Hi,

My name is Doug Kercher and I am a golf pro in Australia.

I was recommended to this site by a friend of mine.

I have worked very hard to get my product and website up. A big learning curve.

It's been on Clickbank for a couple of months and no sales yet.

Is it my salescopy, product or traffic?

I hope it is the 3rd one as I haven't had many people to the site, only 20 or 30.

Would anyone like to critique my site please?

www.dougkerchergolf.com

Thank you, hope I can contribute in the future.

Hi Doug,

I'm just a newbie at copywriting so I'll leave indepth critique to someone more qualified. I did want to mention though, a little bit of your graphics is cutoff in your header; the word 'Plan' at the end of the first phrase 'Your Perfect Plan' is missing just a bit of the letter 'N'. Also, your 'privacy policy' in your opt-in box isn't clickable.

I'm sure none of these are any big deal but just a couple of things I noticed. I know website design can be a tedious process and I commend you for all the effort that your site must have took!

Hang in there! If you keep up with promoting your product around the web you're gonna do ok. If you need any tips on where to promote, send me a private message and I will give you a link to an article I just read that gives ideas on where to promote your ebooks and reports.

Aside from the design issues the previous poster mentioned, I see no problems with your site. It is colorful and attractive, and although I'm not a golfer, it appears to be well targeted. I was hoping to find something that would make me say, "Aha!" in terms of giving you pointers to make the site profitable. Good luck to you!

Well, I have just begun to delve into the extraordinary toolset that copywriting is, so I would not dare to offer advice in that arena. However, having spent about 10 to 12 hours a day for the last year studying internet marketing, I can offer some advice on your website. After you hear this, you may just want to start from scratch, but it might be well worth it for you.

In the real world, location, location, location, is the key to getting traffic to your store. On the internet, you have to replace the word "location" with "information" as the key to getting traffic to your website.

Most people build a website backwards from how it should be done. They choose a domain name, and then put the site together.

Wrong.

Why, you ask?

Simply this, keywords are the lifeblood and beating heart of a website. Your first move before you ever register a domain name should be to research keywords relating to your site concept. Do vertical and lateral searches using the plethora (god I love that word) of keyword tools available on such sites as Google and Yahoo, Overture, etc. You must find a set of about 30 keywords that have a fairly high demand, and ideally, a lower supply, than there is demand for them.

What about the domain name??

Well, you have now done your homework, found a great set of keywords, and you are going to be using the very best keyword, as your main site concept. This keyword (or sometimes keyword phrase) will become your DOMAIN NAME, and also the main keyword on your landing page.

But I'm doing a site about home golf instruction!!

Yeah, well, good luck on that, do a search on Google for golf instruction, which, by the way, after viewing your landing page source is your one and only keyword, and you will find that you do not come up in the natural search results at all.

Here's the thing, you have a product to sell, in order to sell it on the net, great copywriting is, of course going to be necessary to close the sale, but if your website gets no traffic, who do you think you're going to be selling to?

Lessons and key concepts:

• Keywords drive traffic

• Natural search results outperform paid search results at an astonishingly high ratio - ergo, you want to rank high on a NATURAL search result for your site concept.

• Search engines are in the business of delivering high quality and highly relevant search results, it's their BUSINESS, and the algorithms they use are getting increasingly sophisticated, so your only recourse is to deliver high quality, lexically relevant content.

• Website structure is CRUCIAL to getting traffic. The proven model is
a) Site nav menu on the left, no more than ten items, no more than 5 submenus for each item.

b) AT LEAST 10 Tier two pages delivering high quality content, linking back up to the index / landing / tier one page and down to the tier three pages.

c) AT LEAST 20 Tier three pages delivering high quality content, linking back up to the tier two pages and the index / landing / tier one page.

d) Duplicate the nav menu top and bottom on every page in a text only form.

e) Must have a contact page, this will increase your clickthrough by 30%, DON'T use an email link, spambots LOVE them, use, instead, a contact FORM page. This is also proven to increase your contact rate by about 85%.

f) Search engines LOVE pictures, but make sure they're optimized and don't slow your site from loading.

• Each page on your site should be a "keyword focused content page". In other words, from your newly acquired keyword list, choose one for each page, and build the page around it delivering high quality content.


!@#$ WHY DO I HAVE TO DO ALL THAT??!!

Again my friend, it's all about getting traffic to your site so you can have someone to deliver your pitch TO. Building a site in this manner will get you ranked high on a natural search result, which translates into traffic, which translates into at least a CHANCE to pitch your product or service.

There is a lot of "wisdom" out there that says you only need one page of good copy to get good results. I think this would be a great idea for someone who is paying for traffic or advertising their website in something like PopSci or whatever, but a one page salesletter will generally not rank high on a natural search. The 30 page, high quality content, tier 1, 2, 3 model is the ideal structure for good search engine results.

There's a lot more to it, but this should get you started. By the way, use your keywords enough times on the pages so they'll be picked up as being lexically relevant, but DON'T SPAM. Make sure your Title uses your page concept keyword, and make sure your keyword appears at least once in the first paragraph of each page.

BTW, keyword phrases when used as part of a domain name, such as Learn-Golf-At-Home.com will be seen as a phrase separated by spaces, not hyphens, and that is a great thing. You might not be able to get LearnGolfAtHome.com but you might be able to get the other.

Keyword phrases work a similar way, in the metacontent part of your page, where you list your keywords, separate the keyword phrases by commas, don't use hyphens in the keyword phrases, and the spiderbots will pick these keyword phrases up as keywords. DON'T BE AFRAID TO USE A LONG TAIL KEYWORD PHRASE, these are getting better and better results these days.

Hope this helps.

Hello Copy Heads.

Sigung - you hit the nail on the head. Great post. So many
folks don't know where to begin and step one being keyword
key phrase research seems to boggle minds. But it is the
true starting point. You have to know the market (on the web)
before jumping into the (keyword/phrase) pool.

I just want to give Doug a few more pieces of advice that relate
to his website.

Doug, add these terms to your meta tag keywords:

golf, golf instruction, golf lessons, learn to play golf,
improve your golf game, doug kercher, golf pro, australia, australian,

Some of these are the long tail phrases Sig was telling you about
and there may be more of those.

Meta tag description - try using this:

Golf instruction (golf lessons) by Australian Golf Pro Doug Kercher.
Improve your golf game to the fullest potential possible.

Home Page Title:

Golf Instruction - Get your golf lessons from Australian Golf Pro
Doug Kercher!

As for the copy on the page - PM and we'll talk. You need to
dramatically improve the text - be sure all the keywords and
key phrases are in the text on the page.

ONE more thing - Don't use "click here" ever. Use pertinent
anchor text instead. This will make a HUGE difference too.

All the little pieces put together correctly will bring you much more
traffic and potential customers.

My .02 and OH-pinion.

Verb