Are you trying to improve conversion rates from your landing pages? Here are three mistakes could be costing you visitors and sales.

Landing Page Optimization: 3 Mistakes To Avoid

1. Don’t dazzle me with automation. Most web users hate to feel like they have lost control of their browser. Avoid too many flash intros, auto play music or dancing, flashing graphics. The most common response to over the top web special effects is for visitors to immediately close their browsers in order to regain control.
2. Don’t ask me for too much information. Lengthy registration forms can kill the conversion rates of your landing pages. Some experts estimate that you lose 30% of your respondents for every registration field you ask visitors to complete. Stick with the minimum requirements you need to effectively communicate with your potential customer going forward.
3. Don’t end the conversation abruptly. Once I’ve filled out your registration form, will I find myself on a simple “Thank you for registering” page, or will you give me the option to go further? Provide me with links to more information or invite me to download a free eBook. Maybe I can follow you on Twitter or become a fan of your Facebook page. Whatever you do, don’t be the one to hang up first.

Landing page optimization should be focused on simple design, while always considering a possible next call to action for your visitors.  Most important, always be testing!

Britt Reints is a freelance writer living in Orlando, Florida. She is leading a statewide crusade against auto play music.

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Creating SEO content isn’t easy. It takes a degree of skill to be a writer; it takes even more to be a good researcher capable of doing work across a variety of topics. When it comes to SEO articles, it’s sometimes more important that a writer is capable of doing some simple research than to be a subject matter expert. A good writer’s strength is conveying information in a confident, appropriate-to-the-topic way. If a good writer is able to research medical topics, for exmaple, and the audience is not a group of doctors, it’s perfectly reasonable to hire a writer with a background in medical writing who doesn’t have a background practicing medicine.

Look at any freelance writing blog and you’ll discover that experienced writers cover a diverse range of topics. When you hire an SEO writer to create content, you don’t need to split hairs over whether they’re writing from a background in the topics you need content for; instead, ask the writer how confident they are in their ability to research the kinds of work you need done based on your keywords.

You should also ask the writer what resources they fall back on when their initial research doesn’t uncover enough to cover a particular topic. Believe it or not, it’s not always possible to come up with good information on the first pass if your SEO keywords are more obscure. Car insurance articles are much easier to write as long as you respect the fact that laws are ever-changing and each state has its own unique requirements. Nuclear energy topics are a bit more challenging for writers who don’t know where to start looking for information. Being a good researcher is a major plus.

Joe Wallace has been a writer/editor since 1992 and is always open to fun new ways to market online businesses. In addition to running Freelance-Zone.com, he blogs about music at Turntabling.net and runs a small press specializing in snarky t-shirts.

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For most writers their background is in English, Journalism, or Communications. However, when hiring a technical or Scientific freelance copywriter a different approach by the writer is necessary to make sure the information presented is accurate and the proper terminology is used.

1. Hire a Writer that has a background in scientific or technical writing. technical writing is often considered dry by a freelance copywriter whose experience is mostly in sales copy or writing marketing copy for less technical products or services. If you hire a writer looking for a good time and hand them technical materials, you may find yourself reading copy that’s more fun than informative.
2. You can’t go wrong with a good list. Provide the freelance writer with a list of terminology that should not have other terms substituted for the terms given. In many highly scientific industries certain terms have very specific meanings and synonyms that seem acceptable will actually refer to very different products or services than the one being written about.
3. Make sure they get it. Hire a writer that is able to prove they understand the industry and the differences in terminology. Go over the list of specific terms that cannot be substituted with the writer before hiring to make sure they will be able to grasp the subtle differences in terminology that describe the specifics of the industry.
4. Hire a writer, not a scientist or technician. Although a Scientist or Engineer may know the industry’s terminology better than anyone else they may not have the writing skills necessary when writing marketing copy for the web.

Jennifer Gniadecki loves to write. You can find her on any given day writing lists, blog posts, articles, assignments, outlines or fleshing out story ideas on her laptop.

Read  about what factors Google engineers looked at to decide this in their own reportcard!

