I’ve been losing interest and passion in what I do for a while now to be honest.  A number of things have fueled it that are inside the SEO industry, as well as life in general.  The biggest thing that has jaded me about this line of work is small business owners themselves wanting professional quality but only willing to pay at sub-amateur rates.  That’s been the norm here even before the economy went south.  Factor in that over 90% of businesses in Hawaii are small business, my target audience is pretty bleak.  After numerous attempts to get some contracts going, the same thing happens after I pass the quote;  they vanish and lack the professional courtesy to decline with a reason… hell even to try and negotiate a different price point.  They just vanish.  Email them, no response.  Call them, no call back.  Crazy thing is, I was charging (and getting) twice as much back in Oregon doing this line of work.. I came here and had to chop my rates in half, and still that’s too expensive for nearly all of the companies I’ve bidded out on.

Then you got the wanna-be’s and vultures from outside the state underbidding you.  Then you got the twitter rockstars running their mouths and acting like morons making you almost ashamed of the irresponsible and idiotic garbage coming out their mouths about SEO.  Then you got noobie bloggers acting like they know it all when they clearly DON’T.  Then you got the die hard Matt Cutt’s zombies who can’t optimize their way out of a paper bag.  Then you got the internal drama in the industry.  Then you got the spammers and shady idiots who make the rest of us look like charlatans.  Then you got web designers and developers who create a dog of a website, pass it onto the company, the company wants marketing done on it, and the damn site needs to be completely redone because their designer was an absolute idiot about the coding and content placement.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

I apologize, I’m not trying to go on the attack, but the point I’m trying to make is that after 8 years of being in this line of work, I’m exhausted.  The same issues that plague websites from 8 years ago are still alive and well today.  The same FUD and misinformation about what SEO and online marketing is still getting fed to company owners by people inside and outside our own industry daily.  I’m tired of fighting for legitimacy and recognition for the work I do and the industry I’m a part of.

For those of you who are going to fight the good fight in this economy and with the obstacles I just mentioned in our line of work, I salute you.  When things get better, which they will, you stand to be rewarded for sticking through it all. 

As for me, this is where I exit stage right.  See ya on the flip side.

Creative Commons Licensed - Courtesy RogueSun Media

Ok, time to get back to the 5 part series addressing the whole issue of exactly what constitutes “quality content” from an SEO perspective, and more importantly, from a visitor perspective.  Don’t get me wrong, this is a pretty vague and elusive topic due to the ambiguity surrounding the definitions, but one universal truth is that when you get a ton of positive feedback and as few complaints as possible about whatever you put up on your site, then you know you’re on your way to nailing the quality content target. 

Previously I covered finding some quality content zen on the home page and then over to the pages for your products or services.  Go have yourself a read and head back when you’re ready to roll again.  Go on, I can wait….

If you went and read that stuff I just mentioned, then you rock.  If you didn’t, then you have sealed your own fate and are doomed to wander the Earth in your final days wishing you would have read it.  Your choice.  Anyways, today we get to focus on a page that never really gets the credit it deserves, and man let me tell you;  this page gets treated like crap by site owners 9 times out of 10.  The About page.  The place where you tell the world who you are.  The place where you can really tell people what your company culture is like.  Your customer relations.  The whole reason why you put this site up.  Your vision.  Can you see what I’m getting at here?

Be You

Think about this for a second;  after you get on a site and you dig what you see, you sometimes get curious about who is responsible for it right?  So you take the extra time and head over to the About page to learn more.  Now at this point, you have no idea what you’re gonna see, but in the least, you’re hoping that it’s gonna be something that reaches out to you in some way where you feel a little more connected or interested in coming back again.  Like a blogger you really like for example.  Those about pages get consistent traffic because people want to know who wrote this kick ass article they just read.  Well, if you got a service or product that’s generating buzz, then you’re About page becomes vital to sealing the deal on your cool factor.

You already impressed them once, now you gotta really strut your stuff.  Some great examples of sites that tie in their attitude to their service would be the one found out Slide.com.  It’s uniform with the site’s writing style, theme and general presentation.  Same for the developers of Songbird.  Again, fluid in presentation, sticking with the whole formula.  They both were able to get essential info in place about the company, service, the people responsible and best of all… not be totally freakin boring about it.  And that right there is a key element.  Share your personality as if you’re there to entertain, inform and impress.

Be True

I got a personal grudge against corporate About pages.  They were written in the premise of business to business consumption and they almost always leave out consideration to the fact that a normal person is reading it.  People like you and me, who might be working for a company or a client who sent us out to check out some company website to learn about them.  All we walk away with is nausea from their self-congratulatory statements and the vague sense that they secretly love themselves in some strange way.  Enough I say!  I want to know who you are, not what you want us to think you are!

And this is where being true comes in.  Talk about who you are as a company.  Talk about the human factor that made you what you are.  Talk about the pride you take in the individuals who work for you, with you and around you.  That’s what tells the world about your culture in the workplace.  And that right there translates into how your culture is with the people coming to your site.  You’re human, you’re accessible.

