Jamie O’Donnell of SEO-PR interviews Matt Malden, CEO of Yield Software and an exhibitor at last month’s SES San Francisco 2010.  Here’s a synopsys of Jamie’s reporting:

Yield Software’s Yield Web Marketing Suite handles three aspects of automated web marketing. It has a pay-per-click (PPC) bid management module that includes spending on the three major search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo.  Second, the Yield Web Marketing Suite offers automated SEO or natural search engine optimization. Using the Yield Web Marketing Suite, Web marketers can get higher organic search rankings for their important keywords and learn how to improve their landing pages, link building, on-page and off-page optimization. Finally, the Yield Web Marketing Suite offers Web marketers a landing page optimization module. Using Yield, marketers can conduct complex multivariate testing of landing pages, using a visual drag and drop interface to automatically implement recommendations.

Yield Software is great for advertisers who want to be more effective in the search space, particularly medium and large-sized companies. Yield Software has also been adopted by digital and interactive media agencies that are conducting bid management, natural search optimization and email campaigns in order to help them generate better search marketing results.

Yield Software empowers any organization in the world to attract high-value customers at the lowest cost. Using advanced algorithms and techniques, the Yield Web Marketing Suite optimizes internet marketing expenditures, attracts visitors to a web site and tunes web page content to have the greatest impact.

For more information about exhibiting at SES, please visit: http://searchenginestrategies.com

A few months ago we wrote a post about whether or not to trap a visitor on a landing page.  This continues to be a dilemma for many of our clients.  However (I’m not afraid to admit it) I’m pretty sure I missed the boat on the most optimal approach for landing pages.  Thank you to Yahoo’s recent designs for the enlightenment!

With landing pages, we typically weigh the pros and cons of having a landing page that prohibits navigation, so we keep the visitor focused on conversion.  Or, having a landing page that is part of the regular website with all the links active, allowing the visitor to wander to gather the information they need in hopes they will get to a conversion point before exiting the site.  The biggest challenge with the trapping technique is that these pages often lack in data to keep visitors around.  While they may have improved conversion rates, their associated bounce rates are also much higher.

Yahoo’s recent designs seem to have the best approach here.  The goal is simple.  To make sure the visitor doesn’t need to search beyond the page by providing them with an engaging, multi-media experience where they can browse to find everything they need on that single page.

Yahoo is saying that user engagement on their pages is nearly twice the amount with their latest designs.  And since dwell time directly correlates to conversion rates, let’s see what we can glean from Yahoo’s designs that can be directly incorporated into landing pages.

One prominent concept is search by clicking.  For many, over half of the visitors who come to their site are using the search function to try to find out what they need.   But why not change the game by providing users with lots of different types of browse options and suggest related search terms for them to use for browsing.  This can prevent them from ending up on a search results page that is less than satisfactory to their information needs.

Utilize multiple media formats.  In order to provide an engaging experience and meet the needs of a variety of visitors, employ multiple media types on your landing pages – text, images, videos, slide shows, interactive widgets, news and social streams come to mind.   Multiple formats make your page more engaging and help meet the demand of all different types of learning preferences.

Make it Current.  Highlight for the visitor what’s trending now.  Try related news streams, blog posts, and social feeds and call out trending related search topics on your landing pages.  Become the source for all the latest and greatest information that visitors will come to.

Make it locally relevant.  This can be particularly helpful for national or global advertisers.  Are there dynamic snippets of locally relevant, related information that you can include?

Make it Infinite.  Incorporate infinite browse boxes onto your website.  For your products or services you can include infinite browse boxes for images, videos, news streams, whitepapers, blog posts, forum posts, slide shows, ebooks, awards, comparisons, analyst studies, upcoming events, you name it! The possibilities are endless.

The bottom line is to think about all the data points of research a potential customer needs to do before converting, and presenting that data on a single browsable page in a multimedia format.

