Posts Tagged ‘quality content’

The Basics of Hotel Website Marketing

Fresh Post at Getaway Graphics: The Basics of Hotel Website Marketing

These days every hotel needs to be keenly aware of how to market themselves online and the first rule is keywords. If you don’t know the first thing about keywords, don’t worry you’re not alone and that’s your key strength because very few people in the hospitality industry are taking the time to use effective keywords in their online marketing.

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Organic Marketing is Free Marketing

Fresh Post at thingsidoformoney.com: Organic Marketing is Free Marketing

Remember the old saying Content is King? Well, nowhere is it more true than here on the Internet and in particular when it comes to a special kind on online marketing called Organic Marketing.

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Does it matter what order you put header tags in?

I was surfing YouTube today and came across a great video from Matt Cutts (the Guru of Google) who answered an interesting question, does it matter what order you put header tags in?

 

What I find most interesting is Matt’s body language in this video, especially when talking about how Google tries to make sense of poorly written websites. Yes, they do their best to do it … but let’s all still try to help (Document Structure vs. Document Appearance, the power of CSS). 

So what do I get from his comments?

For those of you who don’t know who Matt Cutts is, he’s well known in the SEO community as the face of Google, which I guess is pretty impressive really. He offers a lot of advice on how to make websites more friendly and is pretty well the Oracle when it comes to what Google likes (and doesn’t like).

So here’s what I took from Matt’s video

  1. Google tries really hard to read your web pages, even if you’re technically incompetent. Does this mean that you shouldn’t try to optimize your pages? Not at all, but writing quality content is what Google really hopes to find.
  2. Google understands that content formating mistakes happen.  Sure, we should all strive to be perfect but let’s remember what’s important (content!)
  3. Google’s Offices need longer blinds. Hey, I’m not judging … maybe shorter blinds have a better SEO value?

As always, I think anybody who wants to have an online business should take a few minutes at subscribe to the Google WebMaster YouTube channel.

Five Things You Can Write on Your Blog to Increase Traffic

Write something useful

If you’re familiar with my website, then you know that I’m a big believer in writing quality content. The best way to increase traffic to your website? Write something worth reading. Tips, tricks or advice to help your audience.

Write something original

You don’t have to be the best writer out there but it helps to be original. Stop trying to compete for high end key phrases or recycling the same old content. Write something fresh that people would care to read about.

Write something timely

During the Democratic competition I wrote an article about Obama’s use of technology, that piece brought in more traffic to my website for a week then any other piece. The second most common piece during that time? Rednecks for Obama.

Write it first

Be the first to come up with an idea and write about it.

Write something with value

If nothing else, your article should give your reader knowledge. Improve their world, cut down on their costs, increase their profits or help them understand the simplicity of technology. Just make sure when they’re done reading … they know more then when they started.

How to get a PageRank of 5

For those of you who know nothing at all about PageRanks and Alexa rankings, let me explain that they’re the modern equivenant of a Nielsen ratings for websites. 

Alexa measures your website performance by volunteer users, in effect millions of average people agree to allow Alexa to collect statistics about their surfing habits and from that data, Alexa tracks and monitors activity on the Internet. At Halloween this year, Alexa ranked my website at 2,291,883. Today it’s at 231,354 which is a 1790% improvement for spending about 20 minutes a day on my website.

Google on the other hand ranks your website by looking at who your website connects to and in return, who connects to your website. That’s a pretty over simplified way to look at it but it’s also the general gist of the method. It’s a bit like a popularity contest, Google believes that if websites with high page ranks (the system is from 0 to 10) link to you consistently, your content must be of a certain value.

So now that you understand what a PageRank and Alexa ranking mean, here’s how I earned my respectable rankings in both … (drum roll anybody?) … quality content, consistently posted.

I know that you’re all hoping for a much better answer than that but sadly it’s the truth. My very good friend Chris Bavota jumped from a PR0 to a PR4 in just three months, doing exactly the same thing … he posts great articles that people love to read and he makes sure that he does it regularly.

Chris and I followed some easy to understand advice:

Once that was done, both Chris and I did what any self respecting blog owner would do:

  • we used deep linking techniques to ensure our readers know about related content on our website
  • we posted links to other peoples blogs, helping our readers find similar content
  • we let other blog owners know that we had articles of interest for their readers

There are no scams, no black hat SEO techniques, no short cuts and no tricks. Quality rankings on a quality search engine takes nothing more than a little bit of effort, quality content and the determination to contribute something positive to the Internet as a whole.

Qualities of a good site

While most of you probably spent your winter holiday sipping egg nog or drinking mulled cider, I spent mine watching a new series of posts to Google Video by Matt Cutts, the master of all things Google. Yes, I have a wife and no … this didn’t amuse her.

One video in particular caught my attention and I thought was worth mentioning here on my website. In it, Matt talks about the qualities of a good site and how to make your website more Google friendly.

I’m posting this here as much for my regular readers as for myself, as an easy reference to some of the best Search Engine Optimization advice I’ve ever heard.

Make your site crawl-able.  That’s really the best advice anybody can give you and if the master of Google repeats it, then you’ve got to believe it. One of the best ways to do this is to try to surf your website as a blind user. If it’s possible for person to surf your website without using graphics (especially Flash) then you’re one step closer to having an indexable site. It’s easy to understand why really, Google is a robot. That might be a surprise to people but all Google does (all day long) is surf the Internet, following link after link and indexing the content … if it can’t see the link (ie it’s hidden in a Flash animation) then Google can’t follow it.

Matt also suggests taking some time to look at your website to make sure that you’ve included a couple of things:

  • Site Map
  • Quality Content

Quality content? Yes, that’s huge. “Fundimentally, you need something interesting that sets you apart from the pack”. Makes perfect sense really, it’s all about making your website better for people, not Google.