1. Make sure you have a clear idea of what you would like your visitors to do and define it concisely such as “sign up for our newsletter”, “Register to be notified of special offers”, “Purchase My e-book”.
2. Sketch out a map of what that process looks like. It doesn’t have to be elaborate but it helps if you visualize the process that a user has to go through in order to reach the outcome you’re seeking.  Marketers call this the sales funnel.
3. Once you sketch out your “call to action” process then follow these three steps:  1) simplify, 2) simplify, 3) simplify… You’d like the process to be as straightforward and uncomplicated as possible.
4. Make sure you use clear, simple language that leaves little doubt as to what is going to happen. Don’t, for example, have a mystery button or link that offers “More information”. Be honest and straightforward and say “Buy now”, “Sign-up” or “Register”. A call to action should be specific, clear and unambiguous.
5. Finally, TEST! Tools such as Google Optimizer let you play around with different scenarios and different variations of content and sales pitches. Test multiple approaches and close in on the ones that work the best. In marketing jargon, we call this A/B, split and multi-variant testing. Test, test, test!!

We believe so deeply in the value of this tool, SUDO would like to make this very special offer available to our current and perspective clients. Now through August 2009 if you sign-up for a BaseCamp subscription, you’ll get a 1 hour consultation at no charge. For existing SUDO customers, we’d like to offer 50% off your next MONTHLY FEE!

To take advantage of this offer requires two simple steps:

1) First, sign-up for a BaseCamp account through the link below and

2) Send and email to peter.braswell@sudomarketing.com with your BaseCamp URL in the body of the email!

That’s it! Couldn’t be easier!

Go to our contact page and click the Base Camp offer at the top!

We believe so deeply in the value of this tool,  SUDO would like to make this very special offer available to our current and perspective clients.  Now through August 2009 if you sign-up for a BaseCamp subscription, you’ll get a 1 hour consultation at no charge.  For existing SUDO customers, we’d like to offer 50% off your next MONTHLY FEE!

To take advantage of this offer requires two simple steps:

1) First, sign-up for a BaseCamp account through the link below and

2) Send and email to peter.braswell@sudomarketing.com with your BaseCamp URL in the body of the email!

That’s it!  Couldn’t be easier!

Got to our contact page, and click the BaseCamp Link

What should you measure?  “Everything” is probably unreasonable.  If you use SUDO web analytic software or something like Google Analytics, you will quickly realize that you can be absolutely overwhelmed with data.  What then is most important?  SUDO suggest that at a minimum you track the following:

• Overall visitors
• Unique visitors
• Percentage of new visitors
• Referring sites
• Number of back links pointing to you
• Keywords used to find your site
• Bounce rate

Those are the key performance indicators (KPI) that you should be partnering with your SEO provider to move.  SEO has often been cited as being complex and a bit of a black art.  I think this is unfortunate because the is a demonstrable cause and effect regarding how websites are built, how they are deployed and how they are maintained.  How all those things happen are driven by performance.  The performance must be measured and tracked and that’s where the SEO scorecard comes in.

If’ you’d like to recieve a FREE sample SEO scorecard that you can use to track your own SEO progress, please register with us today!

To check out this new service, please click here: SUDO WEB ANALYTICS.

If you’d like to have your organization’s website monitored, please contact us.

One of the most simple things your can do is to make sure you have a site map file nicely embedded in your website.  It’s not hard to do and you should generate one of these files anytime you change or update your site.  If you are using a Wordpress blog, you’re in luck.  There’s a plug-in available that will generate and publish a site map without you having to think about it.

If you are not using Wordpress, don’t despair.  You can generate a site map manually with any number of free tools .  Use this tool to generate your map and submit it to Google.  Generally you’ll put your site map into your root directory of your domain.  After you’ve done this, go tell Google about yourself and where it can find your site map.

Need more help?  Consider Sudo Marketing, your partner is “Pay for Performance” internet marketing.

