Creative365 Website Design Samples2

Main Reasons for Google Page Ranking Drop, External Factors

Recently I've came across many frazzled website owners posted questions about their Google Ranking dropping. Actually one of our websites dropped in its ranking as well. While searching for the answers, I've been collecting all the information I came across and now would like to share it with you. Here is a list of the most common reasons why a website's search engine rankings fall. I would also like to suggest some methods of its recovery.

First of all, you need to decide if your website's ranking dropped in all search engines or only in Google. What I mean is that sometimes your website is still ranking high in Yahoo, Bing,.. and that it's completely down in Google search engine.
Let's cover the case when your ranking dropped in Google only. I'm going to divide the reasons or factors into 2 categories - External and Internal. In this article I'm going to cover External problems in more detail. Separately, I'll write about Google Panda algorithm.

External Factors / Problems of Google Ranking Drop

By External problems I refer problems between your website and other websites, hosting, links,…

1. Your Page Rank (PR) dropped.

1A. This can happen if some websites with the Page Rank higher than yours remove links to your website. Let's say your website has PR2, it's best if other websites pointing to you (having links to your website) have PR2+ (meaning Page Rank of 2 or higher). So if many of such websites remove their links, then your Page Rank will drop.

1B. Most of the website designers participate in link exchanging or link building. Sometimes, they buy links. But it's very important to understand how many links, what kind of links and how often you can buy those links not to get punished. Again, if your website's PR is 3, and if you purchased many-many links with PR0, then you didn't benefit enough for your money. Most likely, you even made it worse. If you suddenly got too many links with lower PR pointing to your site, then most likely your own PR will go down.

1C. If you link to a "bad neighborhood website". Before exchanging links, always check the website, make sure that if your visitors click on this link, they don't go to a so-called "bad neighborhood" website you don't want them to visit. My advice is to click on a few pages of such website first. I've come across a few  websites that had a nice home page, let's say about purchasing of purses or something like that and then, when you click on another page, it's about something completely else. It's always a good idea that if you doubt about the website, don't exchange links. At least try to use "nofollow" attribute in your link tag: <a href="http://www.theirwebsite.com" rel="nofollow">. Usually if you have just a few links pointing to the bad websites, it's not so bad. However, if you have other problems as well, you can get penalized.

1D. If you exchanged links with the farm websites or websites that are just ads. Google started being very aggressive on that. 

2. If you have a relatively new website.

2A. Sometimes, Google will boost a new website for just some time. You need to continue working on link building - collect links from different sources. Please check out my other article "SEO and Online Marketing Strategies" about the SEO and link building.

2B. If you exceeded the optimum amount of links that looks reasonable for Google. Let's say you purchased or exchanged links with other websites and the ranking of those sites is good but you still overdid it. You got too many links at once… then you can get into a sand box.

3. Your website was hacked.

It feels that hackers don't have anything else to do these days:) Websites get constantly hacked. So if your website was hacked and visitors to your website reported it, then Google will respond to it accordingly. You can use Google's tools for checking your website. Re-install the clean version of your website and use Google tools make sure it's really clean. You can contact your hosting and if your website was flagged as having malware, request a review to determine whether your site is clean. If you are using wordpress, update all the plugins and themes (however, remember, if you previously adjusted a theme for your website and made it more custom, then, after you reinstall the theme all your custom settings will disappear). There is a detailed article on what you should do at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-sites-been-hacked-now-what.html 
     
4. Websites that sell ads or links.

Recently Google became very aggressive on punishing the websites that sell Text ads and sell links. Google can easily drop your Page Rank. Again, if you decide to keep these links, then add attribute "nofollow" in the link tag - please see above. 

5. Multiple domains.

If you have many different domains pointing to one website, then Google may penalize you. Try to keep one domain name per one website.

6. Don't forget to set 301 "canonical redirects" for your website.

It means that for Google www.yourwebsite.com and yourwebsite.com (without the "www") are two different websites. So if you promoted let's say www.yourwebsite.com and then switched your efforts to yourwebsite.com, then Google will be confused.

7. Your server was down for an extensive amount of time.

When your server is down and you didn't set your server to respond with the 503 code, Google can take your PR down. If your server is down or if you know that your server is going to be down, set it to respond with the 503 code, it will tell to Google or another search engine that you are aware of the problem and working on it.

These are just some of the External factors / Problems that make the Google Ranking go down. There are some other ones, but it looks that these seven factors are the most common. It's always a good idea to check Google Webmaster Tools where you can have your website checked for any issues and also find a lot of useful information. After you fixed the problems of your website, submit Reconsideration Request to Google so your website will be re-evaluated. It might speed up the process significantly. More in my next article.

