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Written on September 2, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: book, searchengineguide
by Stoney deGeyter
Much like life, websites have to adapt over time. When they don’t, they risk becoming stagnant, outdated, stale, and boring. As times change, so should your content. Content that was once relevant becomes irrelevant or in need of an update, old products get dumped in favor of new products, and data becomes outdated and needs to be replaced.
There are any number of reasons why content needs to be changed, freshened up, or removed altogether. But rarely, if ever, do you want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Something can usually be salvaged. Previously valuable content can be made valuable again. Here are four ways you can keep good content alive, even when it’s old.
Keep content up to date
Keeping your content up-to-date may sound like a simple task; but, the larger the site, the more difficult it is. Sites with hundreds or thousands of pages often have a lot of little hidden gems that can easily become stale or irrelevant. Over time, you see products and services change. A simple reference to an old pricing structure or outdated way of doing things can really throw a wrench in the works for the reader. Conflicts and contradictions breed mistrust.
Failing to find and correct these nuggets will send your readers a message that perhaps you are stale and irrelevant as well. So, spending time on a regular basis, perhaps yearly, reviewing all your editorial content and brushing it up to keep it current is an important item to put on your task list.
Redirect deleted pages
Pages on websites often get moved or deleted over time. Perhaps you are restructuring your information architecture, removing services that you no longer offer, or deleting tutorials that have become obsolete. Just because this content is considered old, doesn’t mean that it can’t still work for you.
Simply adding “301 redirects” or a building a custom “404″ page can capture that traffic and send them to other areas of your site. This allows them to stick around long enough to see if you still have something that will meet their needs, even though you no longer have exactly what they want.
Adding redirects allows you to keep visitors on your site if they have arrived, say, from a bookmarked page or an old page in the search results. Instead of losing those visitors, this gives you the opportunity to keep them engaged with your site, with the possibility of attracting them to your other excellent content.
Repurpose old content
Blogs are a great place to re-purpose old content and provide an updated spin on it. If you’re running out of ideas for what to publish on your blog, you can go back several years in your archive and find old topics and discussions for which you can provide a new take.
Blog back history can give you a wealth of topics that you can pull from to create fresh, new content for your readers.
Another way to re-purpose old content is by removing excessive content from your site and moving it over to your blog. This can be necessary after years of site content build-up. This happens when you keep adding content to your site and it becomes so bloated that your readers end up spending too much time working through your site instead of being moved through the conversion process.
A couple months back, I worked on the Information Architecture for a client, and they had this very problem. We were able to take dozens of pages of content and move it off of their main site onto their blog. The content was good, but it was excessive. This hindered the conversion process, making the site both convoluted and confusing at the same time. By moving this stuff to the blog, the main site was better able to do the job of selling and the blog became the avenue of informing readers.
Link to historical pages
Content, especially blog content, often gets buried after months and years of time passing. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the content isn’t valuable or even needs to be re-written.
What you can do is write new content that links to this valuable content that was written long ago. You’re giving your readers something fresh, while linking to something historical, that you can use to make your point or provide more detailed information for the reader to peruse at their leisure.
Take advantage of any area of content that allows you to link to another page that provides more information. The web isn’t a brochure, it’s more like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. That historical content can be a goldmine of information, provided you’re giving your new readers a way to access it.
Good content never has to die. If you’re treating it right, it never will. New people are coming to your site every day. These people have not had the benefit of reading all your past or historical stuff. No need to let it go to waste. Instead, keep it alive… and keep it working for you.
This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx’s Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert’s Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for “inconceivable content” on this blog to find them all.
Be sure and visit our small business news site.
Originally posted here:
Don’t Let Good Content Die - 4 Ways to Keep It Alive
Written on August 31, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: book, marketing
It’s been a busy week over at Digg and the changes just keep on coming. It began with the public release of the new Digg, which I happened to like, but many did not. The loudest noises are coming from Digg’s old guard and it’s not surprising since the new Digg is designed to allow a wider variety of users to rise to the top, not just the dedicated few.
Digg founder Kevin Rose responded to many of the complaints in his blog this week. Some were valid points which he says they’re taking into consideration. Some were features that were accidentally broken in the transitions, but some, like the fact that comments from your friends rise above all, were intentional. So, live with it, is the message.
The best part of the blog post is what you see at the bottom.
You can Tweet this post, send it to Facebook, but Digg it is not an option. Oh my.
On the upside, TechCrunch has reported that Digg has a new CEO. It’s Matt Williams who has been with Amazon since 1999. Kevin Rose will step down to the roll he was in before, that of Chief Architect.
ClickZ reported on more interesting Digg news today with a story about the first brands who have set up official Digg accounts. Wait, brand names as individual identities, residing alongside real people? Where have I seen that before. . .
Red Bull, Electronic Arts and GE Ecomagination are some of the brands that are breaking the ice. As with those “other” sites, following one of these brands will cause their content to show up in your personal “My News” feed. It will be interesting to see if the brands end up posting the same kind of material they post to Twitter or Facebook. Digg is supposed to be about sharing interesting finds from around the web, but the new site makes it so easy to digg the company blog and other social media feeds, there’s no way it’s not going to turn into yet another avenue for direct self-promotion.
What I’d like to see are brands behaving more like average users, submitting links that are relevant to their audience but not directly related to their brand. For example, Red Bull digging a link to a video of people doing crazy physical stunts with no mention of their product. It’s viral, it suits their brand and they’ll still get the benefit of having their name attached to the link in everyone’s news stream.
To be fair, it’s possible that the new brands on Digg are already doing this. I don’t know, because when I went to investigate, I got this:
Looks like there’s more stormy weather ahead for the once mighty social media site.
More:
Digg Weathers the Storm After New Release
Written on August 31, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Object, seo
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
Is SEO Integrated Into Your Localization Process?
For many, the question posed in the title of this post seems silly, often resulting in either a confused expression, or a “how dare you ask that [...]
*** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above ***
Read the original:
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 31, 2010
Written on August 27, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: marketing, searchengineguide
by Stoney deGeyter
When it comes to getting your visitors to take action, whether that be a sale, download, request, or call, it’s your content that is going to either make it happen or leave people blowing in the wind like a sagebrush through a ghost town. If there is anything that all the years of marketing research has proven it’s that people need to be told what to do if you expect them to do anything at all.
Think about it. If you’re not telling your visitors what to do next, how can you expect them to do it? Sure, they can guess, make assumptions or “figure it out on their own”. But, for anybody that’s doing anything new, directions are a God send.
I recently spent 2 hours putting together a desk that should have taken me 20 minutes. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m generally more destructive than constructive when it comes to these kinds of things, but with a little help (a.k.a. reading directions), I can usually get the job done. But, on this particular desk, the directions actually didn’t help. Not even a little.
The desk had two pieces: the main desk and a small side table. Both look nearly identical, only the size is different. The directions started you out building the small table…but they didn’t make that clear. I spent at least 30 minutes putting together the larger desk with the small table instructions, wondering why things just weren’t making much sense.
Once I figured that out and moved on to building the desk with proper directions, I found several pieces that all looked similar, but with subtle differences. The directions didn’t make those distinctions, neither verbally nor visually. Luckily, I was able to stay calm and keep the cursing to a low mumble that my kids couldn’t hear!
Your content should work like directions. It needs to inform and make clear what the next step is. Giving your visitors clear directions doesn’t have to be difficult. You don’t have to re-write all of your content, adding in long prose of “here’s what we want you to do next”. All you have to do is some simple re-working of key areas.
Action Words: We often tend to write passively. We talk in terms of how things are, not in terms of what we are doing, what we’ve done, or what we want to do. This makes our content stagnant.
Instead, use words that convey action. Tell visitors how you achieved your knowledge or skills. Tell them how they will benefit from your product or services. Give them examples of the results they will see. And, most importantly, give them some calls to action.
Calls to Action: Using action words is never more important than ensuring your work calls action into your content. These are the directives that you provide to your visitors that lead them down the path to the conversion.
