your page? If they were strong calls to action they would.
4. Your Facebook posts – It’s great that you use Facebook as much as you do, but do any of your posts include a call to action? Make people click the link. Tell them to do it.
5. Your tweets – There’s not a lot of room for error on Twitter, but one way that many marketers miss opportunities is to include a link without a strong call to action.
6. Your PPC ads – Want people to click your ads? Give them a strong call to action and they will click all day long.

Take control of your online marketing with calls to action. They get people where you want them.

It used to be that all you had to do was write a decent page of keyword-based content, add some meta tags, and then start building links. If you were even halfway good at it, you could expect to achieve respectable rankings. SEO is a lot harder now.

Specifically, on-page SEO is a lot harder now. And it’s getting harder.

What’s making on-page SEO so hard? Why is it getting harder?

There are several reasons why on-page SEO is getting more difficult with each passing day. For starters, Google changes its search algorithms more than 50 times a day, so it’s near impossible to keep up with the changes.

Secondly, there are so many search factors to keep up with that no one can feasibly master them all. And we can’t be sure any more just how much weight is given to specific on-page factors such as keyword density, keywords in subheads, meta tags, page titles, etc. Plus, the addition of schemas and structured data means that some SEO factors may be subject to certain conditions and your rankings may or may not have to do with anything related to those conditions.

For instance, all else being equal, if you use a particular bit of structured data and your competitor doesn’t use any, your competitor could still rank higher for you on some search queries even if you rank higher than him on others.

SEO is getting to be more and more subjective all the time – subjective in the sense that each page is judged on its own merits without consideration for what’s going on in other parts of the web.

There are basics to on-page SEO that every webmaster should pay attention to, but beyond those, your best bet is to test, experiment, and measure. No two web pages are a like and no two search queries are either.

In light of the Penguin update you’ve probably been hearing a lot about quality content. In fact, since the first Panda update, every SEO in the world has come out in favor of quality content. It makes you wonder if they were in favor of quality before they got beat down. They certainly weren’t talking about it then.

So why are they talking about it now?

SEOs have always been interested in whatever is going to make their websites rank higher in the search engines. At one time that meant counting keywords and focusing on keyword density. Even after it was evident that keyword densities didn’t work, many SEOs kept advising their clients to count keywords anyway.

Then there was link counting. And anchor text manipulation. Link building became a spam game between SEOs to see who could acquire the most and the best links. Many of them won. Then along came Panda.

Getting boinked isn’t fun. Especially if it costs you money. But if you focus on producing quality content, then you don’t have to worry about getting boinked. And this hasn’t changed. Quality today means the same thing it meant in 1998. The only thing that has changed is that now every SEO on the planet wants to focus on it.

Quality content means writing content that your readers want to read. It means providing useful and valuable information on a topic that is important to your audience. If you can do that, you’ll rank for the right key terms.

A new study shows that Facebook would earn 22% of the search market share immediately if it launched a search engine right now, today. This actually brings up two questions for me.

1. No. 1, why doesn’t Facebook have an adequate search feature then?
2. And, two, what if the search engine just wasn’t any good? Would that share drop off considerably once users decided they didn’t like it?

Of course if Facebook did have its own search engine, that would strain its relationship with Bing. I can’t see that Bing and Facebook would continue to have the relationship they have now if Facebook were to develop its own search engine. So I’m not sure that’s going to happen.

Thirdly, if Facebook had 22% of the market starting out and it did build a search engine that people would use, it would likely siphon off some market from Bing. It could very well end up at the 40% market share neighborhood and leave Bing flailing like Yahoo!

Building a search engine is a difficult thing to master. Certainly, 22% of the share of the search market would put Facebook at No. 2 in the search engine competition. However, creating value in search is not easy to do as both Yahoo! and Bing have discovered.

I’m not saying Facebook shouldn’t build its own search engine. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be good if they did. I am saying that simply building one wouldn’t necessarily mean it would be good.

