Content, content, content…  Adding new written content to your website is an important road to continued or increased success for your online business. We know this because of experience, research and the study of changes in the industry. For example, Google continues to modify its algorithms to give favor to sites that are updating and adding new, original content. In June 2010, Google announced a major update called May Day. The algorithm change directly affected the ranking of pages with deeper page content.

Most recently, Google implemented its update called Panda/Farm in which it aimed to penalize sites for copying and duplicating content – emphasizing the importance of creating original content. For best results, I tell my clients to add content that is DRIC. What is DRIC you ask?

DRIC:
Detailed: This is content that’s specific, but not long-winded.
Researched: Do a little research on your content to write beyond what you know yourself.  This content is supported and enhanced by outside research
Industry-Specific: Your content focuses on your industry or the industries you serve.
Current: This content includes reference to current news and information on the topic.

Written content can be added to your website in several ways: Product Descriptions, Product Information pages, Industry Application pages, Frequently Asked Questions, Case Studies, Testimonials, and more. In all of this writing, details are important: researched, industry-specific, and current details.

First and foremost, content on product pages and about your product takes priority. If you don’t have DRIC content about your product then that is where you need to start.

Recently I made a plan with one of my clients to add original written content – DRIC. This particular client sells an industrial product and is currently successful at bringing targeted traffic and converting this traffic into quote requests. His product page content is well developed, and he would like to further his success and increase targeted traffic for the products that are sold most often. To do this, he created a brief list of industries that buy his product. First on his list was the grain industry.

We discussed and wrote a plan for adding new original content. First he wrote a few paragraphs on the problems his grain industry customers have and how his products can solve these problems. This writing was brief but detailed. We also included relevant keyterms, examples, and researched information to support his statements. Next, we added images that exemplify the grain industry. With this new content, we were able to create a new web page specifically for the grain industry. We will continue to create pages and content related to the grain industry including frequently asked questions, product lists, case studies, and testimonials – all content that is specifically designed to help the customer in the grain industry.

The goal of developing this new content is to teach site visitors and the search engines that my client and the product he sells can help those in the grain industry. It will teach them that he is an expert in his field and knowledgeable about related products. Ideally, search engines like Google will begin to send unique searches from those types of customers to his website. Directories and referring sites within the grain industry may even begin to link to his site. All of this is aimed at increasing those targeted quote requests that lead to more sales.

Next time you question how you can improve the content on your website, remember the acronym DRIC: Detailed, Researched, Industry-Specific, and Current. Then dive into updating your current content or creating content around a new topic that is designed to help increase website visitors and increased sales. Do you have another idea for adding unique content to your site?

Search engines want relevancy in their results… period.  Keep in mind that a search engine’s number one customer is its users.  If a user has to sort through irrelevant and spammy results, they most likely won’t come back. Therefore search engines are constantly changing their algorithm in an effort to eliminate spam and give their users results that make sense. In fact, Google just did an algorithm update at the end of January. So, what does this mean for your optimization efforts? You have to keep it relevant and you have to keep it real. There are a lot of misconceptions about how to optimize a website and specifically key term optimization.
Below are five common things I hear from customers regarding key term optimization and my general response to those comments.

1.) “My site launched two weeks ago, why am I not yet ranking for key term xxxxx?”
Sorry, key term optimization is not magical.
Contrary to popular belief, key term optimization requires work! Though many believe that optimizing for a key term or key phrase is as easy as placing that term(s) once in the meta title or meta description/key terms, it is not as simple as that. Key term optimization also takes time.  Optimization is a combination of having that key word or phrase not only in the titles or meta description, but most importantly within the content of the site. If a key term or phrase is within the content of the site, the search engine can begin to determine that your site might be relevant on that term and begin to rank. Bottom line – you should be developing content for your customers and the use of key terms and optimization will come naturally.

