WP Blog Host's Blog » Blog Optimization/SEO

The Ingenious Way To Use SEO

John Hoff — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:10:06 +0000

Articles I typically read online include:

Tweaks to WordPress
WP Security
Online Marketing
Blogging Tips
Content Writing
SEO

And a few others, but lately I’ve been reading a few SEO articles and forum posts and I gotta say, so many people get “good” SEO keyword research wrong.

Maybe not wrong, I suppose–just not well thought out enough.

You see, to truly succeed in whatever it is you want to do online, you must realize that 90% of the game is “Intelligence” (i.e. research).

Think about how this works in war. Assuming both sides have the same technology to work with, who would you say has the competitive edge, the ones who spend a lot of time doing reconnaissance and research into their enemy, or the ones who simply learned how to use their weapons and blindly jumped out of their holes shooting?

SEO is the same way.

You need to research what people are looking for. The problem is, so many people only do the job half way.

Okay, so what do I mean.

Basically, SEO is about finding what people are searching for online–yes, but it’s also about finding what people are searching for online which also returns very little results (i.e. competition). In other words, don’t go for the big piece of the pie unless you’re willing to put years and tons of work into content, backlinks, etc.

So for example, one of the reasons why I don’t blog on a consistent schedule is because I’m busy making money online. I make more money online doing other things than I do through my blogging endeavors.

Right now I’m starting the process where I’m building a niche website for my mother. She knows a ton about how to incorporate your business in Nevada, the best state to incorporate in. But simply designing a site is not enough; I need to drive traffic to the site and make it sustainable without much work from me down the road. I’m just too busy to keep going back and “working on SEO” for my mom’s site.

But with a little in-depth research into what people are looking for online, how they’re looking for it, what keywords they are using, and what my competition looks like, I can create a site which can get ranked relatively easy.

My mother’s target customers are people looking to incorporate in Nevada.

So typically what you’d do is head over to the Google Keyword Tool and do a search for that keyword and see how many people are looking for that keyword phrase online.

Here’s the snapshot:

Looks like there’s 9,900 searches each month for that keyword phrase. Now the next step is the part that so many people forget to do. Now we need to know how many sites we will be competing with.

So head over to Google.com and type in the search, “incorporate in Nevada” (with the quotes) and see how many returned results you get. I get 15,500.

That’s actually not that bad. But can we do better?

Let’s take a look at “incorporating in Nevada”. It only has 2,400 searches each month but guess what? When we head over to Google and type in “incorporating in Nevada”, the returned results I get are less than HALF.

That means I have just cut my competition down by over half.

So I might want to really try and target, incorporating in Nevada as my keyword because there’s a lot less competition.

There of course is a lot more to market research than this, but I hope this example made it clear how good SEO keyword research not only involves how many people are searching for something, but also takes a good look at who you’re going to be competing with.

If you want to rank near the top of Google, try to pick something you can easily rank for.

2 Little Things to Consider When Starting a Website with a Blog

John Hoff — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 04:00:27 +0000

If you’re new to blogging or are contemplating changing the design of your site, this information might pertain to you…

I was visiting the Problogger forum the other day and came across a new blogger who had a question about how they should set up their website.

The scenario: Bill is starting a website which will consist of two parts:

A main site area where he will advertise his products and services
A blog… which he’ll use to generate traffic and brand awareness

Bill’s dilemma: Should he create his site as part static (html only) for his products and services and part WordPress for his blog – or – simply create the entire site as a WordPress site and simply place his blog in the /blog path?

Bill’s question sparked a number of replies, some for an all WordPress site and some for splitting it up as part static and part WordPress. Here’s my take…

If html and a little css doesn’t scare you, you might want to consider splitting things up; however, if you have no idea how to code in html and at the very least, toy with css, a full WordPress site might be the better option.

Personally, I like splitting up the two. I can sum it all up in two words: Upgrades and Security.

Consideration #1: Upgrades

Ask anyone who is a WordPress blogger about “upgrades” and you’ll hear it… upgrades are a pain in the butt. It seems every month there is a new release of WordPress and you are advised to upgrade immediately. The problem here is that many times after we upgrade WordPress, weird things can happen:

Database errors
Theme not displaying right
Some plugins might no longer be compatible with your new version of WordPress

The list goes on and on and because of this, we are told to make sure and fully backup our sites before we attempt upgrades.

