Webify Your Business Archives

Killer Sales Copy

Friday, September 2nd, 2011 at 6:36 am  
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You didn’t come here to learn about basket weaving…

The reason for putting your business online is to sell stuff, right? Read on to find out how to create killer sales copy. It’s a step-by-step process that–if followed carefully–will bring you results. Each step has a sole purpose: To get your readers to read the content in the next step!

Step 0 (optional but highly effective): Write a killer “super headline.” Often called a “subheadline,” it appears above your headline in a contrasting color, smaller font size. It may allude to a painful aspect of the problem you are going to solve for your readers.

Step 1: Get their attention with a killer headline. Say something shocking, provocative, or amazing. Reference a statistic that will blow their minds. Make it bold. Giant red font enclosed in quotes is a proven winner. Remember, the headline’s purpose is to get the reader to read the next step!

Step 2: Identify the problem. In fact, don’t just identify it–exploit it. Tell the reader just how bad the problem is. Put it in their terms. “You feel neglected, unsatisfied, downright sad.” Really drive home the point that this problem really REALLY SUCKS. Focus on the pain they may be experiencing.

Step 3: Tell them that you know how to solve their problem. If it solved the problem for you, that’s even better. You’re a trusted friend (that’s what we’ve been working towards in this whole Webify sequence) and they will take what you say worked for you as gospel at this point. Drive it home. Make sure they know that you can solve their problem. Talk in terms of benefits not features.

Step 4: Of course, you aren’t the only one with the solution. Odds are, there are dozens of other solutions out there. You have to distance your solution from the rest. Tell your reader why your product or service is better than the rest. You may focus on quality or price or a myriad of different reasons. But your solution is better, why?

Step 5: Continuing on with the theme of Step 4, it’s time to build value and establish firmly why your solution is the best. Describe in no uncertain terms how your product differs from the other ones on the market. Tell them why yours is a bargain at any price. Offer a guarantee. Build even more value through bonuses that will enhance the main product’s value.

Step 6: Provide proof that your solution works. Social proof is best. This means that you let past satisfied customers do the convincing for you. Include testimonials. They are immensely powerful. In fact, this step is becoming so important that there is a trend right now for putting it right after Step 1.

Step 7: Write up a compelling “call to action.” Ask for the sale! It’s really that simple. Just come on out and say it. “Buy Now!” works. You have built them up on the idea that you can solve their problem. So now tell them what to do next!

Step 8: Give it to them! Put that Buy button smack dab in the middle of the page. If you did the previous steps well, this is the easy part. They got out their credit cards when you told them you knew how to solve their problem. Most people read the rest of the salesletter looking for a reason to put that card back in their wallet or purse. No joke.

Step 9: Include a PS. The postscript should contain words that trigger strong emotions. Talk about urgency, timing, how the price may rise when you figure out that you’re simply offering this for too low of a price. Ask for the sale again. Put that big button down one more time!

If you follow these steps and execute them well, you will find that selling online isn’t any harder than writing a blog post. You now have a plan. Go out and do it.

 

Keyword Selection Made (Somewhat) Easy

Thursday, February 17th, 2011 at 10:24 am  
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Following up on the last post, Basic Keyword Structure, today I am going to show you how to make your keyword selections.

Keyword Selection Made (Somewhat) Easy

Let's say your chosen niche is dog training. What do you think your main, or Tier 1, keyword ought to be? That's right–dog training!

Odds are, however, that it will take you until the end of time to rank on the first page of Google for that term. However, there are many keyword variations on "dog training" that you can rank for. Today, I will show you how to find them.

Remember, the basic premise of my web philosophy is that content is King. This isn't about micro niches, either (more on that in a subsequent post). Rather, what we are talking about here is building out an authority site that serves to provide your visitors and customers with loads of content they crave.

Here's a really simple (and I mean really simple) way to get all the keywords you could EVER want.

Each of the keywords we find in the following exercise will be a future post or page for our site. They are long-tail keywords, too, so they will rank quite easily with enough backlinking juice.

So, here goes. Fire up Google's "External Keyword Tool," found here — http://u-like.us/keyword (a new window or tab should open up).

dog training google keyword tool

Type "dog training" (without the quotes) in the Word or Phrase box, check the box "Only show ideas closely related to my search terms," and click the Search button.

Your results will be the top-searched keywords that contain the term, dog training. I suggest you click on the Download button and save these results as a CSV file that you can open in a spreadsheet program later.

Any of these keywords could be your Tier 2 keywords. Pick 4 or 5 of these that make sense for your website.

Finding Tier 3 Keywords

Now, here's the cool part. Un-check the "Only show ideas closely related to my search terms" and run the search again. Note that the results are different. These are the LSI keywords we talked about in Basic Keyword Structure. Save those results, too.

Now you have 200 keywords that you can use to write posts or pages.

