Bressler Advertising : Blog

News of Knol: What it is and how to use it

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Google has recently released a new product coined Knol - a unit of knowledge. Knol is opened to everyone. Knol is a Google Product similar to Wikipedia. Google describes Knol as "authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects."

The difference between Knol and Wikipedia is that the author's name is public behind the content. This solves many of the conflicts Wikipedia has experienced with credibility and accuracy. If an author is required to display his/her name, then it is their reputation on the line, and their edits, voice, and opinion are made public.

Many social networks or collaborative sites have a sort of community code or etiquette. For instance, there are "rules" to Wikipedia entries. Writing your company's entry or editing a competitor's entry is very much frowned upon. On Digg, it really doesn't pay to Digg your own articles or have all of your coworkers Digg your stuff. Votes from the same IP address are noted, and taken action upon.

I was fishing around to understand Knol's guidelines or best practices, and they do have a "content policy" that is helpful.

Knol apparently encourages voicing your opinion, and I suppose the safety net to this acceptance is the fact that the author's name and information are up front.

So what if Knol becomes stuffed with opinions and rants instead of actual facts and expertise? My guess is that it will be filled with both, but I hope Google will find a way to categorize or give authority to certain authors.

The guideline I find interesting is:
"COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY: You may use Knol to create articles for your business or to promote your lawful products or services that are not otherwise prohibited by our Content Policy or Terms of Service, unless you are in Cuba, Iran, Burma (Myanmar), North Korea, Syria, or Sudan. There are some commercial uses we don’t allow. We don’t allow pages that have the primary purpose of redirecting visitors, acting as a bridge page, or driving traffic to another website. We also don’t allow Knol pages that have the primary purpose of profiting from displaying ads from any publisher network, such as pages created with little or no unique content that exist only to display ads."

It will be interesting to see how search engine optimization consultants negotiate these rules, and what kind of results they can get by skirting them.

Is Your Web Site Converting Visitors Into Leads?

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT

I've been reading up on lead conversion - the percentage of Web site visitors that end up reaching the given goal on your Web site. It could include anything from completing a contact form, requesting more information, signing up for your newsletter, making a purchase, etc.

Lead generation is critical to the overall success of your site because it determines whether or not you have captured a visitor. It is the difference between window shopping and actually making a purchase - you want to get them inside the dressing room don't you? (pardon the shopping references)

Here is a list of some simple steps you can do to start converting more Web site traffic into qualified leads:

Optimize your home page: ensure you have appropriate title tags and home page text - this will help you attract more overall traffic to your site, increasing the base number of visitors, giving you a better number to start with to convert
Clearly lay out the navigation structure: if visitors cannot easily get to the information they are seeking, how are they going to perform the action you desire?
Properly position your call to action: do visitors even know what to do when they get to your site?
Site metrics are key: are you checking analytics? Google's free tool shows you an incredible amount of information about your site. At the most basic level, the “site overlay” feature tells you where people click, where they don’t click and where they leave your site. Also important is the bounce rate - how high the percentage of traffic leaving your site from the home page (before they navigate anywhere else). This information is key to finding out what site adjustments may be needed to retain better traffic.
Web site features: what are you offering your audience? Few tools tell you anything about your “non-customers” – that is, the visitors who arrived at your site then left for whatever reason. You rarely get feedback from these people. They are unlikely to phone up, but they might just be persuaded to use a Live Chat feature, for example.
Usability: there are free tests out there that will help you assess your site.
Eye Tracking: tools that show you what people are seeing but do not click. There are services that provide you with this information, here is one.
Click Mapping: see where the most popular parts of your site are. Crazy Eggs a free service that allows you to see the parts of your page that your visitors click on. ClickTale s similar, but has the advantage of recording Flash movies of your visitors’ browsing sessions, and allowing you to see how far people scroll down your pages.
And, finally, listen to those who frequently use your site. Ask for their suggestions and be sure to check out our SEO services to get more traffic coming in.

Market yourself on the Search Engines

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Not every company needs to hire a search engine optimization specialist. Chances are if you have a well seasoned and mature domain, a good number of other industry relevant and reputable sites linking to your site, frequently changing content, and competitive number of pages in your site, you are probably just a few tweaks away from being able to achieve some reasonable goals.

If you fall into this category, you probably just need to focus your efforts on optimizing the content on your homepage, your title tags, and your metatags.

Keyword research is your next step. There is a tool called Keyword Discovery that can help you focus your efforts on the most appropriate keywords. The key is to start broad. For example if you are a company that provides a service like career counseling, you should start your keyword research with a broad term like "Career". This broad search will show you every variation of keyword phrases using the word "Career". The reason for doing this is that while you might refer to your service as Career Counseling, you may find that Career Counseling actually gets less search traffic than Career Coaching. By researching broader terms you will stumble on other phrases that consumers use to find your service than you refer to it just as an industry professional.

Once you come up with 2-3 keyword phrases, make sure to place those keyword phrases in the first few positions in your title tag and provide links from your homepage to relevant content using those keyword phrases. Additionally if it is possible, request those companies that already link to you to change the words on their site that are actually linked to your site to a keyword phrase you are focusing on. For example instead of linking to you by just using your company name, have them link to you using for example, "Career Coaching with Company Name".

If you find you can't achieve your goals after addressing these key areas, you may need a professional firm to help you establish a link building or content building campaign.

This article was originally published by web development firm Plexus on their site