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.

One of the common objections we hear from people regarding writing a blog regularly, producing content for marketing purposes, is that they are likely to just waste hours of time with no real results.

However, one of the keys to finding online success is great content — without it, any real success is unlikely.  Some reasons why content continues to be king:

Your competitors are doing it

Your customers expect it

It builds credibility and community

Most importantly, it’s a central component of SEO strategy – from dynamic updates, to links, to keyword relevance

How do you write content that will bring you links and leads, and is not just wasted time?  I find that judging content is very similar to how I shop for fruit in the produce aisle.  For instance:

1) On the Shopping List.

If it’s not food that I need, I’m going to walk right by it.  Just like the produce section is filled with items I don’t care about, so the online world is filled with content that just doesn’t matter to me.  Is your content a piece of information that your customers need?  Put yourself in the shoes of your customers.  What are common pain points that they share?  What are common decisions that they have to make? Only write about what is relevant to them and their role.

2) Non-Exotic.

The audience for exotic fruits is significantly smaller than for the basic staple fruits.  What is considered exotic depends on many factors such as season, geography, demographics, etc.  A highly sought-after fruit in Honolulu might not see the same demand in Hoboken.  Think carefully about your target before you decide the flavor of content to provide.  Like all good marketing that produces results, your content must be a highly targeted staple for your customers.

3) Not Covered with Dents or Bruises.

Every time you mention your own product, solution, service or anything else promotional, it’s just as if you’ve taken a lovely banana and pounded a hammer on it – well, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but you get the point.  Do not constantly mention your products, solutions, services in your content.  Think of your content as an additional service you are providing to your customers, potential leads and industry as a whole.  This is not the place for naked self-promotion, with one exception: case studies.  If you’re able to tell a story about how a customer using your products was able to achieve a particular objective, and that information may be useful to many others, go ahead and tell that story.  Just be sure to highlight your customer more than your own products.

4) Fresh and In-Season.

Don’t write about anything that’s so yesterday, or over talked-about, or is no longer a hot pressing issue.  Stick with current events.  What’s the impact of a recent news event?  What’s a way to deal with a new or upcoming change in the industry?  Be current.  Be fresh.  Also be sure to do this in a way that maintains a politically neutral voice (unless your business is about being partisan!), and is seen as intending to be helpful to all your customers.  You don’t want to inadvertently alienate a segment of your customer base.

5) Home Grown.

There are channels for just being an information pusher — that is, simply republishing what others are saying — but if you want links and to showcase your unique knowledge, you’re going to have go home-grown.  Be original and express your unique view, experiences or knowledge.  Help expand your customer’s way of thinking by sharing new ways to look at things.  If you’re not a naturally strong writer or video producer, get help from friends or associates who are.  You don’t have to write “War and Peace”, but dashing off a couple paragraphs of thoughtful prose, proof-read by someone you trust, should be easy for most people to do.  We frequently hear from business professionals that their kids helped them produce short videos that have big impacts.

6) Looks Appealing.

Fruit that’s bruised, or has worms crawling out from a holes, will get passed over.  Which is why content format matters.  Something that looks appealing will easily catch my eye.  You don’t have to be a great designer or deeply experienced in the art of blogging.  If the content appears to be easy to read – usage of images, headers, etc. — then I’m more likely to read it since it seems like it will be quickly digestible.

7) Easy to Eat.

A tough chew is going to get spit out, so make your content readable and even entertaining.  Jokes, no matter how lame, are almost always appreciated.  We are more engaged in learning when we are entertained along the way.  Just be sure you’ve got an angel on your shoulder whispering in your ear, in addition to that little devil!

8 ) Easy to Digest.

There’s not point in chowing down on something if it’s just going to come right back up.  No one wants any pain from eating something.  So make sure to write in the correct tone and language for your customer base.  Only use advanced terms or acronyms if that’s the way your customers speak and think on a regular basis.

9) Healthy.

This is fruit, so it should be good for you.  Content that is bashing or negative in tone isn’t a healthy read, so keep positive.

10) Disease Free, and Passes the Scratch-and-Sniff Test.

I might be wary of some random piece of fruit if I’m not sure it comes from a credible source.  Make sure you give credit where credit is due and provide context around why or how you know what you know.

11) Tastes Good.

