In 2006 Google did a comparison test to show 30 results per page instead of 10. Traffic and revenue dropped by 20% despite being a change people had requested. Why was this the case? It took an additional 0.5 seconds to render the page. Speed matters.

Google knows a lot about customer browsing behavior. They know how fast a site loads versus how long a person stays on the site. They even take it into account when ranking your website for keywords. The longer a person stays on your site the better. The longer it takes to show them the content, the faster they jump ship. Late last year

Google released the Chrome web browser for Windows as an attempt to speed things up on the visitor’s end. It worked very well and lit quite a fire under web browser developers. Safari 3, Firefox 3 and IE 8 have all seen improvements in speed because of it.

The new Safari 4 beta for Mac however, has set a new bar. It’s faster than any other browser we’ve ever used. It loads MSN.com some 8 times faster than IE 7.

What You Can Do to Speed Up Your Web Site

Since most people aren’t using Safari 4 and are using IE 6 or 7, here are some ways to speed up your site.

• Make your images smaller through optimizing file size.
• Only load what you need on a page. File sizes add up quick to slow you down.
• Make sure your HTTP headers are setup to allow client side caching of images and scripts. This helps on future page loads.Cache your database driven pages as rendered HTML files. We use the wp-cache or wp-supercache plugin on every Wordpress site we build and custom caching solutions in frameworks like Ruby on Rails.
• Host your site close to your customers on good equipment. 25 milliseconds of latency going across the country adds up quick. Our homepage loads 19 files (the page, images, javascript, etc). That’s nearly half a second just by being close to home!

Even with the best keywords, landing page design, content and offer your conversions will suffer due to slow load times. We can help. Just give us a call.

Leads already have a desire for your product or service. They want to stay in touch and learn more about how you can solve their problem.

Here is a quick way to increase your targeted leads that your sales team can turn into easy wins without paying the search engines for clicks.

Keyword Research

The first step in generating leads is to get your company in front of the people that have a need and are ready to buy from you. At this point there are two ways we can go about this.

1. Go after the keywords with the most traffic and most competition.
2. Go after the keywords with less traffic and less competition.

It’s the second option that powers companies like Apple, Amazon and your local real estate agent. That’s the one we want to go after. It’s much easier to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond.

Here’s an example for the real estate agent to show the difference.

Indianapolis homes for sale

• 1,730,000 search results
• 74,000 Google searches in January  2009
• 5 results on the first page are Indianapolis companies

Zionsville homes for sale

• 64,300 search results
• 5,400 Google searches in January 2009
• Only 1 result on the first page is based in Indianapolis!

As you can see, Zionsville has less competition, but plenty of searches to drive leads to your website. It’s much easier to be at the top.

The Landing Page and Offer

Now that we have picked our keywords we need to design a new landing page to convert that visitor into a lead. It should look great and get to the point.

Let’s start by picking a name for the page that includes only the keywords we are targeting: http://www.myrealtorsite.com/Zionsville-homes-for-sale.html. That page name is very important.

On this page you’ll want to add great content such as a home search, MLS listings, the realtor’s information, contact numbers, etc. and a form to capture the visitors contact information.

On the surface it looks like we have given everything away that they want. The truth is that we have something much more valuable to give them. This is the offer.

When the user fills out the form they will now receive a white paper or e-book on buying homes in the Zionsville area. It contains every demographic you can imagine (schools, income level, low crime rates, mortgage companies, etc) in one easy to find document. Sure, they can find it elsewhere, but it may take 20-30 different places to find it all. You’ve just made their life easy in 1 step.

Driving Traffic and Measuring Results

The next step after creating your new landing pages is to get other websites to link to it. This isn’t about getting visitors from those sites to click through, but rather about building rankings in the search engines. Inbound links are the most important factor in making your web page rank at the top in Google, Yahoo and MSN. It’s a trust factor. If a lot of people link to you, you must have something important to say.

Here at TGFI we maintain a list of over 2500 directories, communities and websites where we can add your link in keyword targeted pages. It’s a slow, manual process, but VERY effective in boosting rankings. Once added to these other high traffic sites, the search engines will automatically pick up your page and move you up the rankings.

Now that we have the landing page created, a great offer to capture leads and people talking about it, we need to measure to see how well it’s working.

There are several great tools for managing leads from the search engines. Google Analytics, Web Trends, Omniture and even Webalizer. These tools will tell us how many visitors are coming to the site, to which pages and from where. If they are from the search engines they will also tell us which keywords were used.

Using this information we can compare the number of visitors to the page to the number of leads. It’s your basic conversion rate. If the numbers are low we can make some content changes or alter the offer, and then test the results to drive them up.

Once the landing pages are up and running smoothly you’ll get a continuous flow of traffic for months, even years to come.

For you next project, slow down, take a step back and think about each of the following. Short or long term, it could save you a lot of that precious money you have to invest.

Personality Matters

First and foremost, you have to be compatible with the people you are going to work with. No matter how great each side is at executing, if you can’t get along and respect each other, your project will be a miserable mess and fail. There have been several times that we have chosen not to take a project because the vibe just wasn’t right. Would you grab a bite to eat or maybe a beer with them?

