What makes a website usable, how users think

Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug.
This is almost always my first recommendation. It’s quick to read, it’s easily digested, and drives home the fact that even you are not a careful, thorough, and patient reader/consumer online. It’s hard to believe the author hates to write.

A wealth of insight can be found by following A List Apart and I’ve always enjoyed watching and listening to Jared Spool at User Interface Engineering.

Writing for the Web, content strategy

Yes, it’s different. We’ve probably all heard that and how content is king. Ginny Redish provides excellent example of how its different and how you can make your words work in Letting Go of the Words. It’s a great resource for any writer.

Can’t get enough? Want a little more from the strategic angle? The read Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson. If you want only ten minutes of good advice, read her article “The Discipline of Content Strategy.”

Once it comes out, go give this one a try: Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business. I’m hoping it’s easier to read than its title, but just as thorough.

Want to follow a blog instead? Then try subscribing to Gerry McGovern’s “New Thinking” newsletter and blog.

How a redesign happens, what to expect

Website redesigns always seem to take more time and a lot more work than many people expect. It’s sort of like remodeling your bathroom, living room, and kitchen at the same time. Read Web ReDesign 2.0 by Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler, or at least give it a very good scan, if you want to feel more knowledgeable and in control of the process even as you trust other professionals to do all the technical and heavy work.

All sorts of useful stuff to watch

UIE Bookclub looks promising. You can watch the first episode with Kristina Halvorson. So before, during, or after you’ve read her book, you can watch the interview and call-in show.

I’ve always found Google Webmaster Central Channel and Google Business Channel on YouTube to have quality and bite-sized videos. It’s not always just about the search engine (although you better know how to work with Google if you’re doing an online marketing); it covers a few general online marketing tactics, too.

If you’re looking for a little humor, try HubSpot’s YouTube channel. They’ve been trying a few comics on their website and some silly, but informative, videos here with the introduction of Captain Inbound.

Your additions?

These are books, blogs, and video resources that came to the top of my mind this morning. Tomorrow I might decide to add a few more. What have I missed?

I find it rather charming to see an economist at a white board again. (I used to work for the Federal Reserve Bank.) No CGI here.

Learn why you could be bidding $4 for a keyword, but paying only $2.

Keywords

The same set of keywords you identified for use on your site can also be used in your social media. Consider even more tightly targeted and long-tail keywords, too. Make it easy for someone searching social content to locate you and your products, or services. Or make sure your institution is associated with appropriate issue-related keywords.

The Mayo Clinic does a great job of this.

Remember to consider the keywords you use as links when commenting in a forum, posting an answer, or commenting on a blog. You want to support your other SEO efforts so when you refer to one of your own web pages or blog posts, be sure to use relevant keywords.

Branding

Should you publish from a single brand or from each of your brands?

In the Twitter post example above you’ll see that Mayo Clinic didn’t post from a separate education or audio production account. The tweet came from the larger entity of the institution. They don’t dilute their exceptionally strong brand by having multiple publishers. They do avoid littering their Twitter feed with job openings, however, by posting those from @mayoclinicjobs. And if you’re interested only in audio content, they make it easy to search for it with the hash tag: mayoradio.

If you are a company with a higher potential for bad press or with strong individual product brands, I’d recommend that you have separate accounts for each brand name. Let’s take Pfizer as an example. Their drug names are probably stronger keywords then the company name. The individual brands attract different types of readers.  Someone interested issues around dementia might know and subscribe to an Aricept feed, without knowing it was a Pfizer brand. If an issue regarding Halcion or similar drug hit the media, Pfizer could respond via the specific account channel instead of reminding all their other readers about an issue they’d rather didn’t capture their attention. Another example would be Ford’s separate channels for Ford trucks and the Mustang.

Look at your brand strategy (0r create one) and let that guide your decision on how to publish. Or begin with a single account and if you’re finding that you’re alienating readers by publishing content they don’t care about, then create a new account.

Support your other media

You’ll notice that Mayo Clinic used a new media tweet to support a report going out in the old media of radio. New blog posts, quotes from an interview with your CEO, special offers at your brick-and-mortar location, slides from a training presentation, and news releases are all good examples of content that can be re-purposed for social media.

