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Archives for May 2013

Tips to make adding regular content to your website a breeze

Peter Shilling · May 26, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Last week I gave you some tips on SEO for your WordPress web site and one of the main themes there was around the need to add fresh content to your site on a regular basis. Your website should not be a set and forget tool, it should be constantly fresh for both old and visitors alike.

Easier said than done right? You’re a busy small business owner, perhaps the marketing co-ordinater for a larger business – either way you’ve got a lot of pressures on your time so keeping a content publishing schedule is hard work.

Well I’ve got the answer for you!

Schedule your content in WordPress

Pro bloggers will add a lot of content to their site, sometimes several posts a day. Now I’m not suggesting that in your business you need to publish fresh content at that break neck speed but there is a secret to how they do it that you can benefit from.

Spend a period of time, perhaps as little as two hours a month but more if you can and in that time write a number of pieces for your website. The trick then is to schedule the content for publication. This way you can set the time aside get focused and creative and knock out enough content for a week, a fortnight or perhaps the whole month.

WordPress takes care of the publishing part for you, here’s how to do it.

WordPress-schedule-contentWhere you would normally write a post and publish it, what we need to do is to schedule instead.

In the screen shot opposite, click the edit button next to “Publish immediately”, you’ll see then the “Publish” button changes to “Schedule” and you’ve given a little tool to choose the date and time that you would like the item published.

Use this method to schedule as many new posts as you like.

WordPress allows you to view them and see how your schedule is organised. From the main WordPress Dashboard click “All Posts” and you’ll see all the posts from your site, here you’ll now also see your scheduled posts along with the date that they are going to be published.

wordpress-schedule-content-2

From this same screen you can click on the post and that will return you to the WordPress editor where you continue to edit the post but also follow the same process to change the date if that’s what you’d like to do.

Get organised ahead of time

Scheduling posts in WordPress is great for this method of writing once for a given period of time but also consider using this to published other well timed content for your site. For example, if you’re an accounting firm why not write a blog post and have it publish 2 weeks before the end of the financial year reminding business owners of things that they should do before 30th June.

Good idea?

Yes it is, I’m sure you can come up with ideas like that this would make sense for your business too.

Get someone else to do it

You don’t have to do it all yourself! Get other people in your business involved in writing for your website. Consider these two short examples.

Australia is built on small businesses, many of these are the family business variety. One of the partners may be a tradesman, chef or some other skill and the other partner might take the roll of accounts, administration and yes the business website. While the tradesman is going to be time poor and less likely to have time for the website try this. Interview him or her for 5 minutes over a cup of coffee.

  • What three things should a client tell you when booking a job? (there’s a blog post)
  • Are the more expensive long life light bulbs actually worth it? (there’s another)
  • When a client is going to stay at your holiday rental, 3 things that they should ensure they bring along to make their stay even better (yup, there’s 3)

Extract the information, even use your voice recording app on your iPhone or other smart phone.

Moving away from small business you can take this idea and use it again, this time you’re probably just not going to be married to the subject! You’re the marketing co-ordinator for an large accounting firm. Do the same thing! Grab your boss, sit him down with a hot brew of some kind and extract the information.

The trick to this is: be prepared. Have your 3, 4 or 10 questions ready to go and just pump them for information.

Don’t think this will work for you either?

You’ve got one more choice, outsource it. You may not know it but hiring a writer, regardless of your business size is easier and probably cheaper than you think. It’s not just for the big boys!

We’ve had a lot of success using various copywriters for our clients, we have a couple that we work with regularly to write material for all kinds of businesses but you’ll also find you can find writers on outsourcing web sites like Freelancer.com or Elance.com

In the past we’ve found the journalism / interview technique the one that works the best. After preparing the copywriter with some background on the job, we have them call / Skype / sit and have a coffee with the key person in the business and simply interview them.

It’s quick and it’s effective.

Couple this idea with our scheduling in WordPress and you can achieve a lot.