For more information on SEO and help on fixing your Google Page Ranking from Creative365, Los Angeles professional search engine company, please visit our website www.creative365design.com. We've been successful in bringing clients' websites to the 1st page of Google. Actually, all of our clients that requested search engine optimization services, are on the first page in Google. Contact us today!

SEO and Online Marketing Strategies - Still Work?

Many webdesigners and SEO professionals are afraid of new Google approaches in checking / ranking of the websites. But it looks our "Old" approaches to SEO still work if you use them in complex. Here are a few tips for the complex SEO and Online Marketing.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines. The higher a website appears in the search results list (preferably on the 1st page), the more visitors it will receive from a search engine. As an internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how a search engine works and what people search for. Let’s assume that our main search engine is Google. At the moment, Google is the biggest search engine out there, so getting Google to view your website is very important for having high rankings. So, how do you do that?

The main idea is to “rank high” in Google (to appear on the 1st page of Google). There are several techniques / methods that help you bring your website up in Google or to boost your ranking (this is usually referred as PR - page ranking). Most of these techniques take significant amount of time.

I would like to consider them as 2 approaches - On-page Optimization and Off-page Optimization.

On-page Optimization:
When we talk about on-page optimization, we mean adjusting the site in a way that helps Google to understand what your site is about. That kind of optimization primarily involves editing the content of the website, its HTML and associated coding to increase its relevance to specific keywords for a search engine. This includes:
    •    Competition analysis, keyword research and optimization
    •    Meta tags development & optimization
    •    Title tags, description meta tags
    •    Keyword meta tags creation & optimization
    •    Content optimization based on specific keywords
    •    Header H1 tags optimization
    •    Creation & optimization of Bold Text and Alt tags
    •    Keyword density & prominence optimization
    •    Robots text file creation.


Off-page Optimization:
This is when we need to show Google that our website is really valuable, that many other sites (sites with higher ranking) refer to it. How would Google know that our site offers valuable information? Answer: By having many visitors and by having many backlinks pointing to our site. The more GOOD backlinks our site has, the more solid and prominent our site looks to Google. Please don't be mistaken - if you get a zillion of back links with PR0 from some junk sites, spam,...., you are not going to get to the 1st page of Google. You need quality links, links from websites with PR that is equal or higher than yours.
So, how to create those backlinks or where do we get them from? What influences your Google ranking?
Here is the basic strategy to get your backlinks from:

For a website to have a high ranking, you would need to get backlinks from all these different sources. In red, I listed just a few samples from each of the backlink source. Here are a couple of words about each of these sources.

1. Social Media.
Through social media you can communicate with your potential customers, you work on building a database of your friends.  Then you can advertise to your new friends and followers your specials / offers / new services as well as links to your website.

2. Social Media News, also called Bookmarking Sites
These are sites where people can register and leave their opinions, reviews, interesting facts, even a short mentioning. Social bookmarking sites are sites where you share urls that you think are interesting enough for other people to see and connect and get interested in them. It also allows you to leave a link to your website.
Find sites with good ranking and leave comments. You can find a helper or Philippines based company to leave quality comments (it pays back in a long run). However, there are a few online companies whose services I use that offer commenting for a reasonable price and who do a quality job. 

3. Blogs
These blogs are similar to your landing pages or articles. You can create blogs on different topics related to your industry, this is a way to engage people to communicate and talk about your business. It also connects to your website, you can refer your readers to go to your site for more info...

4. Articles
Writing articles has always been a great way to get publicity and sales, but it's also important for search engine optimization purposes. Their great advantage is that articles provide high-quality one-way links to your site (these links are placed in the author’s bio area). Most article websites allow 2 links per article. What is even more important is that the articles and blogs can use your keywords and create theme-related content for your website. So, if readers are interested in your subject, you can invite them to visit your website. Many of the Article websites have a high ranking.

5. Video Directories
The best one is youtube. It gets a lot of views and now it allows to write a description to your movie as well as to leave a link to your website. You can also submit keywords,...

So, if your business is about, let’s say, traveling to Hawaii, then with proper optimization, when people search for “Hawaii travel”, your website, your blog, your article or your video will pop on the first page. Or better yet, if they pop all together..

6. Press releases
The same applies to press releases. They mention your latest services, products,...

7. Website Directories.
These are similar to the Yellow pages... There are hundreds of directories on the internet.  Some of the directories have a very high ranking (PR6+), some don’t have any value. The best directories are paid ones - like Yahoo ($299), others are free. Here you submit the Title, Description, keywords and a link to your website. For each business, you pick a category and a subcategory where your business will be listed, for example - Travel, Hotels,...