Let your audience lead

Maybe your audience doesn’t want to interact with you on Facebook. Perhaps they clamor for assistance you could best provide via video, so you focus your resources toward YouTube. Perhaps many are hanging out in another location like Gather, Google Buzz, or a forum established back in 1998. Services like socialmention.com or Google Alerts can be helpful in identifying locations where your keywords are currently appearing and generating some conversation. Don’t rely on those services. Do some deeper digging on a regular schedule. For example, check forums through Google’s discussion option to catch up on audience viewpoints and issues that interest them.

Use social monitoring tools to discover conversations expressing dissatisfaction with your competitors. You might not want to jump into the conversation to shout about how you do something better, but you could respond privately to the people with complaints and make them an offer. Provide them what they want and perhaps they’ll become a spokesman for you. Or simply use postings like this to gather competitive data you can use to improve your business.

Are you checking your log files to see how many mobile users you have? They might appreciate communications via Twitter.

If you’re having trouble choosing where you should focus your social attention, ask your sales and service staff for their opinions. They often have insights on how  and where people are currently finding information about you and your products. They’ll also be able to give you goods ideas for content to share.

Remember that educational content is better than promotional content.

If you really want to control the conversation by keeping it on your own site you’re probably going to fail unless you provide enough incentives to keep people visiting, reading, and posting. If you have user generated content like product reviews, make sure the search engines can index that content.

Editorial guidelines still apply

Even if you’re posting something to Facebook you want the status update to look professional. Consider the tone you use for other media. You might choose to be more relaxed or use more humor in your social media posts, but that doesn’t remove the need to follow style and editorial guidelines.

It’s a good idea to have someone periodically review postings and inform everyone who publishes from your organization about what’s been working and what hasn’t. Having measurable goals is critical to success.

Why do you want people to email you?

You almost always want people to have the option of emailing you. Or calling you. Or chatting via IM. It depends on your business and on your customers. Offering your visitors options; love having choices. It’s a way to set yourself apart from your competitors. If you have any visitors with language, motor control, or sight limitations, they will be delighted to have the choice of communication method that works best for them.

I have one client who knows that if she talks to a potential buyer on the phone, she can sell them more product and create a better relationship with that client than if the client used only her online order form. She can answer questions using the caller’s own terms and immediately address their needs and interests. She can make sure they get the product they need and that they will know how to use it. Responding to an email is not as immediately profitable, but it still allows a deeper relationship to develop. It’s more likely that if she sends another email later, the client will recognize the sender name and read her message.

I have another client whose domain hosting service made a change that caused her forms to break. If she hadn’t had her email available on her form page, she would have lost multiple buyers who took the extra effort to send her an email after receiving an error message from her form. Several customers sent her emails to place their order or to let her know of the error. She avoided lost sales and the additional stress and embarrassment she would have suffered if it she had had to discover and diagnose the problem herself.

An easily located email address can be very useful for you and your visitors if an error occurs on your site. I’ve had people take the effort of sending me a screen shot of the error they received which I could then forward to my IT colleagues. There are helpful people out there who will even let you know when you have a small typo on your site. Make it easy for them. They are like friends who will tell you about the spinach in your teeth.

People appreciate the accessibility of a human even if they are sitting at a computer.

Use a real name

I always encourage clients to post a real name to associate with an email address. My experience many years ago was that I’d get about 15 to 25 percent more comments if I was listed as Kristeen instead of as webmaster. People know how to communicate with other people and feel competent doing so. People are not sure how to deal with webmaster or sales or service. They wonder if they will reach a real person of if their email will go into the ether. With a real name, they know how to begin their email: “Dear Kristeen.”

What about complaints? Just between you and me, if I’m angry, my tone will be much harsher if I’m complaining to service rather than to JoAnne. Even if I’ve never met JoAnne, I want JoAnne to think well of me. So if you’re reading incoming complaints or questions, your job will be easier if you’re being addressed as JoAnne  even your name is José.

Even if your service staff of four all accept email from a single address, there’s no reason your site can’t state something like “If you have a question regarding product performance, please contact service@company.com.  One of our certified technicians, Kamiko, James, Guy, or Drew, will respond within 24 hours.”

People trust other people more than they trust automation. Seeing a name associated with your site tells the reader that someone is taking responsibility for that site and what it offers.

What about spam?

