Wednesday, May 28, 2008

One page web sites

There's a lot of talk in the infopreneur world about the difference between a website with a dozen pages or more and a one page website geared toward selling a particular product. I'll be discussing the pros and cons of each type of site, and hopefully clarifying some of the current issues.

Portal Websites for Service Professionals

Most professionals I speak with have sites that talk about their services, how they help their clients, and the results they produce. Some of the better sites I've seen have articles, information, and audio-content free for visitors to download.

The goal of these multipage sites is, theoretically, to begin developing a relationship with the visitor. But rarely does this happen. Usually visitors look around and click away, forgetting all about you. That's not the worst-case scenario, of course, because at least your site was seen. Worse than that, and far more common, is never being found at all.

Usually sites fail because visitors don t know what to do next. The content is good enough, but there's no clear action. Visitors who are only given the option to call for a complimentary consultation generally choose to leave rather than commit to a personal call.

The solution is to give your visitor an option to leave their email address, so you can continue following up. This optional sign-up box, or opt-in box, is a key way for service professionals to leverage their websites more effectively.

One Page Websites



These sites are designed to lead the visitor to take one action. Usually the action is to buy to product being sold an ebook, audio set, membership, seminar or the like. These often read like sales pages, but because they re so clear about the next action necessary, they can be very effective.

Well written websites are also very attractive to search engines, and can more easily be advertised through pay-per-click. For example, Visit my portal website and see what I do as dog breeder! is not as enticing a headline on Google AdWords as The 7 Keys to Finding the Perfect Puppy!

One page websites need to have extremely well-written pages to sell the product, because content is scarce. The promises on the page are what sell the product, much like a typical advertisement. There are no demonstrations of the product s efficacy, just a guarantee that if you use the product as specified it should create results for you.

Hence, relationship building is not a focus of this type of website. For service professionals, this can be a challenge. We distinguish ourselves through greater connection with our prospects and clients. There are thousands of relationship coaches ultimately a prospect will choose one based on the personal connection and trust level that has been established.

One page sites are built to sell a product, and get people into our marketing funnels. Over time, if our information is perceived as consistently great, a client may continue their journey with us all the way.

To review the pro's and con's of one page websites:

1) Clear, and action-oriented. Visitors know what s expected and will choose to either buy or pass.

2) Easier to advertise on search engines, pay-per-click, and off-line venues.

3) The outcome is a sale you make money by offering one product.

4) Low content. The letter makes the sale you don t.

5) Some visitors may be turned off by the salesy nature of the site.

6) These sites are a poor vehicle for developing relationships.

If you want to see examples of one page websites, take a look at the following two of these are my own sites, and one is from an extraordinarily successful internet marketer.

www.NoMoreUselessWebsites.com
www.OnlineServiceBusiness.com
www.InstantSalesLetter.com

---

Stacey Morris helps self-empolyed professionals develop dynamic websites that do more than just uselessly hang out in cyberspace. To find out more about developing a website for your business, sign up for our free report, "Website Success Checklist" at http://www.ServiceBusinessCoaching.com .

Article Source: http://ArticlesReprint.com



Continue Reading

Submitting Your Site to Search Engines

The Good the Bad and the Ugly


Is repeatedly submitting your site to all the major search engines a "best practice"? Absolutely not. Should you submit your site anywhere? Yes, to the Yahoo! Directory, the Open Directory
project (aka DMOZ.com), and key vertical directories in your topic area. That's all you need. Launch your new site with good content, accessible webpage HTML coding, and links from highly credible sites. Google, MSN and Yahoo will find it.

Note: Submitting your site to the search engines has nothing to do with ranking. Resubmitting your site will not help your rankings in any way whatsoever. The engines frown on extra processing load; they're pretty busy already capturing all the world's information.

Good submissions
Submit your site to the Yahoo! Directory. It's the best $299 per year you'll ever spend if you are serious about SEO for your site. Sure, few people actually use it, but the Yahoo Directory remains a credible reference source for search engines when they evaluate sites, because those accepted have been evaluated by human editors. The Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org) is also good, but lately many categories lack editors and those still functioning are overwhelmed.


Bad submissions
Repeated submission to major search engines -- most likely done by something automated -- doesn't work. The engines block auto submissions by requiring you to write in a code from a graphic that no machine can read. See http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl to see how this works. If you're paying someone to do this for you, you're giving your money away for nothing. Instead, do it yourself and give your coins to a group like World Vision to aid disaster victims.


Ugly Submissions
Did you ever read, "We'll submit your site to 100+ or 1000+ search engines"? Don't. There are nowhere near that man search engines and never have been. Most are likely to be links farms, long discredited by search engines and reputable search engine optimization firms. Participating in them is worse than worthless, since you could be penalized for being in a bad links neighborhood.

Source: http://www.wilsonweb.com/seo/kennedy-submissions.htm
by Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner, http://www.BeyondInk.com
Continue Reading
 

About Virtuallee

We're a small, friendly web design company based in Chiswick, west London.

Why choose Virtuallee?

We design and build affordable, professional, eye-catching websites that stand out.

Contact

86 Abinger Road, Chiswick, London, W4 1EX +44 (0)844 8044614 www.virtuallee.co.uk

virtuallee Copyright © 2009 Community is Designed by Bie Blogger Template