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Web Site Creation and OptimizationThe Carpet Buyers Handbook may not be the most beautiful site on the WWW, but it is among the most heavily trafficked. What's the sense in spending a significant amount of money on a beautiful web site, if no one sees it? There are numerous artistic web site designers that have a long list of beautiful website referrals, but few of these designers have built web sites that deliver 500, 1,000, or even 2,000 unique visitors per day? The idea of building and optimizing web sites for our partners actually began from one of our site partners, who agreed to list on our site, only if we built a web site for them. They wanted a site that they could maintain and upload without having to spend an enormous amount of money each month for someone else to upload their specials. After uploading their site in October '04, their new site received 8900 visitors during December '04. They now spend $24.95 per month on a server and we provide them with technical assistance, simply as a service for purchasing our Web Master Plus Package. This whole web thing is simply a hobby for us, so we do not charge exorbitant fees for site creation. We do not suggest that we can build an award winning site, but the site will get traffic and it will be listed on every major search engine. There are any number of struggling artistic web site designers that can take our optimization and build-in a beautiful layout for $250 or less. We will admit that we cannot match socks each morning, but we will build a site that is properly optimized to bring traffic. Site OptimizationIn addition to (or instead of) building a site for you, we will optimize your current site to begin building traffic. Often, reoptimizing a site amounts to rebuilding a site from a structural standpoint and can get very labor intensive. In most cases, we can optimize a site without affecting your art work, but the page content may change to optimize each page for search engine spiders. Do not be Conned!Many web site designers promise top rankings, infinite traffic, and a pot of gold from sales that your new site will generate. When asking for a designers Resume', ignore their website designs, and the beauty they display and ask to to see server traffic reports. Site optimization is the key to building search engine and visitor traffic. It is by far the most costly portion of web site design, and because so few web site designers really "get it", good optimization specialists are hard to find. Good copy writers are hard to find. Writing optimized copy for search engines is very different from writing print copy and every search engine requires a different writing style. The best scenario is authoring optimized copy that provides a good balance for a variety of search engines.
Often, proper site optimization may require a rebuilding of your site because so few web designers truly understand optimization. There are numerous examples of beautiful web sites which receive little or no traffic. Also, web site optimization requires a field of expertise. Look to someone with experience in your business market. A website designer or optimization specialist who is not intimately familiar with your market cannot possibly understand the hundreds of thousands of keywords that can deliver traffic to your site. A flooring site may offer dozens of words that all flooring sites target, but a number of jewels (little-known words) exist that deliver dozens of visitors (each) to your site each day. For example, the Carpet Buyers Handbook receives roughly 20 visitors every day for the search term "carpet paint". While we still don't understand this one, it is an excellent example of how someone with knowledge in your area can deliver visitors for keyword visitors that an outsider simply can't comprehend. For details on these services, Contact michael@carpetbuyershandbook.com or at 706-463-2168. Web Site ManagementWeb Site management is not everyone's cup of tea, although anyone can easily learn to manage their own web site. We offer two types of web management assistance. Our DIY Package teaches Carpet Wholesalers to manage their own site. We optimize the site and teach you how to upload your monthly specials or make changes to your site, and you handle the bulk of the site changes, Our "basics" and "works" packages include site optimization and turnkey web site management "Note: *Basics and *Works" programs include web site maintenance and management: whereas DIY package includes optimization assistance only. Site Partners are provided a 50% discount off of these published fees.