2.) “I was told I just need to put the key term in those meta tag things and I would be all set.”
Titles and meta tags are NOT the holy grail… not anymore.
This would be true… if it was still 1995. Including key terms in your meta tags (meta description and meta key words) was a popular practice that was effective in gaining rank in the early days of search. However, search engines quickly wised up and realized that people were stuffing their meta tags with completely irrelevant key terms, gaining rank on those terms, and producing spammy search results. Remember, search engines want relevancy. Therefore they quickly adjusted their algorithms to not focus so much on the meta in order to clean up results. This decrease in the use of meta by the search engines has only increased over the years and in fact, most search engines no longer even look at the meta key terms. Titles are still an important part of optimization as visitors to the site can see that information, and meta descriptions can still be used as part of search engine result listings. Check out 5 Common SEO Misconceptions for more on meta tags.

3.) “I really want my site to rank for xxxxx because I carry this small product line that I would also like to promote on the site.”
Don’t spread yourself too thin; be relevant.
Not all key words or phrases are equal. Often times people get stuck on one key word or phrase that they believe is absolutely necessary for optimization because they are trying to be all things to all people. However, if no one, or generally few people are searching on a term, it does not make sense to try to optimize for that term. On the other hand, if a key term is too broad, it can be almost impossible to get natural optimization on that term. Choose a focus for your website and work on developing content on that focus. You also want to make sure that your website can compete with the others coming up within the search engine results in terms of price, shipping, and selection.

4.) “I want to optimize for ‘gift basket’ because I know it gets a lot of search.”
Going broad doesn’t pay… go for the long tail.
Sure, the term ‘gift basket’ gets a lot of search… it also currently has over 13 million competing sites.  The chances of a site – especially a newer site – being able to climb to the top of those other 13 million sites are slim at best. A site cannot be all things to all people; choose your focus and narrow the related terms to a manageable list of terms that make sense for your site.  Use long tail key terms. While long tail key terms may not get as much search as a broader key term like ‘gift basket’, your site is much more likely to rank for a long tail key term as long as it is relevant, and you have the content to support it. More importantly, visitors that come from long tail key terms are more likely to convert to a sale because of the relevancy of the search – the customer knows what they are looking for and is ready to buy.

5.) “That list of key terms is great, but I would also like to optimize for these other 30 terms.”
Don’t water it down.
Your site has only so much real estate for optimization, select a list of 15-20 key terms that you feel make the most sense for you site based on what you are selling, research those terms to make sure they are getting search and look at the search engine results pages (SERPs) to determine if you can compete. Then focus on using those terms within your content. Those key terms should be used within the content and titles of the site where it makes sense, not because you are trying to stuff them into as many places as possible. Titles should be relevant to the content on that page. Keep in mind that your website will also begin to naturally rank for many other long tail key terms based on the other content on your site.

Bottom line… don’t get stuck on one key term or phrase that you feel your site has to be found on. Do the research, look at your competition, and make informed decisions on how to best use key terms for optimizing your website. And, first and foremost, develop and write content for your customers – most likely, once you do that, everything else will fall into place. If you have any questions or comments about keywords leave a reply we’d be happy to discuss it with you.

One of the things I hear most often from clients when we discuss further developing content for their website is something along the lines of, “I’m not really sure what to write” or “there is not much to say about X, Y, or Z”. Many of our customers, already busy with the other responsibilities of running a small business are not sure where to begin in developing additional content for their website. Bottom line is that quality content is important for your website because it helps to sell your product or service. Here are five questions to get the ideas flowing:

1.) Do your product descriptions provide enough information?
Often times, business owners are too close to their products to realize that they may not be giving website visitors enough information to make an informed buying decision. Product descriptions need to be detailed and descriptive. Take a step back, put yourself in your customers’ shoes and take a look at your product descriptions to see if they offer enough detail to encourage a visitor to take the next step and purchase the product. Even if you do not sell your products online or instead offer a service, visitors need enough information to take the next step to contact you, whether by phone, email, or request form.

Also, if possible, make sure your product has a (good) picture! No matter what the item for sale, a good picture of your product will only increase your chances of making the sale – people want to see what they’re buying.