There are good spam filters available, but you can’t avoid spam if you publish an email address. I’ve just found that it’s easier to delete spam than it is to re-capture visitors who left your site without providing you with the opportunities for a better relationship with them.

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve tried publishing your email and found it problematic.

Why does this happen?

Usually this comes about because no one actually owns the content once it’s been published. Reviewing pages days, weeks, months, or years after publication is in no one’s job description. The task of reviewing content seems overwhelming so it’s not even attempted. Content originally created for a newsletter is often written with current events in mind and sometimes without complete details. Then that content is moved to the Web and may get a lot of traffic from search, but is never reviewed.

How to keep content updated

• Know which of your pages get the most traffic and make it someone’s job to periodically review those pages. They don’t have to review the entire site, just the pages that are most likely to embarrass you or not perform at the level they should.
• Know when to run a search on your site. When someone changes their name, run a check to see if they were listed somewhere. When pricing changes, be sure to run a search for instances of that price. In large organizations this can necessitate getting an editor onto several distribution lists and scanning all those memos or emails.
• Date your pages. While it’s not critical that all pages have dates, for a large site with many contributors, it makes it easier if most do. Then someone can search your site for “my product April 2009″ and quickly see a list of pages they should review. It also helps orient the reader. If I see a reference to Louisiana, it’s helpful to know if the author was referring to the state before or after Katrina (and before or after the oil spill.)
• Understand your site’s organization. Make sure you know where pricing information, contact information, phone numbers, sales figures, etc. reside. If you’re a large organization, know what other units might be publishing content that refers to your people or services.
• Listen to others in your organization. Make it easy for someone to send you a quick note letting you know of an update or error. Respond quickly and thank them. If Marketing owns the site, people in Sales might know of several updates that are needed but aren’t sharing that information because there’s a lack of good communication between the two units. Receptionists often know about errors but don’t know who to inform about them.
• Review pages with surprisingly high bounce rates. People might be leaving your page because they see something outdated and immediately lose trust in your entire site.

How to handle updates

Some updates are no more than swapping out one piece of data for an updated piece. Sometimes it’s more complicated. I’ve seen the following techniques work well.

• Add an editor’s note at the beginning or end of an article. This could update readers on the status of a project referenced, refer to new accessories for sale, or note that in light of new data the argument made in the article is even more strongly supported. Date the document so it’s clear when the editor’s note was added and when the content was originally published.
• Add a more informal author’s note. This could state that the article has been so popular over the last ten months that the author decided to revisit the topic and completely rewrite the article based on new information or experience.
• Update the article, but add a date of original publication. Consider adding a link to that archived document.
• Don’t update the article; instead provide links to newer content on the same subject.

How to keep content fresh

• Review what others are publishing in your content area, especially the content that’s being shared through social media. Consider if you can add to the conversation by writing a new article or updating one already published. Perhaps you’ll be able to share your current content with a short introduction like “Expert’s argument is spot on. See my article for another great example.” Or “My experience differs. See my article.”
• Focus. Determine what content you want your site to be known for. If there’s someone out there doing a better job than you have the resources for, then create different content. Go with your strengths. Or be more targeted toward your particular audience. Or be the compiler or curator of excellent resources. Or say it all with video. Focus on the content you do best.
• Share. If you’re about to share your content through social media, you have an additional incentive to review it once more. And those you share it with are likely to respond with their ideas and challenges. You can use that feedback to update and improve your content.

Where to find your search logs

Any analytics program will have a report on terms visitors used to find your site. In Google Analytics you’ll find the terms people used to find your site under Traffic Sources | Keywords. Some programs will also report on terms searched using your site search tool. If you’re using the Google site search engine on your site, uou’ll find those queries under Content | Site Search. Google Webmaster Tools will also give you a list of search queries. Bing Webmaster Center does not (although it provides information on backlinks, which is nice.)

Google Webmaster Tool provides this helpful summary of what it finds to be your top keywords. You’ll want to pay attention to it, too.

Google Webmaster Tools

If you’re in a large organization you might have to speak with someone in IT to get access to search reports for your site. If your subdomain or section of the larger site has its own search function, be sure to ask for searches on your section of the site and for any section related to yours. You want to know if people in a related section are actually wanting your content and just got lost. For example, if you’re a college within a university, you might want to see searches on the admissions or library sites.

