heartharmony.com.au

One of the most important things about being found in the web is what is called your “title tag”. You can see each web page’s title in the blue bar at the top of your web browser navigation. But every day I see business websites with the same title across every page of their site, or sites with titles such as “About Us” or “Home”.

Just  as job titles in a business give credibility to roles, and help people understand the different roles people play, your web page titles are equally important. If every page is titled the same, this is akin to saying that every person in a business has the same job title and does the same thing.

Imagine a large business where everyone from the CEO to the office junior is called “Officer” – what would happen?  Mail would get lost, phone calls would go haywire, everyone would get everyone elses emails, no-one would know who to talk to about issues and clients would give up in disgust.

From a search engine perspective, they look at the pile of same page titles and think:  “Nothing new here – move along”. While the search engines will take a glance at the rest of your page, it is more of a cursory glance, than a longer look to see what other nuggets of information are contained on that page. When you get the title right, it gets the search engines to take a closer look.

Each web page needs a unique title, with the keywords you are targeting for each page included. You want to use the most important words – the ones with the highest traffic or the things you particularly want to be known for in that title.

Your title tag is also generally what is returned in search engine results. So you want the words to make sense, be enticing and help your clients go “yes – that’s exactly what I am looking for – I will click that link”.  For example, if your title tag is just the name of your business or the word “home”, how enticing is it when it is sitting next to a whole pile of other juicy sites with the words “Brisbane copywriter” or “SEO copywriter” in the title. People generally look for a solution, not the name of your business or the word “home”.

Now for some homework – go have a look at your website with new eyes. Look at the words you are currently using in your title.  If they are not all that useful, then fix it or have someone go through and fix it for you. Otherwise you are missing out on business – plain and simple!

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – SEO Copywriter

If you have ever sold a home, you know there are a few rules of thumb that every real estate agent worth their commission will tell you. Before you list your home, tidy the gardens, fix things that are broken, think about a coat of paint inside, remove clutter so people can move around, keep the place tidy before inspections and generally make the place look nice so people can imagine themselves owning your home.

Any house that goes on the market with broken bits, that looks unkempt and messy always gets the label “Fixer upper” and always gets a lower sale price and takes longer to sell than one that looks picture perfect.

Your website is your online equivalent of your house. The only trouble is you permanently have an “Open House” and people wander through day and night at their whim. Not only that, your house seems to have permanent internet house guests dropping in, in the form of search engine spiders. People look at your place and make instant judgements about you and your business (and whether or not they will buy).

Often I get asked when businesses should on-page SEO their website. For me it’s like asking when should you prepare your house for inspection if you are on the market. If you have a website, you need the SEO on-page optimisation done as soon as you want to open for business.

All SEO on-page optimisation is doing is preparing your home in its best light – highlighting its best features and showing people who are most likely to buy the things they are most interested in buying.It helps your house get found and brings in the right sort of customers who are keen to buy.

Sure, you can pay for Adwords and other forms of search engine marketing and off-page link-building, but in my book that’s the equivalent of taking out expensive full page ads in the paper to advertise what is still a fixer-upper. You will get people through your place, but when they get there they will still be looking at a place not at its best.

So, today look at your website with the eyes of a real estate agent. How would the agent describe your site?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – SEO Copywriter

As regular readers will know, I have been brushing up my internet marketing skills with James Schramko. It has been a wild ride, learning lots of great new techniques and strategies. One of my favourite has been the creation of single page websites designed to drive traffic to your own website, or towards your favourite products sold by other people (for a commission).

The software he has in his program to create these sites is amazing. I now have it down to 20 minutes from a blank sheet of paper with no writing on it, to a published site. And while the sites they create look very simple and plain, looks can be deceiving. There is a heck of a lot of complex research, SEO and coding going on in the background.

The other thing I have learnt is the importance of “getting something out there” and refining as you go. It is better to have a 75% site launched, than a 100% site still in development 6 months later.

And let me tell you creating sites once you know how is more addictive than scrapbooking!

So … what do the sites look like? Well here are a few for my sites, as well as sites sending traffic to a few of my favourite management and training products on the net.

• Management training by the book
• Performance Appraisals
• Employee Performance Review Tips
• Online management courses
• Stress Management Training
• Presentation Skills Training Course

Check them out. I’m off to tackle the next few on my list!

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriter

Every year I do a few weeks of professional development to hone my skills. This year I have been completing some online internet courses – the Thirty Day Challenge with Ed Dale.   I do this one every year to keep current on the latest internet marketing trends (and it is free to do during August each year).