2.) Are there other ways to shop your products?
Websites often present their products in one, singular way, with a list of major product categories available for sale. Ask yourself if there is another way that visitors might want to shop your products. For example, if you sell Widgets, you might display the categories on your site as: Red Widgets, Blue Widgets, and Green Widgets. Well, what if someone did not want to shop by the type of Widget, but rather what the Widget can do. You may then want to develop a page for your website that outlines some of the more common uses for your product and then list the various product options you have available that would fulfill those needs. A simple place to start would be to look at the markets you serve and determine which of your products meet the needs of that market.

3.) What questions do your customers ask on a regular basis?
Another easy place to start in developing content for your website is to take a look at the types of questions you get asked by your customers most often and begin to develop a list of frequently asked questions. Not only will developing this list of questions help you develop more content for the website, but you will hopefully mitigate some of the extraneous phone calls and emails you receive by answering a customer’s question through a list of frequently asked questions. Start with a couple and then add to this list as you begin to take note of what customers ask you most often.

4.) What are your customers saying about you?
What better way to sell your product than to have other people do it for you! Testimonials from satisfied customers are a great way to communicate the benefits of your products in a non-biased way. Testimonials can be a powerful tool in helping to make a sale; especially when the customer may not be able to physically see a product or if you are selling a service. Just as with the frequently asked questions, start with one or two and grow your number from there as more opportunities arise. Another, even more impactful method in gathering testimonials is to create customer video testimonials.

5.) What other information can you provide your customers to help you sell your product or service?
Think about the following questions: What are the best applications for your product? Is installation necessary and how is this done? How does your product compare to others? What are other ways to use your product other than the obvious features?  Anything that is related to your product or service can potentially help to sell it if positioned the right way. As when developing your product descriptions, try to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and determine what additional information might help them to make the purchase.

Keep in mind that in developing your content, keep it brief and succinct! You only have a few seconds to grab and keep a reader’s attention. Tips include:

-          Use bulleted/numbered lists or brief statements – not long paragraphs

-          Get to the point quickly – let readers know what’s in it for them

-          Have a clear call to action – tell your readers what you want them to do

What other questions can you ask yourself that will help you generate more content and increase sales?

Speak your blog.

There are many reasons why businesses aren’t blogging today and the number one reason I hear is that people just don’t have the time. Other excuses are; they don’t like to sit down and type or people don’t know how to spell that well or every time they have a great idea they’re not in front of a keyboard or don’t have any paper on them.  I wanted to show you through this Mobile Phone application called Dragon Dictation that you don’t have to sit at a keyboard, you can write your own content or speak your own content right into this application as I’m doing via my iPhone 4.

You can find Dragon Dictation on the Apple App Store, and here’s the big kicker, it’s for free.  Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Nuance Communications that allows you to speak easily and instantly see your text or e-mail messages. In fact, it’s up to five times faster than typing on your keyboard. With Dragon Dictation you can also dictate status updates directly to your social networking applications like Facebook and Twitter or send notes and reminders to yourself all using your own voice.  So when you’re on the go, stop typing and start speaking from one short text messages to longer e-mail messages and anything in between. Right now Dragon Dictation currently supports US English, UK English and German and French. Italian and Spanish support will be added later this year.

I’ve tried other dictation to text devices before and by far Dragon works the best.

Some things to consider when using Dragon, is that if you shut off the application after you were  finished without copying you could lose your work so I suggest when you are done to immediately copy it and paste into a notes application which I’ve done for this process.

Coming up with fresh content isn’t always easy,  sometimes great ideas come to you when you least expect it, so now when you say you don’t have time to write a blog…..  It’s as easy as speaking the words, saving and copy-paste. With this application there shouldn’t be any new excuses why you couldn’t write a blog for your website.

So that’s it. Now this blog is written. All I had to do now was edit, make sure all the words make sense and if I had miss spoke to correct that, and also make sure that all the punctuation marks are placed correctly within my sentences.

Hopefully for some, this will solve the problem of  you don’t have time to write good content or you’re not a very good typist. So please speak your mind into the comments section, we would love to know what you think about this.

(This blog was written about 90% through the dictation application. You can click HERE and see the unedited version. Admittedly most of the corrections I had to make was because I misspoke or didn’t convey the actual thought I intended. It took me about 15 minutes to dictate and copy text to this blog. It took another 15 minutes to edit, and this is the first time I ever did this kind of thing.  Absolutely amazing how much time I saved and how easy this was. Below is a short tutorial on how Dragon Dictation works).