8. PPC campaigns
This is when you run ads based on the keywords and that have links to your website (these ads generate traffic and cost you money).

9. Forums and Blogs
There are special websites called forums. This is where people talk about a particular interest, idea, business, application,... You can join/register a forum and start leaving your own comments related to the topic. The most important here is that when you register, you can leave a link to your website. Sometimes, you can just join the forum (without actually leaving a comment). The same thing applies if you leave a comment to somebody’s else blog. While registering, you can add a link to your website and use your keywords. You need to be accurate about leaving comments since they can be considered as spam. You can purchase backlinks from various forums and blogs but need to know how many backlinks you can order (different amount of links for different PR websites) so you would not get into a sandbox or wouldn't be blocked as being a spammer. I will write about this in more details separately.

11. Exchanging links.
This is when different companies (different websites) exchange links with other sites preferably from the same industry that have the same rank or higher. In this case, we create a file that would contain a description of the partner and a link to their website (they provide). Similar, they will have a file on their server that would have a description of our business with the link to our website that we provide.

12. Reviews, Testimonials
It’s a good idea to encourage people to leave reviews on Yelp, Go Places, youtube videos, tripadvisor, ...  These are high ranking websites and are searchable.

So, if you implement optimization of your website and will work hard on getting backlinks from all of these sources, you guarantee to get on the first page of Google. And get more visitors to your website. We’ll talk separately how to optimize your website in more details and about building the backlinks for each of these sources.

Part 5 | Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design

It is important to get conversions for your business. This is the goal of all online businesses. It is important that you convince your visitors to take action. These actions can be any of the following;

-       Registering for your newsletter

-       Purchasing your goods or services

Although you might get traffic to your page daily, in order for your marketing strategy to be successful you have to get the conversions.

25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design

Please also read 25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design, Part 1, 2,3, and 4

21. Keep Your Page Neat

The focal point of your page should be the center. Make sure that all the important things such as text and graphics are centered. Do not use sidebars or videos. This will distract the viewer. Use large, bold text that is colorful as this will help it to stand out and draw the visitor’s attention to it. Make sure that it looks conform and has a call to action near the end. Having the proper flow will help to convert your traffic.

22. Make Sure the Links Work

Make sure that your page is compatible to all browsers. Check the site regularly for broken links. No matter how good your page is, sometimes glitches happen but if the links such as order now, do not work, you will not get the conversion and the potential buyer may look elsewhere. By checking buttons, order forms, shopping carts, etc to make sure that they are working properly, will help you gain sales.

Make sure the content appeals to your reader. Keep it simple and use bullet points to list the benefits. Spread out the content and make sure that the page is an easy read. It should flow properly, and make sure that all terms are clearly explained.

23. Make Your Forms Simple

Try not to ask for phone number as this will be a turn off. Many people simply do not fill out the forms because they do not want to be harassed by telemarketers. Either have multiple choice or perhaps just a name and an email sign up. This will make prospective customers more comfortable.

24. Conversion Options

Let your visitors know what they have to do by having your landing page simple and easy to navigate. Clear links, buttons, will keep them informed. The message should stand out clearly and links that lead the visitor to the conversion. Make sure that you leave many options for the person to convert easily. Options such as phone, email, chat, and so forth should be clearly displayed. This is known as a conversion funnel. Visualize how the funnel works and plan your landing page accordingly.

25. Know When to Use Short Copy vs. Long Copy

Determine when to use either short or long copy. There is no specific length to use. One must determine whether or not to use short or long copy, and if you are giving something away then a short copy is better. They don’t want to be stuck reading a lot of copy they are there for the freebie only. Big tickets items are generally a harder sell and therefore, you will have to go into a lot of detail in order to get them to purchase something. Big ticket items usually need some convincing in order to convert it to a sale.

Conclusion:

Improve your conversion rate by tweaking your landing page. By doing so, you will convert your traffic by fifty percent. If you do not tweak your page, you will have to increase your advertising budget by 50 percent.

The Bottom Line?

Improve your landing page as much as you can and by doing so you will increase your profit margin. For example; Designer boots sell at $100 a pair and you get a 10% profit margin. So with traffic of 1000 visitors a day and typical 2% conversion, you sell 20 pairs a day and make $200 a day. If you apply these 25 principals, spend some time and money, and tweak your landing page, you can get 3% conversion. Then, with still a 1000 visitors a day, you sell 30 pairs and make $300! And keep on going! Then, you can apply best SEO principals to attract more visitors to the website.

