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Google Now Indexes Scanned Documents

Google has announced that it will now begin including scanned documents in its search results – a feat that requires an immense amount of processing power and advanced image recognition technology. Unlike standard text documents, scanned files don’t contain any text data that Google’s spiders can index. Instead, Google has employed Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, converting photos of words into digital text files. – TechCrunch – Google Now Indexes Scanned Documents

The implications of this on search engine optimization (SEO) are fairly huge.  In order for PDFs to be indexed by google, they had to be saved in text format (instead of image format), which counted out millions of older documents and documents from sources not aware of this caveat.  There is a wealth of information online in the form of scientific papers and technical documents that could not previously be included in search results.

For business owners, stop worrying about whether documents on your website will be included in search results.  Instead, shift your concerns to more important issues such as content, usability and increasing sales.

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Increasing Pageviews per Visitor

As we’ve been discussing, sometimes businesses get caught up in the need to increase traffic to their website.  This “traffic” often equates to the number of visitors to a website or the number of total pageviews.  But, as Traffikd discusses, there often is an opportunity to increase the time on the site and the number of pageviews per visitor.  This obviously will increase the number of total pageviews, but it also means that visitors are spending more time on your site – which gives you more time to sell to them.

For bloggers and social media marketers, the desire to increase numbers of unique visitors to a site often overshadows an effort to increase the average number of pageviews per visitor… In reality, the blogger and the designer do have some influence on visitors in terms of encouraging extended visits, and even a small increase in average pageviews per visitor can result in significant gains in overall pageviews. – Traffikd – Increasing Pageviews Per Visitor

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30 Ways to Increase Sales on Your Business Website

saletimparkinsonAs we discussed in our previous post on traffic, there are three ways to increase sales on a website: 1) increase qualified traffic (number of potential customers), 2) increase the number of conversions (sales) or 3) both 1 and 2. This list focuses on ways you can increase traffic or conversions.  A good strategy would be to pick a mixture you’re comfortable with and continue to add to it as you see success.

  1. Increase your advertising budget
  2. Expand the keywords you target with Search Marketing
  3. Use/Expand Affiliate Marketing
  4. Purchase ads on niche websites
  5. Write articles with valuable information for your potential customers
  6. Start a blog
  7. Join social networks and start conversations in your areas of expertise
  8. Advertise on social networks
  9. Allow customers to rate and comment on your products & services
  10. Create a FAQ section on your website
  11. Add a discussion board to your website
  12. Start a podcast
  13. Target your marketing message to your audience
  14. Change to a customer-centric design
  15. Add support information about all your products and services
  16. Make it easy for customers to contact you with questions or concerns
  17. Create an ongoing newsletter
  18. Offer a free product or service in exchange for contact information
  19. Update your website design to a professional, modern look
  20. Add a sitemap to make it easy for customers to find information
  21. Include a search function
  22. Use structured menus instead of drop-downs
  23. Organize your website information intuitively
  24. Add contact information throughout the site
  25. Use a creative, but professional color scheme
  26. Incorporate all the information needed to make a purchase decision on product and service pages
  27. Solicit customer purchases from every product and service page
  28. Tout company accomplishments on homepage
  29. Announce company news through press releases
  30. Optimize your website copy for search engines

Do you have more ways to increase sales on your business website?  We’d love to hear them in the comments below.

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(photo by timparkinson @ Flickr CC)

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