Content ideas

If you write a blog, you need as many content ideas as possible and you’re bound to find a few in your logs. Look for the longer set of terms. These are often long tail searches that don’t produce a lot of search results. I found an odd one on my personal blog site: age 32 eyelashes growing gray. I’m not sure why my site turned up for those terms, but if I wrote on topics about health or aging I’d know I could write a post about premature graying (or perceived premature graying.)

Search queries are also often written as complete questions to which you can respond. An example: does cutting holes in a shipping container weaken them. You might want to watch for these type of question queries if you’re creating or editing an FAQ.

The next step is to look at how people using these search terms behaved. For the eyelash example above I see a 100% bounce rate. I know that the searcher didn’t find anything of interest on my site. I’m a little concerned that the searcher for amount 0f liquid morphine to overdose did stay on my site. I might want to go back and re-read my postings on outdated medical advice to be sure I don’t have anything posted that would assist with a suicide.

Look at search terms where you have low bounce rates, high pages per visit, and high time on site numbers. This can give you a sense of what content is sticky enough to engage your visitors. You might want to expand on the concepts that surround these search terms.

It will also give you an idea of terms bringing you visitors, but where you don’t have the quality of content to keep them on your site. In the example above, if I wanted to sell videos featuring children’s rhymes, I might want to consider writing new copy. But first I’d run that search myself, locate the page that comes up in results, and then check on the overall performance of that page. It could be that people searching for choosing rhymes just wanted the words to “One Potato Two.” In that case I might want to consider adding a new section to my site that features words or lyrics to common children’s poems and rhymes. Or adding something similar to my Facebook page or adding a space where people could vote for favorite rhymes they sang as a child.

Look for interesting topics showing up. You can use these insights to guide your social media discussions. If people are searching for something unexpected, ask your community for their thoughts. Are the searches you’re seeing for pink outdoor paint reflecting a trend among designers, for example?

Site search terms are a great place to locate synonyms you might want to use in your copy. They might even give you an idea of what type of people are not seeing the terms they expect. For example, someone might be searching for plantain lily when you always refer to that plant as a hosta.

Site fixes

You have a few choices to make when you see synonyms you’re not using in your content turn up in your logs.

1. If you have access to the search appliance, add that term and your preferred synonym to the thesaurus or create a keymatch term. Or ask your IT staff if they can make this update to your search tool for you. You want to be sure that someone searching for plantain lily sees search results as if they searched for hosta.
2. Review your navigation. If people are using your site search to find pages that should be easily accessible from your navigation, you know you need to do some user testing. If you’re in an industry which uses a lot of jargon and you might find these synonyms to be worth testing with your desired audiences to see if they are better recognized or understood. Using your audience’s language is always preferred.
3. Look at your page headings and titles in terms of terms that are showing up. Are you using these same terms or keywords? How about in your meta descriptions?

Search engine marketing

Google AdWords report option

If you are seeing terms in a search query report that have absolutely nothing to do with your product or service, add them to  your keywords as negative keywords. That way you won’t be paying for clicks on hickory switch when you only sell hickory nuts.

Check your keyword reports to see which keywords are showing good conversions and consider expanding your content around those terms. Again, look at those long search phrases for the long tail keywords to exploit.

You might also spot a few keywords in your logs that you’ll want to add to the keywords you bid on in your advertising.

You might even find a clue to a small niche market under-served by you or your competitors.

Plus, looking through these logs can be entertaining. You might be surprised by the odd things people search for. Just remember that if you’re looking at your own site’s search logs, there will always be a few searches by people thinking they are searching the entire web universe. They didn’t really think you’d have world cup soccer scores on your farm equipment sales site. But the search for bunny fur hair dye remover might be legitimate.

Editorial staff

I highly recommend that one person be the point person or managing editor for your website. That person will have the big picture view and be the point person to go to with questions. The editor can take care of pages like the 404 error page, the privacy notice, etc. that tend to be forgotten during site reviews. Just like a newspaper or magazine, a website is a regularly published medium which needs oversight. Consider if you have enough staff to create the website you need to meet your business goals. Perhaps your business is so small you need to find a way to take on all tasks.

Various models of staffing are possible. Here are just three.

