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On an average day, you may spend time on Twitter, aggregated news sites, dedicated news sites (eg BBC, CNN, NHK), Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Digg, delicious etc.
What generally happens at the end of the day is you have anywhere up to 100 tabs open that you mean to come back to. But, tomorrow is another day. And the whole round starts again…..open a tab, read a little, click a link, watch a video, tweet, new tab, follow a link, new tab, download a white paper, new tab. ETC.
So, how do you stand out in this endless round of websites and social media impact?
Somewhere, in the recent 1,000 sites I have visited, (ie in the last 3-4 days) is a site that caught my eye. Sadly, because of the insufficiencies of the search engines to revisit the sites I have been to in the last day or two, I cannot lay my hands on it. But it stood out.
Which, you have to admit is rare for a website. Why did it stand out?
Because it behaved exactly the same as an app that I use on the phone – FourSquare. Little pop up saying I’d earned the New Visitor (or similar) badge as I entered and scrolled through the article I had found on one of the major news aggregation sites. It also linked me to others who had found that interesting. Some of whom I know and respect.
Enough to stay? Nope. But the article was good and had links to other related material. So, I clicked within the site links and started reading more. (Good sign – we like sticky sites that help you find other content of interest).
A couple of pages later, I got a new badge and was encouraged to register to the site to keep my badges. And return. By then, I was actually quite interested in the site and knew I would return. So, Sign up- easy, email plus first name.
I kept reading, bookmarked a few items as relevant for my research, and inevitably, eventually, moved on.
No-one from that website has been in touch. My life and requirements for writing have moved on so I haven’t searched for them. I can’t remember where that site is for the life of me. I could go through each day’s bookmarks but I simply don’t have time.
That website has a willing visitor, if I could only remember where it is. I don’t have time to look, but a single email reminder saying:
1 week ago, you looked at the following articles…….. Since then we have added all this related news….
and I’d be there in a flash.
If you create sticky content, add funky functionality, and set up CRM systems that allow you to keep in touch with those who fall over your website….please, please, please use them!!!
On Monday, a story went around about a jelly bean with Kate Middleton’s face on it. In itself, just another of the stories ‘wasting’ newsprint in the run up to the Royal Wedding.
But, it exposed a rather disastrous flaw in the Independent’s URL structure and system which renders outdated or incorrect URLs to the page with that story ID. As long as the story ID is left within the URL, you can change all of the rest of the URL to anything you choose. And people chose to do so, which led to an ever-increasing variety of URLs being posted to Twitter, and an apology from Martin King, editor of the Indie. (Interestingly, his post shows without a story ID as presumably this would also be changed in the ‘retelling’!)
What is perhaps more interesting though is that Google has decided to index as many as 70+ (and rising) of the duplicate URLs as you can see by running this search.
The vast majority of these URLs have appeared on twitter.
The moral of this story is check your URL structures and systems are not open to abuse, and use Twitter and social signals to get indexed rapidly on Google.
Whilst the noise about the Google Panda update (previously called the Farmer update) is beginning to die down, there will still be many websites who should consider the value and quality of all their content and how this may reduce their chances of good listing in the SERPs.
The obvious contenders may not be those you first assume. Aged and static content that has not been updated for some time may actually be bringing in long tail traffic, so don’t just bin old pages without checking your traffic stats and backlinks for those pages first. However, it may be that your business has changed direction since that content was added and it is no longer relevant, so take a look at some of your historic content to ensure it still fits the bill.
More likely culprits for content deemed to be of low quality by the search engines are those which may seem far too similar to other pages on other sites. For instance, if you sell products with a generic product description that other companies also sell, and you have one page per product (required for inclusion in Google Shopping/Base), these product pages may not appear unique to the spiders.
A quick fix would be to add the capability for reviews and testimonials. Until those reviews begin to appear on your site, add a “no index” tag, and then manually remove this from any pages where reviews have been added. You can request reviews from your customers for products that they have purchased, which will also give you a chance to get in touch with your customers and ask for feedback.
Other low quality pages may be a links page that includes broken links, links to irrelevant content, or links which are not providing any link juice to your site. Keep a weather eye on any links on your site to ensure that these are working, relevant and worthwhile.
Check your traffic stats (analytics) to see which pages are rarely visited or have high bounce rates. Check to see why this might be the case – is navigation difficult to reach that page? Is the content out of date or off-topic for your target audience? A quick revamp of your navigation or content may be all that is required to raise the quality score for that page.
And whilst we are talking about Quality Score – take a good look at your PPC, or ensure that your internet marketing agency understands how Quality Score works. One or two keywords in your Pay Per Click campaign that are not performing as they should can have a decidedly negative effect on your QS rating, which will affect your PPC positions.
A nice, quick small task for you to do which will help your website no end.
Pick, say, 5 pages of your website which have links on them. It doesn’t matter if they are internal or external links. Now, look at the anchor text for those links. That’s the bit that people can see to click on.
Do any of them say “Click here” or “More info” or anything equally as trite and non-SEO?
Change them. Make them descriptive, keep them short but punchy, and make sure that your most important keywords are included.
Repeat every day until your website links are SEO friendly and think carefully every time you make a link from now on. Have a list on your desk of the top keywords you need to target and ensure you include them.
This blog post from last October gives some very useful information about the types of links that Google likes to see on your website.
Using Google Webmaster tools is a great way to keep up to date with what links you have to your site. Some may have been created without you asking for a link so it is always worth keeping a check on who is linking to you and developing relationships with those sites and those audiences. It may well be that you have a target audience you were unaware of, and those are business opportunities worth pursuing.
Internal links are fantastic too for driving people to content areas within your site that may also be of interest, for promoting specific products or services to a wider audience, and can help the searchbots to index your site.
As per the previous post about finding a good PPC services team who will help teach you about running a PPC campaign rather than taking all control from you, it is interesting to note that Eric Ward – master link builder from Wordtracker – has the same belief, highlighted at the start of this recent interview.
Building inbound links (or ‘backlinks’), ie getting websites to add a link to your website, is not the black art that many make it out to be, but it takes time and it pays to be methodical in finding those that will bring the best return. Surprisingly, this is not always those sites with the highest PR or Alexa ranking.
However, in order to get worthwhile links you must have good content that others will find of value. Many websites have passionate and committed communities of loyal visitors, who will swear that xyz website is their ‘bible’ for information on that particular subject. Whatever niche you are in, your aim should be to provide similar value to your visitors. This will then show that you are a mine of information on your particular subject, which will encourage others to link to you.
Eric Ward gives some prime examples of creating valued content, and if you take a step back from your own website, you should be able to work out how to do this too in your niche.
Whatever anyone says about the importance of SEO, if you do not have the content to back up your optimisation efforts, it is likely to prove a waste of money and time. Links are still one of the first and foremost ways of bringing in highly targeted traffic and although it is a time-consuming process, it yields major dividends. And in order to get links, we are back to that old saying, “Content is king”.
Create good, high quality, relevant, unique content and others will link to you. Y c’est ca!