Take a peek at your landing pages and start to brainstorm how you can start to keep an keep an ongoing dialogue with your visitors on the single page.

Let’s face it: it’s typically not recommended! Though it may happen once in awhile, for most people it just doesn’t — usually for good reason.  And yet many businesses treat first visits to their websites as if they’re expecting to go all the way on a first date.

Since we all need that little thing called revenue in order to stay in business and be profitable, many businesses just focus on tracking their one main revenue-generating action as a conversion event for online activity.  Whether it’s a product purchase or generation of a lead, all online campaigns and keywords are judged by their ability to immediately result in this one conversion.

However, in this day and age of information abundance, reviews, referral sources, and the like, many searchers do lots of poking around before they are ready to take that conversion step.  There are four generally-accepted steps in the sales cycle you should keep in mind:

Ignorance — This is the phase when a person is unaware of their need of a particular product or service that might make their lives or their own business somehow better or more efficient or less expensive.

Awareness — When a customer has become aware of a need and the means of addressing it, but is still learning, investigating and preparing.

Engagement — A customer-prospect has selected your company as one that might address their need.

Investment — Success! A prospective customer becomes a paying customer.

Most people these days go through these four stages of the sales cycle.  So rather than throwing all of your eggs in one basket, hoping to convince your visitor to “go all the way” on that very first visit, we encourage you to offer different avenues to make a connection on that first visit.  This will enable you to foster the relationship and be the one the searcher comes back to when they are ready to convert.

For prospects in the “ignorance” phase, it’s important to speak to a particular pain point.  Call out that pain and the clear cure for it.  For instance, say you sell solar panels.  You may want to run PPC ads like this one:

Energy Bills High?

Solar is more affordable

than ever – learn how.

solarxyz.com/lowermybills

(Hopefully, this is a fake company… we intended it to be!)  In this instance, the ad is addressing a common customer pain point: high household energy bills.  They point out why an alternative could be viable for the searcher.  And they entice the searcher with an answer to their pain (”lower my bills”).

Next, during the “awareness” phase, think about why your searcher is likely to be hunting around gathering more information:

Are they looking for the best price?

Do they need reviews / ratings / referrals before selecting?

Are they researching a gift for someone else?

Are they sure about the exact product accessory they need?

Did they simply get interrupted in the middle of their search?

Are they not currently using the right device or computer that they intend on converting from?

Do they need to run it by someone else?

We could go on and on — there are so many different reasons why people aren’t ready to commit on the first click.  After you figure out the likely scenarios for your particular offering, you can start to think about the types of valuable information for a connection that will enable you to stick in the mind of the visitor and leave a lasting presence they will return to.

The content that you offer to make the connection will need to be unique, valuable, helpful and just plain irresistible.  Following are some additional “connection” ideas that you can try out:

Newsletter sign-up.  You’ll need to say more than just “sign up” though – for instance, does the newsletter contain offers?  What type of content is in it that will entice them or be useful to them?

Facebook / Twitter following.  Again –why would they want to do this?  Is there some enticing content from your community that you can use as a teaser?  Are there special offers you have for your social following?

Webinar sign-up.  Do you have any relevant upcoming webinars that might be of interest that you can encourage them to sign up for?

Conference sign-up.  Any upcoming conferences that you will be attending?  Perhaps you are going to have some form of a giveaway that they can sign up for.

Notification sign-up.  Can you entice them to sign-up for an email notification if there is a price changes in the future?  Or would they like to be notified of future reviews that are posted, or stock level notifications?

Third-party data.  Do you have valuable industry or market data that you can share with them – any analyst or third party reports, or review aggregations that would help guide them?

Personalized information.  Can you provide them with any information that is personalized to them?  The ROI on a purchase, help finding the right solution through a series of questions, previewing how something will look for them, analysis of something that is theirs, any form of a calculator, etc.  Make sure to capture the results so you can also email them to them.