If you don’t have a proofreader, determine who will be doing that task. Writers could do it for each other or the editor could do it. The person posting your content should know if you want him or her to correct typos or alert you to them. You don’t want your credibility questioned because you didn’t ask someone to proofread your document.

• Do content ideas need to be approved?
• Once a writing assignment has been given, how much latitude does the writer have with the content?
• Does the editor and/or proofreader need to sign off on a document before it is posted?
• Do different types of documents or content require different approvals?

Content/topics

Content needs to promote the goals of your site, whether those are to make a sale or inform or encourage an action. It needs to match the interests and needs of your audience and be written in a manner that your target audience will accept and enjoy.

Business goals

• List only a handful.

Audiences

• Be as detailed as you need. If you use personas, refer to them here.

Calendar

• If you have an editorial calendar, place it here. Consider if one would help motivate your writers or keep them focused.

General content guidelines

• Be of interest to our audience or have a hook which will entice them to read.
• Be timely and relevant.
• Be useful to our audience. (Note: A joke or a chart could each be useful.)
• Be user friendly. (Easy to scan and to understand.)
• Present information in an original manner.
• Have a specific message. Multiple messages should go on separate pages.
• Content should be able to live on its own as its own page. If you’re separating a long article into multiple pages, consider that a reader might enter on page three. Make it easy for that reader and make it obvious that there are preceding pages.
• Consider include a value-added element or additional content. This might be a graphic, a video, a set of links, or an opportunity to signup for a newsletter, an inspirational quote.

Content types

• When will you post a PDF? Only for an article with multiple mathematical equations? Only for white papers your require viewers to register to receive? Do PDFs need to be coded for reading order or other accessibility issues? Do they require tables of content?
• When do you include a video? Are there requirements for the title or credit slides? Do you also post to YouTube?
• How should a slide show be formatter? Do you also post to SlideShare?
• Are forms produced and posted as PDFs, as Word forms, or are they taken care of by your technical staff?

Required page elements

Meta data

Do you have an existing metadata schema or search engine optimization strategy? If so, refer to that here.

• Title. (This is what shows up in search results and at the top of the web browser.)
  • Is the title always the same as your page heading? Does it always need to include an identified keyword from your search engine optimization campaign? Does it need to include your product name, your business name, a reference to media type, or other information?)

• Description of the page. (This information assists people in selecting your page in listing of search results. Make the viewer want to click on your link.)
• Do you have a set of categories or tags you need to identify (typically only for blog entries.)

Example of required elements.

• Date spelled out so people in the U.S. and in Europe will read it the same. Example: June 7, 2009.
  • What type of content needs a date? Is a month and year sufficient?
• Author credit with link to author’s contact page or blog.
• Headings every 2-4 paragraphs.
• References.
• Pull quotes for longer articles.
• A question or concern of your audience. This may be an actual question or simply a good thesis statement.
• A photo or image.
• A testimonial.
• Pricing.
• A call to action.
  • Do calls to action vary from page to page, or section to section? Who writes the calls to action?

Tone

Consider your brand guidelines as you write this section.

• Do you want to appear light-hearted, practical, serious, academic, jocular, clever, supportive, challenging or friendly?
• Are first person references allowed? Only in blogs?
• What acronyms are acceptable?
• Are there internal buzzwords you want to list and ask people not to use? Or are there terms that your audience will understand and feel part of a community because you used them?

Length

People will read online but they prefer to skim. Encourage your writers to take the time necessary to write something clearly and concisely.

• Does your audience expect some types of content—like technical reports, for example—to be long?
• Should other content—such as a review—be around 300 words?
• Does longer content require headings or pull quotes or images to keep the reader reading?
• Is it the writer or editor’s task to determine if a longer document needs to be separated into shorter pages?

Linking

What are your rules for linking to other sites? It is almost always better to write an informative link able to stand on its own rather than a link like “click here” or just providing the URL.

• Are there sites to which links are always permitted or even encouraged?
• Are there sites that have tacit approval and need to be formally approved?
• Are there sites, like commercial or political sites, which can be linked to as long as a disclaimer is provided on the page?
• How do you link within your site? Are there standard ways to refer to pages? For example, a link to the widget page must always be written as “wonderful widget X .”
• Are links allowed in the main text or do they need to be listed at the bottom of the page? Are links repeated at the bottom of the page?

