In the past 3 days I have seen and noticed more and more QR tags. Perhaps time to get one. But where to put them Many people put them in their business cards as with QR readers on smartphones you can now quickly scan details and not have to type the details in.

TEst

My website customers don’t want to read hundreds of pages and blog posts about SEO. Likewise they don’t want to page through many Slideshare presentations about content creation and improving their social media presence. However too many of them still think that getting good ranking is down to just getting links back to their site.

Writing content is something that is elusive to people to understand but is something that should be a staple part of your website habits. It is isn’t hard it is about developing a habit. I would recommend setting 15 minutes aside per day for just writing or updating content on your website. For instance I sat down to write this post at 15:00 on March 12th. It may be updated multiple times around the time of its creation and over time I will revisit it to make tweaks and changes.

As today’s topic was about how to write content for your site I decided that I would show you some of my sources of inspiration for creating website posts. I bet in your own niche you could find a similar list. I refer to these sites on a daily basis quickly using my Google Reader to go through a list of my favourite sites on website design, HTML and SEO to read what is happening in this space. Often my posts are a summary of what I read there.

Sources of Content on Content Creation.

I have been reading Problogger for several years and he writes both well and simply. What he writes is practically a Diploma course on blogging. Although from time to time I get a bit cynical about Seth Godin it cant be denied his simple short and easy to read style does provide good ideas on tightening up your business model and he writes excellent blog posts. I also like to read Copyblogger who is from the same school of thought as Problogger as they write uniquely on writing content it self.

Their mantra is simple. Sit down write – get ideas – produce and keep producing. Initially it IS hard but over time you develop a habit and really and truly get better at it. Write to a particular audience and speak to hem. For instance some of my audience are first time website owners who really are enthusiastic and want their website do do well but really don’t know how to best approach it.

I write to show them at least the best way to produce content that is both useful for their clients and also helps with their search engine rankings. I was chatting to my brother on Skype today and he was asking how he could make money on line. I said write 3 excellent articles per day of 300-500 words in length for 60 days. He thought I was pulling his leg. I wasn’t. I said for him to find a niche that he could write this volume of material on, set the time aside and hammer it out.

Now the length isn’t prescriptive but it is a target. If you run out of steam at 150 don’t cry. Just make sure it is readable and interesting. You can always go back and edit it.

If you think I am wrong then in Matt Cutts from Googles Blog on the topic of SEO he re-iterates this point repeatedly. Simply put write interesting content.

SEO Expertise

The world of search engine optimisation is constantly changing and I take the lazy option 9 times out of 10 and read SEOMoz and SearchEngineLand alone to keep up to date. These blogs provide but a technical and informational look at SEO. Some of it may be a little high brow for some but with these two as primers most questions can be at least touched on for SEO and some of the approaches. Like most sites it isn’t a definitive resource and you can find a lot of equally good sites out there but I find these have a most of what I need on a weekly basis.

Again these especially SEOMOZ preach the same mantra. SEO is a job and is not magic button Internet marketing. You get up in the morning, have a plan and work to it. I accept that you may have heard of a technique in social, content or link building that I have not heard of. It may be right or it may be wrong but the activity in testing this is the hard work and where most people don’t pass go.

It is now 15:46 and by my WordPress blog count I have written 705 words on content creation and SEO. I plan to revise this again and have put a reminder to do so in about a week but it is done and one more blog post is under the belt. It may have flaws, it might not even be interesting to you but I have started the process and will do many more times this week and next week and the week after. Will I write 3x7x30? Not sure but it is a good start.

My website customers don’t want to read hundreds of pages and blog posts about SEO. Likewise they don’t want to page through many Slideshare presentations about content creation and improving their social media presence. However too many of them still think that getting good ranking is down to just getting links back to their site.

This is one of the many methods that does help but isn’t the only way nor will it always work on its own.

Below I have listed what I call brutal must do facts about your site and activities that if you commit to acting on regularly will improve your ranking. In addition I show what most people really do.

Lets Look At Panda

Panda other than being a cute Chines animal is also a Google Employee from whom the sequence of 2012 updates to the Google search algorithm were named. Note these weren’t all the updates its just this was one of the bigger ones.  The Google Blog also posts about this.

But First…

We Don’t Know Everything

Google tweaks its search algorithm hundreds of times per year every year. So puffing wisely on your pipe and saying that high rankings is all about getting links is blatantly wrong. There are hundreds of factors that influence ranking of your website. Admittedly not all of them may relate to your site but a large chunk of them do and I have listed a few of the heavy hitters below. If good rankingswere just down to getting links back the n Google would be a pretty small office.