Myself, James Schramko & Donna-Marie Coggins

I have also been studying with James Schramko – one of the good guys of internet marketing. One of his courses I have been taking is the Underground Profit System which I have to say has been brilliant. It is a series of 8 videos with really comprehensive information about websites and traffic that I hadn’t heard elsewhere (and you won’t break the bank doing them). Even if I didn’t get an affiliate fee for recommending James’s course I would be telling all my friends about it … it is that good!

Now if you’re like me you need to lock yourself away in a darkened room for a couple of days to work with new material. My kids joke that when I am studying I descend into my cave like a hermit, only periodically opening the door to get coffee and food and then scuttling away again, while muttering about things like domains, links and traffic. This isolated state lasts until the last DVD is played and I have had a few days applying what I have learnt.

The application is the most important bit. Unless I apply some of what I studied in the few days after the course, the  course material becomes the online equivalent of a treadmill sitting in the lounge room draped with clothes and good intentions.

So the past few days I have been living in my bunker and have had some great aha moments – like how to find fantastic domain names, different website models for businesses, brilliant tools for market research (that don’t cost a cent), places to source great products, how to have videos on your site (and not crush your bandwidth), simple ways to split test to see which headlines/content gets the best results, and places to get CDs & DVDs replicated for next to nothing.

I also had a massive whack on the side of the head in relation to some simple systems to keep tabs on my website information. I knew where I could find (sort of) which company my domain name was registered with, and who hosts my websites, but passwords and expiry dates of the subscriptions? This super simple one pager put it all together for me in a super-organised way. I now have all my website details and many domains (including all my kids names .com.au and .coms) in the one folder, neatly sorted.

But my hands-down favourite bit of James’s course has been the software. Last night I put together and published 3 simple websites in 2 hours which would have taken me an entire day to do otherwise.  There would have been more but the thunderstorm meant the computer had to turn off. Now you have to remember I have some net knowledge which makes things a bit easier, but in my view even newbies to the net would be able to quickly get a great result.

Why am I telling you this? In business we need to keep on top of new developments. We need to take regular time out to sharpen our saw (as Covey would say), to learn new things and new ways of approaching our business.  When was the last time you took time out to study?  Yes, we are all busy and yes I have a mountainous backlog of emails and so on to tackle today … but it is worth it!

… And if you want to learn more about websites and the net – the two courses I have mentioned are worth doing.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriter

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

All good marketers look through their Google analytic reports to check out the search terms people are typing into search engines to find their website. It is a great way of refining your website keywords and improving your search engine results.

But … how many people look all the way to the end? Prompted by @silkcharm and @the_gman rather funny experiences I scrolled all the way through the thousands of terms to bring you the top 20 strangest terms people have typed into a search engine and then been taken to the Heart Harmony website.

1. 21st birthday ideas

2. 21st birthday presents

Hmnnn – perhaps I can see a niche needing to be filled.

3. metaphors

A perfect storm of metaphors for those addicted to explosive writing.

4. Joke small people small packages

I wonder if people really buy small packages full of small people?

5. Rich people vs poor people

I will help you here – rich people have more money, time, love, happiness – but not necessarily all at the same time.

6. Art niche ideas

Niches as in wall niches or as in niches for artists that haven’t already been done?

7. Best way to claim a laptop on tax

You may want to talk to your accountant for that one.

8. Chicken shop names

9. Chicken shop menu

Ok – there were actually about 15 searches relating to starting a chicken shop – I didn’t know they were so popular as a business idea. But coming soon … a great new e-book on How to Start a Chicken Shop (by the people that brought you Chicken Soup for the Soul).

10. Ebay excavators

You can buy anything eBay these days, so why not excavators? What they have to do with copywriting or Heart Harmony is a bit beyond me though.

11. Email finger

What the?

12. Facts about rosary beads

This is a very strange one.  I have a client that has one website selling first communion gifts (and another site selling pasties) – perhaps we could ask them?

13. Global meltdown

The end of the world is coming!

14. Global meltdown online sale

… but first you can buy rugs from Rugs a Million at 75% off.

15. I hate to be on hold

If you are on the Telstra service never ending problem solving recording … my best tip is to say “talk to a human” – for some reason it works and you get a real person to talk with. I just love the startled “it sounds like you want to talk to an operator” response from the automated recording. It’s worth ringing Telstra just for that moment.

16. I want to work at Smiggle, how do I get a part-time job there?

You contact a Store Manager … and ask them!

17. Quentin Bryce’s leadership skills

This search may or may not have come from the Prime Minister’s Office before he appointed her as Governor-General.

