Your Web Site Content - A recipe for success

Your website reflects upon you. How you take care of your site is how (in your customer's eyes) you will take care of your customers. Once again, I'll draw a parallel between your Web Site and what would be your Bricks and Mortar store.

The Analogy

Imagine that there are two places to buy cupcakes in your town. By some freakish coincidence, these two establishments are in fact directly across the street from one another.

Now, then, one of these two shops, Cuppy's CupCakes - has been there since your town was founded. Sixteen generations of cupcake makers have passed through the hallowed halls of Cuppy's, and they have since day one been creating what are very well-known as the worlds finest cupcakes.

Across the street is Dan. Dan, the CupCake Man. Dan learned how to make CupCakes last week. More often than not, Dan gets the recipe right, but occasionally the salt cup is too close to the sugar cup and, well... that doesn't make for a very good Cupcake.

Everyone in town knows about Dan and Cuppy's. They both have their own customers, and no one ever strays. That works very well for the people of your town. But, now let's say that there's a stranger named Beldon in town, and by golly he's got a hankering for a cupcake. Serendipitously, Beldon finds himself on Baker Street. On his left is Cuppy's, Dan the CupCake Man's is to his right.

We are the insiders. We know that Cuppy's is going to make Beldon happy. But Beldon doesn't know. So he has to go by what he sees (and maybe what he smells).

Since Cuppy's has been there for six hundred years, the building is old. Their sign is barely hanging on to the building, the windows are faded, maybe a little dirty. The paint is not what it should be and in some places is peeling off the walls

Dan's shop is new. It's fresh. The paint is the most current scheme, and in all aspects, it looks amazing.

Who's cupcake do you think Beldon is going to choose? Yep: Dan. And Beldon's gonna be bummed, because today's a salt day.

The Point?

So - the point of all this? Keep it current. Both the design of your site, and the contents should be current. Also, your content should be grammatically correct, concise and categorized. And for goodness sake don't ever have that 'Last Updated on: ' on your pages UNLESS you are updating daily. We've seen way too many web sites 'Last Updated: June 1998'. That's not good.

But is this the only reason to keep your site current? Heck no! Search Engines like Google and Yahoo! like your content to be current, too. In fact, when the Google robot indexes your web site it takes a picture, and time stamps it. Gasp! Then, when the robot returns to your site later, if it hasn't changed - it knows whether or not to update your listing. Oh, yes, Google knows. Now, if your site hasn't changed, but your competitor's has, who do you think (everything else being equal, of course) will get the higher Google Page Rank? That's right, Your Competitor. 

Good content means good writing

In addition to freshness, believe it or not, grammar matters! Google is smart. Very smart. Think about this: when you're typing an email to your friends, your email program will spell-check as you type, and underline things you typed incorrectly in red, right? Well, if your email program knows a misspelled word - don't you think that Google knows, too?

If your competitor's web site employs correct grammar, and you like to use the word "ain't" and "coulda", then you are going to give them the upper hand. So, use good grammar, ok?

Keep it Concise

It's easy to take off on tangents, talking about completely irrelevant things like cupcakes, when you're trying to get points across. Search Engine Robots pay attention to that, too. Your content should be concise, and stay on track. Your paragraphs should be something like one- to four-sentences long, and stay on topic. If you're selling cupcakes, then don't suddenly start talking about carburetors. Unless they're carburetor-shaped cupcakes, of course! Oh, and while we're talking about sentences - those pesky robots aren't too crazy about run-on sentences, because it is hard to figure out how to categorize a sentence which doesn't seem to have an end and talks about different things like cupcakes and carburetors and when Dan the CupCake Man accidentally put in salt instead of sugar and how it made the cupcakes taste bad and did you know that was bad for both the customer and Dan's SEO? ;)

Shopping lists

Whether you're shopping for cupcake ingredients, or explaining to your customers why you are the best at what you do, Lists are Good. Search Engines like lists, too. If you're going to put enough thought into, and emphasis on your content to categorize it for your customers, then the Search Engines will follow your lead, and put the content where it's supposed to go.

Conclusion

Your web site is nothing more than words to a Search Engine. Those words should be relevant, concise, grammatically correct and up-to-date. Your products and or services may be heads-and-shoulders above the competition, but the Search Engine doesn't rate you on your products and services - it rates you on your words. So, make them count.