Google Loves Fresh Content

One of the largest updates to Google´s search algorithm was the well documented Panda update. In summary the update rewarded sites with fresh content. So if you are updating your site regularly then Google reqards this. Of course the other side of this si that it needs to be unique content and useful. So a simple bit of advise is to keep your content updated regularly with fresh interesting content. One of the best ways to do this is to have a system that you can easily update yourself and a blog is a great way to publish regular product and news items.

What Really Happens

Too many (read most) people completely ignore their site once it is created and they are happy with the design. Of course the site looks well and the information will be accurate. But if your competitors are creating product news,  adding new pages with new offers and blogging about the market he or she is in, then who do you think Google will think is a better site?

Getting Links

Links from other sites to your site tell Google that other people know about you and that you exist.  But hold on a second.

It is easy to get hundred links from sites that have nothing to do with your business. So for instance if you have a gardening site and get a link from a Indian site that sells kids clothes then what signal do you think this gives to Google. Answers on a postcard.

It is better to get a few high quality links that give better signals than lots of poor ones. In the Gardening site example it is better to get one link from Better Homes and Gardens site than ten from the India site.

How would you get a link from there?  That is hard work and determination. There are many ways of trying to get these golden links and even if you don’t succeed all the effort you put will be of benefit to your site.

What Really Happens

People still think just because they have a website that people will link to them.  They sweat over the layout of a deeply nested page that gets no traffic and think that once the site is complete visitors will flood in.

Sorry that isn’t the way. Most humans live by the WIIFM (Whats In It For Me) mantra.

Lets go back to the gardening example. If you create a superb article on composting, with a YouTube video and a detailed article on how to make your own composter and where to buy the best ones if you don’t fancy one and on weekly basis write an article on what is happening in tha space – guess what?  Enthusiastic organic gardeners will come back and link to it.

The Hard Work point below mus still be read though

Social Media

Just having a social media account is not enough. The critical word in social media is the social part. This doesn’t mean that you have to live on Twitter and Facebook. No it means dedicating time on a simple strategy for improving your reach. Again if you are spreading links and these are getting Likes, Google Pluses, and retweets this is yet another signal to Google that you exist. Want a simple strategic plan for social? Here goes free of charge

• Spend 15 minutes in the morning 15 minutes at lunch and 15 minutes at night on social media platforms
• Follow 2-3 new people every day in your niche.
• Interact with at least 2-3 people in your niche. In most cases this is easy as for me personally I enjoy it.
• Don’t blather on about your product
• Share other peoples content (do not do this blindly read it and understand it and share it)
• Repeat

What Really Happens

People open accounts. They have the icons on their site. Use it for 2-3 weeks and then say it is stupid. It takes a bit of work to get better at using social media both from a business and fund perspective. The time invested in a strategic manner will yield dividends.

Hard Work

Now there are many many more things that will help you with your search engine rankings. I will blog some more on this soon. But even for the items above you are talking about a level of time commitment and effort. For instance a decent blog post with imagery will take from 2 to 20 hours to create. By the time you write it, edit it, get some imagery, and review it make sure it actually would be of value to people.

But evaluate how much a new client will be to you.

You may not be able to get all this work done during your normal work day.  But evaluate how much a new client will be to you.  Is it worth putting the effort in.  I think so.

But What About Keywords

I know I never mentioned keywords above. Of course keywords are critical and are the ticking clock of SEO in that they are always there. However in the first place you need to get good habits. When you get good habits then you can look at keywords, titles, and structures. If you only have a 5 page website then keywords isn’t your problem.

But Site X Only Has 10 Pages and It Ranks!

Yes there are many sites with a small number of pages that rank above sites with many more pages. But I guarantee that they have strong links to them from high authority sites. Also the site below with attention to the items above could outrank them with a strong strategic action plan. The chart below shows the level of activity with Panda.  This is just one of the bigger changes.  Google Search is always changing but for the majority of businesses putting in effort on the basics is the first part.

Admittedly there is much more that needs to be done in more competitive niches and that is where a more finely tuned action plan comes into play, but you must start with the tasks above to make progress.  And start today.

A large percentage of requests that I get for websites revolve around the same two requirements simple and 4 to 5 pages in length.. Both requests are linked to people on a budget looking to get online. So I’ll include budget as well, people want simple, 4-5 page websites on a budget.

However swinging around the back then comes the next request “… and be found in search engines”. Unfortunately the two don’t go hand in hand. Simple 4-5 page websites can rank against competition but it takes a lot of work to achieve this.