18. Stab proof cloting

Yes – it was spelt cloting. Stay safe dude!

19. Waiter deal complaints

Perhaps Rugs a Million are offering a deal – buy one rug get one waiter free.

20. What does until next time mean

It means … until next time

What is lurking in the bowels of your keyword analytics? Any funny ones you want to share?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Last night I watched a football match with a few thousand mates.  No, I wasn’t at the pub and the living room wasn’t packed to the rafters, I decided to watch the State of Origin match via Twitter, with the TV just quietly going in the background. What a fascinating social experiment it turned out to be!

Twitter generated a similar feeling as going to the stadium – people fell into respective team camps and there was good natured ribbing on each side. The referees came in for the odd blast just like a regular game and there were cheers and boos at all the appropriate places.

What was very different and what made it fascinating, was people quickly organised themselves into conversational groups around the game through the use of hashtags # to identify which conversation they wanted to be part of. No one told them to do it, there was no central place where people copied down the hashtag of the day – someone just started the conversation and then people found out via osmosis and tuned into the conversation.

This simple us of hashtags to designate the conversation demonstrated the power of the internet in creating tribes or communities of interest and how people quickly find their tribe.

Using real time search tools on Twitter applications such as TweetDeck, people could gather these conversations and respond to what other people said. It was like a very noisy party. You could start a conversation with anyone in the tribe, or they could drop into your conversation to share their insights. It was immensely powerful!

So what happened? Well, for me it was like watching football commentated by a swarm of stand up comics. A large proportion of the comments were funny … very funny.

The main hashtag conversations I spotted last night were #origin, #nrl, #qld, #nsw and my personal favourite #origincliches.

#Origincliches had everyone listening to the on-screen commentators and jotting down all of the thousands of cliches that were trotted out. It captured mangled English and the creation of new words such as “outoriginated” by the Channel 9 sports commentators. Seeing all of the cliches listed out was cringe creating – but oh so funny.

But it wasn’t just the football and the commentators that came in for discussion. The ads in the breaks of the game, the most expensive TV real estate of the year, also were up for discussion and debate, as well as what was happening on other TV stations. People who hated football added in their comments and overseas people who spotted the hashtags in trending topics dropped in to work out what it was all about.

So what was the point of watching a match via Twitter? Twitter is certainly the next big thing and like all next big things something else will take over and move it along in years to come. But right now Twitter is huge, so it pays to work out what human needs it is fulfilling and why it is so big.

What Twitter does well is it taps into the intrinsic nature of people. Their need to be part of something bigger. Their need to belong to a group that makes them feel welcome. Their need to share their opinions and ideas and their need to have fun. Twitter fills these human needs with no fanfare, no fuss, at 140 characters at a time.

How can you apply the lessons of Twitter to your business? How can you make people feel welcome and that they belong to a cohesive group? How can you encourage debate and sharing of ideas? How can you make your business a fun place to be? How can you make it quick and simple? These are the true lessons of Twitter.

There are two more State of Origin games in the next few weeks. You may want to get onto Twitter and watch the next few games to get an idea of the sheer power of watching human needs fulfilled, and to have a few laughs along the way.

Join me on Twitter www.twitter.com/ingridcliff. I look forward to connecting with you there.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriters

I love Twitter. It is one of those little things in life that you start doing and wonder why the heck you are doing it.  … And then a few weeks later you wonder what you did without it.

I have been watching Twitter develop over the past 18 months while people work out how to use it. Some use it to connect with colleagues with electronic water cooler type conversations in breaks in work, others trying to sell things with all the tact of an Amway salesperson and still others just doing what they do naturally – sharing ideas and tips to help make other people’s lives easier. Pretty much like life really – everyone communicates differently.

Today I watched another side of Twitter – the community development side. Here in Brisbane we have been hit with a massive all day storm. Flash floods were everywhere, people cut off from loved ones and accidents at every corner.

This is where Twitter really started to hit its stride.  All day people shared photos of roads near their part of the city, updates on road closures, info on which schools were closed and where there were major problems. People shared fears, questions and just connected with other locals to feel a little bit safer.

Through the use of a hashtag #bneflood people used in their Tweets, through Twitter search people collated and tracked this information faster than the traditional media could update things. Some Twitter users even set up Google maps for other Twitterers to see where all the problems were. It was fascinating watching the main local ABC radio station – @612brisbane, using the Twitter stream to help update listeners.