Embedding

• Do you allow embedding of YouTube videos, calendars, slides, etc.?
• Do you allow the importing of RSS feed from other sites?
• How do you credit the source?

Endorsements

Testimonials and endorsements can be powerful for sites that use them. They can be about your product or services or you could be providing them within your own content.

• How should testimonials by your users be formatted or included in a page?
• If a writer refers to a specific brand or business, is a disclaimer required?
• Can photos include actual products? How about when a competitor’s product is visible?

Translations

Translations require some finesse to avoid misunderstandings or embarrassment.

• Who reviews translations?
  • Does the translation match the idiom, social norms and values of the target audience?
  • Does the translation accurately represent your goals?
  • Are examples or testimonials or case studies relevant and meaningful to your geographic audience?
• Do translations run side-by-side or below your standard language content? Does it live on another page? Does it live on another section of the site? (If they reside in different locations, consider how you will be sure to review them both when needed.)

Content contributed by readers or visitors

• Do you need a policy for your contributors to follow?
• Do you need to monitor their uploaded content? Who will do that monitoring and how often?

Content pulled from a feed

• Who has the responsibility for reviewing feeds to be sure they function and serve your goals?
• Who need to approve a new or replacement feed?

After publication

Creating a plan for reviewing content will put you ahead of many website publishers.

• Who sends out requests for links?
• Who sends out a social media notice that a new page has been added?
• Who reviews content? (If it is the site’s writers, don’t forget navigational pages, error pages, policy pages, FAQs, etc.
• When is content reviewed?

Checklist

• Review for ROT (redundant, outdated, or trivial)
• Is the information correct?
• Does it still meet business goals?
• Does it use current trademarks, nomenclature, titles, etc.
• Are copyrights still valid?
• Do links work?
• Is the content still of value to your readers?
• Is content ready for archiving? Where do your archives live? Are they printed or online? (If you’re a large company or a university with a library, you might want to contact the librarians about their interest in your archives.)

Writers love feedback and will be fascinated by all this data, especially if they are more used to working in print media. Sometimes they are further removed from their audiences than they’d like and need to rely on internal resources for content ideas. Luckily it’s pretty easy to give them data they can trust more than opinions from higher ranking staff or executives.

Web analytics program like Google Analytics or Yahoo! Web Analytics—both free—provide insights into your readers’ interests.

What are people already reading on your site?

Top content

This report tells writers where they’ve had success. But don’t just look at the list’s order. Take a look at which pages have the lowest bounce rates and the longer times on page. These are the pages keeping readers reading and on the site. (There could be several reasons for low bounce rates you should investigate a bit: the pages have great calls to action that take them deeper into the site, they have such engaging content that readers want more, or the reader doesn’t find what s/he wants and clicks around in hope of finding something better elsewhere on your site.)

For blog entries, don’t worry about bounce rates. Just look at number of page views and time on page to determine which pages people are reading. They might bounce right off the site immediately, but that’s often because they’ve read the previous entries already. But if an entry is getting a lot of traffic with three-seconds on the site, then you know you probably have a good headline but something’s wrong with the page. It could be a technical problem or an offensive photo or visitors expected to see a list and instead see volumes of text.

If you want to really dig deep, you can also look at pages which get the best number of returning visitors. This will be important for businesses with a long sales cycle where visitors might come several times before they commit to a purchase or giving their email address.

Take some time to celebrate the well-performing pages. Consider what might have made them successful. Are they well targeted to a specific niche? Are they mostly shorter pieces? Are they pages with the most informative graphics?

Make a list of the topics and keywords for these popular and well-performing pages. Is your page about recycled bedding showing surprisingly good numbers? Keep these pages in mind as you look at the next report.

Keywords

Look at your organic keywords and not those from your paid advertising campaigns. Review the most popular keywords and look for surprises. Are there words missing?

Now that you’ve dug a little deeper and you might discover that “linens for crafts” is a fairly popular keyword phrase. Maybe you want to add a new page with craft patterns using old bed sheets and link to it from your popular recycled bedding page. Or maybe you’re seeing “bamboo cloth” rating highly and you could write something on linens and other items made from bamboo fabrics.

