We’ve written and discussed the First Law. It’s immutable. Every transaction — online or offline — follows this law. The concept is simple:

The size of the conversation between buyer and seller that precedes the transaction is in direct proportion to the size of the transaction itself.

The conversation is the flirting that takes place before the first date. In sales it’s known as building to “Yes.” This conversation is called engagement. It is the key to better conversions.

Better? What’s makes one conversion better than another?

The pre-sale conversation — the engagement process — is invaluable in developing better conversions. A strong engagement process will reduce returns, build realistic customer expectations, and cement the value in the service or product being delivered.

A better conversion is one that “sticks” — the client is a happy client six months after the sale.

Creating a strong ecommerce platform begins with designing a conversation — the engagement — that is in direct proportion to the size of the transaction itself. (You can read more about the First Law of Conversions here.)

Here are three ideas for building better — and more — conversions with your engagement process:

1) Answer questions before initiating the sale. Questions that arise during the sales process (the checkout) create insecurity and indecision in the mind of the buyer. This leads to shopping cart abandonment. Questions answered early in the process create confidence and build to Yes.

2) Translate the value props into client benefits. Too often we state the value of our product or service from the company’s perspective. Leaving it up to the prospective client to translate the sales pitch into real benefit.

3) What can the buyer expect after the purchase? Post-sale expectations can be critical to the client’s long-term perspective of your company and their satisfaction. Clearly explain how you will install the product, how you will train the client’s staff, or what support is available.
Video increases conversions because it increases the conversation. Video should be a key component of your plan for engaging users. Video makes it easier to follow the Law.

The Three C’s are your A-Team. They work together or fail together. To recap, they are Code, Content, and Consistency. With the proper code in place your content will be indexed. Your content must be relevant to the subject (keywords). New content must be rolled out consistently and it, too, must relate to the keywords.

The Three C’s work together. The code must be in place so the search engines understand the layout and content of your site. This is an important element of the new search schema adopted by the search engines earlier this year. It’s critical. The new schema defines your content. This new structure tells the search engines what your content is about.

Assuming you have the code in place and a plan for consistent content development, your site will continue to be indexed. The search engines read your content periodically. The more you update your content the more the search engines will index your content and your ranking will grow.

Take two examples: Blog “A” about politics is updated two or three times a day. While Blog “B” on the same topic is updated once a week. There’s no judgement about the quality of the work. Blog B may actually be better in its political insights and judgements.

Blog A, however, will be given more search engine optimization points for frequently updating the content. Because it is updated more frequently, the search engines give Blog A higher marks. Of course there are other issues, but you get the point.

Remember: the content must relate to your key search terms and it must be updated with some frequency.

We used text and images as part of our content. But video was central to our SEO effort. We doubled down on the use of video by employing a detailed plan for our VSEO — video search engine optimization. The practice of VSEO is significantly different but related to standard SEO practices. Standard SEO is easy in comparison.

The use of VSEO code combined with the video content itself provided the boost our search engine optimization plan needed.

Let’s take a detailed look at the Code in the next post.

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To recap: In February we began a focused VSEO effort to improve our Google search ranking. Our target was 90 days to page one. The search term we selected was “VSEO” — video search engine optimization. In the next couple of weeks we’ll layout the strategies and techniques we used. How did we do it?

We call them the Three Cs to SEO/VSEO. They form the foundation of the effort. They are Content, Code, and Consistency. Most search engine optimization work fails because it lacks at least one of these elements.

For example, you might have a blog that produces great content and you write consistently, but without the proper code your work is not getting indexed by the search engines. Or you’ve poured lots of money into the code structure that works across your site and it is integrated with the content, but there’s no consistent plan for future content (consistency).

Unfortunately we see a lot of small-business clients that dump money into a great looking website only to find their site looks great but hasn’t been properly search engine optimized. The look of the site has zero relationship to the quality of the SEO/VSEO work.

The look and design of the site is very important for other considerations; engagement and conversion, for example. But when it comes to search engine optimization you get zero points for style.

So we laid out our plan — the foundation — for our VSEO makeover. We established a search engine optimized code structure that would be used across the website. This code would be used to insure all the pages on the site are properly indexed. In February of this year Google adopted a new code structure or schema for indexing website content. This schema is critical. We embraced this new code and used it on every page.

We created a content plan for the initial relaunch of the site. This plan used text and images, but also relied heavily on video. Why video? You score more search engine optimization points more quickly with video.

And, of course, we created a content plan for the continual development and release of content. This new content worked with the code in place. We’ll take a closer look at the Three C’s in upcoming posts, but one final word here about consistency.

Most small- and medium-sized businesses look at website development as a one-time expense, plus some minor on-going hosting costs. They expense out the development fees and when the new site launches they call it a day.

To be effective, website development requires an on-going investment in time, money, and management’s brain-power. You should consider your Internet efforts as part of the sales and marketing budget.

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To recap: In February we began a focused VSEO effort to improve our Google search ranking. Our target was 90 days to page one. The search term we selected was “VSEO” — video search engine optimization. In the next couple of weeks we’ll layout the strategies and techniques we used. How did we do it?

We began a focused SEO effort to improve our Google search ranking. We used the new search schema adopted by Google and the other major search engines. This new search structure combined with the our experience in VSEO, we achieved a dramatic increase in our search ranking.

This multi-part series breaks down the step-by-step approach we took to conquering the Google search.

Check out the series:

Part One: Introduction

Part Two: What is Page One?

Part Three: The Foundation

Part Four: The Three C’s Working Together

…More on the way.

