Online content writing is a mixture of artistry and hard-nosed realism. You want to write content that is engaging, intelligent and answers questions that website visitors might have. At the same time, you are writing this content for a reason: you want to gain and retain website visitors and eventually turn them into customers. You also want to help your search engine ranking if possible by using proper SEO tactics in your writing.

Simply put, there are a lot of factors to consider. However, you don’t have to sacrifice quality for usefulness when it comes to online writing. Use the same approaches that providers of content writing services use when they approach creating online copy and you’ll have website content that is ready to be used as conversion bait.

Write About the Benefits of Your Products: Contrary to popular belief, visitors don’t land on your website because they are looking for a solution to their problem. They know that the type of service you provide will help them to solve their problem; they want to know if your particular solution is better than the competition. Instead, promote the benefits of using your product or service – especially when compared to the competition

Use Testimonials to Sell Your Benefits:  Customer testimonials have the power to make an immediate connect with a website visitor. If they see that someone who is “just like them” is enthusiastic about the benefits they received by using your product or service, they are far more likely to be convinced than if they simply are reading sales copy.

Images and Videos Have More Power Than Written Text: It might be rough for a content writer to admit, but pictures and videos can lead to substantially higher conversion rates than pages that are solely text-driven. Images can show customers using your product, compare your product to the competition or be infographics that show valuable data a customer might use to make a purchasing decision. Similarly, video can be used to highlight customer stories and draw the viewer closer to your product. An ideal page would integrate video, pictures and text to tell one seamless story.

Don’t Force a Commitment: You might think that the phrases “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” would mean the same thing when used on an eCommerce site’s button. However, testing has shown that potential customers react to the two phrases in much different ways. Telling a customer to “Buy Now” forces them to consider the act of adding something to their cart as a firm commitment, and often keeps them from following through. Instead, use softer language to encourage customers to build their cart before making a final purchasing decision.

Keep Your Web Pages Simple and Well Thought Out: Nothing hurts conversion rates more than a cluttered web design that obscures the overall message that you want to visitor to have about your products or services. It’s important to keep in mind that simplicity is the key when it comes to web design. You need to determine what the most important impression that you want visitors to have about each page and design it to this.

Often, cluttered web pages happen because the designer don’t have a clear concept of the overall flow of the website; this leads to trying to cram as much information into every page as possible. Putting the time into mapping out each page of the site and what should go on it will alleviate many of these issues.

Attempting to determine the proper tactics for mobile SEO has been a mystery in the past. Google has given few clues about how to approach mobile design as part of professional website development. But things have changed in recent years as Google has started to give some major hints on the types of elements that they consider important for mobile sites. There are three ways to handle mobile content and Google has recommendations for each method:

Use a New URL

In many cases, web designers decide to direct mobile users to a completely different URL to access content. When this happens, Google would like to see the link canonical tag on mobile pages to direct to the desktop version of the site and the link alternate tag on desktop pages to direct to the mobile version of the site.

Google also wants separate user agent redirection lists to be set up for different types of mobile users. For example, a user of a Samsung Android phone will be directed by the server differently than the user of an iPhone. This integrates responsive design into the equation, changing the layout to fit the specific screen width of the device.

Same URL With Different HTML

Another way to approach mobile design is to use the same URL for desktop and mobile versions of the site but have the two sites have different HTML. When doing this, Google recommends adding a Vary HTTP header to the server response. This will allow Google to read and crawl both the mobile and desktop versions of the URL.

Same URL and HTML

This is the preferred method of handling mobile and desktop sites by Google. In this case, you would use CSS3 media queries to create different looks for the site. Google prefers this method for several reasons. Two of the most common reasons for implementing this approach is because it brings all ranking metrics to one URL and it is very easy to implement.

Anyone with a basic understanding of search engine optimization knows that meta data such as meta descriptions, image alt text and title tags is critical to proper SEO success. But there’s one element that many people forget that can cause SEO campaigns to fail. Not properly implementing a Robots.txt file can make the difference between seeing your search engine rankings soar or sink.

Defining a Robots.txt File

Simply put, a Robots.txt file can help you tell search engines which directories on your site you don’t want them to index. The reasons for this are varied. You might want to make sure to keep sensitive information such as customer banking information on your eCommerce site secure. Or you might have proprietary information posted on certain sections of your website that you want to keep private. Having a Robots.txt file will tell Google, Bing and other legitimate search engines to not index these pages.