What do you think? Should Facebook build its own search engine? Would it be worth trying if they did? Would you use it? And one more question: How would that affect search engine optimization practices?

Do you know the most important on-page optimization element? Is it internal links? H1 tags? Meta Description (is that even on-page?)? Your primary keyword? Secondary keyword? Or maybe it’s your page title?

Yesterday I stumbled across a web page that ranked No. 1 in its niche for the keyword the author was targeting. When I clicked View Source to check out what was under the hood on that page I discovered a div tag with the element title “hidden SEO”. It was followed by a long line of keywords, keyword phrases, and other SEO content. Could that have been the reason the page ranked No. 1?

Possibly. But even so ….

I wouldn’t put my life on it. That wasn’t the most important on-page optimization element.

So what is?

The most important on-page optimization element for any page you build for your website is the actual content on the page. If you think that’s vague, try building a web page with no words on it. Just build a sidebar with widgets. Does it look good? Do you think it will rank? Now add a link. Nothing more, just a link. Better now? How about adding a video. No description, just a video. Think you’ll make money with that?

I could go and on, but the point is real simple. A web page with no words, no content, no message that intrigues, entertains, enlightens, informs, educates, or sparks a call to action is not really optimized. It’s just there.

Thanks to all those SEO books that came out over the past 10 years there are a lot of small business owners who are making SEO mistakes over and over again. They don’t know they’re making mistakes. They’re doing things the way their SEO taught them to. But the problem is the Internet, and the search engines, have changed a lot in the last decade.

Here are 5 big SEO mistakes that most small business owners are still making:

1. Key stuffing – This is the practice of adding too many keywords to your web pages so that you rank higher for those keywords. The problem is, if the search engines catch on that you are putting too many keywords into your content, then you will lose rankings.
2. Spammy links – Many webmasters and small business owners are still chasing spammy links. Many are still using article marketing techniques from 5 or 10 years ago. These usually lead to spammy links. What will happen is the search engines will discount those links, so all your efforts to acquire them was wasted.
3. Lack of link diversity – In your effort to rank well for your pet keywords you end up using the same anchor text for your links over and over again. Search engines like to see diversity in anchor text.
4. Buying links – Here’s another big one. Many small business owners get roped into buying links. If they are found out, they will likely have their sites de-indexed.
5. Duplicate content – Are you still using article directories and taking articles that other people are using too? They won’t rank. How about plagiarizing? I am amazed to see how many small business owners lift content from other websites. This will hurt your business.

1. If you want to make your SEO better, start by avoiding these common SEO mistakes.

Google’s latest algorithm update is now starting to be called Penguin. At first it was an unnamed update that Google said was necessary to combat webspam. It’s interesting that now they’ve decided it needs a name.

There is a huge difference between an overoptimized website and a website that relies on spam for rankings. You can be one without being the other. I’m sure Google knows that.

But that doesn’t mean that overoptimization is excusable. You may have crossed a line, but it wasn’t a big line.

So what is overoptimization, exactly? In my mind, an example of overoptimization would be too many keywords. It’s when you focus so heavily on keywords that you end up chasing the keywords and therefore include too many on your web page. Maybe you didn’t go so overboard that you are a spammer. Maybe you just went a little overboard.

Overoptimization happens when fairly innocent Internet marketers try to hard to achieve the right rankings.

Sometimes overoptimization can simply be an aggregate of a lot of small errors. Maybe you have too many keywords in your domain name and too many on your web page, plus your inbound links are all using one keyword so you have no link diversity. The key is to scale back on your use of keywords and use a level head where your content is concerned.

If you write content for human readers rather than robots, you shouldn’t have an overoptimization problem. And you definitely won’t have a spam problem.

Google has always had it out for webspam. After all, it dilutes the search engine’s search results and makes it difficult for real quality content to rank as high as it should. That’s why webmasters should kill the spam before Google does.