Now imaging for a moment if your entire site was made up by a WordPress installation and after you hit that “upgrade” button your ducks are no longer all lined up… that means “Database Error” to you and me.

Crap, now what? Your site is disabled and everyone who comes to your site to purchase your “super mommy night time slippers” get to see a big fat “Database Error” instead of your product. On the other hand, if your site was split up between a static site and WordPress blog, only your blog would be disabled and your visitors could still visit your site and make a purchase.

Consideration #2: Security Issues

WordPress sites are a little less secure because they require a database to run and also require PHP code to execute processes. Static sites, on the other hand, are a little more secure because there’s not much to exploit (i.e. crack into).

For the most part, to hack a static site a malicious hacker would need to obtain some information from you, such as your FTP login information. Another way might include them breaking into your web hosting server or possibly even breaking into someone else’s website which is hosted on the same server as yours.

However, for the most part WordPress is pretty well secure as long as you keep up with the upgrades. To that end, if you’re not comfortable with html and css, a full WordPress site might be the way to go because you can update your site very easily without the need to hire a professional.

The choice is yours and not one I can make for you. All I can do is give advice and help you to make an informed decision.

So what do you think? Do you have an all WordPress site but wish it were split up? What’s your opinion here?

Google Keyword Tool + Top 50 Google Tools Bloggers Can Use

John Hoff — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:00:13 +0000

If you’re a blogger, I’m sure at some point some of these topics will interest you:

Keywords for search engine optimization
Running ads on your site to generate some income
Analyzing your blog’s statistics
Submitting your blog to the Google Search Engine
Getting a snapshot of how Google is sees and crawls your blog
If your site gets hacked and removed from Google’s Search, a place to go to tell Google you’ve fixed things

Blogs don’t maintain themselves. At times they need a screw tightened here, ad posted there, and a little investigative work done to see why that thing that’s suppose to be working is not working.

I like to think my blogging tools and bookmarks are like a construction worker’s tool belt. Have you ever met a construction worker who did not have a tape measure strapped to their side?

If you’re a blogger, your tool box is your favorite search engine (and maybe some contacts you have made) and your bookmarks are the tool belts you keep.

I’ve listed what bookmarks and tools I have here and here, but in this article, I’d like to introduce you to the swiss army knife you might like to have in your tool belt.

The Google Keyword Tool Box:

When you have time, it might be good to dig through the Google Keyword Tool Box and discover what all it can do for your blog. As a blogger myself, I know your time is very limited, but realize that blogging is much more than simply writing articles and visiting other blogs.

You need to invest a little time each week in your most important asset: you.

Do you have a blogging resource you’d like to share?

On a side note, I’m heading out on a business trip for a few days and may be slow to responding to emails and comments.

Hammering Down 2 More Ways To Speed Up Your WordPress Blog

John Hoff — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:00:32 +0000

In a recent post I talked about how you can speed up WordPress through compressing data using gzip by way of PHP.

Since I posted that article I’ve had more than a few people ask me what other ways I know that can help speed up a WordPress blog. To be honest, most of what I know is from what I’ve found online.

Something to note before we begin, though, is that if you’re going to toy around with your blog’s performance and theme’s code, be sure to back everything up first. Do NOT skip this step!

Also, always make sure your website is working properly immediately after attempting any of these hacks.

Speed Tip #1: Enable Caching Through .htaccess

If your web host supports mod_deflate, try adding this code to your root .htaccess file to compress javascript and css before it is sent to your visitor’s browser.

SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

Source: AskApache

Speed Tip #2: Combine and Minify Javascript and CSS

One way to speed things up is to rearrange Javascript and CSS files so that everything loads quicker. In practice, if you combine all your Javascript files into one file and load it at the end of your website (i.e. in the footer), your site will load quicker because there are fewer stops and waits for multiple Javascript files to be accessed.

Similarly, the same holds true for CSS files except you’d rather have those load at the top of your website, not the bottom.