Personal response to questions, or personal review of something.  If an expert can help guide them in a personalized, non-salesy way, this is often attractive.

Contests.  Everyone loves to win things!

Polls.  Ask them for their input on something about what you offer.  This will usually require a strong incentive – but even showing the results of an ongoing poll that you have, that they can participate in can often times be enough.

A product brochure, white paper, recent use-case video, etc.  Any content that can help them learn more about you after they go away from your website.

After you are able to make the connection, you’ll want to spend some time nurturing it.  This gets you to the “engagement” level.  Continue to reach out to the visitor on a regular basis with more unique, valuable content along the lines of the connection they made with you.  Whether it’s an updated analysis, a new notification, some interesting community content from Twitter, or some new poll results, keep the conversation going and stay fresh in their mind.

Once you’ve gotten your additional connection points in place on your landing pages and throughout your website, you’ll want to make sure you are tracking their success.  Track all the meaningful events for your online campaigns, realizing that any connection made carries value – so if you have keywords that are bringing in lots of new connections, but no immediate revenue you’ll want to keep them alive to see if your nurture-rate to revenue is high.  For each of these connection points, you’ll want to monitor how often they bring about return visits and eventually generate revenue.  This will help you know where to focus your efforts as you go forward.

All of which gets you to that “all-the-way goal”: investment.

Spring is here, and the pools are open. Time for some bikini boot camp for your landing pages to make sure they’re in tip-top shape as your business dives into summer.

Here are some questions to ask to find the trouble zones you’ll need to focus on in order to get lean, mean performance from your landing pages.

• Do you go below the fold? Try to keep your content concise so that your page fits above the fold and doesn’t require scrolling. If it’s just not possible, make sure that your best assets appear first including what you do, your unique value and a call to action.

• Do you have meaningless words? There have been polls and studies done about the most abused gobbledygook words and phrases. These are the filler that you use to describe your solution that are completely meaningless to your visitors, which include “innovative,” “next-generation,” “cutting-edge,” “marketing-leading,” “easy-to-use”, etc. (I’m sure you’ve heard from blowhards around the pool who use language like this.)  It’s time to shed the meaningless words and just stick with meaningful communication. Fluff is yesterday – clear articulation is today. Don’t use a single word that has an express marketing intent. Cross them all out and just say what you do and why you are the best, using only your customers words (i.e., “this widget cut my operating costs by 10 percent!”)

• Do you have too much information? Landing pages are not the place to ramble on about every little detail about your company and products.  It’s important to stick to just enough information to help users understand in a matter of seconds that (1) they are in the right place; (2) you are better than everyone else; and (3) what the next step to take is.  Save detailed comparisons, extensive product information and anything that would require several minutes of reading for other places on your website.

• Do you expect too much time? How much time does it take someone completely unfamiliar with what you do to read your page and digest what you are trying to tell them and take the next step action? Get some friends to help you out with this exercise. If this is more than 1.5 minutes, you’ll need to do some streamlining in order to have the digestion process occur more quickly.

Now that we’ve given you some ideas about how to cut the fat, let’s talk about the key assets that you want to have shine on your new and improved page:

1. Headline: What do you do – in your customers own words.
2. Benefits: What makes you the best – again, in your customers own words; keep the list short – just three-to-five will do.
3. Call to Action / Offer: What should your visitor do next? Make this accessible right on your landing page to take the mystery out of how much effort is required to take it to the next step.
4. Testimonials / Awards: Give yourself some credibility – just some teasers here will do.

It’s also important to use some lower calorie ways of communicating so that you can maintain your lean, mean page and not just gain the weight back again over time:

1. Images: Use pictures to portray whatever you can – they are interesting to view and can convey at least 1000 words. A picture can help a visitor confirm they are in the right place and understand what you do in the matter of an instant.
2. Videos: If you offer something complex or a concept that is not widely understood, a video can be a great way to provide more detailed information rather than lengthy bouts of text.
3. Bold, Bullets, Formatting: Make sure it’s easy to “cruise through” your page and digest the information as quickly as possible.

