Ten Ways to Win the “Speed Dating” Test

Finding a mate can be a laborious process when you think about how many single people exist.  So speed dating was developed to eliminate some of the time out of this process.

If you think about it, every time you search for something you go through a sort of speed dating process.  You know what you want, but then millions of potential matches appear.  So, you speed date the landing pages on the first one-to-two pages of the search results to see if you can quickly find a website you’re are willing to give your personal information to in hopes that there might be a future there that satisfies your needs.

We’ve compiled ten tips to make sure your landing page can pass the speed dating test and get you those digits:

1)     Be Hotter Than Everyone Else.

Before you have a searcher visit your site, survey the room and check out your speed dating competition.  Take snapshots of all the competitive landing pages on the first page of the search results for your top keywords.  View these snapshots in a line along with yours.  If you wouldn’t pick your landing page as the hotty in the group, redesign your page elements until it becomes the clear winner.

2)     Be Visually Engaging.

Searching is even more shallow than dating because we don’t feel bad about not giving a website the time of day if it doesn’t look perfect.  If you want the searcher to even bother reading your spiel you had better look your absolute best.  Use engaging colors, rather than being drab.  Use images and video to immediately visually engage the searcher.  But don’t go overboard here.  If you have too much eye candy on a single page, you’ll just appear like the used car salesman with one too many gold chains.

3)     Be Trendy.

If your dress is out of date you are not desirable.  If you haven’t updated your website style in the last two years or are using design techniques that were popular years ago it’s time for a redesign.  Just do a search for “great websites” and there are plenty examples of very cool sites to re-use concepts from.  If you don’t have time to get with the times, hire a personal shopper – aka, a web designer.  The money you spend will be well worth it to boost your image.  With a trendy site, you may even find yourself getting phone numbers when you aren’t even trying.

4)     Speak Clearly & Memorably.

Once you are the hottest website in the room, you’ll get a chance to explain who you are and why you are awesome.  Clearly articulate what it is you do and why you are the best in large font using plain simple words.  Don’t use words that you would use to think about what your business does, but rather words your searcher would use to describe you.  With speed dating, no one has room to absorb fluff like “long walks on the beach” – so review your page and remove all of your fluff terms such as innovate, synergy, unique, focused on, leverage, leading provider, cost effective, next generation, etc.  Stating who you are in plain terms allows a searcher to “get you” right away and will also give the searcher a much better chance of remembering who you are at the end of their speed dating session.

5)     Exude Confidence.

Insecurity leads to loneliness.  Show the searcher your confidence in what you have to offer.  Do you offer a guarantee?  Do you have testimonials?    Don’t use unsure words such as “could be considered”, “on average”, or “for some.”  Write with strength and confidence that you are simply the best and you stand behind it.

6)     Don’t Ramble.

Who doesn’t love to talk about themselves?  However, a speed dating session is not the time to ramble on about your 100 different great attributes in excruciating detail.  Keep your landing pages short and concise and above the fold if possible.  You can discuss more on your first real date.  Remember your searcher is interviewing many other potential candidates and you don’t want to dilute yourself here – better to get one message across effectively than become the whiny website that just went on and on until the searcher tuned out and their eyes start to wonder the room.

7)     Drop Some Names.

Everyone is intrigued by a popular person or business that has some well-known associations.  Don’t be shy here; you only have a few seconds so feel free to tout names of customers, awards, or “as seen in”.   Dropping a few names is much more effective than paragraphs of text stating how awesome you are.

8)     Show Off Your Best… er… Assets.

It’s cool to give your searcher a little teaser here.  What can they expect if they work with you?  Tell or show them just enough about results to make them want to learn more.

9)     Hone Your Pickup Lines.

As with dating there are two sets of pickup lines you’ll need to master.  The first is your pickup line to get the searcher to stay and read on.  Try out taglines from your PPC ads that seem to get you the most attention.  After you’ve got their attention, you’ll need a second great line to get their contact information.  It’s not only the pickup line you need to think about, but the delivery as well — the font, colors, button presentation etc. will all have an impact.

10)  Get Their Number!