Robots.txt Keys for Implementation

Disable access to sensitive directories. This can potentially include directories such as: /cgi-bin/, /wp-admin/, /cart/ and /scripts/.

Remove all barriers to main content. This includes making sure that there are no “no follow” tags that will block searches.

Don’t let search engines index “duplicate” pages on your website. This can include sections of your website that are designed for regular viewing and printing, or content that is designed specifically for mobile sites. It’s better to only have them index the main content page in these cases.

Things to Avoid

Putting comments on your Robots.txt file

Listing all files in your Robots.txt. This actually makes it easier to find files you want to keep hidden.

Don’t use a /allow tag. This doesn’t exist in the Robots.txt file.

Nothing is more frustrating than spending weeks or even months to redesign your website, only to see traffic plummet soon after the new version of the site goes live. It’s especially frustrating because you obviously did all the work because you expected to improve your search engine ranking, get more traffic and see more conversions. Where did it all go wrong?

In most cases, there is no single culprit; it’s usually a series of small mistakes that, on their own, would create minimal damage to your traffic but when taken together can be disastrous. Here are four of the most common problems we’ve found at eVisible when people try to relaunch their sites and their traffic tanks:

Check Google Analytics

It’s possible that your site’s analytic tracking didn’t automatically restart when your new site was launched. Manually check Google Analytics to make sure that it’s enabled and working properly; if it isn’t, check individual pages for issues like missing tracking code placement.

Recheck Google Analytics

You can also go deeper with your analytic research to see if there are unforeseen problems. Make sure that you have 301 redirects for any pages whose address structures have changed and thoroughly look for any 404 pages. Do a keyword search to see which keywords are underperforming and if they have been removed from poorly performing pages.

Review Your robots.txt File

It’s possible that your site has been deindexed for some reason. One possible explanation is with your robots.txt file. Check the head of page source code for a meta robots tag exclaiming noindex and also check for anything that says “disallow:/” in the code.

Check for Host or Server Issues

Changing your hosting or server can lead to communications issues that will make it impossible for search engines to index your site. There are several tools available for checking your DNS health; one thing you absolutely should do is look at your DNS errors and server connectivity in your Google or Bing Webmaster Tools.

Reworking your website to have a more SEO friendly design is a great way to boost your online business’ potential; it can also be intimidating, especially right before your new site goes live. Before you relaunch your site to the world, you need to go through a last-minute checklist to ensure that the launch will be a success. Here are 20 steps that you need to take when finalizing your professional website development:

Onsite Content:

1. Check that all of the content you’ve created – and the old content that you haven’t touched – is free of spelling errors, typos or other problems. Also make sure that the content is compelling for visitors.

2. Open your site in Google Chrome and press F12 and then open the “Network” tab to see your site’s speed and page sizes.

3. Test drive the forms on your site to make sure they work properly.

Web Development:

4. Verify that your site links are correct when they have transferred from the test site to your live site. If you have any 404 pages, develop a custom page with search to encourage visitors to go to other parts of your site. If pages are moved or have a new URL structure, make sure to use a 301 redirect.

5. Validate your W3C code and fix any errors you might have.

6. Add custom Favicons to your address bars or the tabs of users’ browsers to create a custom feel for your site.

7. Minify your site to compress the code and make it load faster.

Web Design

8. Cross-check your site on different browsers to ensure multi-browser compatibility.

9. Check that your display text is coming up when you hover over an image. You should also make sure that your images aren’t too large and that you don’t have issues with fonts not rendering correctly.

Search Engine Optimization

10. Make sure that all pages have title tags and meta tags.

11. Upload an accurate site map in both XML and HTML to make your site easier to navigate for users and search engines.

12. Have your Google Analytics package ready to go along with your Google and Bing Webmaster Tools. Also contact your ad rep if you have any PPC campaigns running to avoid a disruption.

13. Submit your site to the popular search engines to ensure they are indexed immediately.

14. Check to make sure that your SERP display is correct and your pages are displaying properly on search engine result pages.

15. Make sure that your social media buttons go to the right pages and allow people to “Like” the right parts of your site.

Network Administration:

16. Install site monitors to ensure visitors can get to your pages and use enhanced monitors for your key landing pages.

17. Run tests with load test software tools to simulate what will happen to your site in times of heavy traffic.

18. Have a backup system ready to go in case your site does crash.

19. Check password-protected pages to make sure people can’t get into them without the proper credentials.

20. If you have a secure certificate, check it to make sure it is valid on launch day.

Why has local business marketing become such a driving force in search engine optimization? One of the big reasons is the rise of smartphones and tablets. People no longer have to print out information about a business or look things up in a phone book. Addresses, phone numbers, website and customer reviews are all available in a convenient, handheld format. When you include the rise of Twitter and Facebook and the resulting wave of social media marketing, it’s easy to see why local SEO is so critical to a site’s success.

