Category: Web Content

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Keeping Your Website Clean

Some people get so absorbed in spending time driving traffic to their site that they forget about the functionality of the site itself. In order to ensure the maximum amount of possible conversions from your Internet marketing efforts, your site needs to have completely usable functions and features.

Sites that are loaded with broken links, calls to action that result in 404 errors and contact e-mail addresses that return messages undelivered are not going to do very well in terms of conversions. Even if you double the incoming traffic to your website, your conversions will still suffer if your website isn’t functional.

It’s important to regularly examine your site in order to be sure that everything is functioning exactly as you would want it to if you were a prospective customer visiting for the first time. Make sure all of your links, calls to action and landing pages are functioning properly. Take the time to fill out and test the contact form to ensure that the message actually gets delivered to the intended person. If any of these aspects of your website aren’t working properly, make it a point to fix them, or have them fixed immediately.

Any prospect that ends up on your website for any reason isn’t very likely to place an order on a site that isn’t functioning properly. You can also forget about first time visitors becoming regulars or directing their friends to websites that don’t function properly.

For every day that an integral aspect of your site isn’t functioning, you are losing sales. It doesn’t matter how much work you put into your Internet marketing efforts if your prospects can’t take the next step do to a poorly functioning site. We carefully monitor and test all contact forms and work hard to improve our user’s experience.

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Contact Form Woes And The Solution

Occasionally we have a client who is using a low-end web host or who is self-hosting and does not have a cgi-bin or scripting enabled in order for us to install a contact form processing script. Sometimes this has lead to expensive programming charges. We do not offer programming and so we have to contract out this portion of a project adding to expenses.

We have found a service that will process the script for you on their servers and so far it looks like a clean and elegant solution to a thorny problem for some clients. Our preferred site is MyContactForm.com. With a premium account for $24.99 per year, now any client can have a professional seamless contact form installed on their site without complex programming initiatives. I think that it is a very smart solution.

We have used this service on a number of client sites over the years and have had no issues in implementation or script processing. If you are in a similar situation, it is worth a look-see.

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Duplicate Content Revisited

To move up and stay up in the organic search results you have to have a content and link building program. When it comes to syndicating your own content there are a few guidelines that Matt Cutts of Google recommends.

“I would be mindful that taking all your articles and submitting them for syndication all over the place can make it more difficult to determine how much the site wrote its own content vs. just used syndicated content. My advice would be 1) to avoid over-syndicating the articles that you write, and 2) if you do syndicate content, make sure that you include a link to the original content. That will help ensure that the original content has more PageRank, which will aid in picking the best documents in our index.”

The bottom-line is that you need to tag the location of your original content so you will get credit from Google as being the author. This is especially important when you are using article syndication sites. We even recommend posting the content on your website first when possible and then a week later at the syndication sites. Now this tactic is not always possible, but if you can you’ll want to post on your site first.

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Web Writing Is Not Blog Writing

There is a difference between writing for a website and writing for a blog. Here is a short list showing the differences between the two.

Web Writing
1. Written with marketing action and focus on features and benefits.
2. Desired action is to get a client to contact the office for more information or to buy something.
3. Written to expose your products and services in-depth and supply adjunct informative information.
4. Although is user centric the focus is on selling and putting you in the best light.
5. Content typically does not change with any degree of frequency.

Blog Writing
1. Informational in nature and tone and is focused on current news events.
2. Written in a very conversational style and with casual use of slang terminology and euphemisms.
3. Short one topic per page piece. Typically about 250 to 350 words maximum.
4. Does not hard sell your services. May mention your website or service but soft sells.
5. Typically is not all about you, but a newsworthy article or event, but may refer briefly to you or your website.

There is a very big difference in the quality of writer that should be used for blogging and for web content creation. The price is indicative of the quality of writing. It is not uncommon to spend $1 per word to $70 per hour for research and writing for website content.

Blog content on the other hand is more production oriented and is typically not done by a highly skilled and degreed journalist, but rather a good writer who may or may not have the critical marketing and communications background that a professional journalist or professional copywriter may have.

It is very important that if you are looking for web content writing that you not consider blog content or a blog writer an appropriate source for important website content. Rather a content specialist who has website content creation experience is the most appropriate choice. You will pay more, but the quality will be more appropriate for the use.