If you think your content is not interesting enough, then you better re-think your approach. Below are some reasons why no one is sharing your blog post.

The Headline of Your Blog Post Sucks

No one likes boring headlines. Keep in mind that the most important part of your post is its headline since through it you create a first impression. Write headlines that are descriptive and one that also sparks a sense of urgency. Your reader’s should be captivated by your headline and hook them with great content behind it.

Your Timing Is Off

Do you know when to publish content in order to get the best results? You may be publishing your posts when your readers are busy with work. It would be better if you can survey your audience and ask when they are likely to read your content. Remember that planning ahead is key. Know when your audience are most likely free and not busy with other things.

You Write About Yourself Too Much

When readers read your post, remember that they don’t care much about you or your company. Readers are after news and information. They like to be fed with information that interests them. How-to articles and lists of tips and resources are good formats to begin with.

You Make Your Posts Difficult to Share

It’s sad how many blogs do not have social sharing buttons. It is quite easy to get so excited in selecting the perfect design for your blog then forget about the obvious and functional elements like social media buttons or subscribe widgets. Try to settle for a design that is simple enough to get the most important features, and plan ahead with your content.

What makes you want to share a blog post? Let us know and leave your comments below!

Making sure that your website is created in such a way that will give you the best chance in ranking is hard and may need careful planning and execution. To make sure you won’t make deadly mistakes in your site.

We have listed some of the most common errors we notice on sites.

Poor Site Architecture

When your site has poor architecture, search engines will find it hard to crawl and find your content, your inner pages will also struggle to rank since the top end of your site has no authority. What you can do is to make sure each page of your site can be accessed within 3 clicks from any page on your site. If your users can get to any of your site pages quickly, search engines will too.

Fix: Categorise your products and make use of sub categories when necessary. It will also be better if you draft a sitemap before you make any changes to your site to determine how effective your changes might be.

If you are changing your sitemap ensure you set up redirects of your old pages otherwise the old pages will be removed from the search engines index.

Pagination

Ask any web designer, pagination is one of the hardest things to figure out when building an ecommerce site. If for instance, you have 350 products in a single category, you will surely need to have multiple pages of your products. The problem here is that starting from your page 2, the products will be similar to the products of your page 1 and will probably even have the same keywords in the title and content. If you have a large site, search engines may flag your site for duplication and really hurt your rankings.

Fix: Luckily, you can add the meta robots no-index tag to page two onwards. Make sure that only the first page of each category are indexed.

Duplicate Product URLs

Once you have started building your ecommerce site and your site has multiple categories, you will notice that some products are featured in more than one category. Though this is not a problem, the organisation of your URL structure may be. If you have organised your URL in such a way that the product name can be found on the end of the category string, you will end up with the same product having many different URLs— now you have a duplication issue!

Fix: To avoid this kind of duplication issue, be certain that your product name is on the beginning of the string. For example: http://www.mybag.com/product name is the correct way to do it. http://www.mybag.com/bags/leather-bags/product-name/ will give you a nasty duplication issue.

Not-So-Useful Content

Though a few years ago, your website can rank well by simply copying the manufacturer product descriptions; this is not the case nowadays. Many webmasters mistakenly think that crafting a few sentences for a product description is enough. Doing so will just drop your long tail traffic that is why content should be the very first thing you need to invest in. If you do not have time to write creative product descriptions, you can always hire a writer to do it for you.

Fix: Though it is very difficult to craft creative product descriptions for thousands of similar products, hire several writers or write some yourself. Product reviews from your past customers can also be a good idea.

In Summary

By avoiding the deadly mistakes we have mentioned above and by following good solid SEO strategies, your ecommerce site will have a good chance to rank again.

Before you embark on any SEO campaign, the first thing you need to do is make sure that your website is built for the search engines. Whether or not your website is new, you need to adhere to certain rules to make your website is set up correctly for SEO.

Below are our recommendations to ensure your website is qualified to get all the traffic it deserves.

URL Structure:

Do not use page IDs for your URLs. Instead, use a worded structure because it will not only help with SEO, it will also help your visitors know what your page is all about. If you are using WordPress as a platform for your website, you can easily change the settings for your URL structure by going to Settings > Permalinks>  and enter /%postname%/ as a Custom Structure. Furthermore, ensure that your site only goes to www or the non-www version but not both. If your website uses both the www and non-www version, it may potentially create duplicate content problems.

Moderate The Use of Flash

Although flash may look flashy, the search engines cannot read the flash code. So whatever part of your site is built using flash will not be seen by the likes of Google, Bing or Yahoo or any other search engine. Therefore building your entire website in flash is not a good idea for ranking!

Google also has the new instant preview feature. If your website is built on flash, the preview may turn out black or empty.

One Topic Per Page

If you are selling a myriad of products and services, it will be a good idea to maintain a rule of one product per page for SEO purposes. Make sure your homepage has the overall information of your business. So having only one product per page not only look better, it will also be easier for your visitors to see the different kinds of products you have to offer.

Text As Images

You should use text as text as much as possible as the search engines cannot read the text as an image. You can easily style text to make it look good so this is the preferred method. If you do use images you should always ensure you include a title tag and alt tag with the image code.