Yesterday Google announced another algorithm update that will address some of the ongoing webspam issues. In January, the company addressed content quality with an algorithm that punished web pages with too many ads at the top.

It behooves you to keep an eye on what Google, and all the search engines, are up to so that you don’t run afoul of their policies. By keeping your site “clean” – or free of spam – you increase your chances of ranking well for your keywords.

Many an innocent business owner has found herself slipping in rankings because of some algorithmic change that addressed a problem that the business owner didn’t know was a problem. You might think you are following search engine guidelines only to discover that the practices you’ve been engaged in are practices the search engines don’t favor.

The best way to protect yourself from algorithmic changes that make your site good today and not-so-good tomorrow is to follow the search engine blogs and stay up-to-date on their policies. But if you can’t do that – admittedly, it is nearly a full-time task – then hire an SEO firm that does keep on top of industry changes and tries to steer clear of objectionable practices.

SEO is ever-changing. It requires daily practice and daily monitoring.

Funny how so many people are willing to tell you how to optimize a web page but they can’t do it themselves. They’ve read the book, they know all the right things to say, but where are their rankings?

They don’t have any.

Real SEO is not about chasing keywords. Keywords are important, yes. But if you can’t rank a web page without doing keyword research, then you probably aren’t doing your SEO right. Stop it.

Search engine optimization is about creating opportunities. It’s not about following 10-year-old advice as if it is today’s recipe.

So now the big question is, How do you create opportunities with search engine optimization? Glad you asked.

What world class copywriters do is study copywriting techniques. They write headlines that grab readers’ attentions. Then they write content that people want to read. And they do it so well that you wish you had written it. On any given day a good online copywriter can get their content to rank for hundreds of keywords. They write content that matters.

Instead of chasing keywords, try instead to write as keywords don’t matter. Don’t just pick a popular phrase that a lot of other people have written about and write a post about it. Instead, write a post about something that people in your niche want to know about. Write it without worrying about what keyword to use.

I’m not saying keywords are not important. What I am saying is that bad content can’t be saved by keywords. Learn to write good content before you try to spruce it up with keywords.

A lot has been said of marketing toward particular segments of the population and that includes the differences between the generational segments. For instance, if you are marketing products and services toward Baby Boomers, then you would position your brand differently than if you were marketing toward Millennials (younger people between 18 and 34).

But is there any validity to this marketing argument?

I think it depends on the product and service. Obviously, some products appeal to older populations that younger people aren’t going to be interested in. An AARP membership, for instance.

But what about generic products or products that cross generational lines in terms of interest and usability?

I think the key is to outline the benefits of your product for the consumer. Maybe older people are looking for a different benefit than younger people when it comes to your product. Maybe not. The key to any marketing – even online marketing – is to sell the benefits of the product or service. The question is, How?

If you have different market segments that seek different benefits for the same product, then it might be prudent to target them separately the same way that marketers in the TV and print advertising age have done. In that case, you might build two separate websites and focus optimizing them for the right keywords for each market. Then use the right social media sites to drive traffic and make connections based on the market.

Market segmentation is nothing new. Online, however, it might take on a different flavor. Think about it in terms of benefit for each segment and you can’t go wrong.

One of the most important parts of search engine optimization is also the part that is most often downplayed by the SEO community and by webmasters in general. Almost everyone is fixated on the technical aspects of SEO – keyword research, keyword density, meta tags, alt tags, etc. But you don’t often hear about how important creativity is in the SEO process.

When I speak of creativity, what I’m really talking about is bringing something unique to web pages. That’s something unique in the web design as well as in the content delivery.

Creativity is important in the SEO process because it makes your website unique, not only to visitors but also to the search engines. You want to feed the robots with information the can’t find somewhere else. You can do that in one of two ways.

The first way to be unique in your content is to provide information that no one else provides. That’s a bit difficult, but it can be done. You want to look for opportunities to bring to light information that no one else has access to or has left ignored. If you can do that, then you can take advantage of the creative aspect of search engine optimization by providing unique information.