What Do I Write About in My Blog?

My products & services, RIGHT?  Better not.

Your company blog content is a great way to communicate with your potential and current customers.  It’s a way to give them the news they are interested in.  Reading about the best features of products A, B, and C can easily be done via your website and for a blog post, can be really boring if done too often.  The common question I hear from my clients is, “So what DO I write about?”

I recently came across a blog by Urban Outfitters – a retail clothing store.  They are making the UO Blog thee Go-To Place for current fashion trends.  They are writing about fashion from all over the world – not just their own store.  Their focus seems to be: what else do our customers want to know?  They are writing about things that their clientele care about, in this case, looking cool and wearing the latest trends.

UO’s blog content considers the consumer instead of focusing on specific products.  Their content is updated often, which makes people want to come back for more.  Don’t be taken aback by UO’s choices of clothing in the photos, videos, and set up.  It is uniquely designed to target a specific audience.  Great work UO.  They seem to know their customers well.

But you’re a small business that can’t spend the time or money investigating and traveling and researching.  What is your blog about, then?  If you go back to Urban Outfitters’ focus, it’s simple: what else do our customers want to know?  Do you get phone calls from customers asking questions about how to fix something, how to determine the correct size, what are the best ways to use a product?  Take the answers you provide over the phone and write about them.  Do a little research on Google to enhance your content, and wallah!  You have a great post with little effort.  Write about the latest updates in your industry, the trends; the big news.  Write about what is going on within your business location – remodeling? A party? A promotion? A new hire? The owner’s hobby?  The list goes on and on.

You are an expert already, just write it down.
Where do you get the inspiration for your blog? Write back we would love know.

It can’t be said enough … good original content is necessary for the success of a website. Without it, you will not be able to attract search engines or customers.

Long gone are the days when adding 30 key terms to the Meta tags was pretty much what you did to win page rank in Google. Search engines now look at the total sum of the written content on your site; the page titles, sub-titles, paragraphs, image names and captions that appear on the page, and they are looking for that content to be relevant to what you sell.

The challenge for many small businesses is that they do not have budgets that allow for hiring web copywriters, photographers or graphic designers to continually produce content for the website. Luckily for your customers, you already have that meaningful information. Start looking for the content in your own company.

1.) Listen to the Voices Inside
The people in your company who sell and support your products and services are an important source of your website content.  Capture insightful comments about your companys’ products and services from employee’s. Staff can supply founatins of content, ask them to get involved.

2.) Talk to Customers
Ask your prefered clients to write three … just three … sentences on each of your major offerings.  Encourage them to share thier thoughts on how, when and why they use your products and services.

3.) Talk to Suppliers
Similarly ask your vendors and suppliers what they think of your latest feature release, its unique value and the time it took to ship, because you are interested in improving the relationship with them.  But while you are capturing that important information, also listen for the words they use to describe what you do for them.  They will use key words and phrases that other potential customers will likely use while searching for your business.

4.) Get Shooting
If you sell products manufactured by other companies, your sales rep with that company may be a source of content to you. Ask your sales rep if there are product descriptions, photos, videos, line drawings or other digital materials that you can use.  One note of caution; you do not want your entire web site to consist of content you have received from the manufacture simply because you will likely have identical content to all other distributors who did the same thing.  But when interspersed with original content you create yourself, supplier info can bring a lot of value to your site.

5.) Save Digital Copies
If you do use an ad agency or freelancer to create other marketing materials, make sure you get digital versions of all the content for your webs site, preferably as source files.

Once you get into the habit of looking for content as you go about your day, you’re going to stumble across other tricks that are specific to you and your business.  Share them with us here in the comments; we’re always interested in hearing what you have to say.

There’s nothing better than a fired-up client … a client eager to spend resources and energy on doing smart things in a smart way … a client ready for results and willing to do what it takes to get them.

And there’s nothing worse than having to tell that client to holster it back up because they aren’t ready to pull the trigger.

