Tracy’s post the other day on cross linking keywords inspired me to write this post on calls to action. The go hand in hand with cross linking, but instead of highlighting the importance of a keyword, they encourage your website’s visitors to complete an action, whether it’s requesting contact information or reading an FAQ to learn more. Calls to action can help you move and direct your websites visitors through the site. Links in these statements help you emphasize what pages are important, whether they’re cross linked keywords or a link to the RFQ and facilities lists pages.

To show you how many clicks calls to actions can receive, here are some examples:

“To begin your industrial website’s redesign, contact Ecreativeworks to request a quote today.”

As you can see, the “contact Ecreativeworks” link got 14% of the clicks on that particular page. That’s a lot of clicks! That first sentence has a lot of action in it. The visitor is told how they can begin a website redesign and encouraged to begin that process.

“Be sure to check out the basics, like wire and cable.”

11% and 10% of visitors clicked on simple terms like “wire” and “cable,” respectively. A simple reminder or encouragement to “check out the basics” obviously goes a long way. Anticipating a visitor’s needs, such as wire and cable in addition to specialty products, is an important aspect of a good call to action.
Again, good calls to action can help you cross link and direct your traffic flow, encouraging conversions and helping you share your information and expertise. What are some good calls to action you’ve written or seen lately?

Cross linking is when you link from one page of your industrial site to another within the copy. Here’s how it works. Google gives more weight in the algorithm, or “credit”, to a keyword that is in a link. Google also gives credit to the page that you are linking for that keyword. So you get a “two for one” credit for “electroplating” when you cross link with that keyword. MSN and Yahoo also give more credit to a keyword in a link, so you’ll improve your keyword rankings there as well. Remember to use your keywords in your links! It’s a good idea to cross link to pages outside your site occasionally, as long as it’s not to your competitors.

Cross linking is also great for usability. It’s easier for a person to click on a link in the copy while they’re reading then it is to look back to the navigation to find the next place to go. When you look at this overlay from Google Analytics, you can see where people are clicking on the links within the text:

Cross linking does take some time to do, but it’s worth it – better keyword rankings, more search engine traffic, and improved usability. What other benefits have you seen from cross linking? Do you have any tips on how to cross link between pages?

There are many reasons why a visitor may find their way to your 404 error page–a site redesign may result in broken or outdated links, your web designer may have misspelled your URLs or a visitor could simply have mistyped a web address.  The thing is, your 404 page is often one of the pages with the highest traffic on the site! 

With so many visitors reaching your site on an error page, it’s easy to understand why they might think the site is broken or become frustrated and bounce right off the site without ever trying to find what they need.  You can remedy this situation easily and also use it as an opportunity to optimize another page on your site for the search engines! 

 Here’s how!

•  Change the error text on the page from the dull and uninviting statement ‘The page you are looking for cannot be found’ to something more human and inviting.  Welcome them with something more along the lines of ‘We’re sorry! We can’t find the page you are looking for’. 
• Add useful links or attractive buttons to help your visitors navigate to popular areas of the site.  For example, check out this truly engaging and useful 404 error message.  This site offers links to explore, friendly suggestions on how to find the item in question and the best part: a verbal smile!  The site welcomes the visitor and walks them through with ease.
• Search eninge optimize your error page with keywords and phrases.  This is a great opportunity to choose your page content carefully and include important keywords for additional exporsure.

Giving your visitors attractive and helpful assitance on the 404 page can definitely increase page views and decrease bounce rates.  Give it a shot!

Ecreativeworks has launched a new blog to complement the Industrial Search Engine Marketing blog!

The focus of International Industrial SEO is all about foreign search engine optimization for industrial and business to business websites. The blog aims to cover a wide range of topics related to industrial websites and their presence in international search engines. Topics include keyword research, translation, and international Internet usage. We encourage readers to leave comments and questions on posts so we can help them to better understand international SEO and how business to business websites can use it to attract visitors and increase conversions.

We’re very excited to share some of the information we’ve learned through our international internet marketing. It’s an easy way for our clients and those in industry to better understand the work we do and how good SEO is necessary for business websites.

Stop by International Industrial SEO today!

The importance of good title tags for your website can’t be overstated. The title tags are what people see in the search results. A good title tag should be well written and draw the searcher towards your website. The same goes with your meta descriptions. They’re often (but not always) used as the ‘blurb’ that appears for your page in the search results. Good metas describe who you are, promote your products and services, and have a call to action.

