seo
Free websites – you get what you pay for.
Posted by Sabrina | Marketing, Services, Websites, Writing and Editing | No Comments
This year I've seen a couple of campaigns designed to get Aussie businesses online with free websites and free domain names or free lessons on building your own. I won't mention them by name simply because - well, it's bad for my business! I don't build sites for free (but mine ARE affordable). However with anything that's free, you get what you pay for.
(Note that you can have a blog site with static pages hosted on WordPress, Typepad or Blogger, and you can access a range of templates, all for free, however you can't host these sites on your own standalone domain name, and this post discusses sites hosted on your own domain name.)
Yes, you can get up and running with your own website all by yourself, but I would suggest that if you go down that route, contact someone like me for assistance with graphics, SEO, and as part of that SEO copywriting.
These days anyone can put a website up. You might have the best product in the world, but unless you know a bit about how keyword analysis works, how search engines work, and how to write copy that will use the system to your advantage, you're not going to get found. SEO is a real art, and with search algorithms changing at a rapid pace in line with website evolution, you need to constantly tweak your copy and keywords.
I've seen so many small business sites let down with poor grammar and punctuation over the years that I highly recommend having a copywriter help you with your website material. The worst offenders are apostrophes: often popped in where they don't need to be and left out where they do, incorrect tenses and misuse of plurals. Poor grammar and punctuation looks unprofessional.
Competition is tough out there. As well as SEO-friendly copy on your site and great graphics and images, telling your own story could make the difference between people buying your product or someone else's. People remember stories; they engage with them. Simply saying "Buy my widget because it's the cheapest" won't differentiate you from the competition, even with a good price. Saying "Buy my widget - I developed my widget as a result of there being nothing on the market that quite did the job. It took me ten years of experimenting to get it right, to tailor it especially for our local market and local needs..." is far more memorable, human and compelling as a sales pitch. People can relate to you and trust you.
Look and feel is also a big part of the web experience. You not only have to grab your readers' attention with copy in the first five seconds, your site has to look professional and coherent. With free websites you are often constricted as far as design goes; apart from your logo there won't be much to differentiate you graphically from another business which has taken up the free site offer. Most free sites have a very limited number of templates and unless you're a whiz with coding or know someone who is, a limited number of options you can do with those templates.
Often too you may be limited as to the number of pages or menu items you can list on your free site. You might not be able to expand your site in the way you want down the track. Free sites mightn't let you feed in your twitter and facebook feeds or offer a range of widgets and plugins.
These are all items to think about if you're considering taking up a free site offer with your own domain name. Unless you're a marketing, copywriting or graphic expert, consider spending some money and getting professional help with your free site, or take the plunge and have a unique site developed. Domain names are cheap at the moment - from $9 a year and hosting with the fab Crazy Domains guys starts at $54/year. I can start you off with a micro-site to which you can add your own pages and menu items from $495, and it won't look like a free site built on the same template 50,000 other Australian businesses are using.
I read on the redoubtable Mashable yesterday that Google has declared war on 'bad' sites that are nothing more than content farms. You know the ones: you key in a search term in Google, go to a popular result and it's a page of auto-RSSed links, content lifted blatantly from other sites without acknowledgement or simply very poorly written and questionable content. You might as well not wasted five seconds you'll never get back clicking on the link and glancing at the page.
While the changes in Google's algorithm will initially apply only to the US (but we'll get it eventually), it's great news for the rest of us who do have genuine original content on our websites. Any changes that help my clients is fine by me. We work hard to write SEO-friendly content for our client sites; when you're tweaking content every word is vital if you want to get a good search result.
Google has been trying hard to rid spam sites from its search engine results, and is succeeding somewhat. If you clicked my link in the last sentence and read the article, you'll have seen this: "Google’s new classifier is designed to detect spam on individual web pages by identifying spammy words and phrases."
Bear this in mind if you constantly repeat keywords on your website pages. Okay, if you're a genuine person or business you probably won't be affected by the new anti-spam algorithm, but repeating a keyword more than a dozen times on one page won't help you up the search engine rankings.
I use SEO Scribe to analyse my blog posts. I've mentioned it before. Fab tool that really makes you think about what you're writing and what your keywords are. It can help you identify keywords. And it tells you when you've used a particular keyword too many times. Search engines CAN penalise you if it looks like you're rorting the system. Your keyword density should be about 5.5% of your written content, Scribe says.
What would you like to see Google do next (apart from offer a proper help service, via telephone, with real human beings on the other end to help you with misbehaving Google products?)
While the changes in Google's algorithm will initially apply only to the US (but we'll get it eventually), it's great news for the rest of us who do have genuine original content on our websites. Any changes that help my clients is fine by me. We work hard to write SEO-friendly content for our client sites; when you're tweaking content every word is vital if you want to get a good search result.
Google has been trying hard to rid spam sites from its search engine results, and is succeeding somewhat. If you clicked my link in the last sentence and read the article, you'll have seen this: "Google’s new classifier is designed to detect spam on individual web pages by identifying spammy words and phrases."
Bear this in mind if you constantly repeat keywords on your website pages. Okay, if you're a genuine person or business you probably won't be affected by the new anti-spam algorithm, but repeating a keyword more than a dozen times on one page won't help you up the search engine rankings.
I use SEO Scribe to analyse my blog posts. I've mentioned it before. Fab tool that really makes you think about what you're writing and what your keywords are. It can help you identify keywords. And it tells you when you've used a particular keyword too many times. Search engines CAN penalise you if it looks like you're rorting the system. Your keyword density should be about 5.5% of your written content, Scribe says.