That is sometimes the situation we find ourselves in when our small business clients are interested in implementing social media strategies before they have made sure that the location they are driving traffic to – usually their Web site – is prepared to handle the traffic.

When it comes to marketing their own brand, many small- and mid-sized businesses are working with limited resources.  So a decision to increase focus in one area often inadvertently becomes a decision to decrease attention in another.

Embarking on a social media strategy is a major undertaking for any company, an effort that often manages to soak up a lot of internal resources.  This can mean that the more mundane efforts it takes to update the company Web site can often go ignored, leaving the place you are trying to drive more traffic to looking something less than its best. Why is this a problem?  Because social media efforts are just a means to an end, with your final goal being to convert traffic into sales.

It’s important that the first step of your social media strategy be taking a look at your Web site and making sure it is an effective end-destination for every tweet, blog post and shared video.

• Are there clear “calls to action” throughout your Web site?
• Are your products and service pages current, accurate and complete?
• If you are targeting a specific audience with specific services/products needs in your social media efforts, are those services/products easily found?
• Are your contact pages updated and complete?  Is it easy for customers to continue the dialog that you started with a social media vehicle?
• Is your Web site content of interest to your social media audiences?

Pages that need simple corrections should be taken care of right away.  Any section that needs more extensive effort should be avoided as landing pages for social media traffic.  Once you are comfortable that your Web site is ready and able to do handle the new traffic, your company can feel comfortable in taking its first shot at social media success.

If you are going to succeed on the web, be it as a manufacturer, retailer, dealer / distributor, consultant, coach or whatever, it is essential that you identify, as specifically as you possibly can, who your prospective customers are. This is the foundation upon which Target Marketing is based.

An easy way to tackle this problem is through the development of a Customer Composite Index (CCI). Your CCI is a detailed list of characteristics that very specifically and succinctly defines your customers. Ask yourself the following questions: who, what, where, when, how and why.

An example of some of these types of questions are; who are our customers, what do they do, where do they live, (in the case of consumer products)? Or, where are they located (in the case of businesses)? Does their location have any significance to the product or service I’m offering? Does how they live have any bearing? What business are they in – product, service, specialty, commodity? What’s their annual income or revenue? How many employees do they have?

Additionally, are there customer personality or lifestyle traits that are important to your business? And, who are their customers? This is especially important, because if you understand their customer’s needs, you truly know what makes them tick! What are their interests and hobbies? I am sure you can come up with many more relevant questions that will help you to define your CCI. The point is, if you know who your customers are, by virtue of your CCI, then you know what you are looking for in a new customer.

If you have trouble with this exercise, visit an existing customer (or five) and ask them these questions. This gives you the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. 1) You will meet with them and get some face time, for a very legitimate reason. Which means you can continue to build your relationship. 2) In your questioning, you will inevitably communicate your concern through your interest in understanding your customer better. You never know, you may just uncover an unmet need or two that you can convert into a sale!

This content continues to get a ton of traffic elsewhere on the web so, I figured I would include it here for your viewing pleasure. This is extremely relevant information related to the development of effective communications with your potential customers.

Everything in this post is as relevant today in the Social Marketing space as it is in the dirt-world. As you will see, it’s all about communication…

Unlike the Broadway musical of the same name, the AIDA that I am referring to is not the story of timeless love between a Nubian princess and an Egyptian prince, but rather the 4 “timeless” fundamental elements of effective marketing communications.

Attention
Your audience is barraged by thousands of different marketing messages and communication inputs every day of their lives. This is only going to get worse now that we have embarked on yet another communications revolution on the web (Social Media). Ensuring that your message is seen and read will mean the difference between success and failure.

Keep in mind that “It’s Not About You!” Get your ego out of it. Your headline, in the case of an ad, or subject line, in the case of an email communication, or blog post, should be a bold and compelling benefit statement that “hits the reader where they live.” It should address some aspect of their need, that you are responding to, or the problem that you are solving. Make it as personal as you possibly can!

A good starting point is to make sure you know who you are communicating with or who you would like to communicate your message to. Remember that Search engines feed on blog posts and all other forms of online communications (web pages, twitter feeds, etc). Make sure that your content will draw the right crowd.

