Search Engine Optimization – SEO for short, is the art of creating web pages so that the search engines will find them attractive for a particular keyword or phrase, preferably a word or phrase that is central to your business.

SEO is extremely important because it directly affects the likelihood of a potential customer finding your website when they go to the search engines to look for something; be that information, goods or services. And here’s the clinch – the better optimized your site is for a keyword or phrase, the more likely it is that it will be found when someone is searching for that term.

Since Google is by far the most important search engine in the world, I am going to talk about SEO in relation to Google, but rest assured, SEO works pretty much the same in all search engines.

As a business owner looking to get potential customers to your website, there are three main kinds of traffic you can get through Google.

1. Organic Traffic, i.e. free traffic, which are the results that show in the main area of the search page after a search term is entered in Google.
2. Paid search traffic, which are listings that look like little advertisements, these are usually on the right hand side of the page (and sometimes at the top of the page highlighted in yellow). And finally
3. Content Network Traffic, which is ads that Google places on websites that have an agreement with Google to run their ads on their website.

If you have been online at all, you will have seen all of these traffic sources, and if you have a website or are an online advertiser, your capacity to appear in these results is directly influenced by the SEO of your website.

With organic traffic the Search Engine Optimization relationship is definitive. By that I mean 100% of the likelihood of your web page being shown in response to a search is based on the SEO score Google gives your site in relation to the search term that the user has put into the search engine.

So how does Google come up with an SEO score for your website? NOBODY KNOWS EXACTLY (except the good folk at Google) and the way they configure their search ranking algorithm is regularly changed. Google does this so that people cannot manipulate their websites to obtain better search engine rankings.

However, this being acknowledged, there are a number of known factors that certainly influence the SEO ranking Google gives a site. At the broadest level there are two factors that Google considers, ‘on site’ and ‘off site’ SEO.

On site factors relate directly to the content on your site. In a nutshell Google looks at elements on your site like the page title, headings, content, meta tags, url, navigation elements and the like to quantify what your site is about.

In some niche markets where the players in the market are unsophisticated in their knowledge of the internet, it’s actually possible to get a page 1 ranking in organic search results for niche keyword phrases just by doing a good job of optimizing your ‘onsite’ SEO elements, and I have achieved that for many of my clients.

‘Off site’ factors relate to links to your website from other websites. Basically links to your website are regarded as a ‘vote’ for the quality of your site, and the more votes you get, the higher Google assumes your relevancy is for whatever topic your site is about.

Not all votes are considered equal however. If a site that Google ‘likes’ (ranks highly) links to your site, that link has greater value than the link from a site that Google give a lesser importance too.

Relatively speaking, off site SEO factors have more weight than onsite factors, however it is unlikely that you will achieve a No 1 ranking on Google for anything without having well optimized onsite factors. To be an authority site for any particular topic you really need both ‘onsite’ and ‘offsite’ factors working for you.

Now I’d like to relate all this back to web design for a moment and let you know that even though you would naturally assume that all web designers should or would understand search engine optimization, most of them don’t. How come? Because most of them are graphic designers, and their area of expertise is in making things look nice, not SEO or how to plan and build a website to maximize sales.

This is a big trap for business owners when they engage someone to help build their website. Most assume that something as important as this would be looked after for them by the web designer and in most cases it isn’t. This oversight can be devastating because, as far as I’m concerned, a websites most important function is selling, so it’s extremely important to your potential online success that your web site is built by someone that knows and understand SEO, because if they don’t, the future success of your website is jeapordised.

Inadequate SEO means that from day one there is a ‘glass ceiling’ restricting how successful your business can be online, (specifically, inadequate SEO architecture) and if you ever want to burst through it, you will most likely need to rebuild your website all over again. What a waste of time and money!

So do yourself a favour and heed the wisdom of this very old saying, “if you’re going to do something, do it right the first time”! As far as building websites goes, that means getting your on site SEO right, right from the start. Your then ‘building on the rock’, and your website will only improve in the search rankings as it ages.

Til next Time

I wish you every success in Business

David Mollet

What’s the difference between a good looking sales person and a good looking website?

Nothing really, because looks count for little when a customers is deciding whether or not they’ll buy from you. Marketing isn’t a beauty contest, it’s a contest to win the hearts and minds of customers.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying a good looking website isn’t important, because it is. After all, good looking people find it easy to get people’s attention and a good looking websites the same; it can buy you a few seconds of interest, but after that if the message on your page doesn’t grab them, if it doesn’t offer something interesting, intelligent or meaningful, people loose interest fast… after all, the promise of finding exactly what they’re looking for somewhere else could be just 1 click away…

So here’s a big mistake I commonly see made.