WordPress makes this very difficult because of the use of plugins. Many plugins come with their own CSS and Javascript files and unless you’re into coding big time, it’ll be extremely difficult to combine all your plugin’s CSS and Javascript files.

There is hope, however, thanks to (ironically) minify plugins.

Two minify plugins I have experimented with are the WP Minify and Head Cleaner plugins.

These plugins attempt to speed up your blog’s load time by combining Javascript and CSS files respectively and loading them in their appropriate places for increased speed. Of the two plugins, the WP Minify plugin worked best for me as seen by these screen shots below using the Firebug/Y-Slow add-ons for Firefox.

Before WP Minify my blog had a B rating because it made too many http requests (which slow things down):

After installing the WP Minify plugin my blog now has an A rating:

One thing to note about the WP Minify plugin: if your blog is located in the /blog or some directory other than your website’s root, make sure to define its location in the plugin’s settings.

There are lots more little tips and tricks you can do to increase the speed at which your blog loads, some things work, others don’t or have very little performance changes. It’s always best if you can find articles which back up claims with statistics.

By the way, if you’re still looking to get your own WordPress blog or you’re in the market for a domain name, SSL certificate, etc., don’t forget we provide all these hosting/domains services here at WP Blog Host.

SSL certificates are a great way to log into your WordPress admin area and do whatever it is you want to do under the protection of everything being encrypted. We’ll talk more about that and how to set it up in a future post.

1 Incredibly Wicked Trick To Speeding Up Your Blog’s Load Time

John Hoff — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:00:19 +0000

We all know attention spans on the Web are small. Make a potential first time visitor to your site wait more than a few moments for your blog to load and they’ll click away faster than you can say, “But wait!”

Here’s an incredibly easy trick you can do to reducing that “but wait”-time for your blog to load. In most cases, it’s as easy as copy & paste.

Now who doesn’t like the copy, paste, and done tutorials?

Let’s first show you what to do and then for those who are interested, we’ll talk about what we did (in easy terms).

Copy This and Put It Here

Copy

gzip‘)) ob_start(“ob_gzhandler”); else ob_start(); ?>

Paste A (for WordPress users)

For WordPress users, paste the code up at the very top of your header.php file (above the DOCTYPE line). If you’re not sure how to do this, see the video at the end of this tutorial.

Paste B (for static .html pages)

If your website is coded in html and not php, then what you’ll need to do is copy the code above and paste it up at the very top of each web page you want to compress (above the DOCTYPE).

The one change you’ll need to do here is change the extension of your web pages from .html to .php.

So for example, change: index.html to index.php

What Did We Do?

Without going into a bunch of techno talk, we basically instructed, through PHP, that the Web server compress files for transit to your visitors’ Web browser by use of gzip.

I’m sure you’ve seen zip files before (myfile.zip). Zip is a compression utility that takes a bunch of data and files and compresses them into one smaller size file.

By using gzip, we compressed your blog’s data into a smaller file size before sending it over to your visitor’s Web browser. As a result, your blog loads faster for your visitor.

Simple. Easy. Works.

How To Test It

Of course you’ll want proof that your site is loading quicker. You should notice a difference in load time just by clicking around your blog before and after the line is pasted in. But if you want to see actual data, head over to http://www.port80software.com and type your blog’s address in the Compression Check box.

Here’s the results for my blog. I circled the parts that showed my after compression data.

As you can see, my blog loads more than 4 times faster with the gzip compression enabled.

Also, the file size transmitted over the Internet and to my visitor’s browser was reduced from 60,241 bytes to just 12,963 bytes. That’s a 47,278 difference in file size!

WordPress How-To Video

For those who like videos, here’s how to copy and paste this command into your WordPress header.php file.

Share It

This little tip has helped many people decrease how long it takes their sites to load. If you have a moment, please consider sharing it through your social networks like Stumble Upon, Twitter, etc. While you’re at it, feel free to follow me on Twitter.

SEO Tips For WordPress Bloggers by Matt Cutts

John Hoff — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:25:01 +0000

I just watched an excellent video on the topic of WordPress search engine optimization (SEO) given by Matt Cutts while speaking at the WordCamp San Francisco 2009 seminar.