Using these simple and easy tips to get your key landing pages into shape will ensure you’re not only attracting great traffic, but turning that traffic into real business (but don’t apply the bikini analogy here… because that’s just creepy.)

The most recent stat I saw for how long a searcher spends on a website before deciding whether or not to click the back button was 13 seconds. I think that might be generous, but I like generosity, so we’ll work with that number.

Let’s think through what happens. A searcher clicks to go to your website:

• Second 1 – Is your site attractive enough? If yes, stay.
• Second 2-5 – Is your site relevant? Does the text or image that stands out the most resonate as what the searcher was looking for? If yes, stay.
• Seconds 6-13 – Do you have something to offer that is relevant and valuable? If yes, stay.

We frequently provide tips on landing page content and how to portray it in order to pass the above 13 second test. But even with the best content, this is a tough battle to win for the diverse set of searchers who come to your site. It’s not that your website is irrelevant, but that you can’t always say or show the exact right message for all the potential leads.

When you think about a typical performance, whether gymnastics or a flight, the landing comes last. You are able to demonstrate some talent before that critical landing moment. Even in the case of a rough landing, you will get some credit and maybe even a second chance. But with search, the landing comes first. So if your landing isn’t a 10, then nothing else matters.

Since the landing is critical and the 13-second challenge is difficult, why not focus on breaking the typical visitor’s review cycle? Throw that 13-second content challenge right out the window. Increase the percentage of landings that stick so you have the opportunity to strut your stuff with a higher percentage of searchers.

How do you break the cycle? By immediately getting your searcher involved and interacting with your website.

Following are ten interactive website techniques to increase your number of perfect landings:

1) Calculate Value.
Is there some form of quick calculation that searchers can run to see how much something would go up or down if they use your product or service? Maybe it’s how much they would save on their heating bill with new windows, how much their operating costs would go down with your IT solution, how much their home is worth, or how your investment performs better than their current ones. Start off with a quick little attractive form. Make sure it only has a maximum of 5 data entry points and the numbers are well-known.

2) Create your Own.
We all love stuff that we can personalize and many of us also love being able to share our perfect design with others. Maybe it’s putting together complete outfits on a shopping site, or putting together the activities that the perfect vacation package should include, designing the perfect stationary, or the best list of baby shower gifts to register for. Engage your searchers with just a handful of options (which can be expanded if they desire.) Include designs that others have created to help get them motivated. Being able to vote on other’s designs or have something named after them if you use their idea can also be great motivators.

3) Polling or Voting.
Engage visitors with a vote or polling question. Show them, even before they become a customer, that their opinion matters. Perhaps it’s a response to how they feel about a current, relevant hot topic. Or share a company favorite of a relevant book and ask them to vote on it or share their own. Or have them vote on some current projects that your company is working on – which menu item is better, which logo is more appealing, which of an option of upcoming features should you build into your app, or which pain point is more pressing? It’s important to convey the current vote tally results after someone submits their answer.

4) Real-Time Activity.
Then there’s good old peer pressure. If a lot of other people are trying something or visiting a site or doing something, I think it must be worthwhile to give it a shot. Maybe it’s a list of websites that are currently trying out a free tool, or a real-time map of your trucks or shipments in action, or a real-time counter of phone calls, new customer sign-ups, real-time value of money you’ve helped people save, or number of items sold or left. Showing real-time activity can give you credibility, and adds an action component that triggers more of a sense of urgency to get people involved.

5) Interactive Images.
Attractive images that a visitor can engage with can be just like picking up a product off the shelf or trying out a trial. You can allow visitors to try something on a virtual 3d model, open up appliances and see how the controls work, take a car for a test drive, or click around a sample page of an application and see how it works. If a picture says 1000 words, then interactive images say at least 1,000,000.

