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A lot of people have trouble writing tiny ads for their   AdWords campaign. They can’t succinctly give searchers a reason to click on their ads and do business with them. Or even worse, they don’t give much thought to their AdWords copy, cranking out generic copy that just doesn’t get results.

Simply put, most AdWords copy I see sucks. Why? Here are 7 AdWords copy mistakes.

1.    It doesn’t include keywords at all—You need to   include keywords in your ad’s headline, copy, and display url. These keywords will be bolded in the search results, causing your ad to stand out a little more. It also lets searchers know that you have what they’re looking for.

2.    There isn’t a call to action—A strong call to action can snap searchers out of their passivity and give them direction for when they visit your website. Keep your call to action simple. “Get a free quote today” or “Call for your free consultation” are examples of clear, effective calls to action.
3.    Where are the benefits?—Customers are selfish. They want to know how they’ll benefit by doing business with you. Highlight your main benefits in your ads. Will they lose weight fast? Increase their income? Save more money? Clearly explain the benefits of your product or service in your ad.
4.    The copy is boring—You need to use powerful words in your AdWords copy. Words like “free”, “guaranteed”, “new”, and “save” can grab searchers’ attention and motivate them to click on your ad. Ditch the jargon. Use strong words. It’s that easy.
5.    You aren’t testing different ads—The worst thing you can do is to pick a single ad and stick with it. You have to constantly test different versions of your ads to see which ones perform best. By making minor tweaks, you can clearly see which changes boost your click through rate.
6.    There isn’t a USP—There are 10 organic search results and several paid search results on each page. Why should someone click on your ad instead of any of the other results? Your ad needs to let people know what makes you different. Follow these tips for creating a strong USP.
7.    Ignoring your display URL—Every little aspect of your ad has an impact on your click through rate. I’ve seen many cases where changing the display URL has helped the ad earn far more clicks. Try placing the target keyword in your display URL as this can help your ad stand out a little more and catch the searcher’s eye.

What other AdWords copywriting mistakes would you add to this list?

When visitors drop by your landing pages, what happens? If you’re making any of these deadly mistakes, they probably aren’t converting. Instead, they’re backing out of your website, and you never hear from them again.
Here are the top 7 landing page mistakes to avoid.

1. No strong headline—As soon as someone clicks on your landing page, they should see a strong, benefit-rich headline that lets them know they’re in the right place and they stand to benefit by doing business with you. Simply put, your headline needs to be strong enough to get the visitor to read on. If it lacks a benefit or is unclear, most visitors will instantly back out of your site.

2. Content buried below the fold—According to a new Nielsen study, web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. This means you need to place your most important information above the fold so visitors don’t have to scroll down to see it. Put your most important benefits up top as well as your call to action so visitors know what you offer and what they need to do next.

3. No call to action—Speaking of the call to action, if you don’t have one, you’re screwed. How can you expect visitors to take action if you don’t tell them what you want them to do? You need to have a strong, clear call to action that guides the visitor to the next step. I recommend placing one call to action in every screen view so that visitors always have a way to take action, no matter where they are on your site.

4. Too many options—It’s a myth that customers want choices. Landing page case studies have shown time and time again that offering too many options actually overwhelms visitors and causes them to take no action at all. Ideally, there should be just one thing you want visitors to do, but having two options (e.g. different packages) is also acceptable.

5. Nothing that builds trust—Online shoppers are a skeptical bunch. If they’ve never heard of you, they won’t trust you at first. Your job is to eliminate risk and to build their trust. You can do this by featuring customer testimonials, guaranteeing satisfaction, and offering a good return policy.

6. Paths guiding the visitor off site—How can you expect visitors to convert if you’re dropping links that take them to other pages? You don’t want to give landing page visitors a way out. Everything should be guiding the visitor toward conversion. Anything that does otherwise is like a leak that lets conversions seep out.

7. Difficult to scan copy—Online users tend to scan content in an F-shaped pattern. This means you need to make your copy easy to scan. You can accomplish this by using bulleted and numbered lists, short paragraphs, subheadings, and bolded phrases throughout your copy.

There’s one more thing I’d like to add. The key to continually increasing your landing page conversion rate is to never stop testing. You should always be tweaking various aspects of your landing page and testing them side by side to see what else you can do to get more conversions. The second you stop testing and experimenting is the second you get stagnant and stunt your future growth.
What are some other deadly landing page mistakes you’d add to this list?