The lines between social media and traditional media were very blurred today. Twitter in effect created hundreds of “one the spot” reporters around the city – all willing to share their information and their experiences. Watching the stream of updates on my Tweetdeck was totally compelling from a human perspective. Each Brisbane person was making the world just a bit smaller and more connected.

The storm has been subsiding for the past hour and the typical Aussie humour is starting to show through the stream. People are beginning to laugh at their fears and to lighten the mood. Lots of wry comments are appearing as well as gratitude for getting home safely.

I had heard of the Twitter effect in the Victorian bush-fires. Today I experienced it first hand with the Brisbane floods.

There is certainly something to be said for the immediacy of Twitter. Twitter is just that little bit closer to my heart after today – and I have met a whole pile of brilliant and interesting locals in the process.

If you haven’t yet experienced Twitter, it is worth trying. I look forward to connecting with you on Twitter www.twitter.com/ingridcliff

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer

Have you wondered about negative dirty tricks political campaigns? Why do political parties do them? Simply because they work.

A study reported in Political Psychology showed that people who are asked to think about candidates in terms of who they  oppose rather than who they support, are more resistant to changing their view. This means when you see negative campaign advertising opposing a candidate you are being quietly manipulated into forming a strong viewpoint and embedding your vote for a particular candidate.  You see this sort of advertising more when there are elections with a larger number of “hanging” voters or close elections than when the votes are more clearly defined.

This research has much broader applicability.  If you are shown negative results about a product or company you are more likely to form stronger and less resistant to change viewpoints about that product or service.

Negative comparison tests fall into this category of advertising, which is partially why organisations such as the ACCC caution against using comparative advertising for business (and come down heavily on people who use it in the wrong way).

So should your business adopt negative framing of your ads? While the temptation is to use it due to it’s power, it is a strategy fraught with much greater scrutiny by both your competitors and the regulators. This is one marketing technique to use with caution (and just be aware of it’s use during the next election).

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

If you are looking for something these days, chances are you will check out online as your first port of call. This shift in consumer buying behaviour is also reflecting in how people search for love. A study reported in New Scientist by Harris Interactive found you are more likely to find love on the net that at work or at a party (especially if you are over 45).

The study looked at 10,000 people who married in the US over an 18 month period. 19% met online compared with 17% who met at work and 17% who met through friends. Now,  you may question the validity of the findings given the study was sponsored by an online dating agency, but the facts remain – people are increasingly shopping online.

The problem online dating sites face is the same as for any business – people struggle in describing what makes them special. Ask people what is unique and wonderful about their business or themselves and they freeze up, or come up with platitudes. To succeed in an online world you need your USP (unique selling proposition) to be clear, articulate and compelling.

In the past 5 years we have seen an explosion in resume companies helping to polish individuals resumes.  In the next 5 years I fully expect to see an increase in online profile companies – helping to polish individual’s online profiles whether dating, Twitter, Facebook or other social media. Who knows … it could become a whole new branch of web copywriting complete with “How to write killer online dating profiles” e-courses and training.

In the mean time, if you are looking for love online then make sure you take a tip from business and highlight what makes you wonderful and different from the crowd. Test and measure the words you use and don’t be afraid to adjust the language to get a larger response.

The one thing offline marketing for love and online share in common is at some point the buyer will check out the product to see if the claims match reality. If you over-inflate your claims expect a lot of returns to the online dating pool.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance writer

If you have a website, chances are you want to learn how to boost your traffic numbers and customers to your site. One way you can do it is by improving your rankings in search engines through things such as SEO copywriting (which is where we can help you), or through other SEO on-page optimisation strategies and off-page strategies such as link building.

The other way to grab more traffic is through using Adwords. Adwords are the results that appear in the right hand side column of search engine results and the advertiser pays each time someone clicks on the link to learn more about the ads.

Adwords are a great tool – but if you don’t know what you are doing it can be very costly with little result. The good news is that you just need some basic knowledge and information to make the most what is a fantastic tool.

So how do you get the information? Donna-Marie Coggins was one of our Heart Harmony team and has her own business teaching newbies to the world of the internet exactly how to do each of the main steps you need for an online business.

Donna-Marie has the patience of a saint and is one of the loveliest and warmest people you will ever meet. She has a real gift for teaching people the internet basics.

Recently she interviewed Arran Robertson, an expert at Google Adwords campaigns and has agreed to share the interview for free to readers of this blog. If you want to listen to the interview then hop over to this special interview - http://worldinternetmarketers.com/adwords-interview/

It is a great interview and worth listening to if you want to test the waters of adwords.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – SEO copywriters