Many years ago I read about an experiment where they took three monkeys and some bananas and put in a cage.

If any of the monkeys touched the banners it would shock the other two monkeys. It didn’t take long for the two monkeys getting shocked to figure out what was going on and attack any monkey that went near the bananas.

A new monkey was added to the group and one of the original three removed. When the new monkey headed for the bananas the other two attacked him. So the new monkey never tried to touch the bananas again. However one of the originals were again removed and replaced by a new monkey.

Only one of the three remaining monkeys had ever been shocked or even knows what happens when you touch the bananas. Yet the one that doesn’t know why he is not allowed to touch the banners joins in on beating the new monkey for touching the banners.

The test went on and eventually none of the monkeys were the original three, yet none of the monkeys would touch the bananas. They even removed the mechanism that shocks the monkeys but none of those monkeys would touch the bananas and if any one monkey got near the bananas the other two would attack him.

Yep!

Humans are the same way.

You follow and do what the group does. When in a group setting, you look to see what everyone else is doing, to see what is and what is not the correct thing for you to do.

An example, the other day I went to my son’s end of the year party. As kids got on stage and sang or performed, when one parent started clapping everyone else would join in.

It’s rooted in your DNA, you want to fit in, and you want to belong.

For this reason when you are in a social situation you will look to others to see how to behave. It’s not something you consciously do. You don’t even know you are doing it.

There was an experiment where a person went on the street and pretends like they were having a seizure.

They found that if someone approached alone there was an 85% chance that the person would stop and help.

However, if there was a crowd of people there was only a 35% chance that someone would stop and help.

People looked to see what everyone else was going to do before doing something on their own.

Okay, I know you’re wondering how this applies to your website, let’s say you are standing in a store looking at refrigerators. You are trying to decide between two different refrigerators when a guy stops and says, “I’ve got that refrigerator right there at home and it is the best one I’ve ever used”.

Believe it or not, what just happened will have an influence on the refrigerator you decide to buy.

With an online website where people are able to leave reviews about a product or service, those reviews influence people’s decision.

Don’t believe me?

Do a test for yourself, you’ll find that products with low reviews are totally skipped over by the consumer.

People care what other people think!

But how can we apply this to our website?

There are actually more ways to set up a rating system for your website than you might imagine.

And of course some are better than others.

For example, a site that doesn’t put the rating information on the product page and causes the consumer to have to click on the product to see the rating system, is not using this system as well as they could. By waiting until the second screen to show the rating information you risk losing the customers attention. You want to make sure website visitor gets to the rating information.

Of course the more reviews you have the stronger the impact on the website visitor.

There was a study done in 2007 as to whether recommendations influenced website visitor’s decisions.

The researchers were interested in whether recommendations would be equally influential for products and experiences. They used a digital camera shop for the product and they used a tourist destination for the experience.

A product that was recommended sold 20% more volume than if there was no recommendation.

For the travel destination that had a review it sold 10% more than a destination with no review.

If there was a picture along with the review then the travel recommendation increased to 20%.

Of course, another way to do this would be to show the percent of people that buy that product from that page.

Say 74% of the people that visited this page bought camera A, and 7% bought Camera B and so on and so.

Now keep in mind they were talking about good honest reviews.

In addition to reviews you can also use graphs.

It can be data, charts, graphs or statistics anything that will help build trust and make the end-user understand that he’s making a wise decision. Things like statistics and bar charts appeal to our unconscious logical based part of the brain. Of course the most powerful ratings and reviews involve narratives and storytelling. By adding statistics along with storytelling and the ability to leave reviews will create a greater impact. It’s quite simple; the more information about the person who wrote the review, the bigger the impact on the end user. The end user now has a sketched out mini persona of that person.

This helps to make the review more powerful.

And customer feedback should not be limited to the product itself, customers should be able to post reviews about the company as well. Reviewer feedback becomes more powerful when we know more about the reviewer not just their name and date. We listen more closely to people we know and trust. When it is someone we don’t know we unconsciously try and determine whether we like that person or not.

Any time you give something away for free on your website it creates an opportunity to obligate the person that is receiving the gift.

Let’s say there’s an e-commerce site offering free shipping on orders over $75.

But does this offer really obligate us?

Consider the fact that we not only have to buy something; we have to spend a certain amount of money.  Perhaps more than we wanted to spend. By agreeing to spend more than we’d originally planned, we presented the first gift, our willingness to spend more money. The company then reciprocate by giving us free shipping.

This feels like an exchange, at best. So the offer of free shipping does not create a feeling of being indebted.

To in debt someone they have to feel like they got a gift with no strings attached. At Zappos.com’s online shoe store they offer free shipping with no strings attached. Even better they offer free shipping if you decide to return that item.