6) Reality TV.
Let your visitors take a peak under the covers to get to know you. Maybe it’s a webcam of your office in action, a webcam of a flower store preparing bouquets, a webcam of pets playing at your boarding facility,, a webcam of the weather on your golf course, or a webcam in a factory watching something being made. Make it a reality for them – give them a view into how it’s made, or how it’s done.

7) Take a Challenge.
We all like to think we know it all, or like to find out where we stand on the scale of understanding something. Challenges can be based on how well you know about any related subject matter or related person or related current event. It’s always good to classify their knowledge in a fun way, let them know where they stand relative to others that have taken the challenge.

8 ) Unbiased Reviews.
Not the marketing influenced testimonials, but real, un-touched reviews. We all value other people’s experiences, but we only trust reviews when there are some negative ones in there – otherwise we smell a rat. How do you make reviews interactive? Allow people to quickly identify reviews related to them – perhaps based on business type or the geography of a visitor. Also, allow them to vote on what reviews are helpful or not, so you can show the most relevant content first and begin to glean out what matters most to your searchers.

9) Games.
Games can be a great way to engage visitors for businesses of all types. Perhaps it’s a game of crush your competition and you provide the pieces from your solution which will enable their business to do that, they just provide the competitors names and do the interaction of using your toolset for the defeat. Or, maybe it’s a game that helps them build a shopping list – like decorating for a party, or caring for a newborn.

10) Personal Shopper.
Rather than making them hunt for their answers, go find it for them. Engage them with some key questions to help them classify themselves and what they are looking for and then bring them the most relevant solution or information. For example, finding the right type of assisted living for a parent, or finding the best treatment options for an illness, or finding the best solution set for their business needs. You can even try to do this in the form of a mad libs to add a humorous to entertainment value to it if appropriate for your image.

But wait, there’s more!

With all of the above, you’ll find that they do more than just engage your visitors. Here’s how to milk the most from them:

• Enable visitors to share the interactive piece, or their results of their interaction with others via email or social networks.
• Allow visitors to opt-in for you to send them their customized results via email, and updates on other relevant comments, or vote or contest updates.
• Make sure you are actively capturing all visitor input – most of these provide you with great insight into what matters and what your visitors are looking for.

One word of caution – design your interactions carefully as to not sacrifice on speed, or you’re landing will never even hit the ground, let alone stick.
So, get your website interacting today and stick more landings.

Many landing page best practices dictate that you trap your visitors inside your landing page and not allow navigation to other pages within your website. The logic here is that you are after a conversion, so keep the visitor focused on converting rather than letting them wander around and forget to provide you with their info before they leave your site.

While the trapping technique can be quite effective for some advertisers, we’ve seen it result in complete failure for others. How to know what to do? Here are some simple criteria you can use to determine whether or not trapping your visitor will bring you the highest conversion results.

When trapping is not likely to work:

Your product offering or market space is not well-known. Do you have a new type of product or service that you are trying to sell? In this case visitors need to learn more about your offering before they will be ready to fork over their contact details or make a purchase. Your website should serve as an educational vehicle to help them understand what you do and how it will help them. Guide them through this educational process through your site with a strong emphasis on conversion along the way.

Your brand is not a known. Are you the new kid on the block? Are you the smaller, local guy trying to compete with bigger well-known national brands? In this case your website needs to be a credibility building vehicle. People are not likely to give you any information until they know they can trust you. Help them get to know you and why you are reputable throughout your website pages. Comparisons, testimonials, awards, as seen ins can all be helpful here.

Multiple offerings or conversions are available. Sometimes it’s good for you to have your visitors wander around. The more they wander, the more they are likely to buy or the more conversion opportunities that exist. Also, if you have multiple standard offerings for them to sign up for, it’s good to let them gather this information and choose the package that’s right for them. So use your website as an up-selling vehicle and let them wander and spend.

