Landing Page – An active webpage where customers will ‘land’ when they click your ad. The web address for this page is often called a ‘destination URL’ or ‘clickthrough URL.’

Below is a list of 7 deadly sins for landing page designs. The list was taken from a webinar from Tim Ash, a consultant from Google.

Have you committed one of the “7 deadly sins of landing page design?”

1. Unclear Call to Action
   Ensure that traffic is sent to a page where the desired action is clearly defined. If you wish for them to book a room night, have a large visible button that allows the customer to book a room night.
2. Too Many Visual Distractions
   A page filled with too many visual distractions, whether its photos of products or flashing banners or AdSense ads, will likely not convert as well. Keep the page simple, clean, and to the point.
3. Too Much Text
   A landing page should not be text heavy. Keep sentences short and simple, and convey your message using bullet points.
4. Not Keeping Promises
   Your AdCopy says: Buy 2 get 1 free, but if this same offer cannot be found on the landing page, you are not keeping that promise. If you have an attractive offer in your AdCopy, make sure that it is easily found on the landing page.
5. Long Forms
   Keep forms as short and concise as possible. Only include fields where it’s absolutely essential for the existing transaction.
6. Invisible Risk Reducers
   If your business is accredited by the BBB, or if your website is hacker safe and tested on a daily basis, be sure to include these logos above the fold.
7. Trust Indicators
   If your business is highly rated or raved about by another company of trust, place that logo above the fold as well. For example, if Conde Nast named your hotel as one of the “Top 500 Hotels in the World”, adding this trust indicator will surely help increase trust, and hopefully conversion.

We are Google Adword Professionals and we can help you implement a successful search engine marketing campaign. Contact us through the blog or on our website, SalesOverNight.com. If you’re company is in the medical industry check out of dedicated medical marketing website, LEVELTWO | Medical.

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Over at mashable.com they have an interesting blog post discussing how Google News has opened their Google News search engine to YouTube publishers.

What this means is when you do a search on Google News you will get search results with not only news articles, but also there are embedded videos directly from YouTube.

I tested this out doing a search on “obama healthcare” and I received this search result page (screenshot below).

While your company may not be a news distributor, this new feature points to the growing integration of videos and the search engine world. We’ve discussed this factor many times before.

- Growing number of online video viewers
- Social video distribution is critical to your social media campaign
- The importance of videos in a universal search world

The internet is not a closed loop. The term universal search refers to the inclusion of multiple forms of media within a search result page and the more channels that your social marketing campaign includes, the more reach and depth your campaign will gain.

Read blog post at Mashable.com

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While Google gets all the attention, it’s easy to forget that the search industry is much more than just Google. There’s are many tools that provide search results on a wide range of topics. While Google might provide a global search on a broad range of keywords, many search engines hold very strong niches in many different industries.

For example here is a short list of a few non-google search engines that are based in very specific niches.

Westlaw – Online legal research services for lawyers and legal professionals

PubGene – Visualize and navigate current understanding of genes

Bioinformatic Harvester – Crawls and crosslinks bioinformatic sites

Daylife – News search engine, organizing and distributing the world’s news

Topix – News aggregator which categorizes news stories by topic and geography

Yahoo! News – Top news headlines on current events from around the world

HotPads – Real estate, house, and apartment search engine

Zillow – Search engine for real estate and homes

GlobalSpec – Search engine of engineering and industrial products

Indeed – Job search engine

Picsearch – Image search search engine

PriceGrabber – Online shopping search engine

mySimon – Price comparison shopping search engine

Bing Shopping – Microsoft’s shopping search engine

The best approach to search engine marketing is to diversify your search marketing portfolio. The little dirty secret about search engine optimization is that you ultimately have no control on how search engines display your website. Each search tool uses a different algorithm to determine their best results and it is a constant battle to stay at the top of the search result page.

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We listed things every website must have, tips for landing pages, and ways to engage your readers, so now we want mash all of that up into a new idea, integrating your social campaign with your main website.

#1 – Add live streaming content to your website.
Your visitors want to know that what they are looking at is the newest most current information. Give your site a fresh look by adding an RSS feed from a continually updating data source.

For example: Add your Twitter feed to your homepage. Check out the Twitter widgets for an easy way to display your Twitter updates on your website.

BONUS TIP: Try adding an RSS feed from a popular news source that publishes content about your industry. Like Digg or CNN.

#2 – Add social features to your website.
Offer your visitors a way to connect and interact other than just a phone number or a contact form. While you may not want to offer comments on your site a good alternative would be to add a Get Satisfaction profile to your website. It’s a great way to help connect your customers to your business.