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Look at any good, SEO-optimized site and you’ll find all the puzzle pieces in place; good keywords, quality articles and other content written for humans to read (and not just search engines) and a good-sized database. But what about the “hidden” aspects of a website? Do you have images and media included on your SEO-optimized pages?

If you’re including images within your SEO content, don’t neglect the search engine value of giving the right filenames to those images. If you’ve paid for a set of five articles of car insurance, give the images the same filenames as the post itself, or name the images using one particularly strong keyword. This gives you added Google power, but also increases your discovery potential in other ways–you can pick up some “collateral search results” via searches in Google Images once your pages are properly indexed.

Naturally your first concern should be attracting quality traffic, but with that said, the extra traffic you pick up by using keywords in your image filenames could result in a small amount of conversion. Consider it some additional free advertising which is available just by using the right filenames on your images and other media.

Joe Wallace has been a writer/editor since 1992 and is always open to fun new ways to market online businesses. In addition to running Freelance-Zone.com, he blogs about music at Turntabling.net and runs a small press specializing in snarky t-shirts.

Image from www.opticianonline.net

Have you been neglecting your company’s website? Did you pay a lot of money for a website design, launch the website with much fanfare… and then leave it to wither with no new marketing content because you didn’t see immediate benefits—or you simply got too busy to take care of it? If so, you’re not the only one.

If you want to keep your website up-to-date with fresh marketing content, you have three choices:

1. Charge someone (or several “someones”) in your company with the task of keeping your website updated with SEO optimized content and tracking the results through Google Analytics or a similar tool. You’ll want to stay on them to make sure the job continues to get done—along with their regular job duties.
2. Hire a full-time, in-house employee to maintain your website, creating SEO-optimized articles and tracking the results. Again, you’ll have to manage this employee, as well as providing them with benefits, office space, and the tools they need to do their job.
3. Hire a content marketing agency. A content marketing agency that provides you with regularly updated website content—and then tracks the results of that fresh content—can solve your problems. If you want to see real results from your website content, hire a content marketing agency that works with professional writers. 

Dawn Allcot is a full-time freelance writer and blogger. She frequently writes about technology, business, parenting and paintball.

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Before you hire a writer to work on your Internet marketing, SEO content, or other projects, take some time to look at your content and ask yourself a serious question. Do you have any legal issues that need to be taken into consideration as part of your project?

It’s not fair to your writers to turn them loose on a project only to call them back for revisions because you forgot to have them insert disclaimer language needed on projects dealing with tax issues, medical situations, insurance law, any of the hundreds of topics that really need disclaimers in order to be legally sound.

Sometimes it’s as simple as telling your writers not to give legal advice. Other times this issue is complicated enough that you should have your writers create a seperate paragraph disclaimer run after all the content stating that nothing on the webpage should be construed as legal, medical, or tax advice.

This isn’t written to scare you away from having your writing team cover these kinds of topics–far from it. But give your topics some thought before assigning them. If they require a disclaimer, be sure to give the writers the proper instructions and guidance to prevent needless revisions or liability later down the line.

Joe Wallace has been a writer/editor since 1992 and is always open to fun new ways to market online businesses. In addition to running Freelance-Zone.com, he blogs about music at Turntabling.net and runs a small press specializing in snarky t-shirts.

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Tweet and they will follow. Sometimes.

Okay, we get it: Twitter’s here to stay. So instead of debating whether you should join, start debating what you should say once you’re on there. One of my favorite people to follow is BostonTweet. He gives great updates as to the goings on around town, great deals and even great giveaways. Local businesses love him as do his followers. How can you become so beloved?

Why Is BostonTweet So Successful?

1. He is a person and a brand. He tweets about his hangovers after a particularly busy night of pub crawling. In other words, he has a personality and a life, and he communicates that through his tweets. (Obviously, not everyone should tweet about their pre- or post-hangover experiences, but a little humanity goes a long way.)
2. He gets you involved. Everyone wants their 15 pixels of fame these days, and he gives you just that: every forum you participate in lands you on BostonTweet.com. He is the liaison, making it easier to join Boston’s conversation. How do you get your followers involved (giveaways, polls, links to discussions)? Are they responding?
3. He’s multimedia. Whether it’s through video, pictures or links, he’s always supplying us with something different. Mix things up if you want people to keep paying attention.
4. He knows you. He responds to his Twitter followers and engages them. (He even hangs out with a lot of them.) After all, social  media is a conversation, not a soapbox. Are you paying more attention to what you’re saying than to what you’re hearing?
5. He’s not selling anything. Most of the time he’s giving something away, which is a large part of what he does. The places he tweets about are the places where he drinks, he dines, and he gets kicked out at 2 AM. What do you do and how can you emphasize that over what you sell? Do you believe in the product or service enough to be believable?