Tweaking and testing your landing page is simple. Take some time to make sure that you do this and watch your profit climb.

Part 4 | 25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design

It is important to get conversions for your business. This is the goal of all online businesses. It is important that you convince your visitors to take action. These actions can be any of the following;

-       Registering for your newsletter

-       Purchasing your goods or services

Although you might get traffic to your page daily, in order for your marketing strategy to be successful you have to get the conversions.

25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design

Please also read 25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design, Part 1, 2 and 3

16. Testimonials

Testimonials are powerful persuasion. A concise, honest testimonial is great to convert others to do business with you. Location, name and a picture from past customers is a strong selling point. Make sure the testimonials are relevant to what you have to offer and your target audience.

17. Show Credibility

Awards, certificates, memberships as well as compliances that show others that you are a reliable business will help to build trust as well as credibility. In fact, any type of positive media coverage is a plus so make sure that you show that on your page.

18. Sales Pitch - Above the Fold

Make sure that all the important information is higher than the fold. The fold is the point where the visitor will have to scroll in order to view your information. If your call to action is below the fold you might lose their interest. Therefore, design your page with the lowest common denominator. This means that your page size should be 950 x 750.  Others might look at the information below the fold but most will not. Have the most important information above the fold. You can place information that is not as important in the bottom half.

19. The Call to Action!

Sometimes due to budgeting a marketer will make use of a company home page as a landing page. This might bring in some conversions but it is not the best way to convert traffic into sales. Designing a landing page that has a snappy heading, a quick tag line above the call to action will gain attention from your traffic. Taglines such as; register here, send email to a friend, buy now and so forth, will stand in the forefront in your visitor’s eyes. These attention grabbing tags will gain you conversions.

20. Repeat Your Calls to Action

Make sure that your page displays your call to action in enough places. This, of course, depends on your page size. If you decided to have a message below the fold, make sure that the content is flowing properly so that the visitor will know that it continues on below the fold and they must scroll down. An idea would be to have the call to action at the beginning, the middle of the page and near the fold. The message near the fold could read, for example; Wait! Before you leave, make sure you read about this dramatic breakthrough about our awesome product. A message such as this will compel the visitor to read further.

Please continue reading in 25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design, Part 4

Conclusion:

Improve your conversion rate by tweaking your landing page. By doing so, you will convert your traffic by fifty percent. If you do not tweak your page, you will have to increase your advertising budget by 50 percent.

The Bottom Line?

Improve your landing page as much as you can and by doing so you will increase your profit margin. For example; Designer boots sell at $100 a pair and you get a 10% profit margin. So with traffic of 1000 visitors a day and typical 2% conversion, you sell 20 pairs a day and make $200 a day. If you apply these 25 principals, spend some time and money, and tweak your landing page, you can get 3% conversion. Then, with still a 1000 visitors a day, you sell 30 pairs and make $300! And keep on going! Then, you can apply best SEO principals to attract more visitors to the website.

Tweaking and testing your landing page is simple. Take some time to make sure that you do this and watch your profit climb.

Part 3 | 25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design

It is important to get conversions for your business. This is the goal of all online businesses. It is important that you convince your visitors to take action. These actions can be any of the following;

-       Registering for your newsletter

-       Purchasing your goods or services

Although you might get traffic to your page daily, in order for your marketing strategy to be successful you have to get the conversions. The goals of a good landing page will have to convince the visitor to stay long enough to fill out a form, provide personal details, read and buy your product or service.

25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design

Please also read 25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design, Part 1 and 2

11. Focus on One Product

Focus on one product alone for your landing page. Remember that your potential visitor is looking for a specific thing. Make sure to stay focused on what you are marketing. You will get more conversions this way.

12. Super Simplicity

Do not use the latest in graphic effects. Simplicity rules the roost here. If you have lots of graphics and add-ons such as sound, it will take the page longer to load. Potential visitors will just be turned off instead of taking positive action towards converting to a customer. Simple and direct messages will attract their attention.

13. Build Their Trust

Be credible. Build trust between past and future conversions. Have some real testimonials displayed so that others can view the comments about your past work. Remember not to over do it though. If you have a product that needs to be purchased via a shopping cart, make sure that a graphic is displayed to show the security of the site and transaction. Let them know that their credit card information will not be used elsewhere.