#3 – Add social buttons to your website.
A critical component to facilitating an online conversation about your services or products is to offer your visitors a way to easily share your content with others. An easy “email this” button or bookmark button might be the difference between a visitor sending your website to a friend or adding it to their own social bookmarking site. Try addthis.com, it is a clean easy to install button that features all of the major social bookmarking sites.

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Just this week hulu announced their new desktop viewing software. It features a sleek new look that’s optimized for use with standard Windows Media Center or Apple remote controls, allowing you to navigate Hulu’s entire library with just six buttons. While some video distribution sites might be worried about their place in the market, we are excited to see yet another step closer to the internet becoming integrated with our operating systems.

With all of the online applications now available it is not too far in the future that the internet will become the platform for all of our personal computing tasks. Maybe we’re already there! Webmail, online calendars, invoicing, faxing, making phone calls, and of course the huge popularity of iPhone apps that integrate an online cloud computing system with the mobile software.

You can do it all on the internet. If the future of personal computing is online, that’s where businesses need to focus their marketing efforts. Facebook is replacing your address book and Twitter is replacing texting. As the social networking industry works its way into our daily lives, businesses can’t afford to not be apart of the shifting technology. The search market is integrating with the social market, search is universal!

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We’ve discussed the benefits of having a content platform on your website that publishes new content on a regular basis. Continually refreshing and new content (like a blog) is:

• Preferred by search engines
• A great way to achieve high rankings in search engines
• Indexed (searched) faster than static content
• More up-to-date than static content

And now Google has given us another reason to recommend adding a blog to your online marketing campaign. As you can see in the screen shot below, Google now offers a new search option called for recent results.

When a searcher chooses the option for recent results, the typical search results for keywords are replaced with the most recent blog and new articles.

There are varying ranges of dates, but in the example below we chose to see the most recent results.

As you can see, the top 5 search results were all posts that were made in the last 24 hours. If you repeat this same search one day later, you will see a new top 5 search results. That’s because the most optimized and most recent blog posts are always going to at the top of the Google search result page.

If you are unfamiliar with the term “refreshing content”, it simply means something that is new or fresh on a constant basis. Here are a few example of refreshing content.

• Blog that is updated at least 3-5 times a week
• New product page that updates often
• Weekly specials page
• Newsletter page
• Company news page that updates a few times a month
• RSS feed from your Twitter or other social networking site

If you found this blog post useful, please subscribe to our RSS feed or subscribe to this blog via email.

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1. Privacy Policy
Your visitors need to know that they can trust you. Let them know that their personal information can be trusted with your company. The Direct Marketing Association has a privacy policy generator. http://www.dmaresponsibility.org/PPG

2. Contact Us
This shouldn’t even be on this list, but it’s surprisingly easy for the contact information to be lost in the shuffle. With all of the spambots roaming the web, we recommend that you use a form rather than placing your email directly on your website. Here’s an easy form generator. http://www.bravenet.com/webtools/emailfwd

3. Search Box
If you have a lot of pages on your website you’ll need an easy way for your visitors to find exactly what they are looking for. Make sure that the search box is easy to find and on the home and landing page.

4. Website Analytics
You’ve got to know what your visitors are doing on your site and where they are coming from. There’s no reason not to have some kind of analytics tracking software on your site. http://www.google.com/analytics

5. Newsletter Sign Up
If you’ve got a blog or a newsletter then offer a call-to-action for your visitors to subscribe to your weekly or daily content. Feedburner has an great RSS to email feature. http://www.feedburner.com

6. Search Engine Optimized Copy
If you don’t understand how to optimize your website for search engines it might be best to consult with a professional marketing company.

7. Social Media Share Button
It’s so easy to add these to your website there’s really no reason not to. While some of your visitors may not have any idea what these buttons are for, it’s worth adding these buttons for those visitors that do use them. Try http://www.addthis.com

8. Trust Seals/Testimonials
This is a great way to establish a different kind of trust between your company and your visitors. Take a look at our blog post How to Make Your Website More Trustworthy.

LEVELTWO & LEVELTWO Medical

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The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, including overall cost reduction for the distribution of information and media to a much broader, even global audience. This benefit alone has given online marketing a huge marketplace advantage.

Additionally, the interactive nature of online marketing, both in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses, has also proved imperative in modern day marketing strategy. Below we take a look at four of the most powerful methods of online lead generation.

Search Engine Optimization

Configuring or optimizing your website with targeted keywords or phrases, also known as SEO, not only offers the most cost-effective method of promoting your business online, but with approximately 80% to 90% of all website traffic originating from search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, it is crucial to be at the top of the list. A first page position on Google can generate thousands of unique visitors to your website, generating the leads we want, affecting your bottom line.