Matt heads up the anti-spam team at Google and frequently speaks about search engine optimization issues. The video is a little over 45 minutes but I have to say, it is well worth taking the time to watch if you’re at all interested in WordPress SEO.

Here’s the video and below it (for those with less time) I’ll highlight a few points Matt made which I thought you should know about. Rob Snell transcribed the speech if you’d like to soak it all in at your own pace.

Notes From The Video

I. WordPress is great for SEO

Take a look at this snapshot from his slideshow:

By “mechanics”, Matt means how WordPress is built. It’s built intelligently for Google to crawl it (i.e. your blog) with ease and indexs what needs to be indexed. For example, the url structure by default uses hyphens “-” to separate words in the url, which is great for SEO.

II. PageRank

Matt defines PageRank as “the number of people that link to you and how important those links are.”

What exactly does a high PageRank do for you? Well, the more PageRank your site has means:

The faster your site will be found.
The deeper into your site Google will crawl.
The more often Google will visit your pages to see if they’ve been refreshed.

Obviously, those are some things you really would like Google to do. Google also crawls sites in a decreasing order of PageRank:

III. Relevance & Reputable

Google wants to see that you’re relevant to something. If you focus in on a topic for your blog, it will learn that is what you talk about. In other words, don’t talk about a bunch of random stuff, otherwise may get lost in trying to figure out what exactly you want to rank for.

To build reputation, Matt mentions the following:

Be interesting.
Update your blog often.
Provide a useful service.
Do original research and reporting.
Give great information.
Find a creative niche.
Write some code
Live Blogging
Make list posts
Create controversy
Meet other people in social networks

IV. Keyword Notes

- Matt mentions something I’ve said many times in the past, don’t “overstuff” your landing pages with keywords. If you write about furniture, there’s no need to repeat that word 400 times. After mentioning the word 2 or 3 times and perhaps have that keyword in your title and/or url, Googlebot catches on and gets the idea that you’re writing about furniture.

- Contrary to what many SEO bloggers think, bolding the keyword doesn’t really help much; instead, concentrate on a writing style that a human can read and not feel like they are being YELLED AT!

- When trying to optimize your article for a given keyword or keyword phrase, realize that what you might think is the best keyword for your article might not necessarily be the best or only keyword people will use to find your product, service, or article. Use the Google Keyword Tool to find alternative keywords people are using to find your product and try to incorporate those keywords into your article as well. Just be sure that when you insert those other keywords that after reading your article, everything sound and reads naturally – don’t forget to do that!

V. WordPress URL Structure

Matt gives a great tip on how you can do one little tweak to help with your SEO. First, try to incorporate your keyword in your blog’s title and next, change that word slightly in your Permalink structure to another word someone might use in the search box (for example use the word “Changing” in your title and “change” in your url permalink.

Another tip he gives us which is probably the easiest search engine optimization check you can do for your blog is to use the /%postname%/ permalink structure for your blog.

As it turns out, I already have a video showing you how to do this on the WP Blog Host television channel: Setting The Best Permalink (url) Structure For WordPress SEO.

Again I highly suggest you take a little time out of your day to watch this video if you’re at all interested in learning search engine optimization for your WordPress blog. I realize this topic isn’t much fun for many of you and many times you might think you have more important things to do (like read other blog articles or tweeting about your day), but consider how much time you put into building your blog. Isn’t it worth your time to learn something so valuable to you?

Got a question about SEO? Ask away.

The images above are snapshots I took from Matt’s video. I give him full credit for the images I used for this article.

Learn WordPress search engine optimization!
Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate

Creating A Blog Supermodel: Professionalism & Production Quality

John Hoff — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:00:48 +0000

If you’re like me, you want a blog design that looks nice, doesn’t confuse your visitors, and encourages them to hang around for awhile. Of course if you’re selling something, it’s always nice if they become customers.

That is after all why many of us start a blog, isn’t it? To make money or drive traffic to our business website?

