Pay Attention to Your Website Images, or Face the Consequences.

A Good Website Image is Worth a Thousand Optimized Content Words.

If images are properly included on a webpage, SEO is usually improved. The image must be relevant, informational, and properly tagged and captioned. Webpage search optimization is enhanced. Importantly, relevant images vastly improve the odds of a potential client becoming a real client. Pictures and images help sell the product or service being offered.

Optimized Content and Image.

Images increase customer confidence in the company, the website, the product, and the service offered. Most people want to see an image of what they're going to buy, before they buy it. It is human nature to 'see before you buy'. No one wants to buy an unknown product or a service for which context is missing and/or appears confusing.

Relevant images provide assurance and instant information. This applies to goods and services. A good image relates to a particular product, option, service, and application. The potential customer will instantly 'get it'.

Top-notch consumer and industrial product websites like Amazon, Grainger, Home Depot, Walmart, Staples, and others pay close attention to product images. Accurate images help them sell stuff, a lot of stuff.

If a website image is worth a thousand words, why do so many websites have missing-in-action images? Cleaning up missing or inaccurate images should be a high priority. Making sure these images are optimally tagged for search is also important.

Don't end up with sad 'image not found' defaults on your webpages.... it won't end well and you'll lose orders, leads, projects, etc. Your competitors will thank you.

Don't do this:

Missing in Action: Images Not Found.

This is bad:

Image Not Found.

This is bad:

Image Not Found.

This is bad:

Image Not Found.

Don't be bad. Be good. Use precise, concise, imagery on your website. Tag it properly. Your SEO results will thank you for it.

Six Reasons to be Thankful to Your Competitors

Spell It Out for SEO Optimization

Spell It Out for Search Engine Success

Acronyms, initials, and abbreviations are used all the time in business and our daily lives. BTW they are convenient, useful, and practical. 

When it comes to search engine marketing, however, these same spelling shortcuts can wreak havoc on your website, harming the ability of potential customers to find your webpages. Over-reliance on such spelling shortcuts can make it extremely difficult for potential customers to find your products and services using external search engines and, frustratingly, your own internal search website search engine. In short, being 'short'  with your website spelling can cost you external and internal visitors, prospects, and sales. This advice is good for B-to-B and B-to-C websites, for E-commerce and Lead Generation (Lead Gen).

Fully spell out words as much as possible, especially key words. Popular acronyms and abbreviations are also very useful, but should be used in combination with fully spelled out words when practical. Your content and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will be enhanced as a result.

Spell it Out. 

For example, usage of "Glove", not "Glv", when describing such a product is people-friendly, logical, and a better content option. "Glv" is almost useless as a keyword in this instance, rendering such a product listing much more difficult to find via external or internal search. 

For technical sales, acronyms are common and important for successful SEO and lead generation. Yet even here it pays to spell out the acronym, while also using the accepted acronym. For example, "FTIR" is a well known analytical technique and a great keyword, but "Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy" is also packed with SEO potential. Usage of both the acronym and the full spelling creates a powerful content combination, enhancing your chances for superior search engine results performance. 

Using the full technical term also adds credibility and expertise to potential customers looking at your service or product. Remember, you want to impress & motivate that 5% who will purchase/influence/decide upon your offering. It's OK to get technical with verbiage!

Spell it out. You'll improve search engine success and obtain more leads when you do.

Want B2B Leads? Pay Close Attention to Google Search and Content.

A recent study by Mathew Sweezey, Marketing Evangelist for Pardot, reinforces the key role of search engine marketing for lead generation. In his paper "The State of Demand Generation 2013", the results of a user survey clearly list the main effective ingredients needed to enjoy successful B2B lead generation:

1. Obtain Search Engine Marketing Success, especially Google Search Engine Success.

2. Employ Short Content on Webpages and White Papers.... Concise, Precise, and Relevant.

In summary, B2B Buyers use Google Search, and like Relevant and Short Content on Webpages and White Papers. Worth Repeating: "B2B Buyers use Google Search and like Relevant and Short Content."

The same study indicated that an impressive "72% of product research for a future business purchase begins on Google." Nearly 3 out of 4 B2B leads start on Google.

72% of B2B Leads Begin on Google Search, per Mathew Sweezey, Pardot.