That’s a lot to keep in mind when writing title tags and meta descriptions, but here’s one more piece of advice: keep them short and sweet. In many search engines, like Google, there are limits on how many characters appear in the titles and metas featured in search results. Google seems to limit to about 65 characters in titles and 160 in meta descriptions. That doesn’t mean your titles are totally limited to seven or eight words, it just means that only the first 65 characters will appear in the results. Anything beyond that will be followed by ellipses and appear cut off.

What does this mean for you? Make sure you have well thought out title tags and meta descriptions. Include only the most relevant keywords for a particular page to help you focus your tags. Importantly, don’t stuff your titles or metas with every keyword you use on your website. Short, informative titles and metas will show searchers exactly what your page is about and bring traffic to your site. People will click knowing you have what they’re looking for, whether its information, a product, or a service. Don’t let people skip over your search engine results because the titles and metas are cut off, filled with non-relevant terms, or don’t showcase your capabilities.

We focus on keyword saturation a lot within our SEO team. However, we never actually measure the keyword density of any page. So how much saturation is too much? Is there a magic number for keyword density?

Our general consensus is this – saturate the keyword as much as possible without compromising usability. In other words, we try not to over saturate to the point where the copy becomes monotonous. I’m going to go check five random pages that I’ve saturated to see what kind of keyword density each has.

“high pressure die casting” 10.28 %
“multi media filters” 3.41 %
“robotic welding” 10.88 %
“electro polishing’ 6.26%
“patty stacker” 2.07%

So the average is 6.58%. What do you think? Is this too high, too low? Do you try to stick to a certain keyword density? If not, why? What keyword density percentage do you use? Do you believe there is a magic number that Google, Yahoo, or MSN prefer?

Hi! Thank you for taking the time to read our blog. We appreciate the visit and the feedback you leave on our posts. This week we are going to focus on YOU. What do you want to learn more about Industrial Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing or other areas of Internet Marketing for the Industrial Market? What questions are you looking for, but can’t find the answer?

Leave your comments, questions or reviews here - we want to improve our blog to serve you better!

Thank you again, for your time and efforts!

There’s a lot of hoopla about business blogs nowadays. Professional SEOs are extolling the virtues of using social media marketing to advance your business presence on ther web and social media optimization is now one of the most important aspects of leveraging universal search to boost your rankings. But does your industrial business really need a blog, in addition to a website?

Well, no one needs a blog, and for some industrial clients, it’s just not a viable idea. However, in the right hands and using the correct methods, a blog can boost your site’s web presence and traffic by leaps and bounds!

Let’s explore how an industrial business blog can help you and how you can do it well.

• Relationship Building

If your business has a story worth telling, a blog is a great place to do it.  You can utilize the latest web technology to inform and interact with your clients, colleagues and visitors in ways that just weren’t possible as little as ten years ago.  Through the implementation of streaming media, podcasts, pictures and more, you can bring your visitors right into your company, giving them a deeper level of personal contact. 

A blog is your invitation to your visitors to give their input, feedback and opinions, helping you better understand their needs.  Your visitors’ contributions and thoughts can provide valuable insight into how your products and processes are perceived and how you might be able to improve upon your existing corporate or business model.  Being able to respond to blog participants directly and in real-time brings back the ‘personal touch’ to doing business.

• Information and Problem Solving

Christine Halvorson states in her great article “Should Your Company Blog?”, “[your blog is your] editorial column, your radio and television station, your daily newspaper”.  What an amazing way to get your media message out there, and maintain control of the media in which it appears at the same time!  You can talk about your corporate challenges and successes, and explain complicated products or processes in a way that goes beyond a generic email or diagram booklet in a box.

What should a strong business blog look like?

The short answer is…anything you want!  But it’s easy to mess it up, so here are a few things to consider when thinking about implementing a blog.