Now that’s special!

This makes the offer feel like a gift, to us when we shop on their own line shoe store.

Free gifts are very powerful. If the site gives you a free no strings attached gift, it will trigger you to reciprocate.

There is a coffee store inside the mall where I live and every time I go there they give my son a little bag of cookies. And in return I sit down and drink a cup of coffee. After all, the cookies are free with a cup of coffee anyway. So by giving my son the free cookies they obligate me to buy the coffee.

There are times I try to stay away from the coffee store because I know they will see me and obligate me to buy coffee.

By giving a gift with no strings attached, could cause a customer or friend to become a longtime customer or friend.

One way for a website to give a gift would be giving the gift of information.

For example, this website sells website designs, and we dedicated pretty much the whole website to giving guidance and information on making money online rather it’s with your website design, search engine optimization or even social media marketing.

No, this doesn’t guarantee someone’s going to purchase from me, but it does increase my chances.

And it could be the difference between them spending money with me or with my competition. Even if they don’t purchase right away, they are likely to eventually come back and buy. It’s also a great way to get people to feel out a form.

There was a test done in 2007 were they used a website that provide useful information about different formats of media files, definitions of media files, when to use each format and so on.

In the reward condition, visitors can access the information by first completing a form that asked for their names, addresses, and other demographic information.

They tested this site again a separate site were visitors could immediately access the information and then they were asked to fill out a form.

Visitors were twice as likely to fill out the form after getting the free content then filling out the form to access the content.

Christmas time can become a never-ending task. It can get to the point where you want to call your good friends and say, “Hey listen! Let’s not exchange presents this year!”

We know that if they give us something we will have to return their present with one of greater value, or we’re going to feel bad.

We are automatically obligated when somebody gives us something. There’s a sense of obligation to return the favor. Sometimes we do this for love or for fun. But many times we give gifts or do favors out of a sense of obligation. If I gave you a gift or did you a favor, would you feel you owed me something in return?

Most likely you would want to give me a gift or do me a favor in return, possibly to be nice, but mainly to get rid of the feeling of owing me something.

This is an unconscious filling, but quite strong.

Gift giving and favor swapping is what makes us human. It’s necessary for our very survival. If one person gives someone some food, shelter, money, a gift or even a favor, it will cause that person to fell indebted to the other person.

The only reason we are here now is because our ancestors shared their food and their skills an honored a network of obligations.
When we give someone a gift we trigger a feeling in them of being indebted to us. The only way to get rid of this feeling is to respond and return the gift or favor. Sometimes they will ignore these feelings, but these feelings will linger. It might even take a long time for them to act on the feeling. The neatest thing about this is that when the gift or favor is returned it is normally of a higher value.

If someone returns a gift a gift of lesser value it will leave them a feeling of an unpaid debt. So, in most cases they are going to give something of higher value than the original gift.

Some people did some research in 1976. They sent Christmas cards to total strangers and not only did they get a large number sending cards back to them, but these people (who were total strangers) continued to send Christmas cards many years after the experiment was over.

Think about it like this; say you are in a room with another person, as a team or working separately on creative task. After a while a guy comes in the room to tell you that you have a 10 min. break. The other person in the room ask, if he can leave during the break and the guy in charge says, yes.

A few minutes later this person returns with two cans of Coke. He opens one and hands the other one to you and says, I asked the guy if it was okay to bring soda in and he said yes, so I bought one for you too.

You open the soda and drink it.

The person in charge comes in the room and starts the creativity task again. A little while later the person in charge says he needs to take care of some stuff and everyone is free to go. When he leaves, the other person turns to you and ask, if you are interested in buying some raffle tickets. The person who sells the most tickets gets a prize, you say okay and buy three raffle tickets for five dollars.

You see they did this experiment.

If someone gave you a can of soda would you then reciprocate in buying raffle tickets if they asked you to? Half of the time Joe offers the soda. The other half he doesn’t. The results?

When Joe brings you a soda you’re twice as likely to purchase a raffle ticket as when Joe doesn’t bring you a soda. You feel that you have to buy the raffle ticket because he gave you a gift even though the raffle ticket cost a lot more than the soda.

The power of reciprocating has been well known to people who manage direct marketing campaigns.

For example, mailing unsolicited donations for a veterans group generated an average response rate of 18%. When the mailing campaign included personalized address labels, the donation almost doubled to 35%.

Marketers use this method to persuade you to perform some type of action, such as making a purchase, volunteering, or funding a project.

It is difficult to say no to a gift.