Conclusion

There has been a clear shift in recent years about how companies have been presenting themselves out here on the net.  It started out with someone transferring the  ”About copy” found on their print marketing materials and was translated into the digital realm.  It was redundant across the web.  It was the same lingo, the same style, the same mentality, the same corporate mumbo jumbo about how nifty they were without ever really telling us why.  Then the younger aspiring professionals, the ones that were more net savvy, more trendsetting for the development of the web as we know it rapidly introduced a new way to present yourself by breaking out of the tired copy printed on antiquated flyers and brochures.  It’s a small revolution on how companies are redefining initiation with the public.  And it’s showing us that the internet is the preferred medium that the public is turning to before making contact with every company out there it seems.

So the bottom line is this;  if you only get one chance to tell me who you are, how are you gonna do it?

More on this series…

Part 1 - Quality Content - The Home Page

Part 2 - Quality Content - Services & Products Pages

Part 3 - Quality Content - About Page

Part 4 - Quality Content - Where’s The Blog?

Part 5 - Quality Content - Review

Creative Commons Licensed - courtesy LauraFries.com

Money.  Love it or hate it, it’s value has increased in our personal lives as of late.  With all the lovely news coming out about the economy, the record number of layoffs hitting every industry, and all those bankruptcies… well it’s pretty obvious that we need to get smart about the money we do have, as well as secure some new ways to make some more.  To save it of course.. not to spend it on that shiny new XBOX.  Shiny, sexy XBOX… lookin good XBOX.. aw yea..

Oh right.. saving money.  Ok, so I’ve been doing some of the footwork for you as far as some potential ways to bring in some extra money with the skills you have now.   If you’re a loser with no skills then I don’t know what to tell you besides that people will always need someone to make their Whoppers for them.  I kid!  (no pickles on that #2 ok?)

Affiliate Marketing

I recently did an interview with Rae Hoffman (Sugarrae) about this very topic and you should check it out when you get a chance.  Originally I did this interview because I am very interested in this topic and wanted to get someone on the ground level with it who could provide the right frame of mind on approaching it.  Quite honestly, this is going to be my first pick out of what I talk about in this post.  It’s the one path that us web people can take and still remain in our natural environments in terms of development and marketing.  Obviously, that’s a good thing if you got some strong skills that help drive traffic to a site.

Go check out the interview because I think I asked some of the things that most of us are afraid to ask for fear of sounding like a noob.  There were a number of concerns I had that kept me on a fence about taking the plunge.  From the sound of it, it’s not a plunge, more of a stroll into some different waters.

Professional Blogging

Some people have the gift, some people don’t.  Guess what.. I sure as hell don’t but maybe one day I will.  But, maybe you do already!  But how to figure that out without sounding like a pompous ass?  Well ask yourself these questions first; 

• Are you a passionate about writing?
• Are you extremely knowledgeable about a certain topic?
• Do you spend time learning as much as you can about the trends and changes for the topic?
• Do you have professional contacts in the industry related to that topic?
• Got a blog that gets traffic?

Those 5 things right there can serve as a launchpad.  But the one you need to really sharpen is number 4 on that list;  who you know can take you farther than just skill alone.  Hate to say it, but we all know that’s how it works in all industries.  Get yourself on twitter and start communicating with others to grow your community of contacts, you’re gonna need it.  There are a number of places that won’t pay you, but it is exposure.  It gets the ball rolling and yes it takes some time to get noticed.  The key here is to be consistent (thus why I can’t do this lol) and effective about getting eyes on your work.  Market yourself tastefully (aka be able to talk about more than your work and how awesome you are), be accessible, be positive and do your homework on what your writing about.  You’ll get authority on your topic and offers will come your way if you stay on the ball.

Online Surveys

Yea I know, this sounds spammy but hell, if it pays it pays.  And it’s only 10 to 20 minutes of your time tops.  A few that I have investigated and that have turned out to be worth trying are SurveyScout or Paid Surveys Etc.  There are a ton of others out there, but any of us who have been on the net for awhile know from either first hand experience or word of mouth that there are some shady bastards out there that will screw you if given the chance.  But hey, if you got a suggestion for some other decent sites, post it in the comments, I would love to find some more to check out.

Oh, and a word of advice on the paid survey stuff.. setup a junk email account first and use that when signing up for anything

Domain Reselling

Personally this is something that I don’t do, or want to do, but there is money to be made here.  Why don’t I do this?  Well I’m sort of a purist with my approach to the internet and the properties I create on it;  I just use what I need for the project and don’t want to put anyone in a position of having to make an unplanned larger investment to get themselves started out here.   But that’s just me.

Since I don’t do this, my suggestion would be research places that do good deals on bulk registrations and automatically makes the parked pages associated with the domains.  This isn’t always quick money, and yes it does involve some money up front, but if anything you could treat it as a potential long term investment.

Drop Ship Merchandising

This is the oddball of the group, but it does work if you use your online marketing skills.  Get yourself a cafepress or Printfection account and create a line of products that you could promote to the right audience.  Since we’re all a bunch of web geeks, well there is a ton of possibilities as far as marketing angles go (industry, OS vs OS, slang, inside jokes, sci-fi, conventions, etc).  Just like any other SEO work you do, it’s all about getting eyes on what you have without being a total jerk on how you got that traffic in the first place.  Reputation is vital on this one, so be reasonable about your pricing and be honest about the shipping costs or delays.