If you are not providing these directives, or are providing the wrong directives, you won’t be getting the response you want from your visitors. Keep in mind that there are multiple paths to the goal. Customers need to see your products before they can buy them. They also need to know product details. Trying to move your customers to the conversion too quickly simply won’t work.
Use your calls to action to lead visitors down the path of information they need to take the desired action. Some may need to see product reviews, others need to read more about your company, and still others might want to read more about what you offer. Provide calls to action to whatever your visitors might need… because they may not even know they need it.
Textual Links: Adding calls to action directly into your text is simply the best way to get visitors to heed them. Your navigation is important, but sites often put too much faith in the navigation getting the visitors to the information they want. If the visitors know where they want to go, and if they are willing to take the time to click through the navigation, then that approach would work. But, why force the visitor to disengage from your content to hunt through the navigation for what they want? Not a good idea.
That’s the biggest problem with not using textual links. You’re forcing your visitors to figure things out instead of providing them the directions they need right there where they are. If they are reading about your team’s experience, then link to your “About Us” page. If you mention a related product, link to it. If you discuss a significant achievement, place a link to the page that provides more complete information about it.
Visitors are curious. Providing links helps them satisfy their curiosity, which in, turns gives them more satisfaction that you have “what it takes” to provide what they need.
A website that’s not getting any action is a dead site. Conversion rates will be low, and bounce rates will be high. Using action words, calls to action, and textual links gets your visitors to “put out”. But, unless your content is willing to provide the goods, you may not even get to second base.
This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx’s Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert’s Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for “inconceivable content” on this blog to find them all.
Be sure and visit our small business news site.
Here is the original post:
How to Ensure Your Website Gets Some Action
Written on August 26, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: seo
Posted by randfish
Today I’m happy to announce that we’ve just updated Linkscape’s web index (which also powers Open Site Explorer and the metrics via the mozBar) with fresh link data. You should see some bright shiny links we’ve found from late July to early August in this index (e.g. our own Beginner’s Guide now has lots of interesting link information). We also have some cool updates to the API, new partnerships and more, all covered below.
50% Improvement to Domain Authority
You may recall when we produced our correlation research this Spring, we showed that while Page Authority was substantively better than any other metric for an individual page’s importance, Domain Authority was much rougher (and only slightly better than homepage toolbar PageRank, i.e. pretty bad). We’ve been hard at work improving our models, adding data sources and writing code to help and this index is our first to feature an improved Domain Authority.
Thus, you’ll generally find that sites that perform better in Google’s rankings will have higher DA, while those that don’t do tremendously well are much lower. We also noted that a lot of the “bunching”
Written on August 26, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Object, book, marketing, seo
Posted by Danny Dover
Tags: advice ,book ,comparisons ,ecommerce ,images ,marketing ,people ,personality ,post ,price ,seo ,shoe ,shoes ,source ,video
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Written on August 24, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: book, chat, marketing, seo
Posted by jennita
Last week I covered SES San Francisco for SEOmoz. Every time I attend a conference, I try to go to sessions that will have information I can bring back to the community. Sometimes I look for sessions that aim to answer questions we see a lot in Q & A or that I notice popping up in comments on the blog. Either way, my focus is usually to find information that will be helpful to the community.
Now and then I get a little greedy though, and attend sessions that will benefit me in my job. Luckily I hit the sweet spot at SES and found a little of both. Rather than straight up regurgitate what speakers presented, I thought I’d take their insights and show some examples specific to SEOmoz.
1. Who are the specific people sending you traffic?
At SES I was reminded about my problem with A.F. (analytics forgetfulness) and a few things that I personally should be doing to not only be better at my job, but to help the company and community. Marty Weintraub from aimClear was the one that initially got me thinking in the “Deep Dive Into Analytics” panel on the first day.
How often do we look at traffic sources and focus on which sites are sending traffic… ok always. But what about looking at the actual people from those sites that are sending traffic. Let’s take Twitter for example. When most people are tweeting they’re usually either in an app or they’re on the web looking from their own page, which shows up as “/” for most referrers.