Make a list of the poorly performing keywords. Is “recycled bedding” as a search phrase showing high bounce rates? Do your own Web search and you might discover that many of your visitors were probably looking for pet bedding and not how to recycle old sheets. Maybe you want to add an article for pet owners.

Now look at the terms in the middle. You’ll find many useful keywords on down the list that you can assemble into new topic areas to write about. Or you’ll find opportunities for capturing traffic from searchers who use a long string of keywords because know exactly what they want (and will be happy to find that you have it) or who keep adding terms because their previous searches haven’t been fruitful (and will be grateful to find you have what they seek.)

Referring pages and sites

See how bloggers and other sites owners are linking to your pages. These links are explicit votes for your content. Are links coming to the pages you already knew were popular? Or are many linking to more specialized pages that you thought weren’t performing well? Is that page on large steel storage containers showing up on farming blogs when you hadn’t even considered farmers as one of your target markets?

Are you seeing people coming to your pages from an image search engine? Maybe you should spend a bit more time considering your image and graphic choices.

Are you seeing traffic from Twitter? Maybe it’s time to spend more time writing content for it or other social media.

What are people searching for on your site?

If you have an internal search engine then you have a profitable mine to go digging around in. If you’re writing about student housing but seeing lots of searches for “room and board” then you know that there’s an audience out there using terminology you aren’t. This is a great place to go searching for synonyms you should be employing in your writing (and even navigation.)

Perhaps you’re finding people searching for “recipes” when your site is just about food safety issues. Perhaps adding a few recipes will draw in more readers and keep them engaged with your site. Or you’re finding people searching for your product “Mmmyummies” as “Yummers.” You’ll want to create a new page for those searches with a title like “Mmmyummies are yummers.” It might sound corny, but it’s better than giving them a “no page found” message.

What are people commenting on or sharing?

You probably won’t find this type of data from your regular analytics packages. However, your blogging tool might provide you with a listing of your most recent comments or entries with the most comments. Those comments can be mined for new content ideas.

Setting up a report from socialmention.com, bit.ly, Facebook Insights, Google Alerts or other similar tools will give you an idea of what’s being shared. These will also give you a great sense for how your product or service is being talked about. You might find that an article is needed to clarify an issue in your industry or to address a general concern expressed by your intended audiences.

What do I mean by micro content? I mean the small bits of copy that can make a huge difference in terms of SEO and getting a reader to click.

Headlines and page titles

Headlines are crucial. You want keywords in the headline for the search engines and for your readers. The clever headline that might capture your attention in a magazine already in your hands will not always work as a page title. If you have the job of posting magazine content online, you’ll want to review the headlines and perhaps write a new page title for the online version or use the “kicker” headline if the story has one.  “Nuts to that!” might be a surprising and engaging headline for a story about walnut shells abrasives in a magazine for jewelers, but seeing the headline in search results won’t get a jeweler looking for polishing solutions to click on your link.

You don’t want to appear in search results with a listing like this—without a meaningful page title or description.

When you or a reader decides to share your page with others as a bookmark, a tweet or through Facebook, you want to a meaningful title to display.

I really respect TED.com’s page titles. Look at all the information it contains: presenter’s name, presentation title, media type, and then the source. I know exactly what to expect before I click and the keywords don’t shout.

Subheads

Subheads, like the one above, help to break up your text and make it more easily scanned and read. Subheads are another location for your keywords.

Calls to action

Many of your pages will include a call to action. You might be encouraging your readers to change their behavior, buy your product, send a donation, leave a comment, try a sample, or register for training. Your call to action might change depending on the page. Your calls might increase in complexity as a reader gets deeper into your site.

Image captions and alt text

Eyetracker studies have shown that readers’ eyes fixate on image captions. So make the caption meaningful and provide a reason to move on to the actual story copy. If you’re posting an article about crafting a felt rabbit, use a photo caption like “Creating a felt rabbit takes only three simple steps” or “Create an irresistible toy pet for your cat.”

The alt attribute for images serves a different purpose. It’s for people unable to view an image. The alt attribute should fully describe the photo so “Blue felt rabbit with exaggerated ears” would be an appropriate tag. Using keywords here is still a good idea.  The description you use will help them show up properly in an image search.