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Not all outsourced copywriters and consultants are considered equal. Some are top-notch folks who spend time learning about your business, your conversion goals, and your customers, and craft compelling copy. Other “writers” aren’t as conscientious or as skilled—and their text won’t be as effective. If you are searching for some outsourced help—either for a main copywriter, or an SEO copywriter/consultant, there are some things to consider. How An Outsourced SEO Copywriter Adds Value To Your BusinessMost SEO copywriters are accomplished with all forms of direct marketing writing, and writing for search engines is an advanced skill set. An experienced search marketing copywriter views your product or service’s benefits from the customer’s perspective and communicates that excitement to your prospects—while still gaining the ranking positions you desire. Expert SEO copywriters seamlessly weave crucial key phrases into your marketing text without sacrificing a conversion flow—plus strategize how your new pages should be structured for maximum key phrase saturation. Hiring someone who brings that expertise to the table (especially for time-challenged marketing departments or sole entrepreneurs) can help immediately increase your site’s return on investment and your rankings. Ten Tips On How to Choose And Work With Your New Online Copywriting Expert1. Check their SEO writing experience.The way you write for search engines is much different than writing for print or non-SEO online writing, so experience is crucial. You need someone who can switch hats on the fly, write in a Web-friendly manner, integrate call-to-action hyperlinks and think about usability issues. Sure, writing for search engines isn’t rocket science—but if do you hire someone with straight print experience and no online or search marketing experiences background, he or she will learn SEO on your dime. Your SEO copywriter should have at least one year of intensive SEO writing experience—preferably more—and know HTML basics. She should have also trained under a search marketing company or Master SEO copywriter to gain advanced skills, or display an accomplished record of success. If she is new to the field, or hasn’t trained with someone, search for a writer with more experience. 2. Ask for SEO writing references.This sounds like a no-brainer, but checking your copywriter’s references is extremely important. Be sure to ask how the individual pages in a project positioned, and for what key phrases. It’s not important if the writer doesn’t have #1 rankings for all the pages. It’s more important that each page positions for a number of key phrases—plus the page still reads well. It’s common for well-written SEO pages to position in the top-20 for four key phrases or more. 3. Request multiple SEO writing samples.Review the writing carefully and see how it makes you feel. Does the text tempt you into taking action—now? Or does it put you to sleep? Are the key phrases skillfully woven within the copy? Or does the text read like, “Our cashmere sweaters are the highest quality cashmere sweaters of all cashmere sweater stores.” If the sample text doesn’t resonate with you and excite you now, don’t figure things will change later. They won’t. Find another copywriter. 4. Be prepared to pay for quality.Good SEO copywriting does not come cheap. Experienced copywriters can charge anywhere from $75–$500 an hour, and they are worth every penny. Just as your attorney protects your legal assets, your SEO copywriter is fiercely protective of your search engine branding and image. Think about how many Websites you’ve left because you couldn’t understand their main sales points, or the benefits weren’t as compelling as the competition’s. Additionally, an inexperienced SEO copywriter may inadvertently spam the engines by overstuffing the text with your important key phrases. Not only could this cause your site to be downgraded in the engines, it also ruins the text’s persuasive flow. Why save a few dollars for that kind of “quality”? 5. Give your new SEO copywriter plenty of information to work with.Once you’ve signed on the dotted line, your SEO copywriter will want to interview you and other key personnel about your organization. From a copywriting perspective, this is a crucial step—in order to write about your product or service, your copywriter needs to understand your industry’s nuances and your specific benefit points. Asking for business plans, demographic studies, focus group results and click-through ratios is not uncommon. If you block her every move under the cloak of “proprietary information,” she won’t get a good feel for your business—and the copy will sound unfocused. 6. Work with your copywriter when choosing key phrases.Depending on the page’s slant, tone and feel, some key phrase variations may be easier to naturally include within the text. That is, using the key phrase “Hawaiian adventure tours” may sound more natural within the text than “Hawaiian vacations.” If you tell your SEO copywriter what your key phrase priorities are and provide five phrases per page to choose from, she can construct copy specifically meeting your positioning and messaging needs—and use the terms that work best within the text. 7. Plan ahead—and avoid dumping “rush jobs” on your copywriter.No matter how wonderfully talented your SEO writer is, first drafts are typically unfocused—and that’s what you’re getting when you order a rush job. Strong copywriters are perpetual copy-tweakers, needing time to uncover the right writing angle and persuasively penned benefit statements. Would you dump your income taxes on your accountant on April 14th and say, “I’ll need ’em done by tomorrow morning?” Don’t pull a rush job on your copywriter and expect perfect results. 8. Appoint one person as your copywriter’s contact person.One way to drive your copywriter slowly insane (and cost you more money if they are charging you by the hour) is if five people on your staff all have a different idea of how the Web page should read—and they all want a separate revision. Figure out the salient points before you talk to your copywriter and have one person handle all communications. 9. Tell your copywriter what was done right—and wrong.Copywriters have writing egos of steel and are used to constructive criticism. So, your copywriter’s feelings will not be hurt if you don’t like a particular headline—that feedback is incredibly useful. Changing the text for your writer without saying why you are changing it, however, frustrates the writer—and costs you time in-house to make the revisions. The best writer may not write everything perfectly the first time, but they will learn your requirements if you provide specific feedback. If you love the work, tell your writer what you liked and why. You’ll make her day—and she’ll be sure to replicate the tone, feel and structure for your other pages 10. Does the search engine optimization (SEO) have sites that generate significant volume. A customer list in itself does not guarantee a successful history of optimization. Also, what is success anyway? 100 visitors per day? 1000 visitors per day? Successful Search Engine Copywriting: How to Write Prime Positioned Webpages That Convert Like Crazy by Heather Lloyd Martin.Click on the links below to learn more about carpet.
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