Most email management programs on the market today will allow you to personalize your message with the recipient’s name in the subject line, which has been shown to be highly effective in getting email messages noticed and read. By the way, non-spam email is still the highest rate of conversion on the web today.

Interest
Ask yourself, “what can I say (truthfully) that will grab my audience’s attention, and get them to read my entire communication?” Look around in your own world. What is it about the messages that you look at or read that gets your attention? Follow suite with your communications. An effective way of establishing interest is to ask a question, or several questions, that give your audience a reason to continue reading.

Capturing interest always has to do with the establishment of value in your readers mind. Don’t forget that. Don’t be overly concerned with the length of your content. It’s a known fact that long copy sells. This assumes that the copy is good, of course, and that you continue to focus and to build on the unique value that you are offering to your audience.

Desire
This is the set up for the grand finale… It’s very important that you get this part right. If you don’t, all your efforts up to this point will be for naught. Don’t underestimate the power of this element. It has been said that the purpose of advertising is to evoke an emotional response. Similarly, your task is to reach out and generate DESIRE (an emotion) with your audience. Getting a bit more technical, you want to stimulate the amygdalae (brain tonsils), which have been shown in research to perform a primary role in the processing of memory and emotional reactions.

Sound challenging, like brain surgery? It’s not. There are a couple techniques that are surefire ways of establishing desire. The first involves telling your readership, in bold and vivid detail, what they will get when they purchase your product or service, in the case of an advertisement. I.e., what’s in it for them. As I said earlier, don’t be overly concerned about the length of your copy.

The second technique involves the use of a customer testimonial, which is a statement of praise and testimony from an existing customer. This alleviates the “Guinea Pig” factor — the concern that they are the first to buy or use your product or service. Additionally, your future customers would like to know that they are in good company with other folk within their peer group. Testimonials are a great way to achieve this.

Action
In a word, this is where you CLOSE the deal. Be specific and keep it simple. Tell your reader exactly what to do and then make it easy for them to follow your instructions. If you have done everything correctly up to this point, this should be very straightforward.

Something as simple as “Lean More,” “Free Trial Offer,” “Contact Us Now,” or “Order Now,” is generally all that’s required. Make sure that you have a simple to use form or template for your reader to fill out and submit, or the whole thing falls apart!

Your audience wants to know that you’re on-top-of-your-game! After all, they are coming to your website, blog or opting-in to your ezine to find out more about you, your information or your company, with the eventual and very real possibility of spending some of their hard-earned money on your products and/or services!

An easy way of demonstrating to your customers that you are indeed on top of your game is by updating your web content frequently. Having done so, you should send an e-message to your opt-in subscribers that “new” information is available on website. They will do the rest.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve visited websites only to bailout immediately and go to the next one in line when I read this telltale sign at the bottom of the page: “Last Updated — October 2001.” See Ya! If it took me 8 seconds to get to this point, great, if not I go away with the feeling that I’ve wasted my time.

If you are using such an update notice on any one of the pages in your website, make sure that you keep it current. If you have no intention or plan to keep your web pages current and updated, remove the update notice immediately. This is essentially preventive maintenance, which is better than the damage control of trying to win back lost visitors to your web site.

Another dead give away is a web site visitor counter that hasn’t seen much action in a while! Counters do little to gain visitors confidence and trust-especially when they note that, “YOU are visitor # 246 since Oct 2002.”

Final Notes On Good Content
A couple final notes on good Content: First, it is important to strike a reasonable balance between your own company information, news and events and relevant industry related information. So many ezines and web sites on the Net today are nothing more than glorified sales literature. Don’t get caught in this trap. Give your prospects and customers excellent content, always. If you don’t, be assured that your competitors will.

Second, maintaining good content on your Internet Assets (website, blog, ezine, etc.) doesn’t happen by itself. It requires a concerted effort. As mentioned earlier, you get back what you put out. Fortunately there are numerous resources at your immediate disposal to assist you with this challenge. The rewards for developing and maintaining a good content plan are great and are waiting for you, just around the corner.