There are many strategies that one can employee to build back links.  You can hire somebody to generate back links for you.  You can use link exchange sites to swap and build links.  There are many approaches that you can use, most of these I would label as unscrupulous at best.  The “grey” and “black” SEO techniques will get you back links, but they will be of limited quality and of no real value add to the community.  Moreover, Google and the other search engines are getting wiser to what constitutes a low quality link verses a higher quality link.

I believe a good website, be it an online business, a company or personal blog or aggregate content site, should add value to the visitor, no matter what, no excuses!  I believe that if a back link is established for the shear sake of building a back link, you are doing your tribe, constituency, customer-base, whoever spends his or her limited time on YOUR site, a disservice.  Ask your self:

Is my SEO back link strategy adding any social value?

As far as monetary value of back links goes, I hope that is self-evident.  If it’s not, think of it in terms of search engine ranking.  If you can build your rankings enough to end up in Google’s Golden Triangle (Page One, Top three Listings) – you’re paid!  Until then, it’s slogging away at the optimization end until you get there.  Back links are a means to that triangle.

The Project
How then do we ethically and efficiently build meaningful links.  My suggestion, albeit the purpose of this post, is to suggest the 365 Day Back Link project.  Spend 15 minutes per day trolling around for a meaningful place to comment on a bog post, answer a question in a forum or write a meaningful blog entry and book mark it on relevant social book marking sites.  No matter what you do, try to do just one per day.  It’s that easy, it’s just a matter of making the commitment.

Some tips
One way that I’ve been finding great places to post is through Twitter and Tweedeck.  With Tweetdeck, I can set up a search that automatically scans the tweeterverse for posts relevant to my niche keywords.  If I happen to see a blog post come through, I can check it out and if applicable, leave a post on the site. Most blogs will allow you to enter a website address which is exactly what you want.  One back link down, 364 to go!  Remember to be ethical though.  Say something thoughtful and relevant and that ADDS to the conversation.  That is the key here – credibility and contributing to the community.  Getting a back link is SUBORDINATE to this!

I’m going to be doing a tweetdeck tutorial early next month.  If you’d like to be included in the newsletter, please go to our Contact Us Page and sign up for the mailing list!

Copy is the way you tell your potential customer who you are, why your different and why they should give you their business.  Get this wrong and YOUR customers simply bounce off the page and go somewhere else.  Effective copy should always be driving the customer to do what we ultimately want them to do and more importantly, it should be tell THEM how you’re going to solve their problem.  The ultimate desired action is probably different depending on the business, but rest assured, there is always a desired outcome!  Important actions or outcomes may be a membership sign-up, contact information capture or a shopping cart check-out.  Whatever your goal, your copy should be reinforcing and compelling and ALWAYS leading your customers to you defined goal or outcome.  Your copy should create desire and a sense of urgency.  Really good copy is hard to write.  Effective copy takes time and refinement, but is ultimately worth the investment.

Make sure you take the time to consider your internet marketing as a holistic system.  Just getting people to your site isn’t enough.  Get leads to your site but more importantly, make sure you get your customers into that sales funnel once they land there with compelling and well written copy.  For a really great article on writing copy, see this article on Entrepreneur.com.

Evaluate your copy, ask the following questions:

1. Does my copy clearly and concisely describe what it is my business does?
2. Does my copy continually drive my customers to the outcome I desire?
3. Would my mother/grandmother/granddad understand what I’m selling by reading my copy?
4. Does my copy convey a sense of brand? – Think of a “brand” as a promise to your customer.
5. And, this might be a shocker, is everything spelled correctly?  Grammatical and spelling errors are unacceptable!
6. Are you fulfilling the experience they expect once they land on your site?
7. Do you provide value added information that increases your customers trust and that reinforces your company’s brand?

If you’d like to discuss your copy issues with us, we’d love to hear from you.  Go to our contact page and drop us a note.