Posts Tagged ‘content’

Action List: Don’t overdo the page content

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

content

I was reading a competitor bookstore’s online newsletter the other day and it gave me an idea for a post.  The newsletter went on and on and on.  I scrolled, scrolled, scrolled down through the content and found myself deleting the email before reaching the bottom. 

It’s not that the content was bad – it was actually really good (and it gave me some ideas for our own Boomerang Books Bulletin).  It’s just that I didn’t have the time or the inclination to take it all in. 

There’s a lesson in that for netpreneurs.

People’s attention spans are short these days.  We have so many things impacting on our time - so many distractions, competing priorities, and the ever-increasing demands of everyday life.  We just don’t have the time to read through a lengthy web page or email newsletter.  And when we do have the time, we can’t possibly take in all that information, because our mind is full of so many other things!

So for our human visitors/newsletter subscribers, the advice is to employ the KISS principle - keep it simple, stupid!

There’s also another important consideration when reviewing the length of our web pages - will Google index all of the content if it is too long?  Like most people in modern society, the Google indexing robots are busy little bees.  They will only spend a certain amount of time on your website before moving on to the next site.  If each page of your website contains a thesis, then much of the page content won’t be indexed, which means that your site won’t achieve its traffic potential from the search engines.

With that in mind, here are some tips for good page content:

- Keep each page or newsletter to 200-300 words maximum per page.

- If your content is more than 200-300 words, span it over multiple pages, but offer a ‘print version’ that contains the entire text (it’s painful having to print articles that span over multiple pages)

- Use bullet points, prominent headings, white space, 1.5 line spacing and short paragraphs to break up the content and enable the reader to ’scan’ your content.  It’s proven that most people scan, rather than read.

- Include keyword combinations that you want to rank highly for in Google and other search engines, but make sure that they appear ‘naturally’ within the text (ie. when read, the text should read naturally)

- Put your best content ‘above the fold’ so that every visitor can see it – ie. it is visible once the page has loaded, without the necessity to scroll down to reveal the content.

- Cross-link to other appropriate pages on your website so that your visitors can find other content quickly and easily.  Use contextual links (links within the body text, like this one!) to provide natural pathways throughout your website.

Of course, I am aware of the irony – this article appears on a blog page that scrolls and scrolls and scrolls.  A consequence of using Wordpress, although I am sure that it could be configured differently…

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Action List: Avoid duplicate content

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

Search engines exist to provide users with the most relevant information quickly. That’s why it’s in the interests of Google and co. to filter out content which is duplicated elsewhere on the internet. The search engines will only display one instance of each piece of content, and will ignore other instances of that same content.

It’s important then that you a) only display original content that is not replicated elsewhere on the internet, or b) optimise your site so that it is chosen as the most authoritative source (if you do happen to publish content that is replicated elsewhere).

A point to note – the content doesn’t need to be identical for it to be excluded from Google. The search engines know when content has been altered slightly in an attempt to dupe them!

Also, if you publish various versions of the same content on your site (eg regular view, mobile view, text format, print version), then the search engines might penalise you – use the NOFOLLOW, NOINDEX metatag to ‘hide’ certain versions of content from the search engines, because this duplicate content could be seen as an attempt to manipulate the search engines.

If you do use syndicated content, then you need to be optimised for the search engines to make sure that you are ‘the one’ that appears in search results – most importantly, you need to have quality back links from other authoritative and thematically-similar websites.

The best bet is to create your own quality, unique content – but be aware that your content may be republished without your permission elsewhere on the web in an attempt to improve search engine results…this eventuality will be the subject of another post at a later time.

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Action List: Live by the mantra – ‘content is king’

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

content

You have probably heard the mantra ‘content is king’ is web circles. Well, nothing is truer than these three little words on the web. If you publish interesting, quality content on your website, then the search engines will reward you with high rankings.  It’s as simple as that.

Search engines exist for one purpose – to deliver their users the most relevant, authoritative content quickly, in response to the user’s specified search criteria. That’s why Google, Yahoo and MSN have become huge money making machines – they sift out all the rubbish and provide you with the path to enlightenment within milliseconds. Remember when you had to go to the library to find out stuff? Search engines have changed all that.

It follows then that content that is a) unique b) true c) detailed and d) sought after will eventually find its way to the top of the search engine results pages.

Whilst other SEO strategies, such as inbound linking and keyword tweaking, are important (and shouldn’t be neglected), they are subordinate to the requirement to publish quality content.

There are people out there that will try and convince you otherwise, but ‘content is king’. Everything else is incidental on the web.

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Action List: Make your textual page copy easy to read

Monday, January 19th, 2009

text

The success of your website will depend very heavily on the content of your pages, and in particular, the page’s textual copy.  Your text needs to be well-written, well-punctuated, in easy-to-read sentences, have correct spelling, and be free of technical or complex words.

The more complicated the text, the more likelihood that your visitor will leave your site.  Web surfers are impatient people – if they find anything that doesn’t agree with them on your pages, then an alternative (normally a competitor’s) site is but one click away!

To test the readability of your pages, you should ask an independent person to test the page and report on its readability.  You can also use various online tools, such as Websitegrader or IBP, to check your site’s readability.  IBP tests your page copy for Flesch Reading Ease Score and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level.

The Flesch Reading Ease test is a United States governmental standard to determine how easy a text is to read. It measures the approximate level of education necessary to understand the web page content.

I recommend downloading the free IBP search engine optimisation and marketing book.  The eBook covers everything from an introduction to search engine marketing to tips and tricks on how to improve your order page. If you apply all tips and tricks that you learn in this ebook to your website, it is almost guaranteed that you’ll get more visitors and more sales.  I have used it and I have found it to be an excellent resource. 

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