Today I want to talk about professionalism and production quality when it comes to designing your blog. Its already been said online and by various gurus that your site visitors will ask themselves these questions immediately when they land on your site, especially if you’re trying to sell something:

What’s Here?
Why Here?
Why You?
Why Now?
Why This?
So What?

If you’re a blogger, I’m sure you’ve also heard that content is king. There are tons of blogs out there dedicated solely to this topic alone. They show you how to create creative and compelling content which ultimately gets your visitor to stick around or purchase something (i.e. convert).

But if you only have 5 seconds or so to convince a new visitor to stay on your site and have a look around, obviously your content won’t play a big role here. Instead, the visitor will scan your site in an instant and come to a conclusion: “Should I stay or should I go?”

Hey . . . isn’t that a song?

Let’s take a look at some things you can do so that you can communicate in 5 seconds what you’re all about and hopefully convince your site visitor to stick around and take notice. Remember this: Attention is like trust, you have to earn it.

Things you can do to capture attention and convey a message quickly

The first thing a new site visitor will notice is, well, your site. How does it look? What colors are being used? Am I being yelled at (bright colors, lots of capital letters, etc.)? Does it look like “my kind of site?” What’s that tagline say?

You’ll notice one of the questions I highlighted above is, “Is this my kind of site?” What I’m referring to here is in reference to your target customers. For example, if your target customers are computer/Internet techs, your site might be better designed to look high tech and possibly a little corporate; however, if your target customer base are low key and non-techie, then a more relaxed and calming site design might be more suitable.

Colors

For corporate colors, go with colors like:

dark blue
gray
black and white
dark red, etc.

For a more relaxed setting, try shades of:

green
soft yellows and oranges
earth tones (brown, cream, etc.)

Image Quality & Message

Visitors will also notice immediately the quality of your images. Is that tagline in your header blurry? Make sure if you have text in an image, it comes out clearly and in a font that’s not hard to read.

Also, if you’re running banner ads in your sidebar, it would be nice if they had something to do with your niche. Site visitors who are not bloggers might not quickly realize those are advertisements. Instead, those banners convey a quick message to them. If you sell tax auditing services and in your sidebar there are 3 banner ads showcasing images and sites not related to your niche, that subconsciously tells your visitor a message, and it’s probably not related to finding tax services on your site.

Don’t confuse your site visitor with mix matches of messages in your images, because as I always say, a confused mind always says, no.

Font style and link color

For a while I was a big advocate for changing your link color to something that “pops”. I’m sure you have visited a ton of websites in the past, what color did 90% of those sites use for their link color? Blue, right. I experimented with different link colors and for a while favored red because it really popped out and was not what everyone did.

However, I must admit that time and experience has changed my mind on this. After reviewing my statistics, I found that the different link color really didn’t matter much. In fact, traditionally red has always been associated with danger or “Red Alert”. Therefore, my pick for link color is to simply stick with blue.

For font style, you can never go wrong with Arial, however other styles which seem to be easy on the eyes are Verdana and Tahoma.

As for font size, 12 is pretty standard. I’d say start there and see how it looks and if it makes sense to go a little bigger, try it. Whatever you do, don’t make your visitors have to squint to see your text. Black text over a white background is always preferable. If you experiment with anything other than that, be sure to get feedback from your regular site visitors, their input will help you iron out all the small details. Remember, not everyone uses the same screen size and monitor as you.

Convey quick messages with bullet points

Nothing works as quick and easy as bullet points. Knowing that 98% of new visitors to your site are going to first quickly scan your blog, you can use that information to your advantage. While scanning, they want the bullet points of what your site is all about, so give them bullet points.

Bullet points work really well in header images.

For example, our company which provides Blog Hosting could add 3 quick bullet points in our header image which quickly tells visitors what they need to know:

Starting a blog made easy
Get tons of help
Learn the basics of blogging

For my tagline, also included in the header, I could use something like: “You blog. We’re here to help. It’s THAT simple.” Speaking of taglines, they traditionally go below your logo.

So in my header image now, I’d have the name of my company, a quick tagline, and 3 bullet points highlighting what my blog or website is all about.

Oh wait! Did we just quickly answer the What’s Here?, Why You?, and Why This? questions I highlighted at the beginning of this article?

