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!

Let me begin by saying I was very impressed with Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter. She spoke at the Dan Kennedy/Bill Glazer Superconference and it was fascinating hearing her take on business. Here are a few nuggets I came away with:

1. You got to really want it. Ivanka is a driven woman. In fact, I would go so far to say she is succeeding despite her father and wealth. She works 3 times as hard as anyone else to prove that she is really is the best person for the job. And she has succeeded.

Now you could say it was easy for her. She has connections, a name, money. However, that’s exactly the reason why it’s difficult for her. People assume her success is due to her family and not her ability.

She could have thrown in the towel, turned into another Paris. Instead she decided to work 3 times as hard to prove to the world she is just as capable as her father at being successful at business.

My point here is that everyone has obstacles. Even if you can’t see them, we all have issues and blocks and obstacles. And we can choose to give in to them or to succeed despite them.

And, we all feel the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Ivanka truly believes her father would fire her if she screws up. (Actually he publically said that in an interview he’d fire his kids if they messed up.) Can you imagine the public embarrassment and humiliation if that actually happened? Sure we can all look at Ivanka and think “oh, she has it so easy.” But if she ends up in the middle of a colossal failure, the world will all know about it and talk about it. That’s not the case with someone less well known.

This is very common in business (well, in life in general) – people assume someone else’s business is a piece of cake while they have to X, Y, Z to contend with. While it’s true maybe that person doesn’t have X, Y, Z, they do have A, B, C, which are just as difficult in their own way. So the best thing to do is rather than wasting energy on comparisons, focus on making what you have that much better.

2. What’s going on with the economy is just a way to make businesses stronger. Okay, she’s 28, which means she was an infant during the last big recession. However, she is learning from her father, who not only lived through that recession but nearly went bankrupt. How did her father handle it? He got up every day and did something about it. He didn’t let the fact that he owed millions of dollars with no way to pay it back stop him. He got up every day and did something about it.

What are you doing right now? Are you sitting there waiting for the economy to “get better” so you can start making money? Or are you going to start doing something NOW to make that money?

Businesses are still making money right now. People are still buying products and services. You can make money, you just need to be smart about it.

3. Find what you love and do that. Ivanka had been offered a very prestigious job in another company after graduation, but wanted to work in the family business. Her father questioned that decision, which for a long time made her angry. However, he just wanted to make sure she was doing something she loved and not just getting a job in the family business because she thought it was expected of her.

What I liked about this story was what it said about both Donald and Ivanka. Ivanka knew she loved construction and buildings, so she designed her career around doing what she loved. Her father knew how important doing what you love is, and wanted to make sure Ivanka was following in his footsteps. Not his footsteps in the family business but that she truly was doing something she loved.

Are you doing what you love? Or are you doing what is “expected” of you? Think about it. Make sure you really are designing a business you love and that motivates and excites you.

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!

In this audio, I’m joined by Nanci Biddle, who calls herself “The Boundary Queen.” Her Web site is www.yourcoachingpartner.com. Nanci works with women and her tagline is “taking care of you while you take care of business.”

Today she is exploring how a coach can effectively research a new niche market, and connect with prospective clients in this new area. Nanci describes her new niche market as “Baby Boomers taking care of mom or dad.”

Her questions for me include:

1. What is the best resource to find women who are taking care of their parents?

2. What is the best way to find out what their needs are?

3. If I created a survey, what are some great questions to ask?

4. Where else could I display the survey besides on my website?

5. How can I offer the most value and what price would be appropriate?

I think you’ll find this audio especially useful in finding the right focus for your coaching practice. If you’re exploring new niche possibilities and wondering just how to find, and take advantage of, the resources and tools available to you, take a listen.