14. Privacy

Have the strongest privacy policy available. Make sure that it is displayed prominently and is easy to understand. A graphic icon is a good way to show that their privacy is protected. Having this graphic and statement about your guarantee in regards to the importance of keeping their personal information secure, close to your calls to action will make them feel safe and secure.

15. Satisfy Your Customers

Offer a trial period for your customers a warranty and a refund. Another way to gain new clients is to offer free consultation. This way there is no risk of them losing money and those who purchase something, offer them a full refund if they are not completely satisfied. This way you are sure to gain conversions because you have decreased their risk of losing cash. Make sure that the policy and warranty is prominent on your page and this way they will be more than happy to take a chance.

Please continue reading in 25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design, Part 4

Conclusion:

Improve your conversion rate by tweaking your landing page. By doing so, you will convert your traffic by fifty percent. If you do not tweak your page, you will have to increase your advertising budget by 50 percent.

The Bottom Line?

Improve your landing page as much as you can and by doing so you will increase your profit margin. For example; Designer boots sell at $100 a pair and you get a 10% profit margin. So with traffic of 1000 visitors a day and typical 2% conversion, you sell 20 pairs a day and make $200 a day. If you apply these 25 principals, spend some time and money, and tweak your landing page, you can get 3% conversion. Then, with still a 1000 visitors a day, you sell 30 pairs and make $300! And keep on going! Then, you can apply best SEO principals to attract more visitors to the website.

Tweaking and testing your landing page is simple. Take some time to make sure that you do this and watch your profit climb.

Part 2 | 25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design

It is important to get conversions for your business. This is the goal of all online businesses. It is important that you convince your visitors to take action. These actions can be any of the following;

-       Registering for your newsletter

-       Purchasing your goods or services

Although you might get traffic to your page daily, in order for your marketing strategy to be successful you have to get the conversions.

The goals of a good landing page will have to convince the visitor to stay long enough to fill out a form, provide personal details, read and buy your product or service.

25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design

Please also read 25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design, Part 1

6. Choose Your Graphics Well

Keep the graphics simple and in co-ordination with the colors of your design. Having too much color can cause confusion and drive traffic away. A color scheme that is one of contrasting hues is a good idea.

7. Perfection Projection

The picture that you use to capture your visitor is the most important thing in a landing page design. You only have a couple of seconds to enthrall the audience and a well-positioned image that relates to your product or service is what will be the thing that your visitor will notice first. Often, the image is the first thing they notice and then your headline and then the rest of the landing page. If you do not have a proper image, then make sure that any creative element ties in what got them to your page in the first place. Continuity in the layout and graphic design of your page with not confuse the visitor, and so there will be less of a chance of them leaving abruptly.

8. Minor Images

Minor images should be also utilized to get your message across. However, make sure that these images are just that, minor ones that support that main element of your page. For example; you are offering writing services, your main focus should be all about the services that you offer and the page should have a lot of text. Graphics such as writing paper and ink can be used in this sample. If you have a page that is rather technical in nature, such as statistics; your page should have some text, but also some graphs and charts to back up your statement.

Graphics such as a color box behind a message that you want visitors to really take notice of, will help it to stand out. An example of this could be the security feature of your page.

9. Prominent and Consistent Messages

Your creativeness should be related throughout the design of the landing page. If your campaign is a PPC ad- when the visitor clicks that ad they should be taken to a landing page that has the same graphic or offer. For example, a person clicks an ad for a washing machine and lands on a page that is for televisions, will only cause them to become confused and leave quickly.

10. Keep It Simple

No overcrowding your landing page. Design a simple, creative landing page that gets your message across to the visitor in the most positive tone. Do not have a navigation bar as this will give them reason to click it and go elsewhere. By keeping it simple and direct in this case will gain you conversions. In other words, less is more.

Please continue reading in 25 Principals for a Successful Landing Page Design, Part 3

Conclusion:

Improve your conversion rate by tweaking your landing page. By doing so, you will convert your traffic by fifty percent. If you do not tweak your page, you will have to increase your advertising budget by 50 percent.

The Bottom Line?

Improve your landing page as much as you can and by doing so you will increase your profit margin. For example; Designer boots sell at $100 a pair and you get a 10% profit margin. So with traffic of 1000 visitors a day and typical 2% conversion, you sell 20 pairs a day and make $200 a day. If you apply these 25 principals, spend some time and money, and tweak your landing page, you can get 3% conversion. Then, with still a 1000 visitors a day, you sell 30 pairs and make $300! And keep on going! Then, you can apply best SEO principals to attract more visitors to the website.

Tweaking and testing your landing page is simple. Take some time to make sure that you do this and watch your profit climb.