Before you post your copy or provide it to someone else to post, please consider these smaller examples of important marketing copy.

Macro content

A blog post, a web page providing directions, and a product description all count as content. These are the types of content that show up in your editorial calendar. These are the types of content you make sure get proofread. And this is the content you worry about showing up well in search engines. But what about other less visible content?

Error pages

Your 404 error page is not one you really want your visitors to see, but it’s likely that a few will. You can’t prevent a blogger from providing a link with an error in the URL. (You’re watching your logs and analytic reports for these instances, right?) The 404 error page is important and one your writers or editors should be writing and reviewing regularly. Here are a three examples. One is almost useless, one is clever but not particularly helpful, and one provides useful navigational assistance and search. Not a lot of writing is involved, but you want the tone of this page to match your brand.

A hosting site’s default page:

From Apartmenthomeliving.com:

And from Heinz:

If you don’t have access to your logs or to analytics, you might want to ask your visitors for some help in tracking down the source of an error. I’ve had good luck asking people for the URL of the page they were coming from when they tripped on my 404 page. Just be sure to thank those visitors ASAP.

Help and instruction pages

Programmers aren’t always great writers, not do they really want to read your editorial guidelines. But they do know understand common errors how to resolve them. So let them help you write the content and let them review your final draft. Get a technical write or a usability professional involved if you’re still having problems with how well the help page actually helps. Get a designer involved if no one even notices your help page options. But be sure that the tone, style and standards for writing the main pages of your site are applied to these pages, too.

Confirmation or thank you pages

Once someone has made a purchase or signed up for an event or submitted a form, you’ll want to let them know that their action worked, that it was appreciated, and what to expect (an email, a link to a white paper, a phone call, etc.) The tone of the page should match the rest of your site, so you’ll want to write this page. You’ll want to consider adding additional links or options for your readers, too, so you’re not leaving them at a dead end. You might even suggest that they follow you through your social media or suggest your offer to a friend or colleague.

Legal notices

You’ll want your privacy and other legal notices to be more readable, friendly and reassuring than legalistic. But your still have to meet the legal requirements. Do what you can to at least make these statements easy to scan. Write it as a FAQ or break it up into bite-size pieces. Try providing a summary of your intent in providing the page and then let the specialists write the full notice to cover your legal needs. Lead into the legalese with a few sentences that show you understand your readers’ concerns and interests. Add a very short statement to a page where you’re collecting data and link to the full policy statement if you can. And when you find five words being used when one would suffice, ask for that edit to be made.

PDF or not?

I was recently asked to explain why or why not someone should publish content as a PDF.  I’ll try to offer some insights. At a few very large institutions it is often easier to send your web lackey a PDF of a document than a Word or HTML document. Ease and a sense of control are major enticements for publishing a PDF, but let’s look at a few other issues.

• It’s really hard work to make a PDF ADA compliant. It’s really easy to make an HTML page accessible.
• PDFs require an extra step on the part of the visitor. Visitors are lazy. They don’t like taking extra steps. You’ve just changed the way they have been reading and navigating and that’s likely to upset them just a little bit.
• It’s another thing that can break. PDFs are very stable and Acrobat Reader is installed on almost everyone’s PC. But things can break and it’s possible that if a document won’t open the user will blame you.
• PDFs usually lack navigation. You don’t want dead ends on your site. You want people discovering new and wonderful things on your site.
• PDFs are harder to update and edit than an HTML page. Unless your document is meant for an archival copy, you will need to update it at some point.
• The person posting a page that needs to be converted into HTML is more likely to notice your typos or errors than someone simply posting a PDF file.
• PDFs are easily stolen or borrowed and posted elsewhere. Even if your content is part of the public domain, you probably want readers to see your branding and your navigation.
• HTML style sheets make it easy to create a style sheet for printing that will make your document pretty when printed.
• If you must post a long document as a PDF, then please use the indexing or bookmarking feature within Acrobat.

Do these examples matter to SEO?

You don’t really need the search engines visiting your error pages or legal notices. You can ask for them to be excluded from search engines indexes by using the robots.txt file.

Search engines can index your PDF files, but they also point out that your file is a PDF. They do that so their users can elect not to visit such a page, or ask to see it in HTML (Yahoo) or in Google Docs (Google).

What content have I missed?