Build Superior Landing Pages

Imagine running a huge online marketing campaign for your site, complete with all the blog buzz, advertisements and search engine placements. You're expecting tons of traffic to hit your site, you think the job's done, well sadly, not quite. One very important factor many fail to spend time working on - Build superior landing pages. Definitely a very important tool when it comes down to any marketing campaign, if you ask me.

Landing Pages are basically the web page where the visitor reaches, after clicking on a link or promotional ad. Its a page where detailed information about a specific product or service that was mentioned in that link is displayed. At the end of the day, no amount of hardwork put into your marketing campaign will be worth much if there's no conversion! So, create that superior landing page and you're on your way to a very successful site.

Imagine this, your site now gets around 10,000 page views a month and you think, wow, that's a lot of traffic. But remember, that does not promise success, because you could lose all that traffic in matter of weeks if you don't have an equal balance of conversion ratio at your landing page. What do we mean by conversion - Once these visitors reach your landing page, naturally you need them to do something or rather, (like maybe, buy your product, subscribing to your weekly newsletter etc). Once the visitors carry out the desired action similar to this, you've then had, what we call, a conversion. And this ladies and gentlemen, is the sole purpose of having a good landing page. Learning how to optimize the page, is another trick in itself.

Before you begin developing your landing page, consider its real purpose. What do you hope your visitors would do when they reach there? Here are 11 pointers which should help you improve your landing pages :

1. Consider it's main purpose.
   
2. What is your goal? Do you want to sell a product, help people learn about a particular service, do want them to provide you feedback?
3. Content is a vital part of a landing page. Know what to include in, and what not to.
4. Provide detailed information about the said product or service, something which is relevant and focused.
5. Avoid linking to other areas of your site, as you want them to convert on that one page, and not wandering off to other parts off your site whilst being entertained by your fancy colorful animations.
6. Keep in mind who your audience are, make sure the information you provide meets their requirements.
7. Make sure the look and feel of your landing page is consistent with your other marketing materials.
8. Include the keywords or phrases which were used in your advertisement, and add them into your page title and headline.
9. Keep the load times of your landing page under 5 seconds.
10. Routinely update your landing page. If you decide to change your campaign, change your landing page as well.
11. Make sure that none of the links in that page are broken or outdated for that matter.

Steps To Optimize Your Site

Every other person that I've recently met has got a blog of some sort, but far too many of them seem to skip a very important part in the process. Understand here that it's highly important to take relevant steps in-order for you to optimize your site for your readers as well as search engines, without alienating either one. While some blogger's try very hard in focusing on how to monetize their site, there are still those that use these platforms to simply relay their personal feelings where they discuss daily issues, such as : what they had for breakfast today, or how they experienced some bad service at a fancy restaurant the night before, and so forth.

So it doesn't really matter what your ultimate goal is for your blog, the important keyword you have to remember here is - Optimizing! For some, the ideology of blogging is that it's a 'walk-in-the-park', you basically need to write a couple of lines, paste a great photo alongside it, post it up and you're done! In reality, I know you could simply carry on doing it in this manner, but sadly it's not gonna go very far if you want it to withstand the test-of-time.

But what I'm discussing here today is not your usual Search Engine Optimization (in short - SEO), because the majority of blogger's out there run off standard blog platforms or even run as a hosted blog with someone else's domain name, which makes optimizing for a blog a bit different, not to mention design issues which are unique to blogs that may have an impact in your rankings.

Step 1
Let us evaluate the many times we have changed our templates? I know a friend who has changed their template three times in the last six months. All because he didn't get the right background color! Yes, I reiterate that design is important and it counts, BUT, unfortunately not many of those so-called 'blog designers' that offer free templates, are also SEO's by trade. So, without you knowing, these designs could actually be effecting your rankings in a way. My best bet - get a designer to help you on this, or at the very least, try to customize your default template by changing the colors or even adding a uniquely brand new header.

Step 2
In order for you to optimize your blog for user experience, always make sure that their visits are hassle free - easy to access, interactive and most importantly - make them return. Blogs need repeat visitors, that's for sure. There are few methods in achieving this, take for example the commonly orange colored RSS button, every blog needs this, as it would allow yours readers to subscribe to your blog. Automatically many hosted blogging solutions do not have this feature, so it's highly recommended that you add one. FeedBurner is one good source for this feature. Another option you could offer would be to allow your readers to get your posts via email - FeedBlitz does this automatically for me. Finally, make certain that these buttons are well visible, rather than tucked far away at the bottom of the page or placed at another page all together.

Step 3
I remember reading a blog which did not even have a single paragraph break in any of its posts and boy were the posts lengthy. I was automatically off their site in just seconds. What does this tell you, it's always safer to break your posts into parts if you're planning to write a lengthy story, because how you write would eventually keep your readers coming back for more. And always remember to do a spell check prior to posting the article up at your page, this can help you save a lot of embarrassment and ultimately need not affect your image as an author.

Step 4
For some strange reason, I'm not sure why, but I've seen certain sites that display four to five different colored text in a single post or even better still, numerous different sized fonts placed all over. Yes, they may call it a unique talent or an artistic gift that they have, but ironically it simply doesn't work in the real world. Blogs such as these will eventually give their readers a painful experience, forcing them to leave, never to return. So, try not to kill the look of your blog by doing this. Choose a font that best suits your site and add color, only to certain crucial text.

