It is common for businesses to field a host of questions from our prospects who might be:

• evaluating whether we are the best person for the job
• looking for an inappropriate solution to their problem
• doing background research with no intention to purchase

These enquiries are not genuine propects: enquiries such as these which do not lead to sales take time away from your engagement with customers who want to pay you.

Qualifying you customers means answering the entry level questions once on your site, whilst allowing you to make reference to more detail than you could convey on the phone.  It means promoting the appropriate solution to a client’s problem, which may even be directing them elsewhere to a service that you don’t offer.  It means giving away silently and instantly the information that a “product researcher” would otherwise suck out of your working hours.

In this respect, developing the content on your website falls into what Stephen Covey calls “Quadrant 2 activity” in “7 Habits of Highly Successful People”.  He oulines four areas of activity characterised by an intersection of Urgency and Importance.  Quadrant 2 is an activity which is important, but not urgent.  There is no deadline for this task, rather it is an investment in passively grooming your prospects.

By publishing this type of content,  you are sorting through your prospects en masse, so that those enquiries which pursue contact are highly motivated customers.

How do I get more serious customers?

Simple! Write a of articles posts specifically to your best customers!  Be really clear about what you offer, and be generous about publishing what you know.  If you’d give this information to an anonymous prospect on the phone, then you should give it to your readers, too.

• Write highly targeted content which provides detail about your product or service.  If a prospect is undecided as to whether they’ll buy from you, you may ‘tip the balance’ in favour of a purchase if you deliver enough reasons they should buy.
• Address Benfits rather than Features: this is about presenting a case which is deirectly relevant to your customer.  A feature list is about your product; a benefit list is about the outcome for your customer.
• Create a Frequently Asked Questions page and carefully answer the queries which waste your time.
• Ensure that you link content on your website thoroughly so that related material is presented prominently – this is known as making your page ‘sticky’ – enticing readers to stay on your site rather than browse away.

Wordpress Training Melbourne

..err, excuse the pun   I’ve been using the great PHPList Form Integration by Jesse Heap, and have come across his really simple way of reaping some SEO benefit from all the work he puts into the free plugin.

What have Cakes got to do with WordPress?

Jesse’s autoresponder notifies the folk seeking support that there are over 300 support requests in the works, and offers the opportunity to queue jump by linking to his site Pink Cake Box Wedding Cakes! Hats off to Jesse for the plugin.

There are a a few ways of showing gratitude to plugin authors for their work: making donation is the obvious one, but its possible to show appreciation on a tight budget, by rating a plugin at the WordPress Plugin Repository.

Wordpress Training Melbourne

Google has just released a well written guide to the basics of Search Engine Optimisation. Considering that Google has been the defacto authority on SEO practices since the term was coined, and they’ve only now seen fit to release a summary of condoned practices, to have a set of endorsed guidelines is a breath of fresh air.

The guide is written in plain English, and reads really well.  The highlights include:

• Writing better page titles, headings and anchor text
• Basic examples of metadata such as alt text for images
• Explanation of robots.txt and nofollow links
• Links to free tools

It delivers clear instructions to web authors, and I’d recommend that anyone publishing online should read it.

The fact remains that writing with all these points in mind takes some practice, and I believe that the guide will stimulate a realisation of the value of SEO services… Remember, memeLab can help!

The ultimate impact of widespread understanding of SEO principles will be better written content becoming easier to find.  Everyone wins!

Download Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

Wordpress Training Melbourne