Beware of the Content Bandwagon – [How to Write Effective Web Content]

Posted on April 4, 2013October 1, 2025 by infogenix

Beware of the Content Bandwagon – [How to Write Effective Web Content]

I can’t go anywhere without hearing about how content is king and your content strategy is the future. With the content bandwagon moving at high speeds, it amazes me to see how little useful content is actually being produced. I currently work on sites with high bounce rates and very low time on site metrics. My issue is not with content in general but with the interpretation of content in the form of boring and less than insightful web articles, infographics, videos, and more. So what do I propose you ask? I propose all our content go through an quality control boot camp where we can surpass the threshold of being just “content” and into the realm of information.

Content vs. Information

All information is content but not all content is information. In a practical phrase, content is really good at filling space but information will fill the mind. Information solves problems. Think of content as content candy and information as a steak. One provides the proper nourishment for sustainable life while the other, though one could argue does, does not.

Content Vs. Information Analogy:

Imagine you are a detective trying to solve a burglary. The better clues we have the better chance we are going to have at solving the mystery.

Here are some clues based on what we have learned about content and information.

Content Clues:

– The burglary happened on a sunny day.
– The burglary happened at a 149 west elm street.
– There is a fire hydrant in front of the burglary location.

Information Clues:

– A witness saw a heavy set man about 6ft tall leaving the building in a ski mask.
– The burglary happened at 5:49 p.m. according to the silent alarm.
– An unidentified fingerprint was recovered from the broken glass.

Which set of clues would you rather have as a detective. Technically both set of clues pertain to burglary however one set of clues moves myself, the detective, closer to solving the case.

Every visitor to your site in one way or another is trying to solve a case of their own. You should make sure the information you are providing is helping them do this. We do this with a proper evaluating criteria.

Content vs. Information Practical Example

The follow example is one I have seen many times. It involves pages on their site that deal with the cost of a product or service, mainly in the medical or law industries. If i click on the “cost of dental implants” link I want to see costs. It is not rocket science. I understand that some costs may vary but at least help me break it down. Is $1000 an average price for these services? What should I get for $500? What makes a cost higher? Lower? Give me substance! Teach me! If not, more than likely you have missed out on an opportunity to build a relationship with prospective customers. Good content builds trust with what I call actionable intelligence.

How to find good Information for your content

Make your claims concrete. We do x,y, and z.
Use real experiences that support your claims.
A new approach to solving a common problem using your services.
Review white papers and reports with factual data in enhance and support your position.
Answer specific questions in your content.

Now that you have added some substance lets find out if it worked.

How to check if you published information or just basic web content

check content with analytics report in 4 steps

Now that we have created some good information lets see if our audience feels the same way. Remember, the goal is to find content that resonates with your audience.

The simplest way to do this is to go to your analytics and check which pages resonate the most with people. The steps are a little out of order so pay close attention to the image.

After we know a little more about what are visitors are attracted to we can continue to develop more information based content to help resonate more and more with our audience.

SEO for The Average Joe: Keyword Research

Posted on December 17, 2012October 1, 2025 by infogenix

SEO for The Average Joe: Keyword Research

If you haven’t heard that keyword research is one of the most important steps for an effective SEO foundation, now you have. It is the foundation of all other SEO activities. Finding and targeting good SEO keywords will guide the content on your site, help find relevant links, and target the most relevant group of people who want your business.

What are keywords?

Keywords are the words and phrases that a typical customer might type into a search engine to find your business. In the most basic form, if I sell running shoes, then my goal would be to show up in the top position when someone types “running shoes” into a search engine.

Keyword Research

In order to find the right keywords we recommend getting a birdseye view of your business and the current SEO landscape for your industry. Here are the steps we take when starting our research:
STEP 1: Keyword Difficulty Research

Write down some keywords you think are appropriate for your business.
Go to Google and type in your keywords in the search bar.
Look for who/what shows up as the top results in the Paid and Organic section
Typically if there are a lot of ads on the results page then the SEO competition is typically
equally as competitive.
If the majority of the organic results are competitors then we are on the right track.
Do this for all your products and services and take notes of who the common competitors are.

STEP 2: Keyword Expansion and Search Volume
Now that you have some keywords go to:
https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool and put your keywords in where it says “keywords or phrase” and search.

Google will then spit out some more related keywords for you to review with their associated search volume. Select all the keywords that seem relevant for your business and export them into a csv file to open and manage in excel.

Another way to expand your keywords is to check your analytics data for the non-branded keywords that are currently driving traffic for your site.

STEP 3: Finalizing keywords

Take your keyword list and review if for all relevant keywords with any search volume. Organize them according to topical relevance. This will help you organize other SEO activities such as title tags, meta, tags, inbound links, and content optimization.

WARNING: Do not go after the keywords with high search volume. If the search term “brown shoes” gets 50,000 monthly searched and “shoes” gets 1,000,000 resist the urge to try and justify including it as a keyword. This is because the shorter the keyword the more difficult it will be to rank and typically the less conversions you will get from it. An ideal keyword for your SEO campaigns will have 2 to 3 words in it.

TIP: Relevancy is your best friend.

STEP 4: Ongoing Keyword Maintenance
A great way to follow up on the progress of your campaign is to review your analytics data. When review keywords look for questions people are asking and new keywords that you can implement into campaign that would be helpful for users. For example, if during your keyword review you find visiting originating from the keyword “what dresses can I wear with running shoes.” Write a blog post about it and address the concern head on. This will be a great source of finding these new content ideas and scooping up some nice traffic.

TIP: You should frequently review your keyword strategy and adjust where necessary.

Miscellaneous: Tips and Tricks for Keyword Ideas:

If you still feel like you do not have a good handle on your keywords a shortcut would be to go to your competitors websites and look at the title tags on their homepage. This should give you an idea of their most important keywords. Use these as a starting point and see if you should be targeting these as well.

Long Tail vs Short Tail Keywords

Long tail and short tail are words that describe the type of search query. It can be easily be understood by the number of words used in the query as well as how broad or specific the query is. A good illustration would be:

No Tail = “shoes”
Short Tail = “running shoes” or “cheap running shoes”
Long Tail = “cheap air max nike running shoes”

We recommend targeting short tail keywords that are relevant to your business. The deeper you get into your site the specific the content usually becomes and the longer the tail of the keywords.

Don’t Forget Your Branded Keywords

Here is a little secret. Google does not distinguish between brands. What I mean is, there is not a special branded algorithm that identifies your brand and then gives it special treatment. The algorithm does not know how “cool” your company is. It can only gauge the relevance, trust, and authority for a specific query as it relates to your site.

To the right is an example for a local dental office in Orlando. See how they control the majority of the real estate on the SERPS (search engine results page) for their brand name. This is a good example that shows Google is very confident about your brand. Also, notice the sitelinks underneath the first result. Sitelinks are a good indicator that Google understands specifically what users want when searching for your brand name. This is because Google only shows sitelinks for results they are confident will be useful to the user.

Why Are Branded Keywords Important?
1. Branded keywords will almost always have a higