Content That Brings People in to a Website

Web content that is well written, has value and is meaningful works like gravity. It brings traffic to your web site design and holds them there. When a user finds something they think is cool and exciting on the web they tend to spread the word. This is a human nature that good advertising is built around: everyone wants to be the first to bring exciting new things to their friends. If the site offers nothing to hold their attention that user is gone.

Think about how you shop. Say you are looking for a TV and start with a general Google search. The first thing you see is the search results. This is the first chance to grab attention and is why you need a properly designed domain name and search description. You have questions about TVs, like who has the best picture, best service record, how do I hook it up, do I need special wiring or equipment, HD or not to HD, etc.

You go through the list. The first site just has a list of where you can get TVs; nothing useful there. The next site is just a catalog with pictures and 'buy now' buttons; nothing helpful there. Next you come across a site that catches your attention. It has catchy graphics but a simple to follow layout. Besides the normal online store the site offers product and user reviews. There are links to "how to" articles answering the above questions. The site provides links to other web sites that have more useful information. All this quality content has eased some of your stress, answered your questions, given you choices and made you feel like this company wants to help you.

Human nature number two: since you found everything you need at that site: they sell TVs and you are comfortable with this company, you order the TV from them.

Now a few days go by and the TV arrives. The first thing you do is go right back to the web site to find guidance with the set up procedure. Because your experience with this web site was so positive you tell all your friends. You also go back to the site and post your own review. You are so excited you even mention the site, with a link, on your personal blog.

Everything that happened was due to great content and meeting the three goals of findability: help people find your site, help people find what they are looking for within your site, and encourage repeat traffic. All these goals were met because of quality content.

Let’s look at how this was achieved through content.

1- Keywords and phrases located in the articles and reviews created search engine results.

2- You were able to find what you needed through links in the reviews and articles.

3- You returned to the site multiple times to read more articles.

4- You created more useful content by posting your reviews.

5- You were so pleased with your experience that you do not hesitate to recommend the site.

Not only did the web site's findability improve your experience by including relevant and well produced content, it actually caused you to add to that findability by adding your review. This is how great content works.

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Author Chris Kaminski is head web designer at Lone Bird Studio, an Asheville web design and SEO company located in North Carolina.

The Google Canonical Problem

Did you know that Google sees www.lonebird.com and lonebird.com as two different sites?

This is called the Google Canonical Problem, and it will not only have a negative affect on your hit count and your page rank but can get you dinged for duplicate content. This is really important to you SEO content people. This is also another spot for me to reinforce something I feel very strongly: your SEO and code writer need to be joined at the hip.

So what is canonicalization? According to Google it is the process of picking the best URL when there are several choices, and it usually refers to the home pages. Here is a better example: take lonebird.com, www.lonebird.com, www.lonebird.com/index.html, lonebird.com/home.asp. To most of us these are the same. But technically they are four different URLs. In theory, during a search a web server could return completely different content for all four. When Google “canonicalizes” a URL, they try to pick the best representative from that set.

Now that we know what canonicalization is the next question should be, how is your website indexed and how can you tell? Simple. Go to Google and type "site:your-domain.com" in the search bar. What you should see is a list of all the pages Google has indexed. Now type in "site:www.your-domain.com". Do the search results show the same number of pages? If not, then you may have a problem.

So how do we get Google to pick the URL we want and what do we do with the listings that are already out there? The best first step starts with the site itself. Be consistent with your internal links. Be consistent across the entire site. Don’t make half of the links go to http://sitename.com/ and the other half go to http://www.sitename.com/. Pick the URL you prefer and always use that format for your internal links.

Next, be consistent with listing the site. When listing and indexing the site be sure to use the same URL.

Now, the overall best solution depends on whether your site is hosted on a Linux or Microsoft server.

For those on Linux the answer is to use mod_rewrite. What is that? It is an Apache module which will automatically map all requests to a single and consistent URL. Basically you add a short script to the htaccess.txt file located in the server root:

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^expression-web-tutorials\.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.expression-web-tutorials.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The htaccess.txt file allows you to send instructions to the server on the fly. Obviously you need knowledge of Apache, php and you need server access. Most of you will need to ask your code writer or site host to help you with this.

If you are on a Microsoft host the process is similar. Windows uses IIS (Internet Information Services) and like Apache it uses modules to extend its instruction set. These are called ISAPI filters (Internet Services Application Interface). An ISAPI filter can be used to rewrite URLs just like mod_rewrite.

You can write your own ISAPI filter but it can be a little complicated. Your best bet is to search online for a pre written one. Though there are free ones the better examples are paid. Again you will need a little knowledge and you need server access so you may need the help of your site host or developer.

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Author Chris Kaminski is head web designer at Lone Bird Studio, an Asheville web design and SEO company located in North Carolina.

SEO Elements that Search Engines Like

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an important component of your overall web strategy and you should be using several to build a finable website. BUT … successful SEO depends on your understanding of the search engines, what they like to see and how they like to see it. There are many important factors to keep in mind as you build find-ability into your website design. This list is just a few of the more important ones that will really help you build points with the search engines:

- Honest content and not trying to trick the search engines. Make sure your content is relevant and has value to your users.
- Content that is readily visible to spiders with nothing to block the full indexing of pages, such as old html and nested tables or content not placed properly.
- More content than code on your pages. If you are not up on things, html is old news. In fact, with older template and WYSIWYG created sites this can actually cost you in ranking (MS Front page for example). This is why your code writer is as important as your keywords. (See my article "You can’t separate the code from the SEO").
- Keyword rich and valuable and meaningful content. This means content that is not "stuffed".
- Content with a clear information hierarchy so spiders can tell what a page is about. Again this goes back to the code, the order and priority assigned to header tags for example.
- Content that loads quickly and easily for the spiders. This insures proper indexing. Bring your site up to standards using new CSS standards, and make sure your content is marked up correctly (bolding keywords is an example).
- Clean meaningful URLs with keywords when possible. This works for people too.
- Back-links to your web site that are from reputable sources. Search engines use this to determine the credibility of your website. And back-linking counts really high toward your overall ranking.

When you look at these you can understand what the search engines want. They want us to give them plenty of clean, relevant, honest, high quality content. On the coding side we have coined a phrase for this: we call it "Search Engine Positive Code". And as we build all this into our overall Asheville web design the benefits are more than just promoting SEO: there is accessibility.

For example most of the points listed are also part of the new accessibility standards. By building your website to meet these new standards you will broaden your overall audience. This includes users with disabilities and those using alternate devices like handhelds. Placing content in the "alt" and "title" attributes, (a couple of the tags that aid accessibility) provides context and relevance to you website. This helps the search engines understand your page and accurately connect searchers with your web site. Accessibility and find-ability overlap.

People and search engines both appreciate great content. When people find content useful they tend to evangelize and spread the word. They create links on their blogs and even talk about your content on discussion boards. Plus, those in-bound links not only bring more people to your website, they help build your reputation with the search engines. Search engines evaluate your site's reputation by the quality of the sites that link back to you. So it all strings together, good content, clean code, and back-links all blend to improve your find-ability, reputation, and search engine optimization.

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Author Chris Kaminski is head web designer at Lone Bird Studio, an Asheville web design and SEO company located in North Carolina.