Would you like your website to rank well in the organic results on Google, Yahoo and MSN? Would you like to see a steady increase in the amount of visitors to your website? If you answered yes to either of these questions, LEVELTWO can show you how to achieve effective and efficient search engine optimization results.

Pay-Per-Click

If your practice is new to the web and you would like to generate business from your website immediately, Pay-Per-Click advertising could be the solution you are looking for. PPC advertising offers direct advertising to millions of people per day and is targeted by specific keyword searches so you can reach your practices’ audience. Pay-Per-Click advertising is an auction-based bidding system where you compete with your peers to achieve prominent positions in the Paid Search Results.

Media Purchasing

Sometimes just getting your name out there is enough to convert a prospective patient into a real patient, but to really get the most return on your marketing investment you need strategic media purchasing.

At LEVELTWO, our specialty truly is strategy. From innovative research tools to highly targeted demographic placement, we don’t just purchase media, we generate leads with every buy. So whatever your current circumstances are we can provide direction through creative, innovative and effective marketing solutions.

Social Marketing

As the Internet continues to fuel our economy and our society, it is more important than ever to participate in social marketing. Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are just some of the social marketing networks that can do most of the work for you.

By interacting with your followers, you can not only generate leads, but you can form unique relationships with them. And we can show you how use these relationships as effective marketing tools that directly increase your bottom line.

Interested in adding one or more of these tools to your online strategy? Contact us or give us a call at 469-619-0573

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In marketing (online and offline) there are three basic questions that must be addressed when you are trying to sell a product or service. If you don’t address these basic questions, your website will not be successful.

1. What is it?
2. How can I use it?
3. Why do I need it?

Surprisingly, there are many websites and marketing campaigns that don’t answer these three simple questions. No matter how good your product or service might be, no one will buy it unless you present your message in an easy to understand way.

Here are a few tips to help you more effectively broadcast your marketing message through your website.

1. Micro-message
   Learn a lesson from the success of Twitter, keep your messages short and to the point. Explain “who you are”, “what you’re selling”, and “why they need it” as quickly as possible. Save the longwinded descriptions after they click through to the next page.
2. Multimedia
   Hire a marketing firm to create a 30 second video that explains your products. Even better than short micro-message is a short micro-message that I don’t even have to read!
3. Tunnel vision
   If you offer wide variety of products and services then you should compartmentalize each vertical. Present the visitor with a few options and let them determine what they are interested in and then you can provide more detailed information about the product or service.

A website is never finished. As you draw more visitors you should monitor how they react to your web design. Track where they are leaving your website and make changes to try and curb the visitor drop out. A good website can be your best salesman.

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The other day I watched over the shoulder of my wife as she was searching for a local shoe retailer. She opened up Firefox and up popped Google.com as her homepage. The surprise came when she typed the name of the retailer into the Google search bar rather than just typing the URL (which she actually knew for memory).

I didn’t really think much more about it until I ran across a blog post on MarketingProfs that stated a company’s corporate homepage is Google.com.

People are starting to view the Google search bar as their URL entry box. Instead of typing “www.zappos.com” people are simply typing the world “Zappos” into a search form.

This is a key point to remember for businesses engaged in internet marketing.

1. Do you rank first for your company name?
2. Are there any negative comments that show up for your company name?
3. Are your competitors advertising using your company name as a keyword?

If you are not seeing the results you want when you search your own business name you can

1. Advertise on Google using your company’s name
2. Launch a social networking campaign focused on branding and reputation management
3. Optimize your website for search engine ranking

These methods are proven to work and you can often see results within days of launch. But you don’t have to take our word for it. Take a look at some other points made in the article.

A brands biggest concern…should be the negative pages that show up in the results organically. Those are the listings that are much less in Google’s control and more in the hands of consumers/brands.

Just because there are people who are writing about your product on Yelp and GetSatisfaction, doesn’t mean you have to sit back and watch your search results get contaminated. No one is barred from producing content on the web. A brand has just as much right to talk about their great qualities and respond to those who disagree.

Creating great content around your product in pivotal to your organic search success. A big part of Google’s secret formula for organic search is traffic. If you build it (something great), they will come. The better something is, the more traffic it gets, the closer it will rest to your ideal search results.

Creating a small 2 to 3 page microsite is not enough. Engaging your industry through social media and social networking is how brands succeed at reputation management and internet marketing.

Marketing Profs – ‘A company’s corporate homepage is Google.com’

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