Finally, here's a bonus keyword tool that is not widely popular, and I have no idea why. It's called the Wonder Wheel and here's how you find it.

Open a new browser window or tab and navigate to Google. Do a search using "dog training" (without the quotes). Now, on the left-hand side of the results, you should see a menu bar with an "All Results" listing. Underneath that, there is the Wonder Wheel. It looks like this:

Google Wonder Wheel

Click it and you will arrive at a page that looks like this:

Google Dog Training Wonder Wheel Results

Now, this is cool! Click on any of those terms and the Wonder wheel spawns all sorts of keywords directly related to the term!

You will never run out of things to write about again (or to send to your outsource partner) and you should easily be able to rank quite well and quite quickly for them.

Basic Keyword Structure

Thursday, February 17th, 2011 at 6:57 am  
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Basic Keyword StructureA while back, in Keywords Introduction, we talked about choosing keywords for your website. This post is a reiteration, or reinforcement, of that conversation, with a little more depth to the discussion. Here we will talk about basic keyword structure.

In an ideal world, you would begin your website with a clean slate. In fact, you would start with a blank sheet of paper and before you did anything with your website, you'd plan out your entire strategy for building out your website.

The most important part of your plan is your keywords. That is far more important than your website look and feel, your offpage SEO, and your social marketing.
 

Content Is King

We have all heard this one before: Content is king. Google loves content and rewards websites that offer loads of content to its users. Essentially, if you make it easy for Google to love your site, it will. Give the Google what it wants (content) and you're golden.

Where does all this content come from? You write it (or have it written for you, via outsourcing)! But where to start?

That's where the planning and preparation comes in from above. You have to choose your keywords and keyword phrases (KW and KWP, respectively).

Even if you are not starting from scratch, you can follow this plan!

Basic Keyword Structure

Here's the way I suggest you plan out your keyword strategy.

Pick a KW or KWP that makes sense for your industry or niche. If you sell plumbing, your website's main KW ought to be "plumbing." Makes sense, right?

Then think in tiers.

Tier 1 Keyword is your main keyword. It is, after you have built up dozens or hundreds of pages, the keyword you want to rank #1 for at Google. To get there for very competitive keywords like "plumber," you will have to write loads of content, get hundreds if not thousands of backlinks, and promote your site all over the place (far beyond the scope of this post).

But, with diligence, you can get there in most cases.

However, in the interim, you have Tier 2 and Tier 3 keywords you can target right away. These are "long-tail keywords" that are highly related to your Tier 1 keyword.

They are also known as Latent Semantic Indexing keywords, or LSI keywords. You can read more about LSI here (Wikipedia) and here (Exactly What Are LSI Keywords Anyway?) The first, by the way, is the "scientific" explanation; the second is one mere mortals can understand–I'd go with the second one

Using our example of "plumber" your Tier 2 keyword may be "Pleasanton plumber" and your Tier 3 keyword may be "Plumbers serving Pleasanton".

Essentially, your Tier 3 keyword links back to your Tier 2 keyword, which links back to your Tier 1 keyword. Or, put another way,

"All roads lead back to your Tier 1 keyword."

Keyword Plan

Start with the Tier 1 page. Write one page of content where you focus solely on the Tier 1 keyword. That is your home page. Then build 4-5 Tier 2 keyword pages, all linking back to your Tier 1 page. These could be buttons on your home page or categories if your site is based on WordPress.

Finally, begin writing all of your longtail keyword pages. Link each one back to a single Tier 2 page.

You cannot do it all at once. Start with 1 or 2 long-tail keywords (Tier 3) for each Tier 2 page. Each time you publish one of these Tier 3 pages, promote it.

How? There are various strategies, like content syndication, tweeting about them, mentioning them on your Facebook profile page and/or fanpage, or by doing some blog commenting for backlinks. See Two Dozen Ways to Get Backlinks and How To Get Dozens of High Quality Backlinks From a Single Blog Post for more ideas.

In any event, you want to send some backlinks to these Tier 3 pages. These are the easiest keywords and pages to rank for and this is where you should start your web promotion efforts.

Conclusion

Obviously, choosing the right keywords to target in your own website is of paramount importance. I have given you plenty of food for thought in this regard, along with some concrete examples and action plans.

Webify Business Club of the Tri-Valley Chapter 7 Target Market

Monday, November 8th, 2010 at 3:24 pm  
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Here's my mind map of Chapter Seven's "Target Market" topic in Webify Your Business.

Webify Your Business Chapter 7 Target Market

November 12 Webify Your Business

Webify Business Club of the Tri-Valley Chapter 6 Elevator Pitch

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010 at 1:34 pm  
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Here's my "graphical depiction" of what we will be covering in Chapter 6 of Webify Your Business. Here, we cover the elevator pitch.

Webify Your Business Chapter 6 Elevator Pitch

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