Businesses getting carried away with flash animations on their website.

For those who don’t know what flash is, it’s a programming language used to make moving picture animations. Some people build their entire website in flash because they think it looks impressive.

This is a big mistake for a number of reasons, one being that search engines relate to websites via text, not images. Flash websites are a liability in search engines

I’d back myself to build an simple 1 page website that would out perform any flash website any day, and by outperform I mean out rank them (in the search engines) and out sell them in a direct mine v’s theirs split test!

Why? Two reasons:

1.    Because when it comes to online sales, substance beats looks every time. Nothing outsells a well crafted sales message.
2.    The money you save on the flash design costs can be spent on traffic generation strategies that get hot prospects in front of your well crafted sales message.

So just what makes a website sell?

Your message! The benefits of what you do and what those benefits mean to people and their life.

Let’s take a simple example, cheap prices and the money you’ll save.

A lot of consumer products are sold online because people are buying “the lowest price.” As consumer products are standardized, people can easily compare apples to apples, same brand, same model, same same, so why pay more? In that case the cheap price is the message, the issue of substance, “the” thing they are looking for, the thing that gets the sale.

But cheap price isn’t always what people buy online.

If you sell any complex product or service, price has far less influence because people are buying the ‘perceived value’ of what you are selling. Sure, price will be a part of that, but not always because it’s low! In lots of cases people pay more because they associate a higher price with a higher value, better quality, greater luxury, better results, etc etc.

Premium brands, luxury motor cars, Apple Macs, 5 star hotels and the like are all testament to this.

So what’s the take away here for you and your business?

If you are a business owner looking at building a website that will help you make sales, beware the trap of stylish looking web designer who will seduce you to build a good looking, expensive flash based website.

Unless the accompanying sales message has been expertly crafted, It won’t sell and it will just cost you a lot of money better spent later on getting traffic to your site.

In general, if you are selling any type of complex product or service, your business is going to sell much more if you can demonstrate and explain to prospects on your website
•    what it is that distinguishes your product/business from the herd,
•    why you are better and why that quality is important to them and their life
•    why they should buying from you instead of your competitors.

Also, don’t forget that in the online world, words are important because search engines relate to web pages through words, not images.

Now you know this you won’t fall into the trap of thinking that a good looking design is what makes a good website, and you can avoid becoming the casualty of some trendy web designer who knows nothing about how to really help your business get sales online.

Till next time
I wish you every success in business
David Mollet

Unless you’ve been stuck in a coma for a decade, you’re probably aware that newspapers are finding it much harder to make ends meet, and its not surprising really, they’ve had to face a lot of changes.

You see, in the dark ages before the internet, newspapers pretty much had a monopoly on news, classified advertising, and the majority of display advertising too.

Not anymore!

Advertising revenues have been decreasing over the past decade as online advertising alternatives, cheaper and easier to use, have won favour with the people that count; people searching for information.

These days more and more people are finding the information they require online, where it’s available 24 hours a day, and where search engines make it easier for them to find the exact information they need (rather than scanning classified ad columns).

The same can be said for the yellow pages.

Who pulls out a dusty bulky phone directory anymore when the information they need is probably only a few keystrokes away from their desk by simply ‘Googling it’ (there’s the culprit, it was Google who done it).

While this trend has hurt newspaper moguls and “Big Businesses,” which benefited from high advertising costs that effectively kept ‘little guys’ out of the market, the Internet has changed everything…

It has never been easier to win market share from the big boys because the internet makes it much easier for small and medium sized businesses to compete.

And even better, some of the big companies have been slow to react to the change and its challenges, because they have established relationships with ‘old school’ advertisers who have been slow to react to the emerging market and changing circumstances.

This all ads up to BIG opportunities for small business, BUT only if you understand how to use the internet to your advantage.

Getting yourself a website that sells is the starting point because your website needs to cut through the millions of other sites that are vying for people’s attention.

Believe it or not, there are still very few web savvy operators in many markets, which means there is a wealth of opportunity for almost any business that understands how to use the internet to its advantage.

At Click campaigns we are at the cutting edge of internet marketing and can help almost any business profit online. And compared to the costs of doing business yesteryear, it’s CHEAP!

