Author: Jack Humphrey

You are probably aware of common mini-site techniques and you are probably aware of common content site techniques, but what if you combined the two.

The area where most marketers go wrong is in creating return visitors. Your most expensive acquisition is a first-time visitor. You should do everything in your creative arsenal to ensure they come back to your site.

How do you make that happen? By providing your visitors the absolute best experience when visiting your site. Larger authority sites focus on visitor experience first and then content monetization.

Note from Jack:

Serve your market and you will beat everyone else in your niche that aggressively optimizes (tricks) the engines. It’s not a theory, we have proven results to show this is happening right now with our extremely deep R&D and exclusive site building and marketing technology.

“Visitor Optimization” (VO) is all you have to worry about if you have the right platform to publish on. Search engine optimization (SEO) has been replaced for good. If the SEO industry DOES NOT freak out about that statement, then it’s not true. Their impending negative reaction and pooh-poohing of what we are saying will be deafening because it IS true and they are scared.

— Jack Humphrey – RPM Institute Partner

Examples include:

• Medical Information – www.WebMD.com

• Sports Information – www.Sportsline.com

• Car Insurance – www.Geico.com

• Home Equity Loans – www.DiTech.com

• Software – www.Microsoft.com

• Hardware – www.CompUSA.com

We know what you are saying, “Those are gigantic companies with huge advertising budgets”, and you’re right. You’ll notice with each example two trends exist:

• Established brand name

• Creative marketing

True, it will take your company years to establish a brand name, but the creative marketing is not out of reach and can be relatively effective in the short-term.

Here are some tips:

1. Learn from these sites and About.Com. Do everything you can to emulate them on your own website. Notice how they allow their visitors to be interactive with the site through the use of rating systems and product reviews. Notice how they serve the logos of well-respected organizations for businesses.

2. Getting memberships to your local Chamber of Commerce and Better Business Bureau will give your visitors comfort when browsing or shopping on your site. Put these logos front and center on your site.

3. Another tip is to always have a phone number on your site. The phone number doesn’t have to lead to your office or home phone. Setup a voice mail system to answer the calls.

Some other ways of establishing visitor loyalty include member forums, frequent blog posts, having a directory of sites in your niche, and a product review section.

Your ultimate goal should be to create a sense of community for your visitors. How do you think MySpace and YouTube grew so fast? It was simply because they gave their visitors ownership and allowed them to decide which content should be the most popular. Empowering your visitors is a sure formula for success and gobs of traffic.

Excerpt Taken From:
The Authoritative Guide To Creating Profitable Authority Sites 2nd Edition - Revised and Updated
Written By: Jack Humphrey

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