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Building a Website for Stormy Seas

by Jeff Richards on Jun 15, 2010

432 views

Describes some of the basic elements of planning and implementing a website. Offers some basics on getting sites to rank. ...

Describes some of the basic elements of planning and implementing a website. Offers some basics on getting sites to rank.

This presentation is basically pictures, so if you weren't there, you may have to do a lot of filling in the blanks. :)

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Talk About RevenueWire Talk about Constant Content Give a Pirze for a right answer about the bridge
Audience is the key to a successful website, Talk about quality of traffic. Use the analogy to talk about visitors as coming to a store where the website is the store. The right visitors make all the difference betwen a bunch of worthless traffic and worthwhile traffic Comprise vs Compose How do people search for you? What words do they use when they are looking for you or your clients services? Brainstorming is not enough, listening is important. Excercise: Tell your neighbors what you do in 30 seconds and tell them what words they would use in a search engine to look for you.
Search Engines are not the only places to get traffic, people think that search engines are the best source of visitors. There are many others. This is the slide where I say it's not all about search. Where are people who are looking for your services congregating online? IS there a linked in group or conference that has active members interested in your area. Are there people writing about your subject who are very popular? One of the points that Chris is going to touch on is the importantce of being an active member inside the social communiities that are related to your field. This is vital to having a site that can withstand the changing shape of the internet. Your audience may be more inclined to search but they may have other avenues of getting advice and information, make sure you find those places and become active there.
Focus is VERY important, We want to be useful to our visitors and we want to convery a clear message from every page on the site what we are about. So maintaining a focus means that we will be sending strong signels to our users about what we are about. Maintaining a focus doesn't mean simply re-writing the same article over and over again, but it does mean staying on topic. If you're writing a blog for your site this means keep 90% of your posts related to your topic. Be sure to determine what your calls to action are on your page and making a point of making those accessible and noticeable from many pages within your site. Let's make it easy for people to do what we want them to do.
Explain the basics of how a search engine works. Search Engines Are this fantastic thing. They interpret are poorly worded search terms and return to us links to resources that seem related to our search terms. The ideal scenario for a search engine is to take your keywords, understand what you are really looking for, scour the internet with as much intelligence as a human mind and return to you the result that perfectly matches your desire. But search is still growing up. This joke points out that they still have a lot of limitations, they still have a lot of things that they can't do. We've all had bad search results, in spite of all the good money paid to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Employees.
42% click the top listing 11% 8.5% 6% 4% ... Don't over estimate the value of the broad keywords, no doubt they'll get you traffic and exposure but will they REALLY be interested in transacting with you? Remember your focus and your goals. Search Engine Queries are also getting longer, Data released by itwise last year indicates that the average search tem is just abut three words now,ie more longer keyword terms are serving up traffic. In addition, Google reports that 20-25% of queries are new each month. How can we capture targetted long tail results. Articles, showing off your expertise is they best way to build and archive of pages to collect traffic with.
Analytics ( who has analytics for their site, show of hands) Don't focus strictly on the traffic coming from searchers. The traffic from people who directly traffic is another thing to relaly watch. These are the people who have you bookmarked, who are regularly coming to check out your work. Growing a stronger and stronger segment of these people means that you are really growing influence as people are aiming to come directly to your site. They are seeking you. Also remember that referring traffic will lead to more search traffic a boost in referring traffic means that you've created links to your site from other sites and those links are bringing traffi.c
Building a business foundation is a lot of work. Building a Wbsite is teh same. Building content foundation is all about working to establish your site as an authority on the your focus topic. Creating a place where people will find information that will help them find the information about you that they need. The strength of your foundation is going to be dictated by the quality of your articles and the work that you put into promoting them. Getting the word out tht you've written something great is important t to a) get readers and b) start to build a reputation for providing great content. This is part of the bargain that is inherent on the intrenet, you provide great content and people will give you their attention.
Keyword Phrase Focus Alignement - URL - Headlines - Body text - Picture Alt Tags The page is the unit of information on the web, Send the right signals without getting neurotic about it.
Internal Linking serves two purposes it let's people get around and it helps search engines get around. Internal Linking allows you to give a strong hint to search engines about what the page on the other end of a link is all about. Avoid “click here” avoid using the url itself. Aim to use the keyword phrase that you are hoping that page will rank for. Editorial Links are the strongest,
External Links are links from other domains. These are the fastest way to get your site indexed by Google. Think of links as votes. An external link is effectively like that site voting for your site. Link love, link juice, taking the reputation of the parent page and bestowing a portion of that reputation on to the page that has been linked to. This is the strongest signal that you can send to a search engine to indicate that a page is valuable. Quick discussion on directories, guest blog posts, forum posts. Comments, nofollow.