Pay Attention To the Speed of Your Site

If your site takes too long to open up or to load, chances are your visitors may get impatient and leave. Just like your visitors, search engines do not like waiting around. Make sure that your website loads fast enough. Try to find what’s causing your site to slow down. Often, having too many HTTP requests and unnecessary Javascript as well as CSS files and large image can slow down the speedy of your site.

We generally install a caching plugin on our client’s sites that dramatically increases the speed.

In Summary

We are hoping that the our recommendations can help you build a more SEO friendly website in the future. Though some sites may be exempted from the rules we have stated above, many small business websites need to follow them to ensure they can rank well for the keywords they are aiming for.

I’m sure you’ve heard somebody complaining (maybe even yourself) complained that they are sick of waiting for unreliable web developers each time they want to change or update their web content. So the most common solution they are considering getting a content management system.

It’s a frustrating and common scenario, and a content management system is often offered as a solution. But, we wonder:

• Is a content management system the only way to update your website minus a web designer?
• Does a content management system represent real value as a solution to this problem?

Is a content management system the only way?

Since a website in any form is just a bunch of HTML files, any HTML editor will do the job. There are literally hundred of them available, many of them free.

We now build most of our sites in WordPress, a fantastic CMS that is easy to use and will fix this problem and for our clients that haven’t switched across to WordPress that want to make changes themselves we’ve set up with Microsoft Expression Web (Kudos to Microsoft for the name change to try and shake the stigma of Frontpage). They access their site via FTP, and we built the site in a way that’s very easy for them to create new pages and menu items.

Problem solved do you think?

What is the value of a content management system as a solution?

Consider how often your website changes. Now divide that by the price of the content management system.

To implement a proprietary content management system will cost you anywhere from $1,000 – $20,000. For this exercise let’s say that it costs $5,000.

So, 12 changes to your website / $5,000 = $416.66 / change.

Now even if you updated your site every week, it’s still expensive.

What are the drawbacks of a content management system?

1. Content: The best content management system in the world will not create your content, and content is far more important than the system it lives in.
2. No matter what you create your website in, it will suffer from one big limitation, HTML.  HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is the language of the web and what we’re doing with it today is way beyond what it was designed for. As a result it’s sometimes tricky to do even the most basic things. Content management systems often complicate this by adding another complex layer of abstraction.
3. Operator: It’s likely that the person who’s delegated the job to run the website in house will be not be fluent with HTML. Just to write this post I had to delve into the HTML code to fix the formatting because I pasted in a quote from another website and the dodgy formatting came through. Lucky i’m a reformed programmer!

When a content management system really is needed

A content management makes a lot of sense in scenarios like these:

1. An eCommerce website
2. A blog or a forum is required
3. A content based application with work-flow
4. Live work-flow, proofing and auditing of content are required

For many of these scenarios, there are simple solutions freely available that would be unmatched for quality and functionality. WordPress is an awesome example of this. For others, there is a proprietary system that might suit the application.

Website Myth – You need a content management system to have control of your website – Busted!

If you were the owner of a content management system company and you were presented with the scenario above, then I guess you have 2 choices here:

1. Sell them $10,000+ proprietary content management system with implementation, or
2. Sell them Microsoft Expression Web (or equivalent) for a couple of hundred dollars, and teach them to manage it themselves
3. Find a web marketing company that can take care of website changes for you on time for a reasonable price.

Which would you choose?

Our tip, save your money on a content management system and spend it on creating useful website content that is important to your customers!

Kogan Technologies launched a cheeky PR campaign this week aiming to win their share of the Australian Government’s $40 billion economic stimulus package.

The Kevin37 campaign is named after the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd and Kogan’s 37” LCD TV.

Let’s just say that the PR campaign was clever and effective! It has given this relatively unknown company a lot of publicity. The campaign has had coverage on TV, radio and in print.

Here is just a tiny snapshot of the types of articles that have appeared online:

• IT Wire
• Daily Telegraph
• Good Gear Guide
• PC Authority

However, you can’t walk into a Harvey Norman or JB Hi-Fi to buy a Kogan TV. Kogan is an entirely online seller, so how is Kogan planning to capitalise on this brilliant PR campaign?

While there is always room for improvement in ecommerce, we really like what Kogan have done. To make sure that PR turns into sales, Kogan have ensured that this campaign is easily referenced from their website. Here are just some of the conversion rate initiatives that they have taken:

1. The Kevin37 campaign gets a spot on the home page amongst the 4 screen rotating banner at the top.
2. Kevin37 is also featured in the news section of the home page. Unfortunately it is below the fold on 1024×768 screens, so a number of people miss it. But hey, it is there, and that is a good start.
3. Kevin37 is at the top of their products list (click the shop link on the top menu).
4. The Kevin37 campaign also gets a blog entry.

Importantly, Kogan has launched a Google Adwords campaign targeting searches related to Kevin37. It’s amazing how many people run marketing campaigns without ensuring that their website shows up in Google results for the key phrases that they use in their ads.