Have your copywriter briefed on a number of blog post / news ideas and they can write them all at once. You review them in one go and then schedule them in WordPress to be published over time.

That’s it for this week, if you missed the post last week it goes hand in hand with this one, you can check it out here: SEO for your WordPress website – In 10 minutes

SEO for your WordPress website – In 10 minutes

Peter Shilling · May 20, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Small business websites are hard work for their owners, often all the passion and drive is there to create something brilliant but it’s crippled by lack of time. Like any marketing activity, running a great business web site is second to… actually running the business. We write regularly about SEO and WordPress but often these posts assume some previous knowledge.

So today’s blog post is for the small business website owner, perhaps just starting out with a new WordPress website.  You give me 10 minutes and I’ll give you a crash course in Search Engine Optimisation, specifically for WordPress. Over the 10 minutes I’m going to start out really basic but stick with me because even if you know a little you will learn something!

Start the stop watch!

The really basic basics

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the art of making your website optimised so that it comes up when people search for it on sites like Google. Google and other search engines ‘index’ your site, they have computers that read your website and store loads of information about what they find.

Quick Fact: Search engines can only read text, not images or flash animations – simple text on the page.

If you are a butcher in Dee Why and you think that someone will find you by searching for ‘butcher in Dee Why’ they will only find you if that text appears in your website. If that text is prominent in your website (i.e. it appears in the right places in multiple places) even better.

Obviously there is going to be more than one website with the phrase ‘butcher in Dee Why’, so Google and the like employ very complex algorithms to determine which website comes up at the top of the results.

Focused content

Try to make each individual page of content focused on a particular subject. This is why blogging (see below in Regular content)  is such a good idea to help with SEO. Having each individual page of content focused on a narrow subject helps the search engine understand what the page is about, the engines are smart they understand a lot about context.

Quick Fact: Rather than one page listing all of your services, make a page specific to each one, each page will be a lot more focused in the eyes of the search engine.

Focus also on a small group of keywords. It’s a good discipline to write them down. Between 10 and 15 phrases that you’re going to focus your content around. Yes there is an art to this keyword research but in its most simplistic form: phrases that users are going to use to search for and find your website. Then when you add new content to your site continually use and augment the density of these keywords.

Regular content

Consider this situation. Google sees two websites that are have ‘butcher in Dee Why’ in text on the page. One is a small 6 page web site that never changes and the other is a larger site, currently consisting of around 25 pages with 3 new pages appearing every month. On the second site the phrase ‘butcher in Dee Why’ appears in many of the pages in many different ways.

Which site do you think Google will rank higher in the results?

The answer is obvious, the second site. It is well recognised in the world of SEO that regular, fresh, relevant content will out rank static, stale and unchanged content. It’s a fact.

Many website owners struggle with this one “What would I write about”, “I don’t have time to add new content”. I’m yet to find a business or topic where I’ve not been able to suggest at least a handful of subjects to write about, off the top of my head. Let’s take our butcher example.

Here are 3 ideas for blog post topics:

  • “How to pick the freshest product when visiting your local butcher”
  • “Dee Why butcher specials this week”
  • “3 recipes for cutlets that you’ve probably never tried”

See how easy it is?

Quick Fact: WordPress is one of the easiest website tools to use, adding content to your site is absolutely simple and straight forward.

Structured content

So you have a list of keywords and you’re adding content to your website regularly, now where you put the keywords is important. Again let’s keep things simple, we don’t have many of our 10 minutes left right? Google needs to work out which sites are more relevant so it will think like this: “If the heading that I’m seeing on site X has ‘butcher in Dee Why’ in it, then I think that’s more relevant than when the text appears just in a paragraph”. Or perhaps “If the title of this particular page is ‘Joe Soap – your local butcher in Dee Why’ then that whole page must be about the topic, yes it’s more relevant, rank it higher”.

Quick Fact: WordPress and theme frameworks like Genesis provide all the tools to control page structure (things like titles and page descriptions)

Of all the topics in this post, structure is probably the one that requires a bit of know-how. Refer to an older blog post WordPress SEO for the Genesis theme for some more information on this one.

