Web Words That Work
Snapshot
Recently, I was “pre-briefing” a friend before his meeting with a web consultant on making his new website visible on the Internet. My buddy has a killer new online business idea, drawing on his ten plus years in his industry. He had an award winning design team put together a great site, and he shares an online ordering and product fulfillment system with an allied company with a similar but non-competitive product. The big questions seem to be solved for him, and the market research looks great. So what was he so worried about?
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Complete article
Recently, I was “pre-briefing” a friend before his meeting with a web consultant on making his new website visible on the Internet. My buddy has a killer new online business idea, drawing on his ten plus years in his industry. He had an award winning design team put together a great site, and he shares an online ordering and product fulfillment system with an allied company with a similar but non-competitive product. The big questions seem to be solved for him, and the market research looks great. So what was he so worried about?Simple. He was about to hand his web future over to a marketing consultant who spoke a foreign language. No, I don't mean he chose a web marketer from Taiwan, I mean he was about to walk into a meeting with a consultant who used words like “web optimization” and “meta tag” every three sentences or so. My friend was befuddled, a little intimidated, and frankly, a little scared that this cyber-expert might not know what his future customers really wanted when it came to finding his site on the web.
My friend had reason to be concerned. Often web stars really do think in their own language, and assign “tags and key words” to your website that may not be relevant to your future customers. These experts may think like one of the big five search engines, but they need to learn to think like the biggest search engine of them all when it comes to your business: your typical customer.
How do you assure that your site is tagged with the keywords that your real customers would use? Try these four simple ideas as a quick quiz of your web consultant. If they finish “optimizing” your site and can say they’ve also done these four things, then you’re speaking the same language.
That Thing You Do
Remember that many of your future customers will be searching for your company name, but they’ll be doing it incorrectly. A friend gave your name to them and it was garbled, they saw it on a banner ad that they can’t call up, they heard it on the tail end of a radio spot, whatever. Make sure that your site is key worded so that every possible incorrect, partial, or misspelled version of your company name is keyed to you. You might do the same for incorrect spellings or descriptions of your industry or specific service.
A War of Words
Make sure your web designer understands that when it comes to the battle for attention on the Internet, it is not just a battle between web sites, but between web pages. This is how search engines look at the web world; not by sites, but by pages. That means that your designer needs to invest equal amounts of attention in designing and placing keywords in every crucial page of your site. Make sure he or she shows you each and every set and explains their rationale for each. If you begin to see slates of the same keywords for widely different pages of your site, you’ll know your designer is skating on the details. Details that will cost you visitors.
Be the Ball
Ask your designer how much he or she really “thinks” like one of your customers, right down to the words your prospects would use to find you. Your web guru might think keywords like “allergy conscious baked goods” describe your product, while your prospects are typing the words “gluten free chocolate pies” and passing right by you, straight to your competitor who’s speaking their language.
Read Their Mail
Finally, if you’re at a loss as to what key words might be crucial for your website’s back story, do this: see what keywords your competitors are using. Especially if they’re blowing your doors off on the Internet. It’s a perfectly legal and sensible thing to do. Go to their websites, click on View at your browser toolbar, and then click Source. You’ll usually immediately see keywords listed near the top of the page. Nice.
Joe Pursch
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