During my past few years as a blogger, I’ve made a number of mistakes. As an avid blog reader, I’ve also seen other bloggers make mistakes of their own.

Here are 17 blogging blunders you should try to avoid. Please add to this list by leaving a comment.

1. Not having a unique voice. With so many blogs saturating the internet, why should someone read yours? The best way to stand out from the crowd is to have a totally unique voice readers can’t find anywhere else. How can you do that? Write like you talk, and be yourself. It’s that simple.

2. Having an awful design. For the love of all things holy, don’t use the default WordPress theme. It makes you look like a total amateur, and readers won’t take you seriously. There are plenty of great free WordPress themes you can download.

3. Posting infrequently. Keeping your readers’ attention is key to building a loyal following. It’s pretty difficult to do this if you post every few weeks or just whenever you get around to it. I’m not saying you need to post every day, you don’t, but post regularly enough that you don’t slip from your audience’s awareness.

4. Giving up too soon. Building a successful blog takes time. It can be a slow process, but if you avoid the blunders in this list, you should be well on your way to achieving something great.

5. Making it difficult to subscribe. You can’t expect everyone to come back to your blog on a daily basis. You need to make it so you can deliver your new content to them. That’s why you should place RSS feed signup buttons above the fold on your blog. You can also put a reminder at the end of each post asking people to sign up for your feed.

6. Not opening things up for conversation. Blogging is about creating a conversation with readers. Your job is to get the conversation started and to get people talking. Some ways to achieve this are to have a clear opinion on topics, write about timely issues, and ask readers to share their thoughts.

7. Not responding to comments. Of course, what incentive does a reader have to leave a comment if they know the author will just ignore it? You need to respond to all comments so you can keep the conversation going and build relationships with your readers.

8. Responding angrily to negative comments. People are going to disagree with you at some point. That’s just how it goes, and that’s actually a good thing. This starts conversations, and it keeps things interesting. Just make sure you have thick skin and respond to negative comments professionally.

9. Over-moderating comments. One of the great things about blogging—and all social media—is that everyone gets a voice. Readers get to voice their opinions, and those opinions should count just as much as those of the author. By moderating your comments too heavily (deleting all negative comments), you remove this important element, causing you to lose readers.

10. Adding nothing new to exhausted topics. Let’s face it: Whatever you plan on writing about has probably already been covered by someone else. That’s fine. Just make sure you add your own unique perspective to the topic to keep it interesting.

11. Distracting advertisements. If you’re going to have ads on your blog, keep them separated from the content. Place them in a sidebar or in a banner along the top or bottom of the page. Your content should always be the main focus of your blog.

12. Not tagging and categorizing content. Your readers may have particular subjects that they’re interested in reading more about. By categorizing your content, you make it easy for them to find the info they need fast. It’s Usability 101.

13. Bad headlines. A killer headline is the foundation of hot social media content. If your headline sucks, most people won’t even bother reading the rest of your post.

14. Never linking out. Linking out is important for a couple of reasons. First, it helps you turn your blog into a resource for your readers. In other words, when you link out, readers know you’re giving them all the info they need. Second, linking out captures the attention of other bloggers with a trackback, helping you build your network.

15. Being an unproductive blogger. Blogging can take up a lot of your time, especially if you lack basic productivity skills. One of the things I recommend is to set aside a specific time for handling blog maintenance tasks like approving comments. This keeps you from getting distracted each time a new comment is posted. You can also outline your posts ahead of time, so that when you’re ready to write you only have a few details to fill in.

16. Reposting content without asking permission. Never repost someone else’s blog post unless you talk to the blogger first. The only time you can repost content without permission is if it’s a short (few sentences at most) excerpt from the post. In this case, you should still link back to the original post.
17. Not optimizing posts for the search engines. If your posts aren’t targeting specific keywords, you’re missing out on long-term search engine traffic. Stick to the SEO basics of including keywords in headlines, body content, and back links.

What are some other blogging blunders you’d add to this list?

Was your website truly designed to achieve the best possible user experience? Or did the designer focus more on creating a “cool looking” design? Most times, the latter happens, and without even realizing it, a company has a website that hampers usability, costing them conversions and creating a bad impression with potential customers.

Thankfully, making your website more usable is actually easier than you might think. Here are 8 simple ways to improve your site’s usability.