What else do you need to know?

Ok, it’s true there is a lot more to SEO than what is presented here but in reality I don’t think any of it matters unless you’ve got these basic principles in place.

Depending on your speed of reading you’ve probably got at least 3 or 4 minutes left.

Scan these two posts now or bookmark them to read later:

  • Look your best on search engine result pages
  • Optimising images for search engines

I hope these ideas help. If you’ve gone to the trouble of building a website do yourself a favour and make the most of it by nurturing it and building upon it – the rewards will come!

New domain names are coming

Peter Shilling · May 13, 2013 · Leave a Comment

It’s been a long time coming, you may have heard or read about the pending release of new Internet Domain Names over the past couple of years – the process has been slow and drawn out. Finally though it seems that it’s coming to a head.

Melbourne gets a new internet identity

.Melbourne a new domain name space for the city was approved by ICANN over the weekend. It is the first of over 40 names that were applied for by Australian applicants and one of 1,930 application received from around the world. Other Australian applications are for names like .afl, .auspost and .anz – all from fairly obvious applicants.

Bigger change is coming

It’s going to be an interesting change in the landscape over the next couple of years. We’re all used to addresses like CompanyName.com.au or perhaps just CompanyName.com, while there have been a few additions to the internet naming system over the past 10 years none that have made a real impact for most businesses.

With almost two thousand new domain name suffixes applied for there will surely be a solid few that will make some kind of impact in the short term. Already other cities like  London, Tokyo and New York have also secured their own domain names there will be more to come.

It’s not all about cities or regions getting their space online either browse the list of names here you will get a feel for the variety on offer – it’s extensive! Some of the names will have straight forward and predicable uses ( .Windows / .Shop / .Sex ), I’m interested in what will be done with .Space – web sites that are out of this world? (Sorry couldn’t resist that)

What are the opportunities?

I think the number one opportunity for internet users is choice. A business wanting an online presence can choose from a huge variety of domain names suffix to best represent their needs. A restaurant operating in Melbourne I’m sure would love to brand itself around a web site like CitySeafood.Melbourne.

For those who are keen on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) think of what a domain name GreatSeafood.Melbourne could do for your ranking. I’m sure the likes of Google will begin to take into account these new domain names when they are indexing sites.

How to get involved

Right now it’s still a bit of a waiting game. August 2013 ICANN will release all of the results of the applications. Their dates have slipped a number of times so that could change. Then the successful applicants have to go about setting up their registries so they can begin to sell these new domain names.

There are a variety of methods that registries in the past have used to open up a new domain space, commonly they will have a period of time where they will take orders for new domains then process them, suffice to say it will be lot of ‘first come, best dressed’.

It’s worth keeping an eye on this space over the next 12 months to see how it evolves, even just as a web users it will be interesting to see the new names come into existence. Move over .com your time in the sun is coming to an end!

Just for the record, the NSW Government has also applied for .Sydney so we’re not left in the cold!

10 Proven Ways to Build a Website that Customers Will Love

Peter Shilling · May 10, 2013 · Leave a Comment

I will admit, I read a lot of blogs – every week I would spend a deal of time browsing and consuming new posts from my favourite sites. Separating the useful facts from the rest is usually the biggest challenge but each week there are a few gems.

This one I think is so good that it’s time to share it here.

HelpScout.net provide a brilliant email support system, it’s what we use here at The DMA to manage our client support emails, they have a blog that regularly has good information on custom support, web sites etc.. this post however is one to bookmark if you build sites and if you own a site a good list of things to check out on yours.

Two points that I was most interested in:

  • The section “Incorporate Directional Cues” is really interesting, make sure you read that section
  • And! a section on the dreaded “fold” – links to more info that keeping information “above the fold” actually makes no difference at all

Go read it now!   “10 Proven Ways to Build a Website that Customers Will Love”

image credit: HelpScout.net

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