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I need honest feedback! Brutal truth is necessary!

by marketmaker
14 replies
Hello all,

My name is David Vitarelli. I am currently in the Lead Gen industry. My company acts mainly as an aggregating hub of sales leads form various producers. We are looking to break into IM and have taken the according steps (we thought) to market ourselves properly. We have various web designers that were assingned the task of creating our website to be SEO and PPC compatible. WE HAVE A PROBLEM... Our site is terrible and I need honest feedback as to what specific corretions need to be made to be worthy of good SEO rankings and Paid search. because I am new to this forum I cannot post me web URL so I will write it out (elite media us dot com)
#brutal #feedback #honest #truth
  • Profile picture of the author Alex Cohen
    Originally Posted by marketmaker View Post

    Hello all,

    My name is David Vitarelli. I am currently in the Lead Gen industry. My company acts mainly as an aggregating hub of sales leads form various producers. We are looking to break into IM and have taken the according steps (we thought) to market ourselves properly. We have various web designers that were assingned the task of creating our website to be SEO and PPC compatible. WE HAVE A PROBLEM... Our site is terrible and I need honest feedback as to what specific corretions need to be made to be worthy of good SEO rankings and Paid search. because I am new to this forum I cannot post me web URL so I will write it out (elite media us dot com)
    David, if no one on your staff writes direct response copy, I highly suggest that you hire a good freelance copywriter. There are several excellent copywriters who frequent this board. I'll PM you, and if you'd like, I can recommend several.

    Alex
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    • Profile picture of the author marketmaker
      yes, I would like to speak with a couple of your freelance copy writers. Thank you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Loren Woirhaye
    The site is boring and undifferentiated. It fails to flag down
    attention - which is the first step in making a sale. You're
    losing before your even get out the gate.

    It's also grey, as in "man in the grey flannel suit grey," as in DULL.

    Also, your copy prattles on about "we" and "ours" and about how
    splendid your group is. It's also full of the sort of meaningless
    corporate "write to impress" gobbledigook that afflicts a lot of
    (ineffective, but executive ego-stroking) corporate marketing.

    It's not just the site. It's the message.

    You're gonna have to try a lot harder, or get somebody on
    your team who has some sparkle to their writing, because
    this stuff ain't cutting it - which you know of course, because
    you aren't making money from it.
    Signature
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  • Profile picture of the author css
    I would take the blue ball logo and you're contact number and merge them into the header image. They are eating to much space at the top.
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    • Profile picture of the author stevedirect
      Hi David

      Since you're asking specifically about
      SEO and PPC, I'll deal with those concerns first.

      SEO

      1. From what I can see your title tags are
      the same on every page. That's the first
      thing to sort out.

      2. It seems the meta description is the
      same too. In the SERPs every page will
      have the same description. Even if you
      did get decent rankings it's impossible
      for anyone to know what each page on
      your site is actually about until they
      click on your listing... and without a
      decent description they're unlikely to
      do that...

      3. The meta keywords are the same
      for every page as well.

      It seems your designers haven't done
      the most basic on-page SEO.

      The structure of your site is basically OK,
      though having a link on the menu to each
      page will help your pages get spidered.

      The biggie, of course, is off-page optimization,
      which means incoming links. Many ways
      to do this... too many to mention here.
      Enough to say that without a decent link
      campaign you won't get good rankings...


      PPC

      Nothing particularly wrong with your
      site as regards PPC. You need to start
      a PPC campaign and see what kind of
      quality score you get, and then test
      to improve it.

      After SEO and PPC... you need to look at
      the copy, as others have mentioned.
      No use getting people to your site if they
      don't become clients. You need some
      good selling copy for each page, selling
      the benefits of each service you offer.

      To sum up... you need to do a major overhaul
      of every aspect of your site: on-page
      optimization, off-page optimization,
      site structure, traffic generation, sales copy...
      the works.

      Plenty to keep you busy.

      Best regards, and good luck

      Steve
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      • Profile picture of the author Kevin AKA Hubcap
        Hi David

        I'll take a crack at a site review.

        First. What exactly is the point of having the train bear down on visitors to your site. Between the blue logo and the subway image you're losing a lot of valuable real estate that could be used to get prospects to delve deeper into the site and why you're the solution to their problems.


