By Wizard Partner, Dave Young

Your website must...

The non-SEO solution for Search Optimization
If you write your site in the language of your customers, talking about what's important to your customers, you'll likely need very little help from an SEO specialist. Because, if you are using the language and phrasing of your customers, your organic search results will do quite well.

One of the best ways to start getting good organic search results for this type of traffic is to start blogging. If you're diligent and smart about your phrasing, you'll start seeing results quite soon after your new content is indexed.

In addition, you'll need to follow good technical practices to make sure your site is easily indexed and the search engines can find your pages. 

Persuasion
Having a persuasive site is much more difficult that it would seem at face value. Not all of your visitors are persuaded by the same information. They have different values, they have different needs and they have different levels of patience to let you tell your story. Persuasion Architecture is our preferred method to design a persuasive strategy for your site from the very beginning.

Conversion
Have you made it easy for your visitors to do what you desire them to do on your site? Do you have strong and easily-understood calls to action?

The above is simple... but not easy.

PS From the editor. Dave Young is our Online Persuasion Specialist.  You could spend months, possibly years experimenting with Persuasion Architecture, or you could simply hire Dave's team to do it for you. Your results will happen much faster. (If you are an Australian company, contact the Australian office of Wizard of Ads at infoaust@wizardofads.com.)

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"The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction, and malperformance." - Peter Drucker

By Roy H. Williams

People are looking for answers online.

Does your website provide these answers?

Your website needs to deliver: Information. Clarity. Truth.
Your website should be a window into the soul of your company:

1. Anticipate your customer's question.
This is why you must embrace persona-based writing.
2. Answer the question transparently.
Statements that don't ring true will score against you.
3. Make the answer easy to find.
This is a function of website architecture.

Does it surprise you to learn that most website programmers think exactly backwards from how customers think? An organizational hierarchy that's perfectly logical in the mind of a programmer is often frustratingly illogical in the mind of a customer.

Your website architecture dictates your customer's experience. Architecture has nothing to do with graphics. Did your website have an architect? Or was it designed by the programmer? By the graphic artist? By you?

A programmer asks, "Does it function?"
A graphic designer asks, "Does it 'feel right' and represent us well?"
An owner asks, "Does it say what I want it to say?"
An architect asks, "Did the customer find their answer?"

Mass media says, "Create traffic first. Answer their questions after they arrive."
Search engines say, "Create answers first. Store traffic will be created by the answers you provide."

Your website should be a relationship deepener. Having already interacted with your expert, open-all-night website, customers will walk into your store the next day already sold. We're seeing it constantly.

Are you?

CONFESSION: Most of what I've shared with you today was gleaned from my daily chats with the Eisenberg brothers. A few minutes with these guys saves me a lot of time and money.