If you’ve ever marketed in an ecommerce environment, you have a great leg up on how to push product intelligently.  Some secrets on that is cross selling from within product pages, cross selling from any site you have where it seems like a logical fit to advertise it, and to always be accessible to the public.  Hit the social media sites and have some fun with it.

eBay

Your junk for cash.   The only pain in the ass about eBay is the fees, dealing with the post office and the lack of trust buyers have in a new seller.  Perks about doing eBay;  the USPS will deliver shipping materials to your house for free (boxes only) and if you got a digital scale and a printer, you can print out shipping labels for your stuff which in turn you can have the post office pick up your outbound packages for you.  Once you get a little bit of cash in, head down to thrift stores and get more merchandise.  Like what?  Well that all depends on what you’re interested in selling really.

Conclusion

The financial bigwigs keep saying that it’s going to be  a rough year for everybody, so having the eggs in one basket is a bad move.  If you got suggestions on how we can all stay afloat with some side cash ideas, help your fellow geeks out and tell us about it.  And remember, either you’re serving me Whoppers or you’re playing Rock Band on XBOX with me.  The choice is yours

Creative Commons - Courtesy an0nym0usmuse

Sometime back in the golden days of the Microsoft IE development team announcing their new found crush on Web Standards, many web designers and developers were beginning to see a light at the end of a tunnel that seemed never ending.  That tunnel would be the infamous “it works in Firefox, Safari, and Opera… why is it all FU*%ED UP in Internet Explorer?!?!”.  But nay non-believers of hope, that team of IE Devs said that Web Standards would be coming with the new release.. and all seemed promising in the land.  Well, guess what?

The very Web Standards they have promised are not working as planned… and that’s how it looks like IE8 is gonna ship.  Half-assed.  Just like all the previous versions.  They try to explain themselves here, so go get bored out of your mind have a read if you like.

The Modes

Since we all know that Microsoft is all about being a trailblazer (aka bridge burner) in terms of their internet driven endeavors, their new browser comes with this half assed nifty new feature called “Standards Mode”.  In essence what it does is this;  by default the browser runs in a mode that is actual Web Standards logic, but on the off chance that the site just isn’t behaving properly, it will roll into a different mode that will render it correctly by Microsoft standards.  Alternately, you can hit the “Standards Mode” button and *POOF* the page will now render under the IE logic that we all know and love.  More specifically, it will render like IE7 does.  Oh hooray.   

This is typical Microsoft.  You already know why I say this too.  It’s them not really wanting to play ball unless it’s under their rules.  Taking a moment to reflect on this decision, one can’t help but to remember exactly why Web Standards were being pushed to begin with;  to level the playing field for all browsers because Microsoft showed little to no interest to standardizing their browser for such a long time.  This stifled creativity and innovation for web developers and designers. When further development on Internet Explorer went stagnant after version 6 hit the streets, this gave rise to other browser developers to seize the opportunity of building the web into what we have today with forward thinking.  This was IE6’s only real contribution to the world wide web as far as I can tell.  Their inaction caused a wonderful reaction.

The List

One of the most interesting, if not depressingly ironic things about IE8 is that it can’t even load microsoft.com properly.  And they know it too.  Ya see, there’s a publicly available list out there that the guys up at Redmond have put together that lists over 2,400 websites that are identified to not render properly.  Here’s a sample of the list available at ZDNet, or you can grab it directly from Microsoft for XP or Vista.  Also, at anytime, if you want to find out if a site is on this list (got anything better to do with your time?), you can pull it up from within IE8 itself by typing “res://iecompat.dll/iecompatdata.xml“ in the address bar. So if they have found over 2,400 so far, that only leaves billions more that probably won’t function correctly either.  And they know that this list is going to keep growing.   Yea, I get the warm fuzzies thinking about all that extra coding time I have ahead of me too.

And the sites that are on that list aren’t just little dinky sites that no one visits.  Oh no, these are extremely high traffic sites.  Like Facebook.  Like Google.  Like CNN.  Again, half assed effort on their part… these sites are dominating traffic on the net.  How can they possibly justify offering an internet browser that won’t even work properly on the sites we all go to the most?  Oh sure, we can click the little magic button and go back to IE7… but then why the hell did we upgrade from IE7 if we still get it in our lives?  This feels like Windows ME (aka Windows 98 with a boob job) all over again.

The Remedy

Just like when Microsoft told everyone that their current computers weren’t up to snuff to be “Vista Ready” a few years back, now your website runs the same risk.  Microsoft is advising web designers and developers to get their site “IE8 Ready” by  adding a special tag on your site to make it totally compatible with IE8.  Which to me is kinda funny… we need to place a tag on our site to get their browser to work properly.. a tag that ALL of the other browsers don’t require.  How about just going with.. oh.. you know… Web Standards?  Ya know.. the thing you were talking about doing in the first place?

So we have to add a new META tag in place, which if you look at the code example they provide at the Microsoft site, tells IE8 to act just like IE7, or even better, act like IE5 in the event that IE8 is screwing the pooch.  You guys are killing me here.  If we have to tell your Standards compliant browser to not act like it’s Standards compliant in order to render a page properly, then you guys missed the whole damn point of ALL of this. 

Just go 100% standards compliant Microsoft!