The goal of this speed dating scenario is to get the searcher’s information so you can court them.  Make sure that this is prominent on the page.  If you allow the searcher to wander from your landing page through your site, make sure your form is accessible everywhere so they don’t have to find their way back to the original meeting spot to provide you with their phone number.  Let them know what to expect after they provide you with that information – do they get a free consultation or access to something valuable?   Speed daters are more inclined to fork over that number if they know a five-star meal awaits.

Remember the Yield Web Marketing Suite includes our Landing Page Optimizer — a proprietary multivariate test engine that enables you to set up quick landing page experiments to determine which version of a landing page converts best over time.  If you’re not using it already, I urge you to give it a try.  Too often, search marketing ends at the moment someone clicks on a paid or natural search results, without any regard to what happens “post-click”.  It’s a shame when search marketers go to a great deal of trouble to optimize their paid and natural search rankings only to see clicks failing to materialize into real business.  Don’t fall in to this trap!

Start optimizing your landing pages today.

Matt Malden Interviewed from the Expo Floor

Our intrepid CEO & Co-founder, Matt Malden, was interviewed from the SMX West 2010 Expo Floor, where we were exhibiting yesterday, by WebProNews LIVE.  Check it out!

The show this year was great.  It kicked off with Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan interviewing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in which he toyed with the idea of buying Twitter before saying that taking it “captive” might have the effect of weakening its brand.

Throughout the three-day conference, a wide variety of seminars and learning tracks helped Search Marketing professionals to sharpen skills, challenge one another, and learn new strategies and techniques.  We had the opportunity to meet with hundreds of folks throughout the two-day Expo to talk about how we can help both businesses and their agencies meet all their most pressing search engine marketing objectives.  Needless to say, we’re looking forward to the many new relationships begun at SMX West this year.

…and How to Keep Your Nose Clean

The search marketing world creates interesting situations where ethical lines can get stretched quite a bit. For instance, in the search marketing world information is public. Yet unscrupulous actions can be taken anonymously — a scenario too tempting for many a desperate competitor. We run into many clients who have been unethically pursued by a competitor. Unfortunately, there are no comprehensive policing capabilities out there, and complaints about suspected competition fraud are frequently ignored.  Still there are things you can do to protect yourself and you should never stoop to the level of an unethical competitor to retaliate — in the long run, there are always consequences for unethical behavior.

First, let’s look at some all-too-common non-ethical examples. These just don’t pass the red-face test:

Competitors clicking on your pay-per-click ads.

First, it must be stated that most often we find that this one is mostly paranoia. And it can be tough to prove.  However, if you are sure this is happening to you, there are some proactive measures you can take. For example, you can exclude specific geographies or even IP addresses from your pay-per-click campaign to prevent competitor from viewing your ads. Just be careful not to lose out on new leads due to worries about competitors.

Competitors writing false negative reviews.

This one is always heart-breaking for us to hear, but desperate competitors have been known to do this quite aggressively. What can you do? Comment back. Try to address the issues as if they are real to see if they stop. If not, try reaching out to the site where they are being posted. Some sites will work with you on removing false reviews. Also, try to get your customer base incentivized to post positive reviews about you, so that good and real customer feedback is much more prominent than your unethical competitor’s words.  Customer loyalty will always overwhelm unethical competitive behavior.

Competitors using your trademark in their ad copy.

You don’t want your competitor using your product or company name in their ads – particularly in a negative context. This one requires you to protect your trademarks. Monitor for improper or illegal usage of your trademarks and file complaints of any violations the search engines. Ads that infringe on your trademarks will be disallowed from appearing by the search engines.

Next, let’s look at some examples of ethical competitive maneuvering, but which can also be abused:

Tools focused on “spying” on your competitors.

The word “spying” makes you think you might be doing something unethical. However, most of these tools focus on providing information that is publicly available, but also often difficult to aggregate for an individual.  One other aspect to consider here is how the spy-tool company is gathering data – so make sure this is an approved method for data collection. For the most part, this is an okay strategy for supplementing your online competitive knowledge; however, much of the data should be taken with a grain of salt. We haven’t yet come across a tool that has spot-on accurate data, or data that isn’t very stale. Still, many can tools can provide general information that can help you develop robust sets of competitive keywords.

Attending competitor’s webinars, downloading white papers, taking free trials, and subscribing to feeds.