Brutal Honesty

Many companies will take any work that they can get. They’ll also sell you what you don’t need. When was the last time someone said to you “You don’t want that. It won’t work and here’s why.”?

And Now for Something Completely Different

Finding a company that knows the ins and outs of your industry can be very comforting. They know the language. They know the players. They might even know what works.

They might also be a safe bet that only gets you the same thing as your competition. If you just mimic the other guy, you’ll never win. Go to the edge and try something new. You’ll be surprised.

Strategy, Creativity and Vision

Most web projects are executed to check an item off a list – “Hey look, we have a website now!” What those projects should be is part of something much bigger. A strategy. A unique creation. A vision.

What other methods are you using to market your business? Print materials, billboards, hand outs, commercials, etc. A great design firm wants to know what else you are doing to make them all work for each other. Those firms then take this information and arrange the pieces into a cohesive plan. Only then will you get the most benefit for your efforts.

This is how marketing works for you.

Content is King

In the world of the web, the only differences between businesses are the people who run them and the information they produce. The best websites have great people providing truly useful content. They also work with search engine experts to make sure that great information gets in front of the people who are looking for it.

Grammar isn’t dead. It’s more important that ever. The search engines know it and you should too.

Technology

There are thousands of ways to build a website. Hundreds of languages, even more frameworks. Most design firms specialize in just one or two. What you really need is the right tool for the job done in a cost effective manner. Make sure you pick a vendor that can fill your needs and not shove their needs down your throat.

What’s it really going to cost me?

Last but not least, we’ll circle back to the cost of a project. As you may have seen from the items above, the dollar amount on the proposal is only one small piece of the puzzle. The people you work with and the choices you make together have a much greater impact in the long run.

When it comes down to it, you have to get in front of the people who need you and sell them what you have. A cohesive strategy to be the best is what will make you shine at the top.

Learn How People Try to Find You

One of the biggest mistakes we see companies make is to describe their products or services incorrectly. They assume that people looking for their product or service think the same way as they do. Chances are, they don’t.

As an example, here at TGFI we build custom web based applications. While the industry accepts that term, we found the majority of people just want a web designer to help them out. In its simplest form, this is keyword optimization.

Know Your Competition

There is often much to be gained from your competition. Some have been around longer than you. Some have great rankings. Some have a great reputation online. Some have large SEO budgets.

If you’ve been around a while, you can probably name your competitors off the top of your head. If you haven’t, there are several online sources you can leverage.

• Look at the top 10 sites listed in Google, Yahoo and MSN for each of your keywords or phrases.
• Adjust your keyword list and check again.
• Check the Open Directory Project.

Don’t just look at the web either. Traditional media still has some great ideas.

• Hopefully you didn’t throw out those phone books. They are categorized you know.
• For those in Indianapolis, take a look at the Indianapolis Business Journal’s Book of Lists.
• Sign up for industry specific publications.

Optimize Your Page Titles

Every page on your site should be different, and that starts with the title of the page. Be descriptive and use those keywords. Just remember, if a person doesn’t see what they want, they won’t click no matter what your rank. Keep it simple.

Create Unique Descriptions for Each Page

If a search engine doesn’t see a description meta tag, it will use the first 200 viewable characters (letters, spaces, numbers, etc.) it finds on the page. Don’t let them guess. It won’t be what you expect.

Use Headings

Similar to a business document or college paper, headings help to break up the text and tell everyone what you are going to talk about. The search engines know this and look to your header tags to help tell the story. Use your keywords and phrases here. They’ll love it.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility. – Karl Marx

Next time you are working on your website, keep this in mind. It might just keep you from making a political decision…

That all being said – documents are generally labeled, e.g. we add the TGFI logo to the top. It does quickly become interesting how strong of opinions our clients have about whether this logo be on the left or right side of the header (we currently choose the right side, for no other reason than to have made a choice).

Just the daily rant…

Need one more reason to be turned off by AJAX? Read the descriptive intro on script.aculo.us:

script.aculo.us provides you with easy-to-use, compatible and, ultimately, totally cool JavaScript libraries to make your web sites and web applications fly, Web 2.0 style.

This takes me full circle back to my original point that people are abusing it because it’s the cool new technology and not necessary the most effective for the job. It also brings me back to Flash. The more and more I look at it, the more I think that Flash is the better framework to empower the shift to Web 2.0. Flash has a very high install base (>90%) and works on an incredible combination of browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Netscape) and platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix). Newer versions of Flash also add audio/video streaming, presentation tier graphics capabilities (Macromedia Flex), remoting, XML support and more.

In the short term I think that AJAX is a viable technology, but in the long run, something else that has better capabilities will win out. Java is a possibility, but in a browser it’s clunky and doesn’t have the install base. That’s why I’ll put my money on Flash and Macromedia in general.

It’s not very often that I do a 180 on a technology like Flash, but something just clicked today and now I get it. It’s why Macromedia bought Allaire (ColdFusion) and have added all of the complementary products to Flash. It’s why Adobe bought Macromedia. They just get it.