It’s really that straight forward here.  Yes, there will be a slew of broken sites that were built to work with previous versions.  Hell, we have that issue already, it’s not like this is a new problem!  But we just hear the guys at Microsoft keep swearing by the logic that it’s the responsibility of the webmaster to be compliant with their browser regardless of the true state of affairs with websites falling apart under their browsers.  However, on the other side of the same coin, I keep believing that it’s the job of the browser maker to be compliant with Standards so we can all have tried and true development guidelines.  They’re called Standards for a reason.  In this case, the reason is to eliminate the very problems that IE8 is trying to hide.

Dropping a browser that is pure Standards compliant will force webmasters to update their sites, and in a hurry since it’s essential to anyone who has invested money or time into having a web presence.  If you have a site out there, you can never afford to let it get dated and become stale.  That’s how you lose visitors and value.  Having IE get on board with the other browsers will put the pressure onto web designers and developers in a major way.  If Microsoft is at all sincere about making the web work for everyone, it’s time for them to start working with the people who make the web possible in the first place.

Creative Commons Licensed

I was sitting around today doing some work (aka farting around in Facebook) when I saw my friend Aly going ape over something she saw on PCMag’s blog post about SEO.  So I checked out the author’s article first, then I hit her blog up for what she had to say.  It was a FUD campaign on the authors part, actually a very deliberately calculated one delivered with the usual amount of bias and skew that you can come to expect from someone knowing little of the topic or just enough to be dangerous.  I didn’t pay much mind to it, because as I said before… it’s FUD.  Rather than get up in arms about it, I focused on what the author was doing in an attempt to understand the anatomy of what comes out of a corporate blog.

One of the first things I picked up on was the title of the post and it’s blatant negative slant;  “SEO Fiascoes: The Trouble with Search Engine Optimization”.  Instantly you’re told that there’s trouble and this is a fiasco on some level.  Yup, this is linkbaiting at it’s finest.  Ah and you definitely noticed the other sly thing that PCMag did in order to have some on-page SEO in place.. we have “SEO” and Search Engine Optimization” both sitting in the title tag and of course.. a nice fat H1 tag at the start of the article.  Damn that SEO junk, it never works.

So besides the on-page SEO stuff that’s there, let’s look at what external SEO was done under the guise of being a random blog post.  At the time of writing, there are now 305 pages in Googles SERP’s buzzing about this article.  Also at the moment, one page of twitter search results show that it’s hit the twitterverse as I type this.  This is probably going to grow.  Oh but wait a second… what have we got here?  Why it’s PC Magazine’s own dedicated twitter account.  Clearly, someone inside of PC Magazines online marketing department knew that if you drop the bait, the rest is history.  Piss off the bloggers and they will get you that coveted traffic.

Anyways, this article is a ploy to start controversy.  Get traffic.  It’s a tech blog, dedicated audience, good chance that a percentage of the audience is in a web industry of some sort.  This is deliberate.  It’s smart too.  Here’s what we can learn from it;

• Attack the bloggers - Being a blogger, and calling out other bloggers, especially with such a wide brush is sure to rile up some attention.  In this case, it’s a whole industry… which ironically is driven by bloggers.  Funny how that worked out huh?  Not really.  Oh and when I say “attention”, I really mean links. 
• Negativity sells if you have authority - The author wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground in terms of what we do for a living, but then again, he safely bet on his audience to believe in his authority since they believe him to be a source of absolution.  Again, smart move.  Devious, but yes, smart.
• Put your experience with the topic as a secondary focal point- This again, is smart and deliberate.  Avoiding personal accountability, the author can keep himself as a distractor to the real story.  In this case, the author talked about his experience of trying some optimization techniques and that they failed miserably.  Therefore, SEO is at fault.  His authority cancels the possibility that he fudged up somewhere in the procedure or he was expecting instant gratification.
• Be prepared for multiple offensives - If you look at Captain Chucklenut’s post, you’ll notice that it’s not clearly visible how to comment, if at all.  Deliberate again.  When you chum the waters, the sharks will come.  But that’s why you stay on the boat all nice and safe.  So in this case, you get to go piss in a hole with other people that might think he’ll notice your thoughts.  But more importantly, MOST importantly, it’s pre-emptive damage control on a corporate level.  All dissenting opinions about the author, the article.. hell ANYTHING for that matter, cannot be visibly associated with the site.  But it’s there.  Go share some words with him if you like, but seriously.. why bother??

Need more examples of this technique?  Go have a look at ZDNet and CNet.  Man oh man, if you wanna see some nasty linkbaiting going on, find ANY article where they compare operating systems up against each other.  Hell, I kid you not, the authors misspell things often in their posts, almost as if they’re in a rush to just put out something to chum the waters with.  And they do this perfectly every time.  Within 3-4 hours, flame wars begin from readers viciously directing their thoughts and rants at the authors, the topic, the other readers, their own shoes.. hell anything in the way at that moment. 

And it’s DELIBERATE.

Remember that.  It’s the greatest lesson of them all.

10 Questions With Rae Hoffman

10 - For noobs and people lost in the dark as to what Affiliate Marketing is, break it down so we can understand it.

