So, I had a few people moaning about how they won’t read my book online, so Mark gave me the heads up on Lulu.
You can now buy the seo book as a proper paperback directly online for just £9.99
Lulu is a great website. Upload your print-ready PDF, chose a format and decide on your price.
So, as you may have guessed, I think content is important on your website. What you say and how you say it relating to what you are selling is important.
Another area of content generation that is just as important is when you post something, especially relevant with Blogging and news websites.
Google seem to becoming more focussed on time based results. I have found when Blogging, my posts are very searchable in Google within hours then tail off after about a week. They are even looking at future based search.
It seems like an extra chore to creating topical content, but with a little bit of focus on keyword relevant articles, you can create the opportunity for traffic. Don’t put it off though, you may just miss the boat.
Following my predictions, I thought I would elaborate on the need for quality content.
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I love writing. I’m no J.K. Rowling, but I do like to tap away at the keyboard and ‘create’. I also believe in the power of words to help change the way people may think about a subject, or even a product. It’s part of my job I guess, trying to persuade people. That takes focus.
In the same way, I like to read a lot and once in a while I find a book that persuades me to change my thinking. That’s why I am pleased that I made a great discovery in the book Can I Change Your Mind? by Lindsay Camp.
If you write anything, I would highly recommend this book. It may start changing the results you get from that Ad, that e-mail to your colleague, or even that job interview.
So, you’re sitting at your computer to find a product or service. You open up Google and get ready to type in your search query.
I can bet you didn’t type in “integral solutions” or “peace of mind”. In fact, I would suggest it was quite specific.
Where a lot of businesses go wrong with their websites is the use of marketing speak and non-specific content.
This video highlights common mistakes when it comes to web page content and shows you what you can do to make them better.
Having appropriate links to your website can only be a good thing… or can it?
The idea is that the more relevant links you have coming into your website the more authority you have.
About five years ago, the main strategy for building links was for webmasters to swap links (reciprocal linking) . I wasn’t doing it myself but I got the odd e-mail to some of my sites along the lines of, “If I link to you, will you link to me?” So, you ended up with lots of websites with ‘links’ pages. The problem is that so many of these ‘reciprocal’ links simply weren’t relevant.
Of course, search engines rely on giving good results so their criteria for who they place at the top of their search engines, as their algorithms have improved, has become more focussed around the basics - quality and relevance.
They still put a lot of emphasis on incoming links, as well as out going links, but the quality of the sites you are connected to can also help or damage your own reputation.
And, arguably, it doesn’t stop there, with the search engines creating the connections once, twice, or more times removed, ie. the site that’s linking to the site that’s linking to you, could affect your ranking.
For instance, if you have a reference article from an industry magazine website this could be good, depending on the anchor text and general content of the site. Compare this to a link from a spammy website (with low page ranking) about something off-topic.
Some websites have got around this, in terms of their external linking, by using a tag called No follow (looks like this). It tells a search engine not to take the link juice with it when it follows the link, hence, not adding weight to the target page.
This stops people trying to abuse links.
With the advent of user generation through blogging and social networking, a more effective link building strategy now in my opinion is in content generation, with the added bonus that the search engines love new fresh content.
Here, we are talking Blogging, article writing and any aspect of your website, including tools and games, that ‘attract’ people - both physcially, in terms of visitors, and arguably more importantly, through links.
The one key important thing to remember is your website goals and traffic funnel.
Copyblogger is one of my favourite Blogs, and I recommend it to most people who write, especially online. Dean Rieck is currently running a series on the Blog, with his 58 of the World’s Greatest Offers series.
They are coming out over four Blog posts so it may be worth subscribing to stay in touch. The first has already been published: Offers that Raise Response and Lower Risk.
We all need a bit of teasing.
It’s a well known fact (he says) that men like seeing semi-clad women rather than naked women. The suggestibility factor lets our imaginations start working to create something possibly more perfect than the reality.
If you want to tantalise someone with your own marketing, and yes it may not be a sexy industry you work in, you need to add some ‘tease’.
Writing advertising copy is no easy task and Web Copy That Sells is a good starting book to help you crafting some sexy words. It is a craft though and just needs working on, and testing.
Every movie needs a trailor. Every car purchase starts with a test drive. What’s your version of the underwear shot?
Remember the bad old days when companies insisted that on their website, every time their name was mentioned, they wanted to see their logo - even in body copy.
Luckily we’ve moved on from there - a bit.
Another similar problem I see is with names (especially for events) where the words are put together as one or spelt differently, just to be different.
I wrote an article about a local business event called Inspire07 - yes, no spaces, but instead, in my article, I put the space in.
I did this, not to be awkward, or to break any brand guidelines, I did it because logically, that is what someone will type into a search engine. If you do a localised search (6/11/07), the article comes above the actual event website and is delivering traffic to my site already.
I cringe when I sit in a meeting and someone starts telling about a domain name they have bought, “and we’ve spelt it differently to stand out!”
If you want your website to be found, you have to be flexible - spellings and all.
I had a conversation about NLP with a friend, Daryll, last night and he was discussing how he has got to the point with his ‘trade’ where he takes what he does as normal, and sometimes has to remind himself that to other people who have never come into contact with what he does, it’s something new and unknown.
For instance, assuming that you drive now, imagine the first time you got behind the wheel of a car compared to how you may take it for granted now.
My point… People coming into contact with what you do will have a completely different outlook and understanding of every aspect of it - the benefits, the theory, the practical, etc.
Is you sales message written for them, or for you?