If you have a local business and are looking to increase your visibility, local search engine marketing is one great way to do it. Several companies offer local search engine marketing and can handle every aspect, from getting your business listed with the appropriate local online directories to building your website. However, you can also do many the steps yourself. Here are a few things you should definitely consider doing immediately if you are doing your own local search engine marketing:

Perform basic SEO: Simply put, you can’t have local SEO unless you have your traditional SEO house in order. This means having a well-constructed, informative website with plenty of useful content and intelligently linked keywords. You’ll want to strengthen this with other SEO practices such as purchasing in-bound links.

Create and update your business listings: As a small business, you need to make sure that your company is listed with all of the standard business listing sites. One of the first steps in this is to make sure that you have a Dun & Bradstreet number. Another step is to update your contact information with InfoUSA. Once you have done this, the information will gradually start feeding to places like the Yellow Pages and other online business directories.

Claim your online presence: This means going out to sites like Google+, Bing, Yahoo and Yelp and taking control of your company’s pages. You’ll want to make sure that the name, address and phone number are consistent and match what is on your website. Add photos and descriptions and encourage your customers to add positive reviews.

SEO has changed the way that we look at online marketing. It’s led to companies getting smarter about how they develop their online marketing strategy and how they can incorporate many tactics to improve their search engine ranking. However, some people seem to think that SEO is a quick fix that eliminates the need for traditional online marketing.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. While SEO is a powerful tool, it should only be one part of an integrated online marketing game plan. In fact, misunderstanding the role of SEO has led some people to develop warped ideas about online marketing. Here are four of the most common misconceptions about online marketing that people have developed thanks to SEO:

You aren’t in a battle against Google. It’s easy to think that Google has something against you personally if you are struggling to take your search engine placement to the first page. Much of this comes from the fact that there is an air of mystery behind Google’s algorithms used in search engine rankings. Because of this, many online marketers wildly vary their campaigns to reflect what they think are Google’s latest changes. This is almost always just guesswork. Instead, companies should focus on making the core SEO values that don’t change such as quality content and not focus all of their efforts on pleasing Google.

You need to invest time – and money – into any successful SEO campaign. Search engine optimization is a great way to maximize your marketing budget and see instant results. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s “free” marketing. You still need to invest resources into an SEO campaign. This can including spending money on a link building campaign or time in researching keywords and developing appropriate content.

You won’t make money without offering something of value. While it’s true that you can get a site to the top of Google search pages simply by buying links, spun content and a low-quality website, will this make you money? Eventually, people are going to see the quality (or lack) of your offerings. It’s always better to base your success on high quality content and products.

Real world testing is better than solely relying on expert advice. It’s never a bad idea to do research and read articles from experts explaining things that have worked for them. But there’s no substitute for doing your own research and learning through trial and error.

Acquiring links is a valuable tool that should be a part of any SEO campaign. SEO link building services allow you to extend the reach of your brand beyond your website while increasing your site’s credibility in the eyes of major websites such as Google. However, you need to be careful when it comes to managing your link building campaign. Not enough people realize the importance of backlinks monitoring and how much damage that poorly managed links can do to your SEO reputation.

Google and other sites will punish sites if they have links on their website that have been changed or deleted within a short time frame; for the search engines, this is a clear signal that these links have been collected in unnatural ways. The best method of building link popularity is through natural links that appear to the result of other sites posting your links because of the high-quality content that exists on your pages. When a link partner suddenly deletes or changes your links at the same time, this is flagged as a potentially unnatural behavior by Google and could impact your site ranking.

You need to be willing to check your links on a regular basis to make sure that your link partners are keeping your links up and holding up their end of the bargain. In some cases, links can be deleted because the owner of another website has deleted a page on their site and accidentally forgot to move the link; in other cases, the partner might have deleted the link after a short period of time to make room for new links.

Manually checking backlinks one time a day or more is time consuming. One way to work around this is to automate the process with one of the many SEO tools available that do backlink checking. You can purchase and use one of these tools yourself, or you can work with an SEO company like eVisible who can do it for you. Once you’ve determined which links have been deleted or changed, you need to act on it by contacting your partner and convincing them to live up to their end of your deal and restore your link.