Keyword focus, should be done on a page level. This gives you an opportunitiy to aim to have each page rank for a different group of keywords related to your business. Interlink these pages to each other using the apporpaite keywords when it fits in naturally. Ask the people who are buying from you how they are searching and start expanding your pages around those keywords. Consider building silos if you have different topics, what's a silo, (Bruce Clay) technique. Simply put it amounts to writing series of articles that are about the parent topic and interlinking between the articles related to that topic. To create the silo.
How many people allow others to write on their websites. In the effort to get a strong base of content allowing users to comment on your work can be a free way to create more content nad keep your content fresh. Moderate your comments. Spam isn't good for your site, don't let your site become spammy. If you don't have the time to keep it clean don't allow comments. Allowing people to engage with the site is a good way to allow them to interface with you. And can add significantly to the relevance of your work to future contributors. Remember int he internet world, commenters who are positive can act as testimonials who give other confidence to believe what you are saying and become part of your tribe.
In building out your content base and publishing lots of articles there are a number of ways to go about his. I strongly suggest that you focus on share-able content. Content that you or someone on your team has laboured over to make great. Why? Because that is the content that is going to get shared, if you share great information or tools with other people they are going to share that with others,, by linking to your work, blogging about your work, etc. This is the best, for two reasons first because it is word of mouth marketing. Which is very effective AND when they share with their friends they're creating links that will help the search engines come to recognize your work and display it higher in the search rankings.
Building a web presence doesn't have to be just about your website. A lot of people are making really good use of other locations on the web that are freely accessible and very effective at garnering significant amounts of attention and possibly business. Facebook pages, Twitter, are some places that are good opportunities to create a presence. Talk about flickr and youtube Talk about newsletters. Touch on CANSPAM regs
There are two reasons that you really want to keep publishing new content. Subscribers, if you have a publishing system that lets you send emails or RSS feeders to build a group of people who are ready to read most everything that you publish. These people are your tribe (Seth Godin) The people who are keen to support your growth. Talk about QDF Frequent updates are good for both the user and the search engines. Talk about dead blog syndrome.
The search engines are always changing their algorithms and for most people who have websites the significant storms that they see result in either competition coming into the scene or algorithm changes decreasing their ranksings and therefore their traffic. The solution is to build really good content. To really valuable content. Remember what search engines are trying to do. Emulate the valuation of content that you and I do naturally through some programmatic means Build links from multiple sources. Don't rely on one technique for building links.
SEO is for everyone an inexact science. There is a lot of advice out there that is pretty poor. If you are interested go for it learning the ins and outs. My adivce focus on adding value to your pages. Interlinking them in relevant ways with each other. Finding people and places to promote your content. Keep your pages focussed and on topic. Meta Data. I would suggest focussing your efforts solely on the description. This shows up in the search results. Every other piece of meta data is likely of insignificant value. Given the chocie between writing a new article, getting a link from someone new and filling out meta data I would choose the previous two every time.
Shows of hands how many people have a site that is seeing more than 100 people per day. How long has that site been running? I hate to ask a numbers question, but it seems like it is the best way to drive the point home. Most people that start a website are working at it for a year or 18 months before they reach the point where they are seeing any significant traffic. Of course this isn't a rule it's just a generalization. It seems to take this amount of time to get the articles and links built to begin to have the traffic start to flow. Adjust your timelines and budget accordingly. Building a website is like opening a shop in a small back road. At first unless people know about you they won't find you.
One of the challenges with building a website is know what's working. The feedback mechanism kind of sucks. Analytics is a key in understanding what's happening on your site. But there so many numbers. Numbers to watch Bounce Rate – do people hate it? Time on Site – do people find what they are looking for and stick around? What are your popular pages? Is there a theme? Where are you getting strong referral traffic? Can you get more traffic from there? Can you see where people are getting frustrated? Is it easy for people to get to where you want them to go from the pages they are visiting? Are they making the jump? Webmaster Tools
Thank people licensing their pictures for Creative Commonrs.

Building a Website for Stormy Seas — Presentation Transcript

Who Am I?
Finding Your Audience
Where does your audience search?
Develop a Focus
What is a Search Engine Spider?
Search Results 101
Understanding Search and Referrals
Building Your Content Foundation
Make the Most of your Work
Internal Linking and Site Structure
External Links
Expanding Your Focus
User Generated Content The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Share-Ability
Developing Other Channels
Frequent Updates Are Good For You
How to Survive in Storms
Metadata, SEO and Other Mysteries
Think Long Term
Analytics and ROI
Thanks! Day 58 – Audience by Karin Bei Magnified (8/365) by jakeboumal Depth of Daisy by macrophile Ploughed. by meg nicol Fresh Vegetables by ConstructionDealMkting Cedar Point - Disaster Transport Sign by Andrew 94 Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Temple Foundation 2 by diamondmountain Wheel rugs made by Mom Christmas 1999 edited by Martin LaBar The Mystery Machine. by andrewmartin Bullseye by 2inches Photo Credits To Flickr.com photographers Licensed under Creative Commons [email_address] http://twitter.com/jdrichards http://www.constant-content.com/blog/