Your website facilitates the full conversion process. If you have an e-commerce site, or your website is built to facilitate the purchase of what you are offering, let the user wander around to gather all the information they need, select what they would like and complete their transaction. Some examples here include e-commerce sites and hotels.

When trapping is effective:

You have a commonly known product. If people know what they want and are familiar with your product or service, they are likely just looking for the best provider for them. In this case they don’t need to comb through your website to figure out what you have to offer. It’s more important to focus on the conversion when they first land.

You are a known, trusted brand. If visitors already know who you are, they don’t need the rest of your site to find out if they like you or you are trustworthy. In this case too it’s worthwhile to keep the visitor focused on converting right there on the landing page.

Your best sales are done via phone. If your website isn’t your best sales vehicle, but is rather focused on lead generation, it’s best to focus on capturing your visitors contact information so you can follow-up with your more successful sales tactic of direct contact.

Your conversion doesn’t capture sensitive information. If you aren’t asking for any sensitive information, but are just seeking an email or phone number maybe with some form of free information provided in return, you can be very successful trapping your visitors and keeping them focused on providing this info before they move on.

What Makes a Successful Page Trap?

You’ve got one page to engage, convince and capture. Your visitor can’t be longing for more or unsure after viewing the page, so what do you need to include here to be successful?

Engage visitors and highlight your most prominent value in large font. Show them that you understand them and have the answer for them.
Short / Concise Info Capture. Only ask for the pieces of data that you absolutely need. The shorter the form, the more likely visitors are to complete it.

Testimonials and Awards. Provide as much credibility as possible in this small space – testimonials and awards can go a long way on the trust factor.

High-Level Comparisons. Providing quick info around why you are the best can go along way to help solve the question of what provider the visitor should use. It will also help you to frame how the visitor examines your competitors.Samples of your work, or results they are likely to expect, or what they will experience can go a long way in providing the visitor with some comfort and some excitement about working with you. The more visual, the better here.

Always offer an out from a page trap through your company logo. Even on a technically trapped page, there should always be a way to get to your website if the visitor really feels the need to. The most common way to handle this is for your company logo to be a link to your website.

One last piece of advice: always test. Test, test, test. If you think one strategy might be good, test it against a control and carefully track the results.  Subscribers to the Yield Web Marketing Suite can easily use our Landing Page Optimizer to do A/B split tests as well as multivariate tests of landing pages that are fast and easy to implement.  Use this tool liberally to your advantage.  Only through consistent, rigorous testing can you be assured that you’ve got the right landing page strategy at work for your business.

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.

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.

Even though we are headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, we are making our first trip east to exhibit at ad:tech New York 2009, with very good reason. The nightlife? The food? The fashion? While New York certainly has a lot to offer–the three months I lived there, I think I slept for about 2 hours total–it is also one of the epicenters of advertising activity. Sure, Madison Avenue is renowned. However, in this digital media age, there are tons of interactive agencies successfully helping advertisers get online and leverage search engine marketing to attract and acquire customers.

So, what could be a better location to launch our agency offering, the Yield Web Marketing Suite for Agencies. We’ve been working on this product for over a year, ensuring that it not only allows our agency customers to easily manage paid search campaigns on behalf of their clients, it allows them to also expand their services to include search engine optimization (SEO) and landing page optimization (LPO). And, all these capabilities are integrated into one easy-to-use system, reducing training costs and improving the effectiveness of agency staffers. This new offering leverages many of the capabilities of our charter product, but it also includes an integrated client dashboard, agency reporting, automated client on-boarding, agency co-branding and a number of other features.

We architected this product in response to great feedback from our agency clients and built an offering that more closely meets their specific needs. They asked for a solution that allowed them to serve more clients with more capabilities while generating better results. We definitely delivered. For agencies interested in learning more, either drop by our ad:tech booth (#1515) or send us an email at sales@yieldsoftware.com and we’d be happy to give you a personalized demonstration.

