Google Website Optimizer is partnering with ideaLaunch company SplitTestLab for our Website Optimizer services. Only 13 U.S. companies are Google-certified Technology Partners, so the office was pretty happy to hear the news.

SplitTestLab is our innovative way to make your website more awesome and you more money. We simultaneously test three different versions of one of your landing pages—including headlines, copy, design, offers and incentives—to see which version gets the most conversions. SplitTestLab is 100-percent focused on one solution: three variations for any single landing page tested against the original page.

Within three weeks of meeting us, the client sees both more conversions and better Google landing page ranks thanks to the ease of Google’s Optimizer platform. Read more about our testing process and email if you’re interested in having our staff of geniuses test your landing page.

Dear Clients,

We love you. We love serving you, writing your tips and optimizing your web pages, and helping your website get better Google listings. Like any healthy relationship, the love must be mutual. You show us your love by reviewing your tips and articles promptly, giving us constructive feedback, and answering our emails and phone calls when we contact you.

But some of you—and you know who you are—are avoiding us. Your tips have been pending approval for weeks and even months, and you don’t return our phone calls or emails. Do you not love us anymore? Are you breaking up with us?

Don’t do it, please. It will never work. We will stalk you. We will relentlessly come find you, wherever you are, until you review your tips and every single last one is approved. Then we will deliver your tip center to you and solicit more business from you so that our relationship can continue forever. Call it a habit, call it an addiction, call us “lonely,” we need your eternal love to go on living and we will not rest until we have it.

Yours truly,

Carolyn

Hey everyone - long time no see. It's been awhile since my last post, but something so monumental occurred in the search world yesterday that I had to come out of hiding and share this news with those who may or may not be aware. Yesterday, Google officially launched its new SearchWiki feaure available to those who have a Google account. In a nutshell, Google's SearchWiki allows users like you and me to edit search results. You can re-order, remove, or add web pages to the search results for any query and even more interesting, you can also add notes to specific listings. I could go on and explain more about how it works exactly but for that, take a look at this article; they've already done it.

Now I know this has nothing to do with writing or keywords or anything that we normally discuss really on this blog, but for anyone who uses Google when searching for stuff (everyone), or for those SEO's out there, this is really, really big news. I was playing around with this new user interface today and I must say, it's pretty cool. I'm curious as to what everyone else out there thinks about it, or if you have even noticed it. I personally think it has huge implications for SEO, not so much in terms of rankings at the moment, but users will be able to see all of the notes other searchers have made about a page or a site, and they will also be able to see what results other users have re-ordered, removed, or added. Google's product manager, Cedric Dupont, added that he "wouldn't completely rule out the possibility that user data from SearchWiki may someday impact regular search rankings." This too, would have huge implications on the SEO world because, as of now, rankings are more objective, decided upon by the many factors in the search engine's algorithms. This would bring a much more subjective element to it. Very interesting stuff..........

Remember, you have to have a Google account and you also must be signed in to be able to use SearchWiki. Try it out and let me know what you think!

This week our SEO team has finally been able to implement Word Vision, our super-human proprietary search engine optimization tool. Byron likes to describe it as “super-human” because, with a little bit of guidance from our SEO wizards Michelle and Joyel, Word Vision does the leg work of finding SEO trends, hot topics, and popular keywords. Our ladies simply upload keywords and content into the user interface and let Word Vision work its magic. Over the span of one to two weeks, we check back with reports on listing migration patterns, PPC price, and search volume. This data helps Michelle and Joyel write the most effective title tags and meta descriptions, as well as guide the content the editorial team and our writers subsequently create to leverage these results even further.

It’s the next generation of SEO—finally we are able to measure the impact of our Tip & Advice Centers and Sponsorships that our beloved writers put so much love and elbow grease into making. It’s ROI for our clients and a pat on the back for a job well done by our writers.

We had a choco-rific birthday celebration for our president Byron White this week. Not only did the team gorge ourselves on German chocolate cake from North End super-bakery Mike’s Pastries, we got a trip down LifeTips memory lane with stories about the good-ol’-days of Byron as a fledgling entrepreneur. Our company has come a long way from Byron working by himself in a basement charging $25 a pop for services! Needless to say, it was an uplifting sugar-high of a Wednesday afternoon.

Happy birthday, Byron! Cheers to more years of growing LifeTips, serving our clients, and making happy memories!

Does your company have its own internal style guide? If so, send it to your sitting LifeTips editor at the start of a project so that we can give it to the writer before he or she starts writing your tips and/or articles.

Having this information up front helps the writer capture the voice and language that reflects your brand. It takes out the guesswork. And when I edit the content, I can tune my eye to be aware of style nuances— such as Oxford commas, trademarks, and legal boundaries—unique to your company.

In the end, sharing this information up front saves you time from having to reject content. At LifeTips, we strive for zero rejections with every project.

If your company is thinking of making its own style guide, click here for helpful hints.

Reject. Rejected. Rejection. I know these aren’t nice words. But if you don’t like a tip, just reject it. Make sure, however, that you are very specific about why you're rejecting. Do this by:

a)      Telling us exactly what you want changed, or

b)      Pasting your revised tip into the comments box.

I promise you won’t hurt our feelings!

What does “separation of church and state” mean? Get ready for a new twist. At LifeTips, the phrase means keeping promotional product copy “tips” separate from informational/advice-oriented tips. We present the informational tip first, followed by the product tip—labeled just so: “Product Tip”—in italics. The label and the italics show that we are honest about our promotion and not trying to sneak it into regular tips.

So why bother with the separation? Good question. Honesty, for one. People browsing your Tip & Advice Center are likely there because they want information, advice, answers, knowledge, tips. They want to learn something new, not have your products shoved down their throat in the form of marketing copy overload.

The more you can give people what they want in the form of valuable information, the more likely they are to post links back to your website, bookmark you, and consider you an authority in your space. Search engine spider bots will love this as much as your readers love your organic content, catapulting your website to higher search rankings. And guess what? When people trust you they are more likely to buy your products. All they have to do is click on the link in your Product Tip and take out their credit card.

Information/trust + higher search engine rankings = more conversions.  That’s a concept our forefathers would be proud of.