Fresh Content Increases Return Traffic

March 22, 2012 by Ray

Capturing the attenion of viewers is difficult enough, so when you keep them more than a few seconds, make sure that they see a reason for future visits as well. Return traffic is like gold!

Out of date content is a turn-off
Periodic updating and addition of text helps rank by showing that there is “fresh” and current content on individual pages and the site as a whole. If visitors notice incorrect or out of date information, their impression is that your website is untrustworthy. When your “coming events” page lists items from the previous year, you may as well be asking people to leave your site. They might assume you are no longer in business!

A regular schedule of web updates could be monthly, quarterly or even annually, as long as information remains valid. If it costs you money each time a web designer or webmaster makes changes or uploads new material, you may want to set up a couple of pages to update yourself at no added cost. Have your designer create a database and code for you to easily log in with a simple username and password to add, edit or delete information. This works well for an “Announcements” section of your homepage or a “Company News” or “Coming Events” page.

A website built to display a schedule of events (meetings, softball games, concerts, etc,) can include a calendar that is easily maintained by an administrator without the need for technical know-how. When clicked on, any entry can display a page with full details – part of the same database of information.

Use original page text
Do not use similar text on several pages of your site, just to have more content. Do not copy text from another website just because it contains good keywords. Google levies a “duplicate content” penalty which will cause the duplicate pages to be filtered out, making them worthless in search engines. This is done to prevent “mirror sites” from both appearing high in results and usually means that whichever page was first indexed would be regarded as the “valid” source by Google.

Add pages for special occasions
Do you have a brand new idea or service or product line? Are you seeking a new target audience for existing products or services? Add a page to address their needs and concisely show how you can fill those needs. You may want an advertising campaign to lead directly to that page, instead of the home page. After a site is already built, additional pages can be added quickly and inexpensively, since the standard page template merely needs to be filled in with words and pictures.

Focus on your specific niche market
Especially if you’re in a large or very competitive industry, a smaller player needs to find and fine-tune factors can be used to your advantage. If you specialize in certain segments of the market or serve a group within the general population, your website must reflect that in text, images, headlines.

Emphasize your specialties and highlight aspects that make you unique. If you’re a travel company which specializes in adventure trips to Costa Rica, you may want to mention that on every page to show that you’re the best choice for that situation. It’s no secret that a company should play up it’s strong points. “Travel” is the mostsearched-for term on the internet. Chances of appearing high in organic search results is remote. Your odds are considerably better for “adventure trips” and greater still for “Costa Rica adventure trips”.

Enjoy your trip to the top of the search engines!

Placement of KeyPhrases on Page

January 16, 2012 by Ray

The most important website content is the text on your pages. Besides the usual places to incorporate key words and phrases (such as your paragraphs and bullet lists), look for other opportunities to add search terms that reflect the page content. Here are some ideas!

Each page must support the site as a whole
Consider how words on any one website page support each other and how keywords used throughout a site will strengthen the rank of the site as a whole. A page which uses the terms “rivers”, “streams” and “lakes” can rank higher than one that only discusses “rivers” since those terms are themselves related. A site with specific pages highlighting each may beat out a site that again only talks about “rivers”. So keep in mind the relevance of terminology within pages and over a number of pages.

Speaking of rivers, the tone of text should “flow” in the same general direction throughout a site. If different people are responsible for writing different pages, an editor should be appointed to give the site a uniform feel.

Maintain strong customer focus
Build the site and flow of information on each page from the customer’s point of view instead of your own. Meet their needs before presenting your credentials and “why to buy from us”. People are only interested in you if you can help them. Here’s a real world example… When prospects call or visit, instead of first telling them about yourself and your wonderful background, ask what you can do for them!

Make images more visible with alt tags
Although images don’t qualify as content to the same degree as text, you can make them more tasty to Google and Yahoo as well. Image “alt” tags should be used to describe photos and graphics to robots and visually impaired viewers. Insert a text description of one or more words as follows:
<img src=”images/tiger-photo.jpg” alt=”Photo of hungry Bengal tiger”/>

Runners enjoy an orange sunset. (description of image)

Squeeze in some fine print
Image captions, smaller print notes, and even copyright lines of text allow additional inclusion of keywords. You may not want to clutter a page with too much text or by repeating the same terms over and over, but there are always opportunities to squeeze in some remarks such as below an image. Even generic images could have a short comment under it. Your page about tigers in Africa may include a couple photos. Even if no explanation is necessary, “African tigers” would definitely not be out of place. Or maybe it’s an opportunity to inject some humor into a dry subject, pleasing both robots and humans simultaneously.

Website Content Tips

December 13, 2011 by Ray

For best visitor retention and sale conversion rates, use conversational tone and provide plenty of text to generate interest. Use the terms that people are searching for.

Speak in simple language
Explain in terms that the average visitor would understand. Avoid using industry jargon when your target audience is the general population. It’s easier to trust you if they understand what you’re saying.

Keep text easy to read
Use short sentences. Longer sentences are often more difficult to follow. In most cases, a conversational tone will be more interesting and readable than a scholarly explanation. Don’t put too much information on a page. Instead, “continue” on to additional pages.

More text = more content
Don’t skimp on the total amount of overall text. Think of a search engine as a hungry tiger and your text as meat. Feed the tiger! Give it lots of juicy text to chew on. As long as page length isn’t excessive, more applicable words on a page means better results. You can work in many more keywords and keyword phrases in 300 words than you can in 100 words. As long as you break up the text with subheadings, bullet points, and graphics, human visitors will devour it as well.

Repeat yourself (again and again?)
Drive home important points by explaining yourself in a number of ways or by providing examples to illustrate details.