These are examples of information companies make available to the public — including their competitors. However, if you are attending an online event or downloading information using a false name or false credentials, then this crosses the ethical line. However, if you access this information, and are honest about who you are, there isn’t any problem with taking advantage of information being supplied by your competitors.  In fact, in this world of blogs and data sharing and Twitter streams, there are plenty of ethical ways you should be maintaining knowledge of your competitors — believe me: they’re staying abreast of all your activity.

Advertise on your competitor’s brand name.

Add in your competitor’s brand name and products names as keywords in your Google PPC campaigns, and have your ads show for those. This helps to make sure that potential customers give you a peak as they consider your competitor.  Just be sure NOT to use your competitor’s brands in your own ad copy — that would be unethical.

Review your competitor’s ad copy.

Check out your competitor’s ad copy. This is a great way to stay on top of their offerings and what they think their competitive advantages are. Keep up here to make sure that your offer is unique and your offers are truly competitive.  However, never copy a competitor’s ads verbatim.  Focus on your own unique points of differentiation in ad copy that’s all your own.

Review your competitor’s website (including view source).

Keep tabs on your competitor’s websites. Extensive reviews here can provide you with a wealth of information about their offerings, their clients, their management, their value proposition, etc.  If you want to know what keywords they are targeting to rank highest for on natural search, click to “view source” of their webpage. Many people have their keywords listed right in their meta keywords tag. But if the keywords aren’t there, check out frequently used words in their page title tags, H1 tags, meta descriptions and content to get a feel for where they are focusing. You might choose to go head-to-head with them, or you might choose to branch out into different words to capture searches they are missing out on.

Read your competitor’s reviews.

What are people saying about your competitors? What do they like? What don’t they like? Make sure to keep tabs on feedback trends so you can improve your own standards in areas where you don’t think you align.  For instance, if your competitor is consistently praised in reviews for excellent customer service, and you’re not, well… you know what you need to do!

It’s okay to be a fierce competitor and to maintain tabs on what your key competition is doing.  Refrain from crossing ethical lines, and you’ll always be engaged in a good, clean fight.  And when you encounter a competitor whose ethics cross the line, use established channels to put a halt to it.

Matt Malden to Present on Integrated Natural, Paid Search Campaigns

Yield Software is coming to SMX West 2010 in Santa Clara, March 2 -3, 2010.

Our CEO, Matt Malden, will present “Walls Come Tumbling Down: Executing an Integrated Natural and Paid Search Campaign” as part of the annual Search Marketing Expo West.  The session, which will take place on March 2 at 1 p.m. in the main Expo Hall Theater, will demonstrate the benefits of an integrated search marketing strategy, and how tearing down the walls that divide key Web marketing disciplines can lead to lower overall costs of acquisition, as well as improved website traffic and conversion rates.

He’ll also be discussing the state of the market, and explaining why most companies fail in their integration of paid and organic search marketing, with attention to common errors in many marketing strategies.

A bunch of us will be at the company booth in the Expo Hall, located at 215. Attendees are invited to demo the Yield Web Marketing Suite and newly launched SEO Analyzer and Natural Search Optimizer. Those who stop at the booth will be entered for a chance to win an Apple iPad, which will be raffled off at conference close.  (You know you want one!)

If you’re in town and can swing by, we’d love to see you.

Now Available: Export via PDF and Excel

Thanks to an awesome and constantly responsive engineering team, we’ve added a feature our customers have been asking for a lot lately: report exports via PDF and Excel.  Now, when you’re in “Reports” view, you have three options for taking your performance data with you: Print, PDF and Excel. For me, the new Excel export feature is the best because (obviously) you now have the flexibility to work with your data and present it in whatever ways you might require.  As always, if you have any questions or issues, don’t hesitate to contact support.

A Four-Step Process to Get You on Your Way

A great pay-per-click (PPC) keyword strategy is central to any campaign’s success, so getting your list right is absolutely critical. Once your campaign is live, the Yield Web Marketing Suite works every day to make recommendations to you about new keywords you might consider together with negative keyword recommendations. This guide, then, will help you create a great keyword list in advance of launching a new campaign in four easy steps: 1) Questions; 2) Keyword Tools; 3) Variations; and 4) Assembly.

1) Questions.

Use the following question categories to start making your list. As you go through and answer these questions, keep your thoughts organized into the different buckets – we’ll keep using these categories in future steps. Throughout this guide we’ll use an example of a restaurant for you to get a feel for how it works.

