The fifth deadly mistake of home page design is poor use of copy and copy optimization techniques.

You see, one of the ways you can attract ideal clients to your website is through search engine optimization. But if you aren’t maximizing the use of SEO opportunities on your website, your pages won’t rank high enough in the search engines to get noticed.

Here are some tips to help you leverage the power of “on-page” SEO to attract your ideal clients.

Step 1: What key words are your idea clients using to find products and services like yours?
You’ll need to do some keyword research … don’t just guess. Find out the actual words and phrases that are being use by your target market to find businesses like yours.

Step 2: Use those key words and phrases strategically throughout your website.
Your keywords should be used appropriately, strategically and with restraint (you don’t want to be dinged for key word stuffing), in several places:

• Meta tags: These are tags used by search engines to understand what your page is about and how (or whether) to index it. One of the meta tags should include an appropriate list of key words.
• H tags: These are the tags that specify your headers and sub-heads. H tagged phrase are given more weight that bolded text, which is given more weight than standard text, in search engine algorithms.
• Image tags: One of the attributes of an image tag is “alt.” This is used by readers for the blind to describe the image. It is also used by search engines in image searches. Having your key word descriptions in the alt tags can increase the number of places your website shows up.
• Your copy: Of course your website copy should also have an effective key word density of about 2% to 3%.

Want to know what all five deadly mistakes are? Grab a copy of my new book, Home Sweet Home Page: The 5 Deadly Mistakes Authors, Speakers and Coaches Make with Their Website’s Home Page and How To Fix Them! at www.homesweethomepagebook.com. Stop by the website between March 15 and 19, 2010, to join the launch and housewarming party, and download a plethora of free gifts!

One of the five deadly mistakes of home page design is poor use of copy and copy optimization techniques. When your home page says the right things in the right way, it will attract and convert more members of your target market.

There are areas of home page copy that you need to think about and work on until it is optimized for your ideal clients. Here are some starter guidelines for each one:

Headlines

Your headlines are going to be the first text a visitor to your website will read. It needs to be strong and compelling:

• It can mention the most desired benefit of working with you.
• It can arouse curiosity about what you’ll say next.
• It can be authoritative, commanding the visitor to take a specific action.

You can find plenty of advice on headline online. I recommend these resources:

• 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work and Warning: Use These 5 Surefire Headline Formulas at Your Own Risk”, both from CopyBlogger.com
• 10 headline formulas that work like magic, from Copywriting.com
• 5 Sure-Fire Social Media Headline Formulas That Work, from Pronet Advertising
• 10 Winning Headline Formulas …, by Daniel Levis

Subheads

A subhead is like a transition from the headline into the body of the copy. It explains what the headline was getting at in a little more detail and urges the reader to read on.

Subheads also break up the copy on the page. In fact, there will be many visitors to your site that will read the subheads first, using them as a guide as to whether the rest of the content is worth reading or not.

They can follow many of the same guidelines that headlines do, but they can be longer and more conversational, too.

Here are a few resources for writing subheads:

• How to Write Exquisite Subheads from CopyBlogger.com
• Five Tips to Writing Great Subheads by Kristina Springer
• How to Write Effective Subheads by Ray L Edwards

Tone and Voice

All writing has a voice and the copy for your website is no different. The tone and voice you use for your home page copy should accomplish two things:

• Establish your personality
• Illustrated that your speak your target market’s language

Many copy writing gurus will teach you to write with an in-your-face style … but my advice to you is that if you are not an in-your-face kind of person, don’t do that. Your copy should be an expression of who you are and be authentic to your communication style. You want to attract ideal clients, right? So if you would be turned off by your copy, why do you think that people who would want to work with you would be different?

Want to know what all five deadly mistakes are? Grab a copy of my new book, Home Sweet Home Page: The 5 Deadly Mistakes Authors, Speakers and Coaches Make with Their Website’s Home Page and How To Fix Them! at www.homesweethomepagebook.com. Stop by the website between March 15 and 19, 2010, to join the launch and housewarming party, and download a plethora of free gifts!

Ever notice the number of times a client or prospect says some variation of ‘I just have one more question,’ or ‘Just a quick question?’ The answers to those questions are the grist of a tips booklet. You may be asked the same or similar questions repeatedly. And whether you think you are a good writer or not, you can always develop tips based on what people have already said they want to know from you.

Start capturing those random questions and focus on your answers. Organize the answers by categories, and, voila, there you have it. It’s so much easier than digging through your brain to access that stuff that’s been rolling around in there for as long as you’ve been in your current business.

Pay attention to which questions are repeated by your prospects and clients. There are bound to be some questions that come up over and over again.

Those repeated questions guide you in knowing where to focus not only your tips booklet content but where to develop your products and services in general.