It probably started out as a $400 cheapie. You see them advertised on the Internet all the time. Video Spokesperson for $199! The bottom-feeders try to drag you in with the lure of a cheap spokesperson video. As mom taught me, “You get what you pay for.”
This is an industry where you definitely get what you pay for. Let’s skip over the poor quality video, bad sound, and final video that won’t play on the iPad. Those are a given with those cheap virtual spokesperson videos with the bargain basement prices. Here’s the real danger.

With most production companies you don’t own the video. The production company owns the video not you. Odd but true. How true?

Last year a video company that regularly advertises on the Internet sued one of their customers for copyright infringement. I don’t know all the details because I’m not sitting in on the depositions. (Thankfully.)

However, it appears the client bought a video in 2009. I guess in a sense they didn’t really buy it — they were just renting it and didn’t know it. At some point they needed to copy the video or make some other change. They evidently didn’t get the production company’s permission and evidently didn’t pay them an additional fee.

Bam! A lawsuit. And not just any lawsuit. They filed in federal court in Pennsylvania; home of the production company. The client is a small travel agency in New York.

I think they are still fighting it out in court and the production company appears to have lost round one. But at what cost to the client? Even if the client wins in court they lose. They could easily spend $50,000 defending themselves against a senseless lawsuit.

So, what’s the real cost of the cheapie spokesperson video?

For the record, iSpeakVideo does the right thing when it comes to the copyright. Our clients own the final video. See our production agreement. We even put it in writing.

We selected VSEO because the term 1) accurately describes our experience and the focus of our SEO efforts, and 2) the term VSEO is narrow enough that we can leverage our search engine optimization resources to impact the search rankings. The term draws about 10,000 searches a month. A nice niche search term. Compared to SEO which draws close to 400,000 searches and is more difficult and will take more time to conquer.

We defined our target as “page one.” That’s the holy grail for any search marketer. Businesses spend enormous amounts of money every month with search engine marketing firms in their efforts to reach page one. Few succeed. Often the only ones succeeding are the search engine marketing firms who pull in huge fees.

Page one is the objective because very few people click to page two when searching. Even fewer people click beyond page two. We all know this. What’s the impact? The result is that click revenue from a page two position and beyond is nearly zero. Page one is where the action is. Those top ten positions garner all the revenues.

So, page one is the target.

Google allows users to search “everything” — all types of media; images, text, video, etc. The “Everything” search (or Universal Search) is the default. Look at the left side of the Google search engine results page (SERP) and you’ll see it at the top: Everything.

Google and the other search engines also allow you to target your search to particular media; images only or video only for example. Click on “Video” in the left hand column, type in your search term, and you see SERPs that match your search term that are limited to that media type. In this case, Video.

After 90 days we achieved a page one ranking for the search term VSEO when searching Google’s video search database. That’s pretty remarkable when you consider there are over 500,000 videos indexed for the term VSEO.

It’s not a page one rank for Everything. In the broader search index we land on page two or three depending upon the day you search. This is still remarkable when you consider there are 750,000 items indexed by Google that relate to VSEO.
When we started our effort, iSpeakVideo didn’t even rank for the target search term. We didn’t show up. Nada. Zip. The website had been around for nearly six years and not one listing for VSEO.

After about 45 days we were listed on page 80…then page 60…and then finally, after about 90 days, we were listed on page one for Video and page three for Everything.  Pardon me, but pretty damn good.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll take a close look at how we did it.

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To recap: In February we began a focused VSEO effort to improve our Google search ranking. Our target was 90 days to page one. The search term we selected was “VSEO” — video search engine optimization. In the next couple of weeks we’ll layout the strategies and techniques we used. How did we do it?

In February we began a VSEO Makeover of our website: iSpeakVideo.com (Our blogging efforts suffered a bit as a result. My apologies.)

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll share with you the VSEO success we had and how we were able to get to page one in ninety days. Hopefully this will help you to better understand the entire search engine optimization process and how to apply SEO/VSEO to your own business.

First, a little primer about measuring success in a VSEO project. It’s really about defining search terms.
Take the search term “auto insurance.” This is easily one of the more competitive search terms. There are over two million searches a month for the term. PPC campaigns cost thousands of dollars and are dominated by the big names.

Most companies can’t afford the cost of a PPC campaign for this very broad term; lots of traffic but at a high cost. It will also be difficult to create content that competes with the content created by Allstate, Progressive and the other big players. That also makes an organic campaign difficult.

Consider instead, the search term “auto insurance seattle” – a localized search term. There may only be a few thousand searches each month for this term. However, if you are an insurance agent in Seattle this term may be more important to you.

You are also more capable of creating content that is localized and targeted to your search term. This local content will help you with your search engine optimization effort. In the end, effective SEO and VSEO campaigns are all about content.

We could have targeted the very broad search term SEO. This has 400,000 searches each month. PPC campaigns easily cost $5 or more per click.

Instead we set our sights on a search engine optimization project that targeted the term: VSEO. There are fewer than 10,000 searches each month for VSEO. On the other hand, these could be exactly the potential clients were are looking for in our business.

The search term also made sense since VSEO reflects our extensive work with video and is at the core of the SEO work we do for clients. There is great power in harnessing video for your search engine optimization.

Or, at least we thought so 90 days ago.

So, armed with our search term (VSEO) and a great deal of enthusiasm we set out on our VSEO Makeover.

Next we’ll talk about page one. What exactly is page one?

The size of the video spokesperson is an important consideration. Much can be won or lost with the choice of the virtual spokesperson. Lyle Holmes takes a look at the four primary frame sizes and evaluates each in this short video about the best framing size for your virtual spokesperson.