Names: What are all the names of the products or services that you sell? (i.e., restaurant, dining, dinner, bar, grill, happy hour, brunch, buffet, steak joint)

Adjectives: What are common adjectives used to describe those products? (i.e., steak, fine, fancy, all you can eat, affordable, 5 star, best)

Attributes: What attributes does your product have? (i.e., fireplace, live music, bands, entertainment, lounge, full bar, gift cards lakeside, lakeshore, shore, on the water, views)

Searcher Desires: What actions does the searcher want to take with your product? (i.e., eat, takeout, drink, dance, walking distance)

Website Actions: What are the actions you want people to take on your site? (i.e., reserve, reservations, order)

Website Information: What types of information do you offer on your site? (i.e., reviews, specials, pictures, menu)

Location: Where are you located? (i.e., San Mateo, San Mateo, CA, San Mateo, California, Bay Area, South of San Francisco, Close to town, in town, by town, around town, near town, local)

Emotions: How are your searchers feeling, or what do they want to feel? (i.e., hungry, romantic, casual, low-key, cozy)

Events: Under what circumstances does the searcher need you? (i.e., special occasion, group party, valentines, anniversary, thanksgiving, girls night out)

2) Keyword Tools.

Now that you’ve got a starter list, let’s expand it beyond the terms that you naturally think of. Following are some great tools you can use to expand your keyword list. As you find related terms through these following keyword sources, put them into the buckets you started to use above. It will make building your actual keyword list later on much easier. Also, as you go along and see words that you don’t want your ads to appear for, and make note of those for your negative keywords list.

Thesaurus.com: Enter your words from above and jot down all the applicable terms for saying the same thing. Their visual thesaurus can is a great way to see the data. Jot down antonyms that you wouldn’t want your ads to appear for as negative keywords.

Quintura.com: Enter some of your key product phrases from above. Click on items that are related to you to see more ideas appear. Be sure to read through the results on the right-hand side of the page for even more ideas.

Google Search: Wow, this one seems boring, eh? But, it’s a great tool. Enter you basic keywords – as you are entering pay attention to the related searches that Google displays as you type. Then after you click search take some time to read through the ad copy, the organic listings and check out some of the websites. You’ll be surprised how many variations on your keywords you’ll discover here.

Google WonderWheel: As long as you’ve got Google open, click on the Show Options link at the top. Then on the left-hand side click on the Wonder Wheel option. This works in a similar way to Quintura. Just click around the wheel to find related terms.

Google Related Searches: One more option inside of Google is the Related Searches. Click on the Related Searches link (you’ll see this right above the Wonder Wheel option). Click on any of the related searches at the top to view their results and scan through the page for great terms.

Competitor Websites: One of those few times your competitors actually have some value to offer you! Visit your competitor’s websites and look at the terms they use to describe their product and make sure you’ve got those covered as well. This is also great insight into the keywords they are likely using in their pay per click campaigns.

Google Alerts: Sign up for a comprehensive Google Alert pertaining to your product. This is a fantastic source to find out how people are talking about your product and what they are looking for. It’s also one of the best sources to develop a robust set of negative keywords.

TweetBeeb: Keep track of what people are saying about your product type, industry or location on Twitter. Similar to a Google Alert, but based on Tweets.

Yahoo Answers: Do a search for your product or industry and look for the terms that people are using to talk about it and what they are typically seeking.

3) Variations.

You should now have a pretty hearty list of categorized words and also a great start at a list of negatives. Now it’s time for just a few finishing touches to the words that you have identified so far.

Singulars / Plurals: Make sure to include the singular and plural version of all of your keywords.

Hyphen, Non-Hyphen, 2 words, 1 word versions of the word: web site, website, web-site,

Apostrophe and non-apostrophe versions of words: San Mateo’s, San Mateos

4) Assembly.

Drum roll please… all that’s left is to assemble your keyword research! Here’s how to put your keyword phrases together:

Names + Adjectives (lakeshore restaurant, fine dining restaurant)
Names + Attributes (restaurant with live music, byob restaurants)
Names + Searcher Desires (eat at bar restaurant, Chinese takeout)
Names + Website Actions (restaurant reservations, order restaurant gift card)
Names + Website Information (restaurant reviews, restaurant menus)
Names + Location (restaurants in san mateo, local breakfast buffet)
Names + Emotions (romantic restaurant, cozy steak joint)
Names + Events (restaurant for valentines, thanksgiving brunch)

To branch into longer-tail keywords, just use combos of three categories at a time. For example: Event + Name + Location (i.e., “special occasion restaurant in the bay area”).

