Web site maintenance, website management and web consulting services

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If you’re tasked with improving your company website’s faltering search engine performance, you can do hundreds of things to make a difference. Here are 10 ideas to get you started.

1. Content is king. As I’ve mentioned before, this is a cliche, cut it’s important. Don’t mess around with website content. Write each page as if it’s the only page your potential customer is ever going to read.
2. Links make the web go round. Building good quality incoming links to your website increases your popularity in the eyes of search engines. You score extra points if those links use your primary keywords.
3. A title tag on every page. Google lists over 34 million pages with the title ‘untitled document’. Make sure that every page of your website has a page title that’s relevant to the keywords and content of that page.
4. Flash is not your friend. While it’s OK to have a couple of Flash elements on a webpage, make sure that if your entire site is built in Flash, you’ve got an HTML version of your site for search engines to spider.
5. Give each page it’s own topic. Building a separate page for every keyword on your site allows you to have more pages indexed by search engines for specific search terms, and ensures your visitors get to read exactly what they search for.
6. Buy now! Whether you want someone to buy from you, sign up to your newsletter or send you a sales enquiry, without a call to action you aren’t going to get much of a response. While no-one is saying your target market lacks intelligence, people do need to be told what to do online.
7. Start a blog. Prospects and customers love to be able to interact with a business owner online. There are very few better ways to improve your reputation. What’s more, blogs are extremely search engine friendly, so you benefit both ways.
8. Analyze keywords. There are a number of free and premium keyword analysis tools available to help you research the popularity of a keyword before you write your pages, giving you a broad idea of the number of visitors you could expect to your page and the number of websites you’ll be competing with.
9. Use content headings. Instead of just writing your HTML content headings in bold writing, use H1, H2, H3, etc. and style the look of the headings using CSS.
10. Spread the word. With millions of websites to compete with, you’d do well to try everything you can to spread your visibility on search engines. Try listing in quality online directories, experimenting with social media, blogging, commenting on other blogs, writing articles for article directories and getting involved in forums for a start. Every time you expose yourself in one of these outlets, there’s a chance you’ll be linking back to your own website.

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So you’ve got a company website. You spent hours writing content to add to the site and hated every minute of it. And now I’m about to tell you to write more. A lot more.

You see, there’s an old (and incredibly accurate) cliche about web marketing stating that ‘content is king’. The more relevant, fresh and well-written the content on your website, the more pages search engines will index. As a result, your company’s online visibility will increase, and you’ll start to see a lot more people visiting and returning to your website to get their weekly fix. And if you can keep these people interested for long enough, some of them are going to turn into paying customers. It’s

Of course, the fact still remains that nobody really likes writing fresh website content, so I’ve listed 7 places I go to when I need to find ideas for my own website and those of my clients. Try a few of these, and I guarantee you’ll never run out of good ideas again:

1. Look inside your organization. Ask your customer support people to take notes whenever they deal with a customer. Same goes for your sales reps. If you get enough of these notes together you’ll start to see a pattern in the questions people ask. If you’ve got a good answer, write about it. You can also write about recent projects you’ve worked on and how they’ve helped solve your customers’ problems. As long as you keep thinking about your writing in terms of ‘what’s in it for the customer’, you should be able to write something truly useful. You can also try asking your staff to write articles. You may find a couple of budding journalists on your staff and more than one viewpoint is a great asset.
2. Ask your customers. This is my favorite way to find content. Ask your customers what they’d like to read about on your website. You’ll be surprised to find that they’ve got a lot of valid questions. And if one customer has a question, the chances are more customers will also want to know. This may seem like a similar idea to the one above, but it’s totally different because this time you’re getting it straight from the customer with no filtering of information from your staff.
3. Steal from your competitors. Your competitors’ websites can be a great source of information. See what they’ve written about and ask your customers if they’d find similar content useful. If they like the idea, write your own (original) content around the same topic.
4. Read trade journals. There are probably at least 2 trade magazines or journals specifically targeted at your market. Personally, I find trade journals really boring, but at times, they provide me with a few golden nuggets. If you agree with an article in a trade publication, write a complimentary piece, adding context to what has already been written. If you disagree with the article, write about that too. There’s no harm in disagreeing with a journalist as long as your argument is valid and you keep it professional. In fact, you might want to get in touch with the magazine’s editor with a copy of your piece. Maybe you can get it published in print as well.
5. Visit trade shows. I recommend you visit at least one trade show a month, irrespective of the industry. Apart from all the free stuff you can get, there’s a wealth of information that could help you find content ideas. And because a lot of people in your market aren’t going to get a chance to visit the show, there are a number of opportunities for content, photos and other supporting media. Write about who attended, the best products you saw, innovative ideas people used to get their message across, things you didn’t like, conversations you had or conversations you overheard. The list goes on.
6. Read blogs. Whether or not you understand the theory behind blogging, blogs are the new news media. If anything happens anywhere in the world and it’s even remotely interesting, someone will blog about it. I recommend using Google’s blog search or Technorati to search for blog posts on your chosen topic. Once you’ve found something interesting, you could take the easy way out and link to that article from your website, or do some hard work and research the topic further, writing your own article. Once again, you’re entitled to agree with a blogger or start a debate if you disagree.
7. Join a forum. Trolling forums that are specific to your industry is a fantastic way to find content ideas. People visit forums to find solutions. If you find a problem you can help solve, write a quick article and post a link on the forum. This not only helps you to pick up organic search engine traffic in the future, but it also helps to build valuable incoming links to your website.

I realize that until you develop the habit of writing fresh content for your website, it’s going to feel like hard work. I still haven’t quite got to grips with posting new blog articles twice a week, but with practice, I’m getting better. I can promise you that it gets easier with time, and the benefits speak for themselves.

Give it a try and see what happens. What have you got to lose?

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Photo by Phillie Casablanca

It’s safe to say I’ve been drifting for the past 18 months as far as thinkdave.com goes.

I’ve been toying with 3 options; canning the site (and the business) altogether, specializing in website design for the engineering sector, and concentrating on improving and growing my website management business.

I’ve made a decision. As of May 1st, thinkdave.com is a business dedicated to managing B2B websites. For me this is a huge step forward. I’ve spent a lot of time brainstorming exactly how I want the business to be structured and I’m happy that I’ve developed a product that’s really beneficial to both my existing and future clients.

If you’re wondering why I’ve decided to focus on website management rather than designing new websites for people with too much money, this is my reasoning:

With millions of existing websites that just aren’t meeting owners’ expectations, I see a lot of potential to help people to really make good ROI from their online marketing. Anyone can redesign a website, but what’s the point in spending money on a facelift when you can get so much more value from the website you’ve already got?

The services I’m offering cover everything a small business needs to get the most out of their website, and they’re affordable.

What about the blog?

Well, obviously the blog will be focusing on website management as well. There’s a lot to talk about in this field, so I’m going to be sharing a lot more information.

I’m ready to start some great conversations. Are you ready to join in?

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