In our example header image, we quickly sent our site visitor a message which told them:

You can start a blog here.
Starting a blog will be easy.
With our company you will get tons of help.

A final tip: Start at the end and work backwards

Often times thinking in reverse works very well in most things relating to business. The same holds true for designing your blog. Start with then end in mind (i.e. what you want your visitors to do) and then build a site around THAT notion.

Everything else you add to your blog which doesn’t lead the visitor to do what it is you want them to do is just distraction and noise (and less money in your pocket).

Summary (for those of you that skimmed)

It’s ok, I do my fair share of skimming, too

Look at your logo, tagline, font, colors, and quality of images. People look from the upper left down to lower right of your blog when scanning. Typically logo goes above the tagline.
Focus your tagline for your audience. If they are newbies, make it sound friendly.
Use quick bullet points to convey a message quickly. 3 to 4 are good, no more than 6. They would be well placed in your header image, if possible.
Be careful sending mixed messages with images on your site. Your banner ads could tell a person scanning your blog a message which has no relation to what you’re all about.
General site colors: Blue and gray (techie) are good for corporate looking websites, so is red and black and white and black. For a more laid back and non corporate look, try earth tones – browns, soft yellows, greens, soft oranges, etc.
For link color, blue probably works best. Red means danger, error message, etc.
When first designing your blog, think in reverse. What is the end result you want from a visitor? Design your site around that notion, everything else is just noise.

Food For Thought

What is the purpose of your blog?

If you’ve been blogging for awhile, has your blog become cluttered with a bunch of items in your sidebar which you really don’t need and does nothing for the purpose of your blog?

I know mine has, and I’m doing something about it as we speak.

Intro To Creating A Supermodel Blog Design Series

John Hoff — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:32:35 +0000

Image Credit: *spoOky*

Have you ever wondered why some people make more money from their blog than others do?

You might even ask yourself, “What the heck? It’s impossible to put more hours into blogging than I do; I sit at my computer all day. What is it she’s doing that I’m not?”

The first thing you need to understand is the fact that blogs suck at making money. Blogs don’t make money, people and their creative minds do. In other words, it’s what you do with your blog that makes the money.

People will tell you content is king, and if that’s true, then blog design is the engineer that builds the glorious kingdom. Without a kingdom, what would come of a king?

So how do we create a blog design in a way that gets people to click where you want them to click and their eyes to look where you want their eyes to look? That’s question that cannot be answered in just one blog article. People have written entire books on the subject.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll discuss some major points I think are mission critical to building a better blog design which will answer the question above. For now, let’s take a quick look at how I compare building a better blog design with how designers build a supermodel.

A Supermodel Analogy

Let’s compare building a blog with building a supermodel (and yes, they build them). Please excuse my very poor excuse for a flowchart.

As you can see, there is a certain process to building both a supermodel and building a better blog design. Let’s take a look at my top 6 better blog design bullet points you can use to build a supermodel blog.

Topics will include (but are not limited to):

Professionalism and production quality
Page layout and the use of screen real estate
Navigational architecture
Trust and credibility
The main content area
Calls to action

One thing you should come to understand, however, is the fact that we are all too close to our own work. Because we understand our products and offers so well, sometimes it is difficult for us to design our blogs and websites in such a way our target customers will react positively to. So the first thing we should try doing is taking a good look at ourselves and realize what we’re assuming about our site visitors is probably wrong.

Once you understand that fact, then you can go about designing an effective blog design which your site visitors will react in ways you want them to.

The questions then are: Have you taken a good look at your blog or website lately through the eyes of your target audience? Do you understand that what you’re assuming about them is probably wrong? What is it you want them to do? Have you made it easy for them to quickly find what they’re looking for?

For WP Blog Host, we’ve been testing design changes and you’ll probably be seeing a new design here soon. Our target customers for web hosting are bloggers; so shouldn’t our site reflect blogging?

I think so, and I’ve convinced others.

Landing Page Optimization: Lesson Learned by Watching Jesse James is a Dead Man

John Hoff — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 05:00:46 +0000

Ok, I admit it. I like reality TV.