1. Target the right keywords — Too many companies either don’t optimize their websites for the search engines or they target the wrong keywords. As a result, their website attracts low-quality traffic from people who are really looking for someone else. The key is to figure out which phrases your buyers are searching for so when someone finds your website, you have the things they’re looking for.

2. Clear navigation along the top or down the left side — Web users have come to expect to use the internet in a certain manner. One of their habits is to look at the top of the page or along the left side for site navigation. If the navigation isn’t in one of these spots, you can confuse the visitor, making it difficult for them to find what they need. Your navigation should also be clear, no cutesy or clever names.

3. Strong internal linking structure — Placing links throughout your website copy is a good way to keep visitors moving forward in a logical path. Just make sure these links serve a purpose and make sense in the context of the copy. This will help visitors quickly access the pages they’re most interested in.

4. Easy to scan copy — Online users tend to scan copy rather than actually read it one word at a time. In fact, they scan web content in an F-shaped pattern. To meet their scanning propensities, you need to make your copy easy to scan quickly by using lists, bolded phrases, subheads, and short paragraphs.

5. No distractions — You don’t have to cover every single available space on your website with copy or images. Repeat after me: White space is your friend. And less is usually more. So, take a look at your website. Are there any unnecessary elements that distract visitors and pull their focus away from your main message? If so, get rid of them.

6. Add a status bar to checkout process — Some studies have shown that up to 75% of all shopping carts will be abandoned. A common reason for shopping cart abandonment is that shoppers don’t know where they are in the checkout process or how much more they need to do. By placing a status bar on each stage of checking out, you let visitors know exactly what they have left before completing their purchase.

7. Separate pages based on subject — Having too much content on a single page can overwhelm visitors and make it difficult to find the information they need. By breaking up your content based on subject, you improve your website’s usability and give the search engines more pages to crawl and rank.

8. Easy to find contact info — Putting your contact info on each page builds trust and gives visitors a way to get in touch immediately without clicking to another page.

Does your website succeed in all 8 of these factors? What are some other usability tips you’d add to this list?

You’ve probably heard the saying “content is king.” Sure, there’s a lot of truth in that statement, but good content alone won’t make your blog a success. A truly great blog is a combination of quality content, eye-catching design, excellent promotion, and a strong community.

Today, I want to focus in on one of those elements: blog design. Too many bloggers fail to realize the important role blog design plays in creating sticky traffic. The simple truth is your visitors do judge your blog by the way it looks, so it’s important that you have a respectable design that keeps readers coming back.
Here are 7 blog design mistakes that can scare readers away.

1. Having too many ads — I’m not saying you can’t have advertisements on your blog. By all means, put ads on there so you can generate some income. However, just make sure your ads don’t become the main focus on your blog. Ads shouldn’t be a distraction. Create a specific section on the side for your ads so they don’t interfere with your content.

2. Using too many widgets and sidebars — These are a slippery slope. Many of the widgets, sidebars, buttons, plugins, etc. serve a good purpose and enhance your blog, but there comes a time when enough is enough. You have to be careful that you don’t create a cluttered blog that’s difficult for people to use. Pare it down to the sidebar apps you truly need, and get rid of the nonessentials.

3. Picking the default WordPress theme —Do you really expect anyone to take your default-themed blog seriously? Look, there are hundreds of great WordPress themes you can download for absolutely FREE. Anything is better than the default theme. It makes you look like a total blogging noob. Find a catchy theme that gives your blog a professional appearance.

4. Not using images to spice up your posts —Images can add an extra punch to your posts, making them more appealing and more interesting. Just make sure the images load quickly, aren’t copyright protected, and fit with the theme of your post.

5. Burying your RSS button —Blogging success requires building a community of dedicated readers. One of the best ways to keep your readers engaged is to create an RSS feed they can subscribe to that alerts them each time a new post is published. And if you want people to subscribe, you should place the RSS button above the fold for everyone to see.

6. Difficult to scan text — Readers tend to scan text online rather than actually read it word for word. With that in mind, your blog posts should be scanner friendly. You can do this by using bullet points, lists, short paragraphs, and bolded phrases.

7. Not making the design your own — Just because you downloaded a free WordPress theme doesn’t mean you have to use the template as is. There are plenty of things you can do to customize the theme to better fit your brand. One of the best ways to do this is by creating your own header for the blog, replacing the generic banner that comes with it.

What are some other blog design mistakes you’d add to this list? Leave a comment with your thoughts.