To quote a recent article I did on the topic:

“Affiliate marketing boils down to one basic action - paying an online publisher (someone who owns and operates a website) a commission for referring traffic or customers or sales (which actions are paid for are determined by the merchant) to a participating merchant’s website. To put it even simpler terms, affiliate marketers are basically salespeople who don’t actually work for the company they make sales for and only get paid in commissions.”

There really isn’t a better way I’d be able to explain it, LOL.

9 - Now from what I’ve seen when I start researching how to break into this line of marketing, there seems to be a slew of programs out there, but no real way to tell what is worthwhile and what is not. Can you recommend any good resources online where people give unbiased opinions about the programs?

Well, it really depends on your plan of attack. What I’d advise you to do if you’re planning to build a site around an affiliate opportunity is a little different than what I’d advise you to do with an existing site to start taking advantage of existing affiliate opportunities.

If you’re going to build a site around an affiliate arena, you want to make sure there are several merchants/products that will fit the site so that if one closes down or isn’t working, you can try others. The best way to find what works is to ask other successful affiliates you have relationships with if they wouldn’t mind offering some advice on potential markets. If you believe you have real marketing and SEO skills, then there are always the “obvious” markets like finance, satellite systems, VoIP, etc.

If you already have a website you’re looking to monetize with affiliate marketing, then do a search for related products. If you’re going to do a site about basketball, then you’ll want to search to find merchants that offer sports equipment, tickets, clothing, etc with affiliate programs.

8 - Let’s say that there are 2 different people that want to start doing this. One is really effecient at Social Media Marketing (link building, traffic generation, link baiting). The other is really good at On-Page SEO (visitor usability, clean coding, keyword implementation). Who do you think would have an easier transition into this?

I’ll choose C - the one who gets the smart way to integrate the affiliate program (simply slapping a banner up isn’t going to make you much bank unless you have millions upon millions of pageviews each month). That said, I would go with the social media marketer if I had to choose. I think it is easier to learn SEO than marketing. That said, you need both as well as an understanding of website optimization to really be a “professional affiliate” so to speak. I’ll contend that if someone who doesn’t get all three aspects is making 5K a month, they could be making double to triple that by expanding their skillset.

7 - What’s better; strict dedication (i.e. 40 hours per week) to a relative number of affiliate programs or joining multiple programs and dedicating a few hours to each throughout a week?

I think it’s better to dedicate yourself to creating a site with longevity on a topic that you can THEN monetize with affiliate products, as well as CPM ads, contextual advertising. The whole package. I’ve laid out my affiliate business plan and it’s all about building an affiliate brand and then monetizing the hell out of it. Dedicating yourself to one affiliate program could leave you sitting on your hands if they ever shut down their affiliate program or go out of business. I’ve been through it and it’s not fun to have a site with topic rankings that you suddenly have no way to make money from.

6 - Do you use a spreadsheet or something like that to track your accounts? Would it be wise to do something like this?

Yeah. After a while, it will all start to blur together if you don’t keep track. I keep a spreadsheet of the programs, username, password, sites I use them on, SID (aka site ID) for each of those sites as well as the amount of revenue each merchant and then merchant by SID has earned, the number of clicks each links received and the EPC of each program. My spreadsheet is massively detailed, but I think what I mentioned here is enough to get any affiliate started in the right direction as far as keeping track of things.

5 - What Analytics package do you think is the best suited for tracking your marketing effort and subsequent conversions?

We built ours in house. So, the best one as far as *I* am concerned is unavailable. However, if you’re looking for free, Google Analyticsas much as I hate to say it and throw business to the borg, is likely your best bet if you’re just starting out. You can assign each affiliate link a goal to track the number of clicks from your site (on your own as opposed to simply trusting the merchants stats) as well as a ton of other cool features. You’ll find a bit of detail on using Google Analytics here.

4 - Preferred web platform for creating sites (blog, static html, etc)?

Again, we use one built in house. However, if I didn’t have access to that program, I’d use WordPress and couple it with the Thesis theme due to all of its advanced capabilities with hooksand ad targeting, among others. That said, unless a site will be more than 30 pages one day, I’d likely stay with a static site to keep things simple. If you’re going to be using datafeeds, Webmergeis great for helping you turn a datafeed into an actual static site with no real programming knowledge.

3 - Let’s say that one of the people from before gets on board with some programs and it’s week 1. What should be the first 3 things they should do to get the ball rolling?

First, figure out your point of difference if you’re going for long term income and stability. Second, start doing promos and trailers - aka, promoting your site right away to get the aging process for both your site and your links starting and to drum up interest. Third, develop good content on a weekly basis and start pushing your best pieces by networking within the community.

• Define who you are
• Let people know you’re coming
• Network to make people aware you’ve arrived

2 - What’s your take on pushing your marketing on friends or family?

Friends and family are not going to make you a business, but they can be an invaluable street team. If you build a site and not 20 mini sites focused on 20 things, it makes it a lot easier to ask friends and family for favors and promotional help. Leverage any connection you have providing you do it minimally and responsibly. Think big and kick ass.

1 - What nugget of wisdom could you pass onto us about getting started?

If you work the equivalent of 20 hours a week on your site, and truly market it like you’d market yourself as an SEO, you really can be making a full time income within a year. Don’t get distracted and keep pushing forward.

