The latest Think Visibility conference organized by Dom Hodgson, was held this month at Alea Casino in Leeds. Around 150 practitioners of SEO, social media and affiliate marketing met for a one day powerhouse of a conference. With some big name speakers lined up as well as some big name attendees in the audience, Wordtracker sent Gareth Davies along to gather some of the top takeaways from the event.
Link Building
All Patrick Moogan …
1) Always start link building work with link analysis. Too many people don't think about the type of links they need.
2) Use Twitter to find link prospects. Find out which Twitter followers have websites and reach out to them.
3) Use FriendorFollow.com to find out information about your Twitter followers. Use Qwerly to find out which of them have websites.
4) When you’re looking for link prospects and you find a good site - try clicking 'similar' to get more sites on Google.
5) When looking for link prospects go to Google and search: your keywords inurl:links.
6) It’s a good idea to stick to your brand terms as the link text, if you’re going to get links from universities and charities.
7) New start ups can use Smarta.com Do ‘60 second posts’ to get exposure and a link.
Social Media
8) Keep your Wordpress install up to date. Don’t update within a few hours of the new version coming out, give a few days for any issues to be ironed out but keep up to date. New versions can overcome vulnerabilities in older versions (which could become an issue with Google).
Dave Naylor
9) Use Follower Wonk to search Twitter bios for "keywords."Patrick Moogan
10) Use JournalistTweets.com to find journalists who are on Twitter.Patrick Moogan
11) "Use Competitionhunter.com to get links for a competition."Patrick Moogan
Content Promotion
12) If you’re looking to guest blog, approach the blog owners directly and offer them a choice of article titles. Find out what they want to publish.
Patrick Moogan
13) Put your bio link at the top of your article if you can. Google have given a bit of a hint that the position of a link on a page can affect its value.
Patrick Moogan
Video
14) When promoting online product videos use brand anchor text (rather than keyword rich text) and link back to your product page.
Patrick Moogan
SEO
All Dave Naylor ...
15) Limit links on your homepage to 100 or less if possible to help link juice flow. Don't have 400 links on a page - if you do and you have duplicate content issues, you won’t rank for the long tail.
16) Website and page load time is important.
17) Keep the main page content high up in your source code if you can. Avoid lots of code before the actual page content appears in the source – if necessary move it up.
18) Avoid spammy footer links. Google can look at the bottom of a page and chop that off if they don't like the look of it.
19) People who don't invest in unique content will suffer in the long term.
20) If you read your H2s out to people do they know what you’re talking about? Make sure your H2 tags are descriptive and to the point.
21) Don’t be lazy with title tags. Make sure your title tags contain calls to action that will make people click on them.
22) Having too many external links - can leak link authority.
Conversions
All Stephen Pavlovich ...
23) Conversion rate optimization isn't just about buttons, it is about persuasion. And it can involve making big changes to address why people aren't converting.
24) Conversion rate optimization is about persuading people. You can get ideas for this from techniques used in brainwashing and the letters your gran receives saying she’s won a prize.
25) Ideas for improving conversions come in many forms. Direct mail letters are finely tuned marketing and can be inspiring. Some of the DM letters are more persuasive than what we see online.
26) Testimonials are a great example of social proof. Add a person’s job or title to their testimonial as this can enhance the credibility.
27) If someone is not converting on your website you need to think how you can persuade them. How can you overcome their objections?
28) Evoking people's competitive streak can help with conversions. One example of this is when people try and outbid each other on Ebay. Sometimes they can end up paying more for a product by bidding on Ebay than they could buy it for on Amazon.
29) Scarcity can help sell. Zappos use the principle of scarcity and people's competitiveness by putting information like "only 3 left in stock" for the shoes they sell. You could take this further and say that other people have the same product in their basket too.
30) Apply the principle of competitiveness online. Often people are making emotional decisions when they shop and so we need to focus on the irrational and rational.
31) Social proof can help convert. Reviews can work along these lines and they combine the rational and irrational side of persuasion.
32) Apple is a good example of using cult psychology. People who use Apple products feel part of the Mac community. There is a retention strategy through using identity and community. There's a bigger cause than just buying a product.
33) Find out why people came to the site, what they were hoping to achieve. Use KISS insights to find this out.
34) Look at the keywords that are referring people - use this as a guide to create future content.
35) A great question to ask users to help improve your conversion rate is simply saying: "We'd love to hear about what you thought about our website - What one thing could be changed?"
36) Conversion rate as a metric is most useful when its comparing like for like traffic data because it can be greatly influenced by the quality of the traffic.
37) Free downloads can help with conversions, but if you’re doing free downloads don't skimp on it - do it well. They need to look like a supplement from Which magazine.
38) Good places to start optimizing are the website header and the shopping cart as it's at the end of the sales funnel. To start with be prepared to make chunkier changes that may be site wide.
39) If a visitor has entered their email address on your website but doesn't complete shopping process you can send an email to say you noticed they didn't complete their purchase and ask why they didn't complete their purchase.
40) Be cautious about using vouchers to improve conversion rate. If people learn to expect a discount code it can create procrastination during the checkout process.
41) Test Live Chat. If you are in an industry where a prospective customer is making a complex purchase decision Live Chat can work well to help the sales process as it can reassure people and overcome objections. It can also be implemented relatively cheaply."
Email Marketing
42) Email marketing is one of the most under-valued tools.
Stephen Pavlovich
43) Improve email sign ups by getting web users to sign up after they have checked out. Get them to sign up for the mailing list on the confirmation page... and also capture feedback.
Stephen Pavlovich
Outsourcing
All
Paul Madden ...
44) By outsourcing I managed to get two extra days off a week and travel a lot.
45) Upwork is a great tool when outsourcing work to freelancers. Sign up as buyer, post your job, get applications, interview and you can literally watch them work via a screen recording facility.
46) When picking staff to outsource to, choose freelancers affiliated with a bigger provider. You can then deal with a manager and the manager then gives jobs to appropriate staff.
47) Hiring solo freelance developers can be good, but its more risky than hiring a provider that has a team.
48) Get the freelance workers or providers to sign an NDA. It is not worth the paper it’s written on but it gets the person to think about respecting disclosure.
49) With new outsourced staff, get them to do some simple tasks first and see how they get on. Be sure to set hourly limits.
50) Use a project management tool like Basecamp and insist the outsourced staff use Basecamp to communicate."
51) When giving a task try and make it nearly impossible to get wrong and break every task into simple functions.
52) You can live an outsourced life, but it’s not as simple as you think. Also you can lose some of your ambition and drive in the process, so you need something to replace it with.
53) The quality of your work will likely suffer if you purely outsource everything.
54) Never be afraid of trying somebody, and if they are not good enough, dropping them.
Domains
All Gary Taylor ...
55) For buying domains Sedo is the biggest firm with 16-18m domain names. However Acorn Domains is also good for domainers and is well worthwhile if you’re new to domains, as you can get to speak to some experienced people.
56) You have to be realistic about buying established domains because you’re going to have to stump up four figures if you want something decent.
57) Exact match domains can be worth their weight in gold. They give you an edge and can give you type-in traffic.
58) I don't think the exact match domain bubble will burst. Personally I think they'll hold weight for a long time to come.
59) Buying an established domain and site can help leap frog a lot of the issues you face with launching a brand new domain and site.
60) If you're thinking of buying a domain do your research and make sure the domain has been treated well.