Let’s pretend you are on the local school board and I’m part of a group of parents that would like to get new playground equipment. We’ve heard that there are some extra funds left over this year in the school budget. The parent group has selected me to approach the school board and ask for $5000 of the fund balance for the playground equipment.

At the meeting, in which I’m making my request, I shock the rest of the parent group by asking for $7,500 not $5,000. You and the rest of the school board shake your heads and say, “No, we can’t possibly spend that much money on playground equipment.”

I looked disappointed and say we do have a reduced plan for $5,000. You ask to see the reduced plan and I walk out of the meeting with a $5000 project approved.

Let me explain what just happened.

When you said no to me it was like a gift to you when I accepted that no.

The result was that you were now indebted to me.

By me accepting your no you had to reciprocate with something. So when I offered the reduced plan for $5,000 you said yes. Because you were indebted to me for accepting the no.

The idea is to ask for a favor beyond what you need, that way when they say no you can with another favor that is more reasonable, and you end up with exactly what you wanted in the first place.

Glass Repair Business in Albany, NY, Hires SEO Advertisers to Meet Local Glass Installation Needs

I just got this in one of my Google alerts.

If I owned a company, (especially one that’s dealing locally with local clientele) and I hire an SEO company to come in and help me do some marketing the last thing I want them to do is announce to my competition what I am doing.

Glass repair business in Albany New York hires SEO advertisers to meet local glass installation needs.

What does that mean?

SEO advertisers?

Search engine optimization is optimizing a website for the search engines. It’s making that website show up organically on the search engines. It’s working with the customer to show them how to make that website make money.

It’s guiding and directing that customer down the path he needs to be on to make money.

The most important thing to me is that the customer makes money so he doesn’t mind paying me every month.

If you’re serious about your business then you should be serious about your clients business.

From this press release I am not sure if the SEO is helping the client with advertising or installing glass.

About the only thing that press release does is makes me want to call the SEO company to compete against the glass company.

This press release was written for the SEO Company not the glass company.

It is written in such a way that I might click on a link in the press release if I wanted to hire an SEO company but not for a glass company.

If I was the glass company and hired this SEO Company to write a press release for me I would be very disappointed when I saw this.

I guess you’re wondering what the press release says, let me post the rest of it.

Dave’s Glass Co., located in New York’s Capital District, has partnered with Prospect Genius, a local online advertising company.

 

Albany, NY, December 03, 2011 — Dave’s Glass Co., located in New York’s Capital District, has partnered with Prospect Genius, a local online advertising company, to assist local residents in finding the best solution for their glass repair and installation needs. By working with Prospect Genius, Dave’s Glass Co. is more accessible to customers, providing them with an easier connection to local glass design, repair, and replacement services on the Web.

The professionals at Dave’s Glass Co. made the decision to collaborate with Prospect Genius to utilize their search engine optimization services (SEO). SEO allows the glass repair and installation company to become more visible to residential and commercial customers in the Albany, NY, area. This increased online presence allows local residents a more direct route for finding reliable glass installation services in the Capital District when searching in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

Matt Gallo, a senior Internet marketing specialist with Prospect Genius, is excited with the new partnership: “The whole Prospect Genius team is eager to spread the word about Dave’s Glass Co. and their 30 years of experience. We are thrilled to help to connect local residents and businesses in need of custom glass installations and repair solutions to Dave’s Glass. Now it is even easier for potential clients to find a local company performing auto windshield replacements or stained glass installations, along with the individual attention and care Dave’s Glass is known for.”

Recent studies have shown that higher ranked companies on search engines get the most overall traffic, so an effective advertising strategy can be very advantageous to local companies on the Web. Prospect Genius’s search engine optimization technique improves the prominence of Dave’s Glass Co. in online searches for customers, simplifying their search for professional glass services. Now when a potential customer searches for “Albany county glass repair,” Dave’s Glass Co. will be just a click away.

Dave’s Glass Co. is a glass repair and installation company specializing in auto windshield replacement, stained glass installation, and custom designs in New York’s Capital Region.

###

Contact Information

Dave’s Glass Co. Prospect Genius 518-703-8904glass-services-albany.ny-biz.co/

I am not sure how much Dave paid prospectgenius.com for that press release but prospectgenius.com should have told Dave to spend $10.00 on his own domain name before doing anything else.

Just from this press release alone I would not guess that prospectgenius.com cares very much about their client nor knows what they are doing.

Webmasters often forget just how important structure is in a website. And it can be an easy mistake to make. You likely add hundreds of pages of content after a site’s initial launch, based on new keyword data or to just get some fresh content up for SEO purposes. But you can easily betray your original site plan, and make your site difficult to navigate. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the human visitors are the only ones that will have difficulty navigating your site. If your URL structure is off, or you have pages that are more than a few clicks from the homepage, Google may take notice as well — which will likely translate into lost rankings.

