PBAC Blog

While it’s true that there are many different strategies that can be used to optimize a web site for search engine success, one of the most overlooked methods for improving search engine placements is building up your web site’s credibility. When you provide your visitors with lots of useful, relevant information on your web site, you create professional credibility and establish your expertise in your industry. When your web site is credible, people will naturally want to link to all of your good information, and your pages will likely be loaded with the keywords and phrases that matter most to your company as well. In other words, a credible web site has many of the elements that impress Google the most!

Brownie Points From Google

One of the ways you can help build your web site’s credibility is to create an online glossary for your site and link to it from the rest of your pages. Think about it - we know that Google gives you points for using your keywords in the text of your links, so why not pick up some extra points by linking your key terms to a glossary that further explains them? This is also extremely helpful to visitors who are on your site to learn about your company, products, and services as well.

Credibility Through Repetition

Let’s say, for example, your business sells insurance, and that each type of insurance that you sell has its own web page. Now imagine that some of your important keywords like “auto insurance,” “life insurance,” and “renters insurance” are linked directly to a glossary page that contains these keywords, plus a short description of each. In this example, you’ve used your keywords as links, and repeated the keywords on the glossary page as well as on the product pages. All of this contributes to the credibility of your web site as Google sees it.

Thinking Like a Spider

A glossary page is inherently loaded with specific words and phrases that are relevant to your business. When a search engine “spider” visits your glossary, it sees these words and phrases and also sees that they are cross-linked and used throughout your other web pages as well. So what’s a spider to think? It would probably think that your site is very important, relevant, and credible. And credible web sites can lead to more web site traffic, increased inbound links, and ultimately improve your search engine placements in Google. Now that’s impressive!

Lauren Hobson is the Editor of Biz Talk Newsletter and the Five Sparrows Marketing Blog from Five Sparrows, LLC. Read the most recent Five Sparrows articles on small business websites and marketing on our business blog at http://www.fivesparrows.com/blog, or subscribe to our free newsletter at http://www.fivesparrows.com

Copyright 2008 Five Sparrows, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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When it comes to advertising and marketing your products and services, common sense dictates that the higher the response rate, the better. But just knowing that is not enough. It�??s important to understand exactly how each additional response can affect your marketing costs and profits. The better your understanding of the potential value of each additional response, the more effort you�??ll invest into increasing your response rate over time.

Increasing your response rate can increase your net profit in one of two ways. You can either:

1. Maintain (or increase) your marketing investment and frequency and capitalize on your higher response rate to bring in more revenue. If the response rate for an ongoing campaign that reaches 10,000 people can be increased by 20%, let�??s say from 1.5% to 1.8%, that increases your actual responses from 150 to 180. That may not sound like much, but depending on what you charge for your products and services, those extra 30 responses could add up to more than enough sales to justify the effort.

2. Decrease your marketing investment and frequency, leveraging your higher response rate to maintain the same net number of responses but at a lower cost. The higher your response rate, the less money you need to spend to generate the same amount of business.

Remember that this kind of measurement is only possible using a direct response marketing approach (marketing that solicits immediate action on the part of the recipient, such as an inquiry, request for information or sale), as opposed to a branding or image advertising campaign (marketing that seeks to increase mind share for eventual sale or action). Unless there is a specific call to action (�??Call today for a free guide�?�) to generate an immediate and measurable response, you will find it very challenging to gauge a campaign�??s effectiveness at all.

Marcus Schaller is the author of �??The Lead Ladder-Turn Strangers into Clients, One Step at a Time�?� (McGraw-Hill), and managing editor of Purple Dot Magazine (http://www.purpledotmag.com), a free online publication covering marketing, sales and public relations for small businesses and self-employed professionals.

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