So do yourself a favour, if you haven’t as yet read our report “The Shocking Truth: Why Most Websites Fail to Sell and The 10 Critical Must Haves for a Web Design That Sells”, read it now!

Then start implementing what’s in the report, or better still, allow us to implement it for you. We’ll probably do a better job, and you’ll get on the front foot and start winning your share of the business that’s waiting for you online.

Till next time.
I wish you every success in business
David Mollet

Want to know a fate worse than death…cold calling for a living!

How’s this for a picture of hell. You stuck in a phone room being forced to make unsolicited phone calls to people who don’t care about you or your business – for eternity!

Sounds bad doesn’t it, and yet that is some peoples lives every day.

If you’d prefer to never make a cold call again and still have plenty of business, you should read the rest of this article…

If you ask me, one of the worst things the internet has done is lower call costs so that some dull, last century business executive can afford to herd a bunch of unfortunate people in developing economies into a phone room so he can ‘churn the numbers’.

I don’t know about you, but I hate getting unsolicited phone calls (and door knocks) and I never buy from them.

If your only weapon in business is a telephone and your ability to withstand rejection, you’re part of a dying breed, and as the world moves on you’ll be left further and further behind.

In today’s connected world, sales people are being replaced with websites and media. If you doubt this, imagine that you were a door to door salesman selling books in today’s world. How would you ever compete with Amazon or any other half decent online book store.

Impossible. You’d starve to death. And you couldn’t possibly provide your customers with an equivalent service or selection.

But here’s the TRUTH: If you carve out a niche for yourself and you use automated tools like a website and email auto-responders, you can increase the efficiency of your business and you can compete.

And you won’t antagonize your customers in the process…

So Listen Up: You must build a website that sells for your business and use modern communication tools shrewdly.

Most companies don’t. Most websites aren’t built to sell; they’re just thrown together because people have some vague notion that they need one. And most important of all, most companies wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how to write effective sales copy that gets the phone to ring (and ’s why they think websites aren’t worth spending time and money on).

Here’s The Good News: Their ignorance is your opportunity…

If you build a website that sells, the chances are you’ll own one of a few elite marketing machines in your industry. And even better, because of the way search engines work (i.e. they identify and reward authority sites with more traffic) this machine will allow you to out perform your competitors for years to come.

And by the time they wake up and realise they need to change what they are doing to match you, you’ll be light years ahead and they may
never catch up.

Let ‘em eat your dust. Get a website that sells…

You can download a free report that provides invaluable information about how to build a website that sells, and how to avoid the pitfalls of web design from this website.

I wish you every success in business.

David Mollet

I recently got a call from one of my clients, she was really excited, wanted to tell me that ‘A Current Affair’ had just called her and they wanted to do a feature story on her cooking school.

Now for anyone outside Australia who doesn’t know what ‘A Current Affair’ is, it’s a prime time 7.00pm weeknight news magazine program that is so successful it has been running here for at least 25 years.

Guess what happens if your business appears on this show like this. You get an immediate and huge spike in sales! So just how did she attract such great free online publicity?

“I wanted to ring and thank you David because they found my website on line and were so impressed, they ask to do a story on me.”

Wow, what a boom! Prime time national television coverage on one of the big networks for free, with them asking you, not the other way around. No press release, no cold calling, no chasing a story, nothing!

So what made the TV news people so interested?

I’ll give you the address of my clients’ web page so you can see for yourself. But before you visit it, there’s a few things I’d like you to notice:

1.    The page has a killer headline, one that captures peoples imagination and makes them see benefits for themselves and their life in the product
2.    The copy has great “angles”. It paints pictures in the readers mind of strong and meaningful benefits they’ll get from her product and why those things will be valuable to them.
3.    The copy is fun and motivating, cheeky and interesting … its not your run of the mill web page guff.
4.    I had a traffic acquisition strategy in place that ended up netting the producers when they were looking for stories.

All of these points and more are covered in my free report “The Shocking Truth: Why Most Websites Fail to Sell and The 10 Critical Must Haves for a Web Design That Sells”.

So check out my client’s cooking school and see what got ‘A Current Affair’ so interested. By the way, this page sells a lot of cooking school courses every week, and chances are I can make one just like it for you and help you make a lot of money online too.

Till next time
I wish you every success in business
David Mollet

It’s conventional wisdom in today’s highly connected world that your business must have a website to succeed’! But is that really true?