The end result needs to be positive.  If the recommendations you share don’t work, or the news is inaccurate then the whole thing was a waste of time.   If it doesn’t taste good it will be thrown away, and worse, the reader might even tell their friends how truly awful it was.  Check and double check that your information is right.

12) Sharable.

When we find something amazing, we love to tell others about it: “Oh my gosh – you have to taste this!”  Make it easy to share and even encourage comments and sharing.  If your website isn’t built on a blogging platform like WordPress, be sure your blog is (and that it’s integrated into your website — a stand-alone blog won’t help your SEO prospects).  Blog publishing platforms automatically build in optimization features so you don’t have to worry too much about your content being found.  If you haven’t already, make sure you have a “Share This” feature included in your blog posts, which enables readers to instant share a link to your stuff via Twitter or Facebook, among other social sharing services, and ensures your content is as portable as possible.

13) Get it Delivered.

If I fall in love with something, I’d really like to make getting it again a breeze.  Make it as easy as possible for a happy reader to subscribe – whether it’s an email newsletter, an RSS feed, or following you on a social network.  Once you’ve got their attention, make them a repeat reader.  You should be gathering a following of your content just like you gather customers of your products.

14) Regularly Available.

I will stop looking for a type of fruit or fruit from a certain producer if it’s not regularly available.  So preset how frequently you are going to publish content and stick with the routine. (For instance, if you subscribe to the Yield Software newsletter, you can count on getting it delivered to your inbox every Tuesday morning.)

15) Consistently Good.

We are creatures of habit and value consistency.  If I don’t consistently have a good experience with a particular type of fruit or producer, I’ll look elsewhere.  So take the time consistently to ensure you content is always great and aligns naturally with your brand’s values.

Spring is here – so start writing your bushel of content today!

To round off our SEO Strategies Series on choosing the right keywords for your website and landing pages, I’ve listed the frequently asked questions (FAQs) we regularly receive about how to incorporate keywords within your website pages – as well as the answers.

How many times should I use my keywords in the page copy?

Rather than focus on how many times you should use each keyword per page, focus instead on incorporating the keyword where it makes sense to do so. For example, if you sell vacation packages, and you’re optimizing a page for “Cabo San Lucas vacation packages,” instead of writing, “We specialize in resort vacation packages,” use this keyword-rich phrase: “We specialize in Cabo San Lucas resort vacation packages.”

It’s also a good practice to include your main keyword in the page headline and sub-heads if possible. However, consider your readers. You may want to use a powerful headline that pulls people into the page but doesn’t include your keyword. (Remember that our Yield Web Marketing Suite includes a real-time multivariate testing engine – you can test various headlines to see which one converts the most visitors.)

What is “anchor text” and why is it important?

Anchor text is simply hyperlinked words. For example, in this phrase, “try our free 30-day demo,” the anchor text is “free 30-day demo.” Google and other search engines deem the words in linked text to be somewhat important, which is why it pays to use your keywords as anchor text – and why it’s even better if other sites link to your site and include your keywords in their anchor text.

It’s also why you don’t want to hyperlink something like, “Download your free report here.” The word “here” has no SEO value whatsoever!

Should I optimize for my brand names? I’ve heard it’s a waste of time to do this.

Definitely optimize for your brand names and for each of the services you offer. For example, if you provide outsourced IT, develop pages that address the specific types of services you offer within outsourced IT and optimize each of those pages based on the phrases people are using to find companies like yours.

A company offering IT outsourcing might have pages that describe remote diagnostics and trouble-shooting, disaster recovery, computer security services, network integration and management, IT consulting, email servers and support, etc.

{Warning: Self-serving FAQ} All of this sounds complicated. Does the Yield Software Web Marketing Suite help me with these SEO tasks?

Yes.  Yield Software’s fully integrated Web Marketing Suite automates the time-consuming chore of optimizing your website. For example, Yield has built a library of automated analyses to test web pages for adherence to generally accepted search engine optimization best practices. The software then ensures those pages have the highest probability of attaining top natural search engine rankings. For each analysis, Yield provides a full explanation of the best practice, recommends a solution and, in certain instances, automatically resolves the problem.

If something on your page isn’t up to par – i.e. you don’t have any anchor text – the software alerts you.

Be sure to try our 30-day no-risk free demo to see how much time you can save – as well as ratcheting up the marketing effectiveness of your site.