The second way to present unique content is in the presentation. This one is much easier to implement than the first method. You can take care of the presentation by focusing on web design, site structure, or content presentation elements on the page – for instance, use of videos, infographics, or other interesting visual and non-visual content delivery elements. You can also add rich snippets to your page to increase your search engine optimization possibilities.

Creative SEO can be handled in any number of ways, but it’s a very important aspect to SEO in the 21st century. Make your website unique.

Is there an SEO activity that is more important than all the others? Is it link building? Social networking? Writing meta tags? Keyword research? Looking over analytics reports?

Actually, it’s none of those. The most important SEO activity that you can perform at any time is content creation.

That’s right. As simple as it sounds, content creation is no mundane activity. It is the heart and soul of SEO. Without quality content there is nothing else that you can do that can make your website’s SEO effective.

All the link building in the world is fruitless if you aren’t producing quality content on a regular basis. What good is analytics without content? Why are you networking if you have no content? Meta tags without content is senseless. Yet, many webmasters spend a great deal of their day engaging in one or more of the above activities without producing any new content.

When you produce new content for your website you are telling your website visitors and the search engines that you take their concerns seriously. I’d rather spend an hour writing more content than two or three hours on each of the other activities combined.

If you aren’t creating new content every day – even if it’s just one article – then you aren’t really doing SEO.

I have to admit that when I read the title of this article at SiteProNews I thought, “OK, here’s another shallow article on how domain names are the Holy Grail of SEO. Isn’t that so 2005?”

After reading the article I have to agree with its premise.

Much has been said of link building, link baiting, and other here-today-gone-tomorrow SEO schemes. But Google always seems to find a way to make these “hot” SEO tactics not so hot after a series of algorithm changes. But one thing Google has never seemed to target for limitation is the domain name. It could very well be the most important SEO ranking factor long term.

I like the way the author puts it in these paragraphs:

Many SEO experts would suggest high quality backlinks from keyword related authority sites to be the overriding factor for high rankings. Others would suggest, in the new improved Panda-Empowered Google, on-page and on-site metrics are now the most important ranking factors to be considered for high listings.

However, I would suggest another old ranking factor, which is still one of the most over-riding factors for getting those top listings in Google. Simply put, having the exact keywords or keyword phrase in your domain name and title, is the most important ranking factor.

Unlike other SEO ranking factors, domain names are a tight security against fluctuating algorithms intended to kill search engine spam. Just by putting your exact keyword phrase – your primary phrase – in your domain name and ensuring that your website is full of high quality content, that alone is a goldmine of search ranking potential. In many cases, link building isn’t even necessary. I’ve seen sites rank on that alone.

The key is in choosing a keyword phrase that accurately depicts what your site is about without getting cute. Then, filling that website’s pages with high quality content which also targets that keyword phrase without going into excess.

Domain names are like real estate. If you build your business on the most desirable corner in a city, then you will no doubt get tons of traffic. People will stop in to see what you are about. And the real estate is limited. In the same way, a domain name can be like that street corner. Its value can increase according to market demand and the limitations imposed on the space.

Do it well and your domain name can serve you for years to come.

If you don’t have a huge budget but you still want to take advantage of the benefits of link building, there are ways you can build solid links to your website or blog without spending a lot of time or money on the effort. It does, however, take some creativity.

The first step is to ask for guest bloggers to write content for your blog. Set up a Guest Blogger page on your blog and get people to sign up to be a guest blogger. Then, give them some sample post titles to write, but be willing to accept other types of posts as well. Keep an open mind. But one thing you don’t want to sacrifice on is quality. Insist that all content you publish is high quality content.

Be sure to promote your guests posts through your social media accounts. Then follow those guest bloggers on their social media accounts. Retweet their tweets, Like their posts, and build that relationship.

After you’ve built your relationships, cash in. Ask those fellow bloggers if you can write a guest post on their blog. When you do, use the rel=author tag to link your guest posts to your Google+ account (you do have one, don’t you?) and link your Google+ account to your guests posts. Also link those guest posts back to your blog or website, which is the inbound link that you’ve been coveting.