• Your blog is NOT a platform to advertise your products and services.  That’s what your website and other marketing methods are for.  Posts written solely to make money on ads or sales pitches and not to provide anyone with useful or interesting information are bad, bad, bad!
• Be sure to provide relevant, interesting and useful content to your visitors.  Not only will they appreciate the latest news presented to them in a refreshing way, it will encourage them to come back often and to visit your website (the place where sales and RFQs happen!).
• Fresh content, posted often also keeps the search engines coming back again and again.  They LOVE new content to index-provide the search engines fresh, indexable material and you’ll see your placement in universal search results rise!
• Implement smart SEO practices into your blog! Pay attention to keyword placement in your titles and throughout the blog, writing naturally, but ensuring that keywords make well-placed appearances.  Include links back to your site, and not just the homepage–link deeply into your site to encourage traffic and enhance interest.
• Write well! And if you can’t, hire someone who can.  Spellcheck and good grammar go a long way in keeping folks interested and engaged and lends your company credibility.  People will assume that your products or services are as good as the attention to detail given to your site and blog!

Old school PR methods just aren’t relevant anymore.  With people fast-forwarding through commercials on TIVO, listening to podcasts and online radio, and getting their newsletters and articles delivered to their inbox, an immediate and personal form of contact must be employed to carry your message. 

You can do it, fast and often free, with a blog!

Some recent discussions in the office have turned towards identifying factors that are keeping some clients’ websites out of the first page of Google’s rankings. The pages may be saturated and optimized for the appropriate term, but something is still preventing that top 10 listing. A couple factors that may be influencing this are authority and content.

Google loves information, and it particularly loves information coming from so-called ‘authority sites.’  These are ones like Wikipedia, industry associations, educational domains, and non-profit websites.  Whatever it may be (and it could even be a social networking site), an authority site will most often contain large amounts of information, most often around a particular theme, and have some domain age.  These sites also generally have many inbound links and a few high quality outbound links.  A few well chosen outbound links to sites with related content assist the search engines in establishing the theme of the website.  The incoming links, again from relevant sites, show that other sites and Internet users regard the information on the site as being topical and useful.

In short, authority sites rank high in search results due to their focus on theme, quality link building, and established web presence.  You can build your website into an authority site over time, but doing so will require a lot of investment in producing quality, informative content (separate from your content designed to sell a product or services) on your theme and a successful linking campaign that increases your visibility.

Google loves information.  Google wants to give searchers using ‘research phase’ keywords (the short phrases like ‘cnc machining’ or ‘heart health’) informational sites.  Google also likes finding updated and fresh content, the more frequent the better.  If you’re looking to crack the first page, your site needs to have enough informational content and new content to pique the Google bots’ interest.  Fresh content on a consistent basis encourages the bots to visit your site more frequently.  As already mentioned, informational content will help Google determine what your site is about.

Of course, you may pull up the results for your keyword and see that besides some very recognizable authority sites and informational sites, the other pages seem to be your competitors who are selling a product.  But take a closer look at those pages.  What about their site is different from yours?  What content does the landing page have?  Have they built a lot of links?  Even sites pushing a product can rank on the first page if they present information ahead of the pitch, because Google loves information.

There’s no magic formula to getting to the first page of Google’s results.  Your industry and competitors will ultimately determine how best to design your website and content for successful results and conversions.  It may take time to build a good SEO program for your website, but ultimately to benefits to you and your customers are worth it!  And don’t forget, Google loves information.

Link building has always been the most challenging part of SEO for me. It seems like every time I gather a nice set of free sites to submit to, two weeks later they are charging fees. If you have a five figure budget, building links is easy. Unfortunately, most companies in the industrial market place aren’t that lucky. So what is the most effective way to build free links today?

Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a great way to build links to your site. Since social marketing isn’t very popular yet in industrial market, so you may not receive a lot of traffic from these links. These links are still beneficial because they will increase your link popularity. Also, eventually the industrial marketplace will catch up and you will be one of the first to stake your claim in this new territory.

Here are a few sites to submit to. You will first have to create an account. I recommend picking one user/pass and using it for every site to make submitting easier.

Facebook
StumbleUpon
Connectedy
info4it.com

Submit a Press Release or Article
If you have the time to write articles or press releases, this is a great way to get back links and qualified traffic to your site. When you submit your articles or press releases, you will have an opportunity to link back to your site. If you can choose the link text, make sure to include a few keywords. When people find your press release or article in the search engines, they will be able to visit your site!

Here is a popular site to submit your articles to – Ezines

You can submit your press releases to ThomasNet if you are an OEM and meet the rest of their guidelines. This is a great way to get visibility in the search engines for your press releases. Submit to ThomasNet

These are just a few ways to build more links to your site to increase link popularity and traffic to your site. While traditional link building is still effective, it’s taking more and more time to make it work. Try out some of these other ways and see if they work for you!