If you have a website with the classic pages Home, About, Products, Contact and Location for example with some boilerplate text in them and you don’t put any internet marketing hours into them I can confidently say the site will never ever rank on search engines.

The 4 to 5 page website is a legacy of when websites first came into the market and are really a dead duck. People now voraciously go to the web looking for great information on products. And there niches now growing online for everything and people devour the good content and link to it. Look at your website. Do you think it has content that people would love to read? If not then you need a content strategy in the first instance of your SEO plan.

Brand:Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers

This is how Wikipedia defines the term Brand and whole university courses have covered this topic on its own. When looking at your website you could take each of these terms on its own and apply energy and time in developing a site that helps establish your brand’s recognition.  But lets look at seven!

1. Website Name

Too often people get hung up with having the product in their website name california-widgets.com, new-york-widgets.com and so on. But customers and now Google have tired of this for recognition and search respectively.

What is more important is that you have a website name that sticks in peoples minds even after they may have forgotten about the actual product’s name.  Mashable   blogged about Twitter in 2007 when they were amused by the name and how people were tweeting about their cats but it <b>did</b> caught their attention and later they became one of the early adopters and huge advocates.

Of course it doesn’t have to be a name that makes people smile but it should stick. It may be worth investing in the help of a marketing firm and spending some time brainstorming this name.

If your budget is low then why not use an old fashioned tool like a Thesaurus and plugging in your service or business into it. It will give you a both definitions and synonyms and perhaps trigger the creative juices.  Play around with options that you are comfortable with.  Say it a few times.  See if it sounds right.

2. Design of Your Website

Simple sites work best. We are in the 140 character world. People visit sites quickly, spend seconds and make quick decisions. However simple does not mean easy in website design despite what the above Thesaurus might say.

For a website simple means, clean, accessible and responsive. Read Write Web told us last October that the Responsive Web Revolution was coming to Facebook and this title alone told us that they assumed the fight was already over for standard sites.

The temptation to load your site with imagery. the dreaded flash movie and a montage of colours that you may think eye catching is attractive.

If you look at Alexa’s top sites and the top 10 you will see that they all share a simple landing page and you probably use all or some of them on a weekly if not daily basis.

Even they sites have their design  updated regularly as they work to make them even more simple to use for the visitor. Although past the first page there may be a depth of detail and a wealth of information, their initial goal is to make it easy for you to use the the site, stay, and conduct business or some activity.

You need to apply this logic to your own website as well. Although you may be tempted to show how much you know about your brand on page one don’t!  They will run screaming to the hills – we call it bounce rate and boy do they bounce.

Build a simple navigation and structure that will lead your visitor to their information, entertain them, make them welcome and deliver the right experience to them. Remember the portals of the early 1990s. Well I do and they were – shiver – terrible and now they are gone.

3. Establish a Symbol

Prince changed his name to a symbol and it did catch the eye. We don’t expect you to change your name but strong symbolism does help. Now before you go off making weird and wonderful combinations of crosses and Greek circles, there is a simpler option. Its called Typography.

Well chosen fonts and colours can make your brand stand out. Your designer will select those that speak to our brand and image. Most designers can in their own geeky way tell you how the Gotham typeface was used in the Obama presidential campaign. With careful font selection you can deliver a powerful and strong brand message.

 

4. Website Features

There are many tricks and gimmicks that you can add to your site to make it jump and play with the visitor. But the wrong choice of feature can scare them away. It is important to get into the shoes of your potential customer. Your feature may a authentication method using Facebook or like newspapers like the Huffington Post a quick read button that summarises the headline into an easily digestible 40 word summary.

If you have racked your brain for a feature and cant think of one then do what successful brand owners do. Ask your customers. Ask them what they are looking for when they come to your site. Pick up the phone and say hello and ask 2-3 questions of them. They will tell you. They will be right. Take their ideas on board.

Revisit regularly.

5. Distinguish Yourself from the Others

When all the above are complete and tidied away you still need to stand out from the crowd and distinguish yourself. For a website this is simple.

• Make bold promises and keep them.
• Present top class information.
• Amaze your visitors with your product information and fresh updates.
• Beat everyone on service and reliability.
• Take feedback and implement it quickly. Show what you have learned.
• Be human and open.This is the hardest part but the one that will deliver the biggest rewards.

And finally.

6. Start Today

Don’t wait till tomorrow. Start today. Take small steps every day. If you haven’t got a website register a domain, if the domain is registered get hosting, get a designer, form a network to get ideas, hire a graphical designer, start writing ideas and keep a steady momentum going towards developing a strong website brand.