But sometimes, people are viewing a specific person’s twitter page and THEN click your link. In those instances, Google Analytics will show the actual twitter user page as the referrer. This is a quick and easy way to find out WHO is sending you traffic. This person is also probably someone who is an influencer in your community. Finding who the top referrers are is the first step, next you’ll want to use Klout (or another service) to see what their actual reach is. This doesn’t only work for Twitter though, check out the example below that I found looking at delicious referrers.
This is a list of referrers from delicious.com. Let’s see what Chris Brogan, an influencer in the Social Media space bookmarked.
Written on August 22, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: book, marketing, seo
Posted by willcritchlow
I’d like to invite you to the London Pro SEO seminar we are running on the 25th and 26th October.
With a 98% satisfaction rating and 95% of attendees recommending it to others, we were blown away by the positive feedback we received last year. Seasoned pros like Rob from Easynet Connect called it the “highlight of the year” and we have plenty more where that came from (see for example:
Tags: freedom ,gaming ,google ,london ,marketing ,metrics ,organic ,post ,presentations ,reputation ,sales ,seo ,thoughts ,year
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Written on August 20, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: marketing
It’s the “Year of Mobile” v. 2010 remember? Whether it is or isn’t officially is irrelevant. What is important is just how much mobile is continuing to influence the lives of many Internet users. While not as ubiquitous as many in the industry would like us to believe, it is still a very strong component of the online world and one that has seemingly limitless upside for years to come.
Evidence of just how influential the mobile world is comes from Google who announced that they have hit the 100 million users per month using Google Maps in some form. No matter who you are, that is a big number. From the Google Mobile Blog
Almost five years ago, we launched Google Maps for mobile to help you get where you needed to go from your phone instead of a paper map. Today, more than 100 million people a month are now using Google Maps for mobile to get from point A to point B, find nearby places, and more.
Below is an infographic (notice the use of the hottest Internet marketing buzzword) that shows the evolution of Google Maps for mobile until this point.
What is happening today with this Google service is even more important as the usage continues to rise. The trouble is that the vast majority of the businesses that could benefit from this service don’t even have a clue that it exists let alone how important it could be to promoting their business.
Lately, we’ve been especially focused on helping you find the right place at the right time. With recent additions such as Place Pages, you can now pick a nearby place by browsing information such as opening hours and review snippets for the places around you. It’s easier than ever to find those places with Search by voice or the new Places icon on Android. With this latest Android version, we’re happy to see that you’re now searching for places almost three times as often, doubling how many Place Pages are seen a day.
Place Pages are going to be more and more important to the local player and to the BtoB space as well because they will are a supplemental source of data that may actually be used before a web site or even, gulp, instead of one, by people looking for whatever it is they need.
I believe though that unless Google becomes a better marketer themselves this service will not be fully utilized in the way it could be. Google unfortunately just expects people to know this stuff then even puts the following at the end of this post
If you’re a business owner, help millions of people find you by claiming your free Place Page available in Google Maps and our most used mobile “app” — Google Search. Get started at places.google.com/businesses.
It’s a nice touch but the actual numbers of business owners reading any Google blog are likely to be pretty low. Most readers of Google’s blogs are the industry / tech geek type that can get the word out for sure, if that was their job. In most cases it’s not the business owner reading this so these ‘notifications’ are nice but they are not getting the word out……at all.
Even despite that, a lot of people are using Google Maps though, right? Imagine what it would be like if those people using it had even better information to retrieve because the people they were trying to find were there (and in control of their information) too.
One can dream, can’t one?
Read more from the original source:
100 Million A Month Using Google Maps for Mobile
Tags: a-big-number ,a-fair-share ,business ,marketing ,mobile ,online ,parking ,post ,service ,social ,using-the-exact
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Written on August 19, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Object, book, marketing, seo
Posted by Danny Dover
Tags: advice ,best ,facebook ,google ,internet ,news ,opinion ,people ,post ,seo ,software ,time ,united-states ,video
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