Why Website Structure Matters

One question that new web developers always seem to get wrong is “what do searchers usually click on first in search results?” The tendency is to repeat the mantra of “the first result.” But this is actually seldom true. Humans aren’t algorithmic robots. If the second result appears more relevant than the first, searchers will almost always click on it before blindly visiting the first result. In a perfect world, the first website on a SERP will be the most relevant page to a search query. This doesn’t always happen, however.

The same concept translates to your website. Every single portion of your site navigation needs to point visitors in the right direction, from the URL structure on down to your individual pages of content. If a site or page appears to lack relevancy in its structure, your bounce rate will soar. If you have a large site, think about how much content you could add before needing to change the navigation – 20%, 25%, 30%? A good rule to follow is that your site navigation is well implemented when you can add 30% more content without a navigation update.

Structuring Your URLs

Navigation is fairly simple to understand if you think about URL structure. Let’s say you have a wireless Internet service lead generation website, mywirelesssite.com, and a piece of content titled Compare T-Mobile 4G internet and CLEAR. As you can see from the page linked to that title, the URL structure is not what you might normally expect, or http://www.mywirelesssite.com/compare-T-Mobile-4G-Internet-and-CLEAR.html. Instead, the web developer shortens the URL to simply include /tmobile-vs-clear. This will ultimately allow for further subpages without the URL getting out of control. For example, the web developer might eventually want to add pages for each state – /tmobile-vs-clear/alaska or even city with /tmobile-vs-clear/alaska/anchorage.

With the original URL structure, the URL for the page could quickly get out of control. Use your URLs to quickly structure your website, not fit keywords into the address — this does nothing but overcomplicate things. With long URLS and poor site structure, your site will be difficult to index, and deep pages may likely not see a SERP for months.

To properly structure your URLs, create a simple spreadsheet that begins with your homepage in column A, mysite.com, for example. Next, think of all the primary navigation pages that you might have. On a business site, these might include services, locations, about us, contact us, and testimonials. These become your first extended URLs as:

• http://mysite.com/services
• http://mysite.com/locations
• http://mysite.com/about-us
• http://mysite.com/contact-us
• http://mysite.com/testimonials

If you were to flesh out one of those sections (we’ll use services as an example), your URL structure might begin to look something like:

• http://mysite.com/services/roofing
• http://mysite.com/services/painting
• http://mysite.com/services/scaffolding
• http://mysite.com/services/paving
• http://mysite.com/services/refinishing

Everything looks clean and simple, and it’s clear what each page’s relevance to your overall site is simply by looking at the URL. You could have done it the hard way with something like http://mysite.com.com/roofing-services. But, to a search engine, this looks like a whole new category in itself, and can get messy when it’s time to update content, update your navigation, or even switch up your design/coding.

Google offers some additional tips on URL structure, including warning site owners to not create URLs that are long ID numbers rather than easy to read words.

Addressing Physical Site Navigation

Take a look at the irs.gov site map. You’ll notice some fairly broad categories like “Individuals,” “Businesses,” and “Retirement Plans Community.” Not only are these clear in the site map, but you can locate each category in the top navigation of the site. While the site could still use some work on structure, and the site map is a bit out of date, you can see the main idea – just about every page on the site is two or three clicks from the homepage, even though the site is quite large.

With the Panda update, Google has placed emphasis on two major things – high quality content and intelligent site structure. The main reason why many theorists believe content mills are tanking in the SERPs is because they can’t possibly organize millions of pages to be only a few clicks from the home page because they were never really meant to be organized that way.

Structuring Content

The majority of Internet readers tend to scan content, not read it in its entirety. A study as early as October 1997 found that 16% of web readers read content word-by-word. Do you really think that’s changed in a social media era dominated by the likes of “teaspoon content” sites like Twitter and Facebook? This scanning makes it necessary to properly structure content to get the most important ideas to your readers as quickly as possible. Beyond using bulleted lists, lower word counts, specific (not clever) subheads, and highlighted keywords, you have to pay close attention to your page’s HTML structure.

It should go without saying that you should have an “H1″ or title tag for every page – this is important for structure and SEO. But you should also include 2-3 H2 subheads, and even an H3 for a sub-subhead. Just like the larger text helps break up content for readers, the subhead tags help search engines scan your pages faster, and determine relevancy more accurately.

Site structure really comes from careful planning, intelligent design, and a commitment to providing high quality, relevant content. Beyond some of the more technical aspects like using proper code and paying attention to URL structure, most aspects of a site’s structure should fall into place naturally. Remember that organization is paramount, and your site should be fine.