Now you are off to the races. If you don’t have a big enough budget to support your fantastic list, start small and slowly introduce more as you find the keyword niches that bring you customers.

Combined Bing-Yahoo! Search Partnership Live by December

It certainly took a little time.  But all the bureaucratic issues have been resolved.  Microsoft and Yahoo! have now received regulatory clearance to form the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance in the United States and European Union.  What this means, essentially, is that Microsoft’s Bing search engine results will combine in some form with Yahoo’s, and the pay-per-click advertising platform for both engines will be powered by Microsoft’s adCenter.

Though Yahoo’s spin on what comes next seems slightly different from Microsoft’s, there is some agreement on the fundamentals.

According to the official Microsoft announcement, after the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, you will:

Reach more potential customers. Search ad inventory from both the Yahoo! and Microsoft networks will be joined in a new, unified search marketplace powered by Bing, with a combined audience of over 150 million searchers in the U.S and nearly 577 million searchers worldwide.

Save valuable time and effort. You’ll use a single platform — the Microsoft adCenter — to manage your campaigns easier and faster. With just one buy, your search ads will reach users on Bing, Yahoo!, and other premium partner sites and networks, such as The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, msnbc.com, FoxSports.com, Facebook, and Buy.com.

Yahoo, for its part, also seems to have plans to continue to innovate in the field of search independent from Microsoft, and Yahoo’s sales force will also sell specific search services on behalf of the joint effort.  In general, this should be very good for PPC advertisers.  The ROI on Bing campaigns has been, generally speaking, very impressive but they’ve lacked volume since launch.  By combining Yahoo! search volume with Bing’s, advertisers should see hefty benefits.

For all subscribers to the Yield Web Marketing Suite, the transition will be seamless for you and you’ll continue to receive all the benefits of managing your paid search campaigns via our systems.  Our teams are on top of both current and coming changes, and you’ll still be able to manage your PPC, SEO and landing page optimization campaigns for all three search portals from a single, simple interface.

Both Yahoo! and Microsoft have committed to bringing the Search Alliance to the U.S. by the end of 2010, prior to the crucial holiday season, with additional countries following on a staggered schedule beginning in 2011.  Again, for all our subscribers managing campaigns across multiple geographies, this transition will be seamless for you throughout.

As new information becomes available, we’ll be sure to keep you updated here on our Community Blog and via our weekly newsletter.  As always, if you have questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to call our Customer Success Reps Monday – Friday, 9 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. PST at 1-877-943-5379.

Twelve Diagnostic Questions to Get Answers

We frequently get inquiries from businesses that were getting a healthy amount of leads and conversions, but then suddenly their conversion rate takes a nose dive. When the phone stops ringing in today’s economy, panic ensues.

Many businesses aren’t even aware of all the different factors which can cause a negative change like this to occur. In order to give you a hand, we put together this list of questions to ask yourself to get to the root of the problem.

We’ll start at the “front” of the line with our problem-solving and work our way back to the landing page and website, since front-line changes are much easier to address.

1. Have the paid search keywords that are getting clicks changed?

Check out your pay per click (PPC) advertising keywords bringing in traffic. Compare the keywords from the time period in which your conversion rate was good to the time period for which you have not been getting conversions. Are the keywords different?

For PPC, this is an easy problem to solve – pause the keywords which have been taking up budget but not bringing in leads. Then make sure the keywords that used to work have bids that will enable them to get the most traffic.

2. Have the natural search keywords that are bringing traffic to your site changed?

Comb through your analytics to get the list of natural search queries that were bringing people to your site in the good times. Are they still bringing you natural search traffic? Has your natural search rank for these keywords fallen over time?

If these keywords aren’t still working for you on the natural search front, get busy with some SEO activities. Conduct some on-page and link building around those keywords that used to bring in the converting traffic.

3. Are you receiving 100 percent of available ad impressions on Google AdWords?

If you’ve lowered your budget, raised your bids or have been busy adding keywords to your campaign, you may not be receiving 100 percent of your available ad impressions.