What would you like to see Google do next (apart from offer a proper help service, via telephone, with real human beings on the other end to help you with misbehaving Google products?)
New to blogging? Here’s the gen to get you rating from day one
Posted by Sabrina | Marketing, Websites, Writing and Editing | No CommentsI love WordPress. So does Google. They're a pair made for each other.
But simply starting up a blog on WordPress itself or one your own domain name isn't enough.
If you're a newbie to blogging, there are things you need to know. Obviously you have to have your blog topic all thought out (and I'm not talking about the posts themselves, I'm talking about what your whole blog is going to be about.). And I'd advise, if you're using WP to build a corporate site, to sit down with a pen and paper or better yet an Excel spreadsheet and work out the framework of your blog before you press the 'install' button on WordPress.
Once you've done all that, and preferably chosen a good professional theme (as professional themes are better built for SEO), there's something you should read: 43 Blogger Tips for WordPress Installations.
Andrew Rondeau is from the UK and a very experienced and successful blogger (by the way, I am not affiliated by him, but rather impressed by his entrepreneurship). While I implement a lot of his tips on my site and sites I build for others, Andrew puts this advice so succinctly and clearly it's worth directing you to his post.
One thing I can add to Andrew's advice is to tweet your blog. Get on Twitter. Install Twitter Widget Pro on your site and tweet every post. More than once, if you can find something different to say about your post on a separate tweet or two.
Social media works best when it works in partnership: blogs with Twitter, or YouTube, or Facebook. Try and combine your social media memberships with your blog.
Last month Google announced changes to the way it indexes and ranks websites. In a nutshell, it rewards sites which consistently publish fresh content. This is where blogs come into their own.
Having a business blog on your website, which you update regularly, can give you an edge on your competitors. So can including regular video updates (hmm... now which huge organisation owns YouTube I wonder?) and maps (there's that organisation again). Google also owns blogging giant Blogger, but of course there are alternatives such as WordPress and other blogging sites which you can use and which will still see your content included in rankings.
It's fair to say that most if not all search engines take their lead from Google. The complex algorithms behind Google's power are able to deliver remarkable results. For instance last year I wrote an article on my Blogspot personal blog mentioning the Melbourne Cup, with comments about a specific horse, jockey and year in the 1970s. I was trying to find out if anyone remembered the horse that came second (everyone remembers the winners). I typed the horse, jockey and year into Google ten minutes after I'd written my blog post - my blog post was the third site down on the first page. That's the power of Google. Ten minutes.
If you have a fairly static brochureware website, which lists your professional services, I strongly urge you to write a blog or at least regular news to add to your site. Also too get yourself on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and link those social media memberships back to your website.
Maintaining a blog and social media memberships IS time-consuming, so budget a couple of hours a week if you can - at the very least one hour - to write updates.
If you've never written a blog before and are not sure where to start and what to write about, find news items about your industry, link to them in your blog and comment on them; even if it's only a few lines it's your take on the news and how it might affect you or your clients. It's a good way to get started. You can also blog about your clients and how you've helped them (use "Mr X" if you need to!). Keep a notepad and jot down topics for your blog as they come to you.
Now... go forth and get your SEO rankings up!
Who doesn’t have a website? Hands up! If you’re in the hospitality or retail industry or you’re a tradie, you might be able to get by having a listing on a website such as etradesman.com.au, truelocal, or eatability.com.au
However, you can say much more about yourself and your business with your own website and your own domain name. If your business is a consultancy, for example, a website is a must. Even if it's only one page, it's a far more personal and professional look for your company name and brand than just a listing on a site that uses the same template for every listing.
If you own a website, it does need regular care and feeding though. Think of it as a pet or a tamagochi. If you don’t look after it, it’ll die.
Who out there has updated their site in the last week? Couple of weeks? Last month? Any time in the last year?
Imagine you’re a visitor to your own website. You read that the last bit of news posted there was in 2007, and the copyright info at the bottom says 2008. Hmm, you think, perhaps Joe Bloggs is so busy he can’t update his site, or perhaps his business has gone down the tubes and he can’t be bothered any more.
Your website is there working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You need to keep it looking fresh.
For example, you have to give people a hook to connect with you. Have a call to action on your home page, such as Special offer for June 2010. 5% discount to all new clients. Or Contact us for your free report on FairWork. Make sure you change your 'hook' regularly.
If you enjoy talking and writing about what you do or your industry, consider writing a blog and having the latest posts show up on your home page. You’ll have to make time to maintain the pace though – nobody’s going to return if the last blog entry was six months ago.
Make sure you have Search Engine Optimisation on each page of your site, to help you through the rankings. Reciprocal links with other sites help you too.
Consider using Google adwords. This is a cheap and cost-effective way of advertising and because it can be tightly targeted demographically is an excellent spend for your dollar.
Do you know who’s visiting your site? You should have access to your statistics or have Google analytics installed. You should be able to find out from your stats what people are typing into search engines to find you, and what other sites have referred you. If you discover the majority of visits to your site are from your Mum showing you off to her friends, you have a problem with your search engine optimisation.
Add "Share" and RSS options to your site, so people can tell their friends about you or see when your site changes and new content is added.
And of course add your social media links - preferably with the smart little icons you can download from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube etc. If you use Twitter as part of your internet and social marketing strategy, have a Twitter feed on the home page of your site. I'll be writing more on branding and using social media soon in another post and how you can use viral marketing to enhance your online presence.