Building links this way won’t be fast, but it is effective and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

Most web pages that suffer from mediocre search rankings can have those rankings increased with just a few simple tweaks. In most cases all it takes is 3-5 small improvements that take less than 5 minutes each to fix. Here are 5 very small web page improvements you can make to better your website’s SEO in less than 30 minutes.

• Alt tags – Got a photo or image that you are adding to your page? Include an alt tag. Make sure that your alt tag uses your primary keyword for that page. The alt tag is to notify the search engines that the photo is there and what it is about. It will definitely increase your SEO to have alt tags on all your images.
• Inline JavaScript – This kills so many web pages that it’s not even funny, especially if the JavaScript is at the top of the web page’s code. Take that inline JavaScript and put it into an external file, then call it into your web pages with a single line of code. That alone should increase your web visibility because search engines don’t crawl JavaScript and you want to watch your code-to-text ratio.
• Unique meta descriptions – If you have two or more web pages with the same or similar meta descriptions, rewrite the meta descriptions until they are all unique.
• Keywords in subheads – Subheads are often overlooked in pages with lots of text, but if you add subheads every third or fourth paragraph and ensure you have your keywords in those subheads, then that will go a long way to optimizing your web pages.
• Optimized meta title – Like the meta description, a unique meta title can do wonders for your on-page SEO. Don’t just take your page’s headline and make it your meta title. Instead, write a unique meta title using the same keyword that is in your headline.

If you follow these 5 simple steps, you should find your on-page SEO improving your search rankings almost immediately.

It used to be that all you had to think about when building your landing pages was how to optimize your titles and headlines, images through alt tags, keyword usage, and a having strong call to action. Is that all you have to think about today or is there more to it now?

I think that landing page optimization has changed and primarily it has changed because users are more savvy now than they used to be.

For sure, Internet users overall care more about design and layout today than they used to. At one time an ugly landing page could still make money, but because most niches now are embattled in some pretty stiff competition, if your web pages don’t meet a certain design standard, then your competition is going to win. Users will bounce from an ugly site to a more attractive site and make a purchase there even if your product is better.

For that reason, web design is much more important today. You want your site to be optimized well and have a strong call to action, but you want it to be beautiful too.

Aside from that, you also want to pay much more attention to metrics. What are you measuring, and are you sure you’re measuring the right things?

For starters, you should know how much of your traffic is converting. You should also measure your social signals, e-mail opt-ins, and anything else that could potentially lead to a conversion. You have to know what web design elements are working for you and eliminate any that aren’t. This often requires A/B testing or multivariate testing in some form.

By testing your landing pages for better optimization and conversion you signal to the world, and your in-house team, that you are serious about building your brand. It all starts with effective web design.

Businesses that try to employ search engine optimization techniques to improve their search engine rankings often make costly mistakes that kill their rankings. Google has shared a video that is aimed at business owners and webmasters that tells how to avoid 5 mistakes often made with regard to SEO.

The 5 mistakes that website owners make, according to Google, are:

• They don’t have a value proposition – They have no value proposition, something that sets them apart from the competition. Instead of focusing on SEO and keyword densities, try instead to focus on valuable high quality content that will attract the type of people you are looking for to become your customers
• They use a segmented approach – Instead of approaching SEO holistically, many businesses use a segmented approach where the marketing department appears to not be communicating with other departments within the company.
• They get stuck in time-consuming workarounds – We see this one all the time. Many businesses get so stuck on SEO techniques that they spend all their time trying to find a workaround to high search engine rankings. You’d be better off just focusing on producing high quality content
• They get caught up in SEO trends – Here’s another big one. If you are chasing the algorithms, then you are likely wasting your time. They change so often that no one can keep up with every change. You should focus instead on finding your prospects with high quality content.
• They are slow iterators – Many professional SEOs fall into this category as well. Many SEOs are still stuck on 2005 link building techniques. If you focus on providing original, high quality content, then you can’t go wrong.

