"Why do search engines look for a certain structure in a web site to favour them over others?"
Savvy Internet marketing web site owners know the answer and are already taking steps to revamp their "mini-sites" accordingly.
- FACT: Google is a respectable company, and wants "real" web sites in its search results.
- FACT: In principle, Google does not like "get rich" web sites, "make money" web sites, "copy my scheme" web sites, lead-capture web sites, or even affiliate web sites.
- FACT: Most of such web sites are single-page "mini-sites", or have a minimal landing page leading to one long sales page after taking a visitor's contact details.
- FACT: Google discourages such sites by penalizing them, for example, by reducing their 'Quality Score' in AdWords campaigns, so that their owners pay a high 'cost per click'. There's no reason to suppose that Google's algorithm does not apply a penalty also to such web sites in its organic (free) search results.
"What structure do search engines look for in a web site for it to be considered 'respectable'?"
Google states in its guidelines that web sites should, as a minimum, have:
- a landing page with content relevant to the visitor's search term.
- a privacy policy page, stating how visitors' captured details are used.
- a contact page, displaying the contact details of the web site owner, thus showing the owner's willingness to be held accountable for the web site content.
A terms and conditions page also makes a web site look professional and respectable.
Search engines also like to see a site map page with links to all these pages.
Provided that a web site has all these pages, its sales page can be as long as you like... and the more content it has, the more the search engines like it, too.
"How can I create a web site with all these pages easily?"
The Web Sites Creator is clever software that makes you look clever, and you don't need to be a programmer or a lawyer...
| The Web Sites Creator provides templates for the landing page, sales page, privacy policy page, terms and conditions page and contact page, in which you fill in the blanks or edit as you wish, and creates a site map page automatically. If you put a postal code in the contact page, it'll even create a GoogleMap page! |
"That's great! I can simply replace the placeholders with my company or web site name in the pages with all the legal jargon! But what about the technical stuff? How does my web site capture visitor details? I'm not a programmer!"
The Web Sites Creator does not just use the bog-standard 'form' HTML to capture visitor details. Abacus Data Systems has developed 'form' code to defeat spam robots ("spam-bots") by the use of two distinct methods written in two different programming languages (javascript and php). This means that your email list will not be subjected to spam attack.
"Am I glad to hear that! That's the last thing I'd want to happen! So, how do I put these lead-capture forms onto the web pages?"
Dead easy! Take a look at the screenshot below. Just mark the fields that you want to appear in the lead-capture form, fill in a few details, and click the button.
The next screenshot shows this form inserted on the Landing page.
"Fantastic! Can I put a form on my sales page, too?"
Of course you can... in exactly the same way. Take a look at this screenshot:
Here's the form on the Sales page (referred to as the 'Subject' page in the software):
Notice that the visitor does not need to give his name or email address a second time, which would be tedious. The Web Sites Creator software is 'clever' enough to remember them from the Landing page. Just another little 'extra' that an Abacus engineer thinks of.
Moreover, the form fields can be used for anything. For example, you could ask for the visitor's current make of car, hair colour, etc.
"It keeps getting better! Now, what about the contact page?"
Data captured in forms on the Landing page or Subject page are always saved to a database. When you insert a data-capture form on the Contact page, you can choose whether or not to save the visitor's details to the database.
Here's an example:
And here's the form inserted in the Contact page:
"What's the database? Is that where my mailing list is kept?"
Correct. There are actually three databases: one for the landing page, one for the (Subject) sales page and one for the contact page, because you'll be collecting different data from your visitors on each page.
"Are my databases safe from prying eyes?"
Yes, indeed. They are stored on your own web space provided by your web host. There's far less risk of their being compromised there than on an autoresponder service web site.
"Are you suggesting that autoresponder sites use or sell my mailing list data?"
Not at all; merely that it is easily possible. But ask yourself: If you could achieve the same objective in two ways, but one were far less risky than the other, which would you choose?
"Is the Web Sites Creator also an autoresponder, then?"
No, it isn't. The Web Sites Creator creates interactive web sites. It's not wise to develop a software product for two distinct purposes, because, in this case, many buyers merely want to gather information about their visitors, perhaps to email them personally, or for surveys, or for snail-mailshots, or just to build targeted lists for onward sale. It's not fair to charge a customer for an autoresponder, if he doesn't want or need it.
Abacus Data Systems will develop a separate mass email software product, AutoEmailer, which will integrate perfectly with the Web Sites Creator, as well as act as a stand-alone autoresponder. Then customers will have full and secure control over everything.
"Does that mean that I'll have to buy AutoEmailer to conduct an autoresponder email campaign?"
No. If you look at the screenshots of the form builder above, you'll see that you can create data-capture forms in two ways: 1. Automatic, 2. Manual. If you use an autoresponder service already, just paste its HTML or JavaScript code in the 'Manual' textbox.
You'd buy AutoEmailer only if you prefer to run an autoresponder email campaign from your own computer instead of paying a monthly subscription to an autoresponder service.
"It's good to have the choice! Now, what's this 'GoogleMap' page, mentioned above?"
Let's list all the web pages created by the Web Sites Creator...
- Landing page (editable)
- Sales page (or any page with the main content of the subject) (editable)
- Privacy Policy page (editable)
- Terms and Conditions page (editable)
- Contact page (editable)
- Site Map page (automatic)
- Find Us page (GoogleMap) (automatic)
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The Web Sites Creator offers an option to create a 'Find Us' page automatically. A link on your Contact page enables your visitors to locate your premises easily on a dynamic map provided by Google. It'd look like this:
"I've seen enough! How can I buy the Web Sites Creator?"
You can't... at least, not yet. It's still in development. The release of the software is expected in September or October 2009. Sorry! |