As we were hearing great input from our agency customers, many of our business customers commented that they find the Yield Web Marketing Suite valuable, but have zero bandwidth to even get started. As a result, we are simultaneously announcing the launch of a series of service offerings to enable businesses to get a one-time JumpStart to begin taking advantage of the automated capabilities of our product; or leverage our Managed Services Experts for ongoing management of campaigns set up on the Yield Web Marketing Suite.

So, whether you’re an agency or a business, looking for a self-service application or a consultative partner, we have just the right solution for you. Check out the Yield Web Marketing Suite and Yield Web Marketing Suite for Agencies today!

Okay, so we’ve talked about developing a landing page that keeps people on the page (versus letting them wander around your Website) and writing punchy headlines that draw people in to your page.

Now we’ll talk about calls-to-action.

When people think of a call-to-action, they hear a big beefy loud-mouth infomercial guy pitching cleaning products to consumers:

AND WHEN YOU ORDER THE PRODUCT RIGHT NOW, WE’LL SEND YOU NOT ONE, BUT TWO PRODUCTS – ALL FOR $24.95 PLUS SHIPPING AND HANDLING.

THAT’S TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE WHEN YOU PLACE YOUR ORDER RIGHT NOW THROUGH THIS SPECIAL TV OFFER!

In fact, I hear from companies that have actually removed calls-to-action from marketing collateral and Web pages because it’s “too salesy.”

In truth, a call-to-action is simply verbiage that tells people what to do next:
•    Sign up for a trial offer or demo
•    Place an order
•    Call a toll-free number
•    Download a white paper or guide
•    Subscribe to an e-newsletter
•    Register for a Webinar

Don’t confuse a call-to-action with a premium or offer. A call to action tells the prospect what to do next. A premium is a bonus, offer, or gift that gives the prospect even more reason to take the desired action.

Because they increase conversions, premiums and calls-to-action are often joined at the hip, like this:

Sign up today for a 30-day no-risk free trial of Yield’s Web Marketing Suite!

In order to get people to take a desired action, the call-to-action must state exactly what you want people to do, it must not include other types of actions, and it must be clearly visible on the page.

In addition, if your call to action includes a registration or purchase form, you should ensure the form is easy to complete in order to reduce abandoned forms. (Test your forms at home and via the various browsers – Mozilla’s Firefox, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Google’s Chrome, and Apple’s Safari – to ensure all users can complete the form without a hitch.)

As with all aspects of the landing page, you can definitely test calls-to-action. Elements to test include:

Placement on the page – If you have a long-copy sales page, test the placement of the “submit order” or “purchase now” button to see which pulls the best response. Try placing it mid-page, multiple times on the page, within an “info” box at the bottom of the page, and as a simple text link.

Color – If you have a “register now” box or “purchase now” button, test colors to see which one works best.

Copy – Does a question such as, “Are you ready to see increased response on your landing pages?” draw more response than a statement such as, “Let Yield Software show you how to increase landing page conversions”? Test both.

Offer – Adding an offer to your call-to-action may increase conversions, but it pays to test various offers to learn which one your prospects and customers prefer.

Links – Which words in the call-to-action should you hyperlink?  The actual desired action such as “register now,” “sign up today,” or “download your free [item]” or is it better to link the name of the white paper, Webinar, product, or demo? Test and find out!

So here’s our pitch and call to action: Don’t forget that Yield’s Web Marketing Suite makes it very easy to test these and other elements – in real time – while our system automatically delivers the best performing page to your visitors over time.

To learn more, try our FREE no-risk 30-day trial of our Standard Package that supports up to $2,500 in ad spend, 1,000 keywords, and five landing pages.

This is a $129 value that comes with no obligation – meaning, try it for 30 days for free and if you don’t like it, walk away. Register for your free 30-day trial today! (Now how’s that for a good call-to-action?)