A couple years ago when my blog was new, I watched an episode of Kitchen Nightmares (Chef Gordon Ramsay) which inspired me to write a post entitled, A Lesson Learned by Watching Kitchen Nightmares. While watching the show I observed how all though Chef Ramsay is a Chef, he’s also an entrepreneur, and that particular episode inspired an entrepreneurial post out of me.

Two years later and I’ve done it again.

Landing page optimization has been on my mind a lot lately because I know parts of our site are in need of some tlc.

Back to the topic of this article, this time I was watching an episode of Jesse James is a Dead Man and what he did to train for the Baja 500 (an off road race). I immediately made a connection in my head with his training exercise and what you don’t want your blog visitors to do when they come to your site.

To train for the Baja 500, Jesse drove a truck through minefield with a computer attached to his head which monitored and tracked his eye movements during the drive.

What? You haven’t done this before?

After his first run through, the computer showed that Jesse’s eye movements were somewhat erratic and his eyes jumped from one area of the minefield to another. This told Jesse that he wasn’t sure where exactly he wanted to go.

After reviewing the footage, Jesse tried the obstacle course again but this time he made sure to focus his eyes on where he wanted to go.

As a result of being more focused on his destination and where he wanted to go (i.e. less erratic eye movements), Jesse ran the obstacle course far better than his first attempt.

You can watch the full episode right here. If you want to see the part I was talking about, skip ahead to about 8:30 in the video.

How this relates to landing page optimization

In case you haven’t made the connection already, the way this all fits in together with optimizing a blog’s landing or sales page is focus and direction.

What you don’t want is your site visitor’s eyes jumping all over the place. You want to guide them and tell them where to look.

By default, blogs suck at converting traffic into sales. There’s just too much to look at and their eyes will jump all over. Some of those eye-jumping areas include:

Your header image
Blog’s title and tagline
Horizontal menu
Big or blinking graphics (no blinking, please)
Lots of links in your sidebar

The Takeaway

If part of your goal in blogging is to sell products and/or services, you need to direct your visitors where to go. Remember, the first thing a visitor will do when they arrive on your site is ask themselves, “What does this person want me to do?”

If your visitor is a blogger, there’s going to be a lot of assuming going on in their heads. They’re going to assume what you want them to do is read your blog article and are probably going to skip everything on your site and go straight to your content.

If your visitor is not a blogger, they’re probably going to see something on your site that “pops”, like a nice big pretty image. Simply writing a blog article about your product and then linking to the article isn’t going to do it. You need to link to a product sales page with very little, if none, distractions.

You probably don’t even want a menu system. In this way, their eyes won’t jump all around with many things to see and wonder about. They’ll only have one place to look, where your product and description is.

In fact, make them have to click the back button to get off your page while you’re at it.

Make Things Easy To Find On Your Site

John Hoff — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:00:15 +0000

The other day I did a blog security upgrade for a WordPress blogger. In order to do some of the upgrades, I need access to your web hosting account, in this case, his.

He sent me his username and password and noted that he was hosted with Host Gator.

Ok, no problem.

So I headed over to Host Gator’s site only to get frustrated as hell. They are suppose to be a web hosting company. I assume that means people will be logging in and out of their accounts often, not to mention needing access to their webmail accounts whenever they’re away from home and don’t have access to their normal email program.

But I couldn’t find a login / out link anywhere. Now when the person signs up for web hosting they will be sent a link to the login page in an email, but what if you want to login from your parent’s house? Or an Internet cafe? How are you suppose to get into your webmail? Do they have webmail?

Confused, I clicked on their Support link and typed in my question. The returned response made it sound like logging is was such a hassle I had to watch a movie on how to do it.

Ok, I’m not meaning to bash on a competitor’s website. Sorry Host Gator, I don’t have anything against you, I swear.

The point here I’m trying to make is this.

You need to make things easy for people online. If you own a membership based website, make it easy for them to get into their account. If you sell a product, make sure navigation to that product is laid out easily.

The worst thing you can do is create confusion on your blog, because I have a saying I’ve always stuck with and has served me well.

“A confused mind always says, no“.