No amount of creative branding content or social media chatter will mitigate this fact. If you're not focused on winning with search engine marketing, you're at risk of missing nearly 3 out of 4 potential leads!

From my own experience, this simple formula of efficient content and effective SEO has produced over 10 years of outstanding organic search engine marketing lead generation success for B2B niche markets. I've focused on what our potential customers need and are looking for, in order to provide solutions to their problems.

Like a good consultative selling sales pitch, my webpages provide features which bring benefits to meet the prospective customer's needs. This customer-centric approach works for Google SERPs as well, based upon the superior search ranking results I commonly enjoy.

To optimize your lead generation success, craft webpage content to be efficient and relevant, focused, and concise. Content should be as short as reasonably possible, to best provide key information easily to a hectic, busy, potential client. Quickly give them the facts they need in order to be educated and motivated to contact you as a quality business lead.

Potential clients will not waste their valuable time attempting to sift through wordy webpages or white papers full of flowery, self-important, lightweight "content". They want straight facts and answers, and they want them now.

Include and use appropriate technical terms, acronyms, and jargon, because that specialized vocabulary is a key component in the business language of the targeted niche clientele. It is also good practice to spell these abbreviations out at least once on the page, as appropriate, both for visitor comprehension and search engine optimization. Make content simple and relevant for the potential client.

B2B lead generation content is usually designed to reach and influence lucrative and small market niches, not a mass audiences. You want that "1%" of the global potential audience, so talk directly to them. Don't worry about the other "99%" who will not give you any business under any circumstances.

Avoid creating excessive content. Don't 'tell a story' and yammer on telling the world how wonderful and great your company is. Potential clients can see right through this self-centered hype and quickly move on to a competitor who is more focused on the client.

In short, for superior B2B lead generation, focus on search engine marketing combined with concise and precise webpages, white papers, and other content. Include a clear call-to-action. These best practices are true big B2B lead generation winners.

A special thanks is given to Ayaz Nanji, with MarketingProfs, for his post which alerted me to Mathew Sweezey's paper. Ayaz gives an excellent overview of the Pardot report at: B2B Buyers Prefer Short Content; Rely Heavily on Google Searches.

B-to-B Web Marketing Should Help Sales People Sell.

FEED Your Website. FEED IT.

Raise Organic Search Rankings by Reducing Page Content

Reducing the content on a key web-page, if properly done, can rocket a newly slimmed-down page to new organic ranking heights for competitive and valuable Google search terms.

Having a poorly ranking web-page is an opportunity for improvement. First look at the total situation and purpose of the web-page.

1. What I am selling?

2. Who am I selling to?

3. Is my content Concise and Precise?

3a. Can I split up the content on this page into new pages?

3b. Can I reduce the remaining content on my original page?

Many web-pages suffer poor SEO due to long scrolling text, non-essential words and phrases. The same page could suffer from secondary and tertiary content that should stand alone as separate web-pages. The web-page is not focused enough for Google give a good ranking for the keyword(s) the page is trying to target. Too much content, too many subjects produces a page that is not focused, not precise, not concise and not as relevant as it could be.

The Relevancy and Ranking Fix is simple in theory:

1. Put the page on a words diet: streamline the content.

2. Follow good SEO copy-writing practice and don't 'pack' your keywords.

3.Take out surplus content not directly related to the page's mission.

4. Put any important newly removed content into a new, dedicated web-page(s) that is cross-linked with the original page.

When done, instead of having one long, scrolling web-page there may be one, two or three shorter, more concise web-pages that are relevant and related... offering greater content value to visitors and higher relevancy to Google.

This process takes some thought and work. But if done correctly, you'll see spectacular results.

I have web-pages that routinely rank 1, 2, 3, 4 against millions of other indexed Google pages for key search terms... because over the years I have streamlined content, split content and generally tried to make the pages precise and concise and cross-linked to other relevant web-pages.

I have also been happily surprised to see an unexpected web-page become a top-ranked page for a key competitive search-term. When that happens, I am flexible enough to often seize the opportunity and keep the page optimized for visitor relevancy and SEO. It's a gift from Google that can be taken complete advantage of.

Patience and success by trial and error are the norm. Google is the ultimate judge on organic page rankings.... we can only keep trying. Victory may take months to achieve, but the resulting high quality web enquiries produced make the effort worth it.