Jeff's Online Marketing Thoughts

It's All About Relevance

Content in your site needs to be relevant, content in your ads as well. Now there is more proof that the links coming into your site need to be relevant. Internet Retailer had an article about how Google changed the way they measured inbound links, and more importantly the effect it had. For some it was as negative as you can imagine, getting pushed down where it will take 6 months to regain their ranking, if ever. Those that were hit the hardest are those that acquired links in mass volumes, usually not looking at their quality. Those that are the safest are those that acquire links slowly over time. Links have become a new spam, as always people find ways to get around the system, but sooner or later, those that are relevant (there's that damn word again) are those that will win.

Importance Of Contact Options (1st in a Series)

I apologize that posting has been light lately, life gets hectic at times but it is finally returning to normal for me. I've been thinking about topics a lot lately and have had different requests from customers and readers on what they would like to see. This is the first post in a series based on those requests, The Top 10 Features Every Web Site Needs and Why.

#1 - A Way For Customers To Contact You

I see a number of companies develop Web sites as a way to automate taking orders and simplify the process of dealing with customers. After all, a Web site can handle hundreds, even thousands of requests at the same time, a person can only handle one at a time. You should have 3 things on your site for your customers to contact you:

1. Email Address for Customer Service - If someone has a question, allow them to contact you via a simple method. Everyone is comfortable with Email. The only thing you need to make sure is that you have a system in place to ensure you reply to all customers within 24 hours. If you take longer they will not wait any longer and go find your competition.
2. Phone Number - Nothing beats an 800 number to show that you still care and will talk to customers. Many people are not comfortable giving their email address out, or waiting for an answer. Allowing them to call, and not wait on hold for very long, goes a long way to show you value their business. It also says something about the legitimacy of your business. Potential clients are more likely to do business with you if they feel comfortable with you and don't think your business is a couple guys working out of their garage or basement.
3. Contact Us Form - This is more for comments or any type of feedback. Welcome ideas on how to improve your site, products, service, etc. People today have opinions and love to share their opinions with anyone that will listen. One great way to create loyal customers is to take the feedback that you are given, act on it, and then thank the people that give you that feedback that helped your business.

Yahoo Panama Increases the Need To Be Relevant

As many have heard, Yahoo's new paid search service, code named Panama, was released last week. For the most part things have gone well with it as customers have been transitioning over. The thing to realize is that all 3 major search providers, Google, Yahoo and MSN, all base their paid search results to some degree on relevancy. Gone are the days of just outbidding someone for a popular term to drive traffic. Your site content has to be relevant to the keyword. That also helps your site from an SEO perspective as well. Search is moving more and more towards end user focused, everything is continually being refined to more specific and targeted content that the end user is searching for. The moral of the story, you need to have good content on your site, no matter what your method of bringing them in the first place.