Creative Commons - Courtesy of dan4th

Well it looks like New Years handed me too much to stay on schedule with this series, but now that things have calmed down it’s time to pick up where we left off.  On the last post I talked about some ways to achieve quality content on the home page.  Go back and check that out if you like, it’s worth the read.

Assuming that you checked that out and you’re ready to roll, let’s get down to business.  Today I’m focusing on an area of the site that is equally, if not more important than the home page;  where you get to tell the public what you have to offer them.  Think about that for a second… this is your official offering, so what are you exactly offering?  Furthermore, why should they care?  What makes your offering better than the next site they find?  That’s what we’re here to figure out.

Services Deserve Love

When was the last time you saw a page on someones site where their service description did more than just give you the rudimentary information you needed?  I mean for me personally, this is one area of a site that will either make or break my interest with what they have to offer and whether or not I find them to be credible.  So yea, I need more than just something like the following;

Service 1

We take pride in this service and our clients do too.  When engaging one of our trained professionals, we ensure quality service to everything we do for you.  More patting ourselves on the back, more affirmation that our clients love us to pieces.

Service 2

Second verse, same as the first…

Service 3

This is the service that we don’t really offer a whole lot of explanation to because we have placed all of our creative juices on selling you the first service and hopefully the 2nd one as well because they  make us the most amount of money.”

Right, you get what I’m saying here.  It’s not uncommon to find this kind of priority placement coming from the company’s perspective.  More often than not, they place the one that pays them the most above the ones that could very well be the most appealing to the user.  This is where some good ol’ keyword research comes into play to find out which one of those services will benefit the visitor most.

Now let’s say that the keyword research is done and lo and behold, service number 3 is the meal ticket, followed by number 1 and then number 2.  Ok, so we’re gonna readjust the priorities here and use our keyword research to guide our writing.  Try this out for size;

Service 3

Higher focus on what this service has to offer.  This time around you can bust out a good fat paragraph on this with the best keywords related to the service.  Take it a step higher and create a page dedicated to the service, link to it with keywords as anchor text from within this paragraph.

Service 1

Trim down what was originally written and get some keywords in there to support it and perhaps Service 3.  Feel free to cross reference services with anchor text to any dedicated service pages.

Service 2

Same deal as Service 1 through and through.

Now before I go any further, this is a perfect spot to drag products into this mix.

Sticky Products

Dealing with actual goods on a page already delivers it’s own intrinsic value system.  Assuming that you are NOT running a full blown e-commerce setup, this section is for people with a small number of goods they peddle on their site.

Now first thing to look at is the products page itself and ask yourself if any certain product really jumps out at you.  Found it?  Ok good.  Move it to dead center of the page.  Why?  This is how you’re gonna keep the visitors interest since the eyes tend to naturally rest or wander to the near-center of a newly loaded page.

Ok so we got them to look at a certain spot but we’re not adding value yet.  You have a couple different avenues as far as adding value to a products page…

1. Daily/Weekly/Monthly specials work wonders if you announce it shortly in advance and then pop out a few reminders throughout the period that makes up the special.  This works 2-fold;  helps to build up your mailing list via sign-up form on your products page (you got one of those right??)  as well as provides direct marketing to qualified buyers.
2. INTERACTION!!!!  Allow people to vote on the product.  Allow them to write comments and talk about their experience with it.  Good and bad need to be on your product description pages.  But on the products listings page, showing people that there has been discussions and votes and whatever else you can get people to do while viewing a product, this will show others that there is interaction and this site is not static.

Conclusion

Ok so now that we know that our pages have a logical placement for services or products, and supporting web copy has a moderate amount of keyword representation, now we can summarize and see how these things can all tie together and what the common thread has been so far.  Giving people a chance to express their experiences or to be a part of a special that only they know about gives value. Still minding your on-page optimizations is just as important as it was before, but we still need to focus on the visitor experience too.  If you can cater to them while still making sense in your copy, being relevant with your presentation and offering; well then you stand a good chance to be seen as valuable to a visitor.  It’s not as hard as you think frankly.  Approaching your visitors with the kind of respect and thoughtfulness that you expect while conducting business on the web is a great place to start.

Part 1 - Quality Content - The Home Page

Part 2 - Quality Content - Services & Products Pages

Part 3 - Quality Content - About Page

Part 4 - Quality Content - Where’s The Blog?

Part 5 - Quality Content - Review

Shortly after the holidays had passed, I had saved up some money and decided that I wanted to get back into music full force and build myself an amateur at-home recording studio.  I had done my homework by visiting sites like Musicians Friend and a slew of other online retailers for pro audio gear.  Decided on a budget from the get go to see if I could pull off having a formidable studio and not go over $500 for everything I needed.  I picked out the products I wanted after hours of reading online reviews on review sites, musicians forums, and the retailers themselves.  After many days of heavy duty homework, I was ready to take the plunge and pass my money over the web.

Responsible Shopping

Like a responsible consumer whore, I decided to double check my bank account to make sure they had my new address since I moved.  Sure enough, it was the old address.  This is where the trainwreck starts to unravel.  I contacted my bank a few days before making the order and asked them to update my home address since I had moved.  They said they would update it within a few hours, but when I checked my account online a few days later.. the old address was still there.  So I went ahead and changed it online.  It didn’t change but it did inform me that a bank rep would contact me soon to verify the request.  Ok, good enough for me.