        For SEO

        Warriors have already mentioned you have the same title tags, meta description and meta keyword information on each page of your site. (to check, open the page in your browser, go the view menu, and click view source. Look for the <head> tag. You'll see the meta tags).

        This is less than optimal. There is something I should point out. If you go to the "sales" page the meta tags contain information for a photography studio.

        Each page should have a unique title and unique meta information.

        For PPC

        Where are you sending your leads. Are they all going to the home page or are prospects who click on a ad for "press releases" going to the press release page.

        In a perfect world you'd want the keyword your targeting in the ad and in the title tag and body text of the landing page.

        For more info on PPC take a look at Perry Marshall's site.

        Overall

        You've made the same mistakes that I and most others make when starting out. There's a lot of knowledge on this forum. Take their advice and you'll be flying right in no time.

        Kevin
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        • Profile picture of the author Forest_Parks
          I actually think the layout is ok.... It needs interest and some professional updating but it's ok in that sense.

          Maybe the grey image could be replaced with some kind of feature slider like the wordpress "featured content gallery" plugin.

          Also the header does need attention and the square font needs to be swapped for something else.

          I'm a designer by trade so can comment on the design but the copywriting I won't say antthing for now .

          I've seen worse websites pulling in sales!
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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel Scott
    For a start, you're wasting huge amounts of virtual real estate with that stupid header.

    You say you do direct mail campaigns, so surely to god you have a copywriter who actually knows what he's doing?

    Use him!

    At the moment your site is far too corporate, throwing around meaningless buzzwords.

    The whole message/marketing angle is pretty bad, to be frank.

    It's not just the site that needs work, it's the whole way you're marketing the company.

    -Dan
    Signature

    Always looking for badass direct-response copywriters. PM me if we don't know each other and you're looking for work.

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  • Profile picture of the author Peter.Anthony
    I agree about the header. On my 15" monitor, the header takes up most of the screen. That's prime real estate.

    The logo is pixilated, looks bad.

    Here's how I see the first paragraph:

    Welcome to blah, blah, blah, blah. ME. me . me.
    Signature

    Great eBooks at a great price! Email me for a quote or work samples. peter@bridge-city-marketing.com

    Peter Anthony

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    • Profile picture of the author Ross Bowring
      David, it's dull.

      Display your excellence... showcase your previous results... show them you are trustworthy... worthy of a phone call...

      Copy wise... your sentences are way, way, too long. The 9-line paragraph on your front page will scare anybody from reading.

      When I click to your pages on the left I'm left wondering why there are no case studies... no proof that your talk isn't cheap.

      The good news? In the right hands this is a quick fixer-upper.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bryan Bliss
    Not trying to be brutal but A few things I would do would be:
    1) go with a clean font like verdana for the company name instead of the elite media dot "logo". if budget permits, go to 99designs to get logo
    2) abandon the grey subway images until I could find some image that more creatively represents something either more "elite" or more "media" than a curve in a subway track. maybe even just nice pics of the people in the firm that do the work, possibly an informal video.
    3)use lead gen mindset to offer empowering incentive (report or tutorial) with sexy compelling bullet points to get customer opt in.
    4)choose a larger typefont.
    I hope this helps.
    Bry
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  • Profile picture of the author The Copy Nazi
    Banned
    School of No Idea. Meta Description - "Welcome to Elite Media Marketing". And a cutting-edge opt-in "Receive a FREE Quote!" Gosh I'm so excited by that offer. LOFL. And there are even typos in the nav. bar - "achieve hlgher rankings" and "your clients and thelr needs" (as seen on Firefox).
    The Flash header would be better as a train wreck - 'cause that's what this site is.
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    • Profile picture of the author Collette
      Setting aside the design, copy, and SEO issues for the moment:

      Why are you offering services to your clients that you clearly do not have the resources to deliver?

      In other words, why are you setting yourself up to fail?

      No ethical copywriter is going to want to "sell" services which you apparently have neither the expertise nor credentials to deliver. Taking everything into account, for the copywriter to do so they'd have to be flat-out lying.

      My suggestion would be to go with your strength while you build the team you need to offer the other services. You say all your sales come from cold calling. Super. Then offer the best damn cold calling service available.

      Do what you know, do it right, and do it better than anyone else.

      You wil then have a slew of satisfied coustomers who will vouch for your performance and expertise. Something which is conspicuously lacking in your current marketing.
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