Step 5
We tend to add anything and everything onto our blogs these days, one very common item has to be what we call - widgets. Every time you join something online there's always a possibility of them requiring you to place their widget at your blog. And no doubt there also some widgets that are so useful that you can't do without. But then again its always a wise choice to never overload your site with too many widgets as well. Adding a large number of javascript into your site will surely slow it down. Ya, I know some widgets have nice colors and all, but why sacrifice timely loading up time for something not all that necessary.

Uploading And Removing Borders From Picture

It is quite common that we usually upload an image or a diagram or even an illustration of some sort into our post. I usually try to add a picture or two into my post just to add some color into it but there are times when these pictures have some rather weird looking borders surrounding them. In this post I will share with you the simple steps in uploading as well as removing borders from picture, in which you intend to embed onto your Blogger post page. For this example we will use the image uploading tool found in Blogger.

Firstly, once you have logged into your Blogger account, click on this icon and it will generally bring you into your Blogger's post editor page. Once here, you would want to begin the process of uploading a selected image from your PC or even from a particular web page - this is something you should try not to do (taking pictures from other web pages) besides the worry of copyright laws and the simple reasoning that if you post a picture which is taken off from another web page, what's going to happen is that every time you load your blog, that particular picture is going to be loaded by their server, so if their server is down or slow for any given reason, this will ultimately effect your blog as well, besides the owner of that site likely incuring an expense at the same time, thanks to you.

Anyway, assuming you have now decided to upload a particular picture, look for this icon and click on it.

This would immediately open up a new window to help you make the necessary selection of image or images.


Next you would want to decide on the placement of the picture, whether it should go on the left, right or even at the center of your post. Customizing the appearance is also another way of showing your creativity in your post. It will also help you wrap your text around these pictures. Another benefit is that you're able to choose the right size deemed fit for that post. Do this by checking on the relevant "Choose a Layout" box and then finally, click "Upload Image" followed by "Done".

Once you have succesfully uploaded the image, click on the Edit Html tab, to make the necessary modifications to remove the said borders from appearing in your post page.

Normally when you upload a image in Blogger it is displayed as a hyperlink. If you would like to disable the hyperlink, remove the section marked in red.

This is an example markup of the inserted image, appearing on your post editor page.

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/deleted/AMD+690.GIF"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/deleted/AMD+690.GIF" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5105259291560015234" border="0" /></a>

Note the closing </a> tag at the end of the example, remember to remove this.

Now, if you want to maintain the hyperlink and prefer not to have the borders surrounding the image, edit the img (tag) style attribute by inserting : border-style : none;

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/deleted/AMD+690.GIF"><img style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/deleted/AMD+690.GIF" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5105259291560015234" border="0" /></a>

This would ultimately remove the border surrounding your image as well as remove the hyperlink pointer that would normally appear if you align the cursor on top of the picture.

Removing No-Follow In Blogger

Through this post I'm hoping that you will discover the importance of having a two-way communication between you and your readers through comments.

Comments for a Blog is a very important tool but sadly in the Blogger template the tag is set to "No-Follow" by default. What that means is that every comment you leave at that site (which has "No-Follow") will not entitle you to get a link back to your site. So, if you do not alter this soon, there might come a day when no one would bother leaving you a comment at your site.

How would you feel if there was a day where there were no comments on your posts? This is something all bloggers would dread to face. I personally, try to always leave a 'relevant' comment at the sites that I visit. Actually, to be honest, this is also another way to introduce your site to others, but, we totally don't agree to those spam ones though!

Some may ask, what is the definition or how does one categorize a comment as spam? Comments that have no significance to the topic whatsoever and leaving a text URL in your comment asking people to visit your site are the favourites to be considered as spam comments. So, remember folks, always leave good constructive comments and we will reciprocate.

Comments, to me, means that I'm able to get feedback from my readers, without it I would have to rely on just reading e-mails, now that would take the fun out of blogging, wouldn't it? I remember someone saying to me that, a Blog without comments isn't a Blog at all ... I totally agree with this statement. To me, comments can be considered as contents, the more the better. At the end of the day, this would eventually generate you more traffic and less work for you, because the contents are generated by the readers (like in forums).

The secret here is to get your readers to come to your site regularly and read your posts and finally leaving you a relevant comment. This will help you figure out if you're doing things right or maybe there are things that needs fixing. How will you learn all this without comments?

Then there are those who would say that comments are not important as their readers have subscribed to their RSS feed in large numbers. I would think that is also good, but not so good if you're trying to monetize your site, why? Because, if the majority of your readers tend to read your posts through your RSS feed, then only a handful would visit your site and remember, your Ads are at your Blog, not at the RSS feed, right? So, in plain English : You will have a great number of people reading your posts through the RSS feed, but very few coming to your site thus reducing your page views, hence lower Ad income!

So to avoid all these possibilities, do this, remove the "No-Follow" tag from your Blogger template and your readers will love you for that, and very soon a whole load of comments would start to come in.

To be on the safe side, back-up your template first.

Once you're in your account, click on your Dashboard followed by clicking on your Layout link. Once you've done that, click on the Template tab. Now, just below this is "Edit HTML", click that.

This would bring you to a page filled with a lot of words and letters that may look ancient to you. Don't worry, look for a checkbox situated on the top right side which is labeled as Expand Widget Templates, click this box.


Search for the words rel=nofollow (on your keyboard press CTRL and the F key, this would give you a small screen at bottom of your PC, It's like a mini search box. Type rel=nofollow and press enter in that mini search box) The word rel=nofollow will now appear in a highlighted green colour in your screen.

This is for removing the "no-follow" tag for your comments.

Now delete the word, rel=nofollow and Save Your Template!