The short answer is ‘only if it helps you get sales’.

I’ve consulted with hundreds of businesses about web design,and in all those consulting meetings I’ve never met a business owner who didn’t want their website to get them sales.

So why then don’t all websites sell? Why do so many of them sit on the internet gathering little more than cyber dust, with hardly anyone ever visiting them, and even less buying from them?

The answer is simple, it’s because most web designers know nothing about marketing and selling, so they have no idea about how to build you a web design that sells!

You can’t be serious, (I heard someone say) how can this be true?

Despite the fact that this sounds absolutely preposterous,the truth is most people in the web design industry are graphic designers. So what is the expertise of a graphic designer? It’s NOT in selling, it’s in making things look nice…

I was recently employed to helped a client who’s story proves this beyond all doubt, because her naive website, built by some fancy design house that knew nothing about how to design a  website that sells, built her a website that nearly cost her the business.

You need to be aware of the classic mistake she made and learn how to avoid making the same mistake, because it could just save your business.

Catherine ran a wedding gift registry and a good business it is too, because so many of her sales come through direct referrals. Her website didn’t really matter much when she started because her prospects were ‘warm’, they had been told by a trusted friend or family member to call, so all she needed to do was turn up and 9 times out of 10 she got the job.

Catherine worked hard, she was super enthusiastic and fantastic with people, I swear if you met her through a referral, it was a ‘no brainer’, she’d win your business.

Anyway, after a few years of hard work, she was ready to expand her business.  So she began spending a significant amount of money on advertising and that’s when things started to come unstuck. I met her just after the slide had started…

She told me she’d just spent 30,000 on advertising, including $10,000 gearing up for a big Trade Show, as well as hiring two new staff members, who were both on full time wages. Her outgoings had ‘gone through the roof’, her savings were rapidly disappearing and something really bad was happening in the business.

NOTHING!

Her new marketing strategies were failing! And she didn’t know why?

Some customer surveys she’d had done by a market research firm suggested that she needed to improve her website, and that’s why she’d called me. It didn’t take me long to isolate her problem.

The big mistake Catherine had made was to underestimate how important her website was inside the context of her more aggressive marketing.

She’d gone from being a trusted referral to a hunter in a competitive market. This is a totally different sales context to dealing with warm prospects from a referral. Warm customers forgave the failings of her website because they already knew she could deliver because a trusted friend had told them she was great.

Cold clients didn’t know that.
They were skeptical!
They doubted her ability!
They needed proof before they were going to be comfortable enough to proceed…
And they didn’t get it from her website!

In fact any red hot leads her advertising was exposed to went to her website and promptly crossed her off their list. You see, her website was so poor it was a negative to a cold client; it actually raised objections in peoples minds…

Big, bad, costly, mistake because…

By the time she got back to them, they’d checked her out online, gone stone cold and in many cases had already signed up with one of her competitors, who had better websites.

Now if she’d  had had a ‘website that sells’, Catherine could easily have gotten a ten to twenty fold return on her $10,000 convention costs alone. I saw the list she had of people she’d met at the convention, there was no shortage of leads, in fact there were so many, she would have been able to set up her sales funnel for the entire year!

And the greatest tragedy of all is that she is really good at what she does, she has a unique story to tell, and could have had a website that literally kicked the butts of her competitors.

So what’s the learning here? Well there are few things:
1.    If your business is at the point where your spending money on advertising you’d better have a website that sells, otherwise you’ll loosing money through missed sales and lost opportunities.
2.    When people hit your site you only have one chance to turn them into a customer before they either buy from you, become a genuine prospect or go somewhere else. It really is that cut throat and that simple.
3.    Websites are only important if they help you make sales and if they’re not making you sales, the chances are they’re losing you sales. Realise that bad websites actually qualify out potential buyers before they call you!

If your reading this article, chances are you have already got my free report “The Shocking Truth: Why Most Websites Fail to Sell and The 10 Critical Must Haves for a Web Design That Sells”.

If you haven’t downloaded or read that report, I encourage you to take the time to get it/read it now. It will dispel a lot of myths about web design and give you vital knowledge you need to be able to tell a website that sells from a website that doesn’t.

In the next few days I’ll post a different story, a happy one about someone who started business with a website that sells, and you’ll see the awesome difference that can make to your business.

Till then I wish you every success in business.

David Mollet