With that out of my way, it was time to shop.  I placed my order in bulk.  I had everything squared away on the order, got some promo codes punched in to save some extra dough.. and what’s this.. oh even better, since my last visit some of the prices had even dropped.  Man was I feeling good about this now! Onto the last step of the purchase and I can see my shipping and billing address didn’t match up right.  Billing was correct, shipping was my old address.  I went in and changed it real quick before checking out.  Page timed out and the change didn’t go through.  Hmmm.. ok.  Tried a few more times and the same thing happened.  Well crap.  I placed the order anyways and did a support email to them about the address problem.  Sure enough, 30 minutes later they had it squared away.  Perfect, nothing to worry about. 

The bank called me a few hours later and confirmed the new address.  Ironically, it took them another week before they actually updated it for me.  Slackers.  Whatever, everything is all handled and I’ll get my stuff before I know it.

Or so I thought….

Technology Comes To Save Ruin The Day

Within that time, my billing had gone through to my bank and it cleared.  As soon as that cleared, UPS was notified of the order.  Since the updated address didn’t go through on the vendors side until AFTER UPS was notified, UPS was told to deliver my order to the wrong address.  Of course, I had no idea what was going on and just sat back counting the days and waiting for my goodies.

That following Friday I hopped online to check the UPS tracking website to find some odd notes taken by the delivery driver.  He tried delivering it to my place but I wasn’t there.  That’s funny, my wife stays home with the kids all day.. somebody should have been there.  Then I looked a little closer and saw that it was going to my old address.  So at 1:30 pm, I called UPS to tell them of the error.  They told me that my package was still in the truck and they would notify the driver that day of the correct address to drop it off at.  Ok, crisis averted.  Again.

Or so I thought… again…

What Brown Didn’t Do For Me

The following Monday, when it was supposed to be delivered, I checked the UPS tracking site again to see what’s going on.  As I read in horror what I was sincerely hoping was a mistake of some kind, I could feel my heart start pounding and my body temperature rise rapidly.  My hands began to shake a bit and my mind was racing with the same thought “Oh god, what the hell do I do now?!”

 They delivered it 4 hours after talking to them that same Friday I called in.. to the WRONG ADDRESS!  It sat in the car port of my old apartment ALL weekend long.  What’s worse is that I used to live in a kinda rough part of town so I immediately assumed the worst.  Before I could finish the long and loud string of obscenities flowing out of my mouth I was on the UPS website looking for a phone number.  I called.  Got some girl with attitude.  Sorry girlie, wrong day to be disgruntled with this customer.  After weasling out of her that they didn’t tell the driver until the end of his shift at 7pm that Friday, these assclowns decided to just leave my stuff at the wrong address and not bother to tell anyone or pick it up.  So what’s brown gonna do for me?  I was told they would send a driver by my old address.  In a few days.  Wrong answer sweetheart. 

I told my boss what was going on and he told me to get in my car and go there myself.  Damn straight.  I blazed down the freeway in 8 minutes (normally a 15 minute drive) and came screaming into my old driveway like a bat out of hell.  Nothing in the garage.  Somebody has moved in.  Ok maybe they know something.. somebody must have seen the big doo-doo brown truck last Friday.  I beat on the guys door 3 times.  Was just about to leave and that’s when he came out from the back.. half awake and reeking of pot smoke.  Great.   I get to ask Chong to remember something from 3 days ago.

The Decency of Your Fellow Man

As you already suspect, and I did too within the first 10 seconds of realizing what was going on at the UPS website, my stuff is gone.  Yup.  “I never saw anything, I was on the North Shore surfing”.  Yup, right after you pawned my stuff off and got yourself some herbal treats for the day.  At this point I pretty much melted down in his driveway.  I was so loud that people were coming out of their houses to see what’s going on.  The neighbor came over and told me that she saw UPS drop off a large box last Friday.  That confirmed it for me.. it’s stolen and little Bob Marley over here wasn’t fessing up.  Fine, I’m full of strong coffee and the desire to bash some heads in.. I’m getting inside your house now.  I mustered up the strength to politely ask if I could use the bathroom before I drove back to work.. he was hesitant, but he did let me in.

I had visuals on all of the rooms on the way to the bathroom except for one which he said was locked because it was his roommates room and he was on vacation.  There’s no lock on that door.  There’s no locks on any of the internal doors.  Yes, I know what’s behind curtain #1.. but what can I do?  Can’t just kick the door open.  What if he was telling the truth?  Now I get to deal with that whole situation if I’m wrong.  So I used the bathroom and left.  But we know that stuff passed through his hands and onto who knows where.

Conclusion

So how’d this all turn out?  Well this is the only saving grace for this story.  UPS wouldn’t own up to being absolutely, helplessly retarded.  But they told me I could get my money back from the vendor.  Musicians Friend on the other hand was absolutely awesome about all of it.  They resent my order, told me that a refund was coming within 8-10 business days and this time we’re going with Fed Ex.  Suck on it doo-doo brown UPS.

Moral of the story?  None besides be ready to deal with BS if you don’t stay on top of your online orders.  That and I have never had a company give me a case of tourettes, coronary arrest, and blood lust in such a short period of time.