Look at your campaign inside of AdWords and if it says “Limited by Budget” in the campaign status column, you are not currently receiving 100 percent of available ad impressions.

Review your keyword list to make sure that the keywords that were bringing you conversions previously are getting 100 percent of available ad impressions. To ensure this you might need to pause keywords that have not been performing and lower bids for keywords that are not the true work horses. If you have a large volume of keywords, but only a tiny budget you may need to do a lot of trimming here to ensure the performing keywords get their full exposure.

4. Has your ad position changed?

Different ad positions perform differently. Which ad position is best? Well, that depends on many factors. But, if you were getting conversions, you can start to hone in on the ad positions that were working for you. Go back to the time during which those conversions were coming in and review the ad positions for those top-performing keywords. Compare this against the positions you are currently attaining. Have things changed? If so, modify your bids (this may mean switching from automated bidding to manual bidding) so that your ads for these keywords start to appear in positions that bring you results.

5. Has your offer changed?

Did you have an offer in your ad copy or landing page that changed? Has pricing increased or has an incentive expired? Go back to when those conversions were coming in and review the offers in your ad copy and on your landing page. If previous pricing or an expired offer was bringing you results, consider re-enabling that offer.

6. Is it the season?

Many businesses go through seasonal changes, but when the slow season comes around, they often forget that it happens every year. Go back through your analytics and your lead tracking and check to see if this same thing happens every year around the same time. If so, think about ways to motivate leads during the slow times – you might need to whip up some special attractive offers to help increase your conversion volume during these times.

7. Has your competition changed?

Check out your natural search and paid search competition for those top-performing keywords which were bringing in conversions. See any new faces on the block? Get to know the new faces and make sure you are highlighting your unique capabilities and offers as compared to them.

8. Has your competition changed their offer?

Look at the ad copy, landing page and website offers for your natural search and paid search competitors? Where do you stand? Are they offering more? Have they lowered their prices? Have they won awards? Have they added guarantees?

Review their offers and see what you have to offer that makes your business unique and a competitive winner.

9. Has your competition upgraded their landing pages?

This always seems to hit in waves. While reviewing your competition, check out their paid search landing pages and websites. Have some of them gone through website re-designs recently and raised the bar? Have they added new features to their sites such as reviews, testimonials, blogs, forums, photos, or social feeds?

If their websites are looking more professional, understandable, engaging, convincing or iterative than yours, it’s likely influencing your visitor’s impression of your company. Consider updating your website so you don’t lose out on sales due to this initial impression.

10. Has there been a lack of reviews or negative reviews on your business?

What have customers been saying about you online lately? Check out Google Local, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Yelp, City Search and any other applicable sites, which let people review your business online. Are there negative reviews that have come up recently? If so, reach out and take some steps to address them. Let people know that you care and inform them of the actions you are taking to improve.

Or, perhaps you don’t have any reviews but your competition does. In the online world of selecting services, reviews hold a lot of weight. If you don’t have many (or any) reviews, but your competitors do, many people will favor the business with positive reviews. Think about offering incentives to previous happy customers to get them to vocalize their great experiences on these review sites.

11. Has your landing page changed?

Have you changed your landing page content or layout? Have you increased the data, decreased the data, modified colors, moved your call to action, or changed your call to action text? All these things have an impact on user behavior. Try some a/b testing with the two landing pages (the old one and the new one) so you can see which one of them truly performs better. Sometimes the changes we make to our pages feel like an upgrade to us, but aren’t perceived that way by visitors.

12. Has your website changed?

Similar to #11 above – if you’ve been making some changes take a hard look at the things you’ve modified since your conversion rate plummeted. Think about the things that might be having the most impact on your visitor behavior and slowly try out some of the older concepts in your new site to see what content or layouts have the greatest impact on your conversion rate.

Obviously, you should use appropriate data from your Yield Web Marketing Suite reports to make these assessments to the extent possible. And be sure to the landing page optimization module to ensure only the best performing versions of these important pages are available to your customers.

A word of caution: don’t make too many changes at once. Go through this list in order and stop at the first item that is applicable to your situation and adjust it – then wait to see what happens. You may only need to make adjustments in one area, or you may need to make adjustments in several areas, but it’s important not to make too many changes at once so you can get to the root cause.