Social media is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with. Are you?

(This was a blog post I originally posted here.) Image courtesy of problogger.net.

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Note: This post takes a distinctly Canadian slant. Like a good Canadian, I’ll apologize for the gushy outpouring, but will go ahead with it anyway.

At the time this blog post is being written, the showdown between the US and Canadian Men’s Hockey team is a mere hour away. From my home in downtown Toronto, I can see little pockets of people – donned in red and white toques, Team Canada jerseys and maple leaf-kissed mittens (which are far too warm for the current weather, but we care not) – making their way to bars, pubs and friends’ places. There, they will lubricate their voices with a good domestic brew in preparation for the hollering and cheering that is in their future.

Besides learning that Canadians are far more proud of their country than we’ve let on in the past, these 2010 Olympic games in Vancouver have come with other lessons:

Set A Tough Goal And Back It Up
Despite having a population smaller than California and a less-than stellar history of medaling in Olympic games, Canada set into motion ‘Own The Podium,’ a plan to earn the most medals in the games. With it, came unprecedented funding for athletes and training facilities from both corporate and government pools. The result? A best-ever showing of a Canadian team at any Olympic games, third overall in the medal standings and a record-tying (possibly breaking if our hockey team pulls through) feat of earning the most Gold medals won by a country in any Winter games.

The content marketing connection: If you want to stand out online, you need to create a plan and invest in it properly. Research opportunities like SEO keywords you can compete with and take over, hire talented writers and pay them accordingly for their expertise and time, steadily work toward the goal by consistently adding new optimized content marketing pieces like blog posts, videos and social media interactions.

Listen To Your Audience And Adapt
One of the complaints the Vancouver organizers heard right away was the inaccessibility of the Olympic cauldron, which was kept behind a rather unfortunate-looking chain-link fence. Thankfully, they listened and quickly made changes so that more people could enjoy the Olympic flame in an atmosphere that was less refuge camp-esque.

The content marketing connection: While it’s important to know the difference between snark and constructive criticism, being open to feedback is important. Make sure when developing your content marketing strategy that you’re open to differing opinions, flexible in your execution and keep the main goal in sight: bringing value to your audience.

Don’t Let The Bashers Get You Down
The host nation will be the first to admit the Vancouver Olympics got off to a shaky start. The death of Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, hours before the opening ceremony was a particularly sad moment for everyone involved in the games. For the first while, things didn’t seem to improve much – a cringe-worthy gaffe in the opening ceremonies showed us exactly how well Steve Nash can hold a fake smile, warm weather was turning these winter games into the Spring Olympics and complaints about broken equipment, missing buses and line-ups earned Canada some major snark from the international media. Members of the British press went so far as to suggest Vancouver was hosting the worst Olympics ever, dubbing them “The Glitch Games” and “The Calamity Games” just days after the opening ceremonies.

But the organizers – and more so, the people attending and participating – pushed on. The vibe in Vancouver is one of overwhelming positive energy. The 2010 Olympics have become a story of perseverance, teamwork and the inspirational power of an underdog that refuses to give up.

The content marketing connection: When it comes to social media, everyone thinks they’re an expert. You’ll also find the anonymity of the Internet allows people to be far more vicious than they’d dare be to your face. As a result, you will sometimes experience intense negatively in the form of blog comments, video feedback and commentary on social media platforms. Take the hate mail with a huge chunk of salt and sift out what’s constructive – if anything – about it. Rally the troops, think positively, adapt as needed and work hard. You’ll come through alright, eh.

Edited To Add @5:54pm EST: YYYEYYEEEEAAAAHHHH!