Creative Commons/flickr - Courtesy kfury

Ever wonder what constitutes good quality content?  I mean the term is thrown around time and time again until you’re ready to scream, but nobody really ever seems to dig into this topic and provide actual usable examples.  So being the wonderfully useful guy that I am I figured I would toss out some examples as to what good quality content looks like versus coma material.  And to really show you how totally helpful I am, we’re gonna be talking about this for the next 5 days.  Alright settle down, I know you can barely contain your excitement…

Example 1: Home Page Content

This is where the magic happens.  This is where you gotta nail it right or face the consequences of dragging the visitors off to the Lame-O Express.  Next stop… someone else’s site.  First I’m gonna give you a snippet of crap content to get bored with;

“Thank you for visiting our site.   Our company has been in business for over 10 years specializing in serving our customers with quality care and expertise.  Here at Acme Inc. we stand by our ability to keep our clients happy with the services we offer.  Please take a moment to learn more about our services.  We are available to answer your questions via email at boring@acmeinc.com”

Oh joy.  You can find a million and one sites out there that spout this meaningless dribble out, paragraph after paragraph, page after page.  Would you link to this?  Would you rate this favorably on StumbleUpon?  Would you even bother to find out what the hell they’re even offering?  Yea maybe after you wipe the drool from your chin waking from your bored stupor.

So let’s think about how to make this interesting and useful.  How about something like this;

“Welcome to Acme Inc, specializing in [whatever service - keyword it up and link it to somewhere good].  Be sure to check out our blog [link it up again] to stay on top of breaking industry news, written by our industry experts once a week.  We always welcome your feedback and invite you to take part in the discussion! 

Ready to get started?  Head over to [keyworded & linked to service 1], [keyworded & linked to service 2] or [keyworded & linked to service 3] to find out what we can do for you.  We’re always glad to help and have been in the business for over 10 years and counting.  Got a question?  Drop us a line or call us at 1-888-acmeinc!”   

Yea that’s a little better.  But it’s still needing something right?  This is where interactive media comes in;  drop some graphics into place that link to where they should go next.  Trying to get them to head over to the services?  Blog?  Contact page?  Think about what you really want them to see and make it clear to them.  Since us lazy humans avoid reading and using our brains beyond what’s required of us daily, the pretty little pictures can serve the same purpose as the text. 

Ok well that’s all well and good but the value still isn’t there yet.  You got a nice little keyworded blurb and some nice graphics, but you’re still not selling them to go further into the site.  Looking at the competitors and then thinking about your target audience, ask yourself what you would want from a site like this that will keep you coming back.  What can you put on the homepage that won’t drown out the existing content and will provide something truly useful to the inquisitive visitor?

TOOLS!  By placing a tool, or a description rich graphic to get to it, you are giving the people an interactive tool that can answer one of their top questions about your service or the industry at large.  Like what?  Well look at the real estate sites out there;  you got property listings loaded with little options about the property like mortgage calculators, escrow calculators, email sign-ups for when a property becomes available in an area they like.. so on and so forth.  A ton of SEO sites are laden with keyword density tools, page assessment tools and the like.  Also it gives us bored web developers something to get all giddy about when we get to build it because we bore easily.  Feed us some coffee and tell us about the tool and we’re ready to build it!

To wrap it up let’s just gloss over the mentality and approach you want for your home page;

DO

• Make your message short and clear
• Avoid talking yourself up like you’re the best thing on Earth
• Keep your “call-to-action” items in a place that make sense and compliment your text
• Offer a tool or online service that is accessible as soon as they hit your home page
• Link to other places within your site with CLEARLY VISIBLE links
• Offer more than one way to get to the target pages
• Give your content space to shine on it’s own and stand out

DON’T

• Bore them to tears with lame text
• Use ambiguity about what you do;  It’s a great way to lose them in a nano-second
• Use the homepage as a place todumpeverythingonthepage.  See what I mean?
• Use nothing but insider industry terminology all over the page
• Make it impossible for them to contact you
• Force registration in order to use the site
• Go nuts with Flash.. especially a stupid ass intro page

To be honest, that Don’t list could go on for days but I think you get what I’m saying here.  Bottom line is to give them something to do as soon as they get there.  That’s a wrap, let’s look at what we got coming up for the week.

Part 2 - Quality Content - Services & Products Pages

Part 3 - Quality Content - About Page

Part 4 - Quality Content - Where’s The Blog?

Part 5 - Quality Content - Review

Creative Commons - slworking

Since I know next week is gonna be busy for all of us, I wanted to drop in now and wish everyone safe and happy holidays.  Try to remember what the holidays mean to you and your family, enjoy the gift of togetherness.  Gifts are just the bonus.

Here’s my top 6 reminders for you next week;

1. Stay away from the fruitcake
2. Avoid that drunk family member that always says stupid stuff every year
3. Don’t drink and drive
4. Be grateful for whatever you get.  Even that doofy shirt that your sibling got you since they still don’t know what you like after all these years
5. Sleep on the couch during that college game
6. It’s still not a good idea to call people that don’t like you.  The holidays doesn’t change what you did.

I’ll be back online in January.  Happy New Year.  Cheers!