Put critical information near top of page
Important points and ideas should be visible “above the fold” to human visitors. Help them easily find key content without becoming impatient and having to scroll for it. Long pages could include some links to “jump” to lower sections of that page.

Place targeted keywords prominently on page
Keywords that are introduced towards the top of the page actually count more towards that page’s search engine ranking as well. This is logical in that the main theme of any page is expected to be discussed at the very beginning. Think of each page as having its own headline, lead paragraph main discussion points, supplementary or supporting information, and finally a summary (including a call to action like “Sign up now!”). Thus, the first and last paragraphs on any page should emphasize the targeted keywords.

Use bold text for keywords
Where your targeted keywords or keyphrases appear on pages, make them appear in bold text at least once or twice to catch the attention of visitors and tigers! Using HTML, these tags are placed around the words: <b>word word</b>
Yes, search engines give these highlighted words additional increments of credit towards pagerank!!!

Use the word “Free”
Find a way to work ‘free’ – in bold letters – into your site, especially the home page. You probably have something that you can give away, even if it is a PDF full of good advice. The internet was built on the premise of ‘free’. In fact, your customers may have typed in ‘free widget’ as a search term!

Use the words “Today” and “Buy now”
Why wait until tomorrow? Order now! Don’t delay! Take advantage now! Enjoy our product today! Be the first on your block! Foster a sense of urgency. Your visitors are looking for reasons to take action. Facilitate the process.

Keywords in text and page headers

October 6, 2011 by Ray

For best possible search engine optimization (SEO), keywords and keyphrases must be used appropriately within the text of pages. This includes page titles, sub titles, headers, bullet lists, photo captions and regular page text.

Make text readable by search engines
Most of your page text needs to be typed as standard HTML which can be “read” by the search engine bots that regularly visit your site. The font must be available on nearly all computers. If a particular font is not available on someone’s computer, they will see it in a more common form (such as arial, Tahoma, Times New Roman).

Flash movies and images can’t be “read”, so any text contained in them does not count. This means that a completely Flash site might have horrible rank, making it less likely to draw visitors from organic search results. A site using images to display fancy text would face the same dismal results. If vast majority of visitors don’t come from search engines, this is not as important. Examples would be membership sites where only members are invited.

Searchable text must include targeted keywords, with an optimal “density” of 3-4% for each particular word or phrase. This means that if there are 200 words on a page that you want optimized for the phrase “black shoes”, you should try to incorporate that phrase 6-8 times. Any more than that and you may actually be penalized for “keyword spamming” by a search engine – lowering your rank rather than increasing it!

Create distinct pages for each search term so that any single page might rank highly enough to appear within the first 3 pages of directory or S.E. results, even if it is not the actual home page. If you have several products or services, give each it’s own page where you can highlight the distinct terminology and characteristics. When the differences are slight, consider writing a page or article on one of them where you merely replace one possible keyword for another. For example, you may use the word “car” on one page and “auto” on another page. Even then, you should edit the text to avoid a possible “duplicate content” penalty.

Utilize heading tags appropriately
HTML heading tags (h1, h2, etc.) carry more weight than standard text since their purpose is to show a hierarchy of importance. Try to work keywords into the highest level tag possible. Having headings and sub-headings also makes pages easier to browse by humans! Sample:
<h1>Main Heading</h1>
<p>Paragraph of text describing heading</p>
<h2>Sub Heading (work in some additional or secondary keywords)</h2>
<p>More text…</p>

This is a case where having a human web designer or at least good software is always preferable than most word processing web page generators. That’s because the word processor uses it’s own code instead of the standard heading tags favored by search engines.

Multiple subheadings, short paragraphs
Keep pages “skimmable” with the generous use of subheadings and white space. Make it easy to pick out important terms when visitors are quickly glancing at a page to see if it contains worthwhile material. They can then concentrate on sections of text that give the information they need. More meat and less filler! You can always link from there to ‘more details.’

META Description Tag and Robots.txt

August 29, 2011 by Ray

META tags are a fundemental component of HTML and good SEO practices. A META Description tag is a free advertisement in search engine results, so don’t waste it!

Your description “tag” appears near the title in the header area and should be unique to each page. It’s purpose is to be an accurate description of page contents and goals, of course including as many major keywords as possible. 10-20 words are appropriate since total length should be under 170 characters. This will appear in the results of some Search Engines, so it should not be just a collection of random words and phrases. Here is what the tag looks like:
<meta name=”description” content=”Brief description of the contents of your page.”>

META Keywords tag
While not nearly as important as Title and Description, the keywords tag should include any search terms that actually appear within the text of the page. The following practices are advisable: (1) keep your list below 20 unique words or phrases; (2) separate the words or phrases using a comma; (3) put most important word or phrases at the beginning of your list; (4) do not repeat words or phrases. The keywords tag is not as important as it used to be in the early days of the internet. But it’s use has been downgraded since it became an early source of “keyword stuffing”.

Invite search engines to map your site
Be nice to those search engine spider robots which are constantly crawling the web looking for new and updated files. Invite them to chow down at your picnic! The META tag to include within the header code of each page you want them to find/index would be:
<meta name=”robots” content=”index,follow”/>

Upload a robots.txt file
Another welcome to search engine spiders to visit your entire site is by placing a robots.txt file on your server to tell them which pages or sections to crawl or index and which to ignore. For example, you may not want an images directory or javascript file spidered. You may also issue individual indexing instructions to specific search engines. The file itself is a simple little text file, which needs to be saved to the root directory of your site (where your home page or index page is). In other words, you would
upload your version of this to your web host along with your HTML pages, images and other files:

#The following allows all robots to visit all files because wildcard is used
#But all robots are barred from cgi-bin images and scripts directories
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /scripts/
Disallow: /images/

Again, be nice to the search engine robots and you will be richly rewarded!