Watch the video for yourself (below), and when you want to get serious about quality content call an SEO company that understands how to make it stick.

If you don’t have a ghostwriter on your team, then you should probably consider one. A ghostwriter – especially if you don’t have the writing skills yourself – can take your business to all new heights. The tasks that one good ghostwriter can handle are legion. Here’s a short list just off the top of my head:

• Write your daily blog posts. This is important. Having a daily blog is a vital part of any online business.
• Manage your social media campaigns. You’ve got to promote those blog posts somehow. Your ghostwriter will be instrumental in pushing them out to the popular social media sites.
• Write your SEO content. Make sure your ghostwriter is well-versed in SEO tactics. A good copywriter with a working knowledge of SEO is worth his weight in gold.
• Produce your weekly newsletter. You should have an electronic newsletter to help you build relationships with your clientele. A good ghostwriter can help you with that too.
• Write your PPC ads. A writer should be able to write ads with a strong call to action. If you run PPC campaigns, you need a good ghostwriter.
• Article marketing. This includes writing and submitting articles to directories as well as writing guest blog posts on occasion.
• Link building. Since your ghostwriter knows SEO and can write articles, have him manage your link building campaigns.

There really is no limit to what a good ghostwriter can do for your business. If you are serious about marketing your company online, a ghostwriter can be a lot of help.

Sometimes, small business owners new to online marketing think that they can call up their website hosting company and ask them to fix some technical issue. It’s inevitable. It’s bound to happen. And, yes, sometimes server issues can cause SEO problems. You DO need to get those fixed.

I recommend calling your Web host in those cases. Don’t use the 24-hour chat or support ticket method unless they tell you to.

The reason you want to call your Web host for technical support if your server is configured incorrectly for a script you want to run, or another issue that is affecting your SEO, is because you can often learn something about how their servers work in the process. And you can start a dialogue about how your Web host can support you better.

It’s possible that your neighbors on a particular server are affecting your sites, or vice-versa. Speaking to your Web host and asking the right questions can lead to you being moved to another server where that won’t be an issue.

I’ve actually had Web hosts offer to upgrade their PHP for my sites or move me to a server that was running the latest version of PHP.

Your Web host wants your business. They will accommodate most reasonable requests from you so don’t be afraid to ask. But one area where you probably don’t want to get in too deep with your Web host is the area of search engine optimization. They need to know enough about SEO to help you with technical issues, but unless your issue is a server-side issue you’re best talking to a professional SEO about your on-site and off-site non-server-side SEO problems.

Facebook and Bing have been partners for some time. Recently, Facebook has started to get a little bit more aggressive at promoting search to its users.

The Bing ad appears to Facebook users when they log out of their Facebook accounts. Evidently, that happens often enough that Facebook thought it might be prudent to capture those users with an ad promoting their preferred search engine – Bing. Of course, it’s still too early to tell if the promotion has resulted in Bing picking up any market share. But it could happen.

What’s even more important is, How will this affect businesses who use Facebook? Or businesses who SEO their websites for Bing?

That brings up another point. ARE you SEOing your website for Bing? Of course, you should be.

Bing has nowhere near the search market share that Google has, but it’s still a sizable enough of a market share that you shouldn’t ignore it. People do still search the Internet with Bing and it seems that more and more people are doing so. Many websites show Bing as in the top five among referrers to their website. And that’s signficant.

If Bing is listed in your referrer log as a site that sends traffic to your website, then you should do as much as you can to encourage that traffic. SEO your website for Bing search. That means new pages and old pages.

You can improve your website’s Bing SEO for old pages by checking your rankings and tweaking your pages with some type of multivariate testing. You should employ solid SEO practices for your new pages to see how you make your Bing SEO shine.

Bottom line, don’t ignore Bing – or Facebook – for traffic.