7 … and don’t stop. Don’t Ever Stop.

Do you have a blog or perhaps a thriving website in a niche topic? If you’re seeing a decent amount of visitors to your site, you stand a fairly good chance of being able to monetize that traffic in some way. Most website owners would be interested in making an income from their site traffic, so let’s look at some of the ways you can do just that.

Advertising Networks

A popular way of earning money from your site traffic is to sign up with an ad-serving network. The most popular and probably easiest to use is Google AdSense. What’s that then? Put simply, it’s a flexible and hassle-free way to earn online revenue. Website owners display Google sponsored ads on their site. You choose where ads appear; preferably making use of the ton of advice out there that shows you the optimum positions for maximum click-through rate (the amount of time people click on an ad). The way that ads look in terms of font, color and size can be customized to match the look and feel of your site, so you can make them as subtle or as obvious as you like. Ads are targeted so that they will be relevant to the content of your site.

For example, if you write a parenting blog and have written a post about your child’s fascination with all things Lego, you’re likely to see ads from toy shops or online suppliers of Lego toys. The theory behind it being that if people are interesting in reading your post, they’ll most likely be interested in clicking on one of the ads to find out even more about the product. Once your visitor has clicked through to a merchant, it’s up to them to make a sale. You, on the other hand, will have already been paid when they made that all-important click.

Affiliate Products

Another way of driving some income from a website is to join an affiliate program and promote products of interest to your visitors. Most website and blog owners focus on a particular topic. It can be a niche topic or one covering a broader angle; it really doesn’t matter. If you have decent content but no product to sell, the solution is simple – sell someone else’s product. Using our parenting blog and Lego post example, you might write about a particular play set your child has enjoyed.

Talk about it favorably and then show your readers where to buy it with a link to a store selling that particular play set. There are loads of affiliate programs out there, but perhaps one of the best known is Amazon Associates. By promoting products sold on Amazon, you could enjoy a commission on every single sale that originates from your website. The Associates program is one of the better affiliate programs and offers loads of tools and neat-looking widgets to help you convert your traffic into sales. You can even set up your own Associates store to promote a wide range of relevant products at once.

Engage With Your Visitors

It’s worth spending some time looking at the importance of engaging with your visitors. If you build a nice site with some decent traffic, then at some point you’re going to get visitors. A half-decent SEO strategy with the help of some nice juicy keywords should ensure at least a little traffic comes your way. The key is to keep them coming back for more and offer them things outside of the realms of your website. Get your visitors involved and invested in your site and at some point you’re going to reap the benefits of that interaction. A simple way to start the process of getting to know your visitors a little better is to simply ask them for their email address. Pop a form on your website to collect their details and you’re on your way to creating your own email list. Encourage participation by using what is known as a call to action.

This could be as simple as offering your visitors a free eBook when they subscribe to your newsletter. Of course, you’ll then need to write a newsletter each week. This needn’t be overly time-consuming; a quick round up of the posts from that week will do it. This has the added benefit of bringing traffic back to your site and ultimately offers a greater chance of them buying a product through an affiliate link or clicking on one of your sponsored ads.
There is a world of opportunity to make money as a website owner. It needn’t cost anything bar a little time and effort.

 

It is clear that these days that having a website without an SEO or SEM solution and plan is really pointless. It is also clear that it is becoming more and more complex to explain the many facets of Search Engine Optimisation to people. However it is important for people to know that it isn’t just a matter of writing lots of keyword rich content and getting links. Yes these all help. But it is like saying to win the All Ireland you need clean gear and to be fit. You need to work on many facets of the plan and for every business there is a different approach. View this video from SearchEngineLand

For some it may rely strongly on a social approach on others a business to business approach and for others a mix of both. Over the coming weeks I will post some common sense tips on how to improve your sites ranking and show I have done this openly even for this site. Join me soon to read more on this topic.

What the posts will reveal is that there isn’t a secret to SEO at all it is a combination of knowledge on the topic, being well researched and working really hard with a trackable plan.

Content, HTML and Architecture

From the very beginning of your site you have to look at the content of the site and just not blindly pump out pages with bland, uninteresting content that people aren’t looking for. It is all very well that you enjoy wiring for your site but if from a very basic level the content is not on peoples search in Google, Bing and Yahoo then you might as well write nothing. Yes nothing.

The Google Keywords Tool provides an easy to use tool to allow you start some beginning keyword analysis for your business niche and gain traction from a content writing perspective.