All posts tagged content

Google’s own guide to content that rates highly

Confession time. I work with website content every day but I don’t think I’ve ever stuffed a keyword. Sure, I’ve added the odd one to the final copy if the subject doesn’t quite speak for itself, but in the main, a website is about what it’s about. I’ve been relying on Google to lead people who are searching for that subject to the site.

And, in nearly all cases, that’s been happening.

According to Google’s recent update, my faith in this simple approach will now be rewarded even more.

Spelling mistakes: were you going for rude or inept?

When I first started working with web content it amazed me that people could merrily create web pages with spelling and grammar mistakes on them. It just seemed like a basic consideration that you would ensure that you had spelled things correctly – and not a difficult one to achieve.

Talk about naïve.

Are you lifting the iceberg on your company web site?

I just learned the Yiddish word ungapatchka. An ungapatchket house is filled with too much junk. A girl can be ungapatchket if she’s going out all dolled up. It has the sense of a good thing ruined by adding too much on top, like too many sprinkles on the cake or, at this time of the year, a glut of child-made decorations on the tree.

It makes me think of the way in which many businesses want to present themselves through their web sites.

Costly problems content strategy solves for SMEs, part 2

Getting a web site for your business is a challenge. You know that you should have a site, because increasingly your customers and market are online. But you don’t know much about web technology and you don’t want to be taken for a ride.

All this talk about SEO and social media strategy and domain names and information architecture … can’t you just have a basic site that works?

Of course you can.

What businesses are beginning to realise though, is that content strategy is part of the basic package.

Costly problems content strategy solves for SMEs

You’re running a small business so you want a web site but you can’t afford to waste money. You’re wary of snake oil salesmen who might try to exploit your inexperience with technology. You can only justify expenditure for services that obviously benefit your business.

So when someone offers you “content strategy” as part of a web site, you’re going to be suspicious, right?

Perhaps he tells you that if you don’t get help with your content right at the beginning, you’ll pay for it later. Perhaps he tells you a story about camels to back up his point.

Suspicious?

You should be. You should ask, quite bluntly, what problems does this content strategy solve for me? Seriously – what will actually go wrong if you don’t have it?

Content strategy: as boring as it sounds?

The almost constant complaint from Content Strategists is that content is undervalued. Many clients don’t seem to realise that once they have got something to offer, the first thing is to find a way to say it (how about on a web site, for example?). Instead, they want new web sites first and then they [...]