Kogan have a simple clean website with lots of good content. At the very least, they have generated lots of exposure for their brand and products. We’re sure that Kogan’s website has enough of the right elements to ensure that they will sell lots of Kevin37’s from this campaign.

Faced with the case that was building against the move at the Australian competition watchdog (ACCC), eBay pre-empted a negative response by withdrawing its proposal to eliminate all competition in payment systems.

It was unlikely to go well for eBay at the ACCC as objections flooded in from consumers and bodies like the Australian Federal Reserve Bank, Electronic Frontiers Foundation and others.

Of course, eBay is still forcing everyone to offer PayPal, and I wonder if eBay’s strategy was to distract you from that fact by creating a fuss around the threat to eliminate the competition. eBay can’t seriously have ever believed that they could pull a stunt like that.

Rather than doing their a PayPal business any favours eBay has galvanised dissatisfied users to educate the public on the perils of dealing with the monopoly. It has undoubtedly tarnished the eBay and PayPal brands as well as given competition the best opportunity it has ever had to gain a foothold.

eBay claimed that they should be able to offer PayPal exclusively since they say it is more secure than other payment methods. However, contrary to what eBay’s publicity machine have been pumping out, according to the ACCC (from this artcile by Alex Zaharov-Reutt on ITWire):

5.173 The evidence available does not support the view that PayPal is the most secure method of payment, or offers the best service for all transactions.

Simon Tsang of the Sydney Morning Herald compared eBay’s method of consumer “protection” to organised crime.

We can take this out of the whole eBay + PayPal debacle so far: If you’re operating on the Internet and you’re prepared to walk all over your customers, it will come back to bite you.

Was this whole episode simply smoke and mirrors from eBay to distract you from the fact that they are now forcing you to offer PayPal?

According to iTWire eBay has asked the ACCC to excuse it from the trade practices act over the move.

eBay excuses its actions by arguing that users of PayPal are 4 times less likely to open a dispute about an item. It is understandable that eBay would want advise its customers of those statistics and make recommendations about the best ways to trade.

However, forcing you to risk your money with PayPal is another question altogether.

Remember that PayPal is not a bank.

Unlike the money that you deposit at a real bank, the money in your PayPal account is at far more risk. Moreover PayPal doesn’t behave anything like a bank, and according to many reports intelligible communication with PayPal is practically impossible.

We hope that the ACCC acts to force eBay to abandon this move that is sure to disrupt the bulk of Australia’s retail eCommerce activity.

Jeff used the website www.netdisaster.com to suck out all of the text from amazon.com. Well we did a little experimenting of our own, and you can see the results here.

Take the simple high conversion online shopping and lead generation website apcups.com.au. Here’s a screenshot of it without the words:

It’s not very useful. If you look at the site with the words, you get the picture (pun intended).

It’s strange that words are so often overlooked in a website project. We often see that copywriting is kept in house or left out of a website project altogether. Others tell us that people don’t read websites, but a demonstration like this reveals that people depend on what’s written!

When we are selling a new website in a competitive situation, we usually find that our competitors are only offering a web design and a content management system. Most don’t take any interest in actually creating the content and the copy for the website. Strange really, because it’s the words that actually make the website work.

$ Per Visit = Number of Website Visits / $ Total Website Sales

If the number is high, then just concentrate on getting more traffic. If it’s low, then start asking questions about things like:

• Order process conversion rates
• The average number of items sold on orders
• Your pricing
• The pages where most people abandon the order process.

There are many places to look for ways to improve you $ per visit.

You should also look at this metric across the different sources of traffic. For example, look at the $ per visitor from Google organic searches as opposed to Google Adwords.

Dollars Per Visit is also extremely useful for setting bid limits in Google Adwords and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaigns. For instance, if you know that you margin is 50% and your $ per visit is $1.50, then bidding over 70c a click will lose you money. Be sure to monitor this specifically for your Adwords and PPC traffic as it is sure to vary with different traffic sources.

So start with the basics. The touchstone metrics of your eCommerce website are the number of:

1. Visits to your eCommerce website
2. Shopping carts created
3. Orders placed, paid, sealed and delivered.

From these figures you work out your conversion rates.

Visit to Cart Conversion Rate
Visits / Carts created = %

Cart to Order Conversion Rate
Carts / Orders = %
(or subtract this figure from 100 to determine your cart abandonment rate).

IMPORTANT: The conversion rates tell you where to look for the answers. 

For instance, if you have 1000 visits to your site and yet only 5 people created a shopping cart (0.5% visit to cart conversion rate), then you will want to look carefully at the process that people have to go through to create shopping cart on your website.

If you were finding on the other hand that out of the 1000 visits to your website 500 shopping carts were created (50% visit to cart conversion rate), but only 5 placed an order (10% cart to order conversion, a.k.a. 90% cart abandonment rate), then you would need to carefully analyse your ordering process.

From these stats you might launch into your Google Analytics stats to find out what’s going on. From the clues that you find you could formulate a Google Website Optimiser test to prove your assumptions.

The rewards in this sort of work are high. While traffic may be getting harder to generate with increased competition, your conversion rates are likely to be an easy to reach and untapped gold mine.