Improve the Web

How many times have you started shopping, put a great deal of effort in entering all the required information, only to see the "You can't buy now" message. Read where Amazon has failed and how you can improve your shopping cart (scroll to the bottom, if in a hurry).

The story

Though I've had the data for this post for a while, I wanted to share it along with the results of the landing page contest that ran at SEOmoz. It turned out that my page was filtered, because "it got filtered out in the process."

At any rate, I want to share my experience from another project and some knowledge with you.

Earlier, I was working on optimizing Google AdWords performance to increase software download conversions. After I had tweaked the landing page, split the ad group in two and rewritten the ads, the conversions from search ads have more than doubled. So I thought I'd share the case with you.

Recent Search Engine Strategies conference has given us plenty of videos, filmed by Mike McDonald of WebProNews.

Paid Links: Michael Gray and Rand Fishkin

Rand and Michael discuss Google's policy on paid links, how Google uses fear, uncertainty and doubt, why there are some questions left still and what webmasters are supposed to do.

Blogging has been proven and advised to attract large quantities of visitors, readers and, possibly, customers. Whatever your reason to blog is, follow these proven techniques from the experts to become a successful blogger.

Put plenty of effort in your blog

Most beginner bloggers think that blogging is easy. It is, on the surface. However, you may want to know that:

• it takes time and effort to produce posts
• it takes time to get noticed

In the world of Web building, an opportunity to develop/code something quickly is a rare occasion. Mostly, you need to spend hours on research, planning and implementation (unless you code with CSS ;) ).

Here's yet another thing you can do in a couple of minutes to help search engines index your site better, so you could get more traffic within a week or two by 5-15%.

Canonicalization Issues

- "What?"
- "Ca-no-ni-ca-lization/canon-ica-lization/canonic-a-liz-ation issues."

In the SEO world, nearly everything is known and more or less everyone knows the most useful SEO blogs. However, you can also use the source of expert SEO tips few people know about.

Ammon Johns is one of the few SEOs that have been around since the dawn of the Internet days. His knowledge is so broad and advice so deep and useful that if your question is answered by Ammon, consider your problem solved.

You are destined to boost your traffic, links and profit by writing great articles and posts. However, one of the most important factors that influence the success of your content, becides content quality and promotion, is the post title (headline). That's why you need to write great headlines to motivate your readers to read, talk and link about you.

Use this 'how to write titles' list to build your readership:

How to Write Mind-Blowing Titles like CopyBlogger

I suspect every marketer has a continuous train of thought rolling in the direction of connecting to his audience. Almost everyone knows that you need to know your audience, its needs, interests, values and so on to connect. But is there anything else you may be leaving aside?

Describe the Reality

When you tell your potential customers to use the product they need, because it'll make their life easier, most likely, you are describing their reality. Of course, it closely matches to yours, as you should be interested in what you are selling.

Back in the days, everyone and their dog wanted to have a website for any reason. Even just to display dog/cat photos.

But when it comes to business websites, there is investment and return involved. If you invest in the website, you expect to get a return on investment (ROI). And to get any return, your site needs to have a goal, according to which all the actions will be compared.

What is a website goal?

Basically any website can have a goal:

• inform family and friends of life happenings
• share news, thoughts and links about one's interests

On the Web, technology is developing so fast that even the majority of the self-proclaimed specialists know less than 70% of the stuff (how's that for just coined statistics) and have little practice and confidence with the latest developments of the industry.

Given that potential search marketing clients know even less, than the professionals (or just enough to be dangerous), it is pretty hard not only to find a good SEO, but also to get one for a good price.