Creating the tips booklet from the questions you hear helps develop more educated customers for you.

That mean people who have a better idea of what your company provides and how you can improve your clients’ lives.

Make money from listening and responding!

Do you enjoy one-on-one networking, however, the thought of walking into room full of people you don’t know horrifies you? You’re not alone. Yes, even a social butterfly, President of the Social Committee in High School and avid networker knows how you feel. Here are some of my tricks.
And they have all worked!

• A great way to network at a conference is to volunteer at the registration desk. Why? You get to say hello to everyone who registers in your line and everyone who registers gets to see you behind the registration table. At the event, you’ll feel more comfortable talking with people because you’ve “met” them already. And if those aren’t enough benefits, people will “recognize you” from the registration desk, and be more likely to come talk with you.

 

• If you teach a class or speak, go into the room early. Get a feel for it, change it around if need be, and greet everyone who walks in with a big “hello my name is …”. Bring name tags or recycle the tops of old manila folders, have each person put their name on it, and put it on the table in front of them.

 

• When you are planning to attend a meeting for the first time, call up whomever you can from the organization. Ask them if you can meet them at the meeting. Then you’ll “know” someone that you can look for when you arrive.

 

• Carry a nametag in your glove compartment. Make one for personal use, another for business use. Then people will feel more comfortable walking up to you in meetings.

 

• Put your notes on the back of duplicates of pictures (photography) you’ve taken. Then they won’t stick out so much from the podium (like white paper or index cards do.)

 

• Practice some opening lines and your handshake before you attend the event. Practice using a mirror and ask your family to let you practice on them, too.

 

• Develop two a 30-second commercials (also called elevator speeches, USP – unique selling propositions). One is for personal use, and the other would be for business use. On a recent telelclass I attended, provided by Jay Levinson of Guerilla Marketing fame, suggested creating a 7 word commercial, too.
• Remember that everyone in that room is a human being, too. Everyone has their own fears to deal with… and they might even be the same as yours.

Find other ways to build your confidence, too. Let me know the ones that work for you.

In this month’s audio, I am joined by Sally Taylor, a personal coach, who helps professional women to determine their life purpose and learn how that purpose is being played out in the details of where they have been, where they are and where they are going. She uses an ancient Chinese medicine system of Directionology in the work she does with her clients. (For those of you interested in learning more, Sally can be reached at sally.taylor@att.net.)

Here are the questions she brings to the “table.” I have used them almost verbatim, as Sally asked them, as she does such a fine job of setting things up for you:

• As living beings we are both receivers and transmitters of thoughts, ideas. The energy that is present when these thoughts/ideas are received or transmitted differentiates what we call them: Information, knowledge and wisdom. Each has different energy and each describes a different dynamic. Would you like to talk about how you choose what is needed, information, knowledge or wisdom? And when to offer it?
• I know that when I’ve worked with you I experience a “dance” with the different levels we are communicating on. Sometimes you’re offering information – look on the Internet, have you read this book. Sometimes you’re offering the knowledge of your experience, and sometimes some profound wisdom just pops into the conversation. I find this interesting because this “dance” that’s taking place appears to me to come from and a dynamic mix of what you receive through deep cognitive listening and what you receive through deep intuitive listening to Spirit or the Universe. – Sally and I talk about the experience of this “dance”.

Sally’s next questions, in her own words:

• It seems to me that there is often some larger communication taking place in our coaching sessions. There is a unifying spiritual dynamic, and ultimately there is a spiritual message that needs to be communicated. Do you also have a sense of this? What is your experience of that dimension of your work?
• My next question or subject is about the leap from being a creator to being a generator. As a client, for example, I have used the information, knowledge and wisdom I’ve received from you and applied it to creating my business. Really, I’ve worked with you on this from the beginning when all I knew was that I wanted to create a business. I did not know how to even think about that or what it might be.
• And what came to my attention while I was meditating the other day is that I’ve moved beyond being a creator of a business to being a generator of business. Create means originate or father. Generate means to bring into existence. For me there is a feeling difference. For example, we don’t tell someone to go out and create new clients. Instead, we generate new clients. Until recently, I felt myself to be the creator of a business.
• And now that I have solidly brought that business into existence, it expands, and because of the nature of what I do, it helps others bring their dreams into existence – it is generative. And it is generating not only new clients, but new products as well as revenue. What I felt was a subtle shift in myself, in the way I see myself and see my business when this idea came into my experience. So I was wondering if you had your own unique feelings or experiences with this?

Pretty intriguing, don’t you think? I invite you to please join us in this wonderful conversation about the subtle layers of communication.

I’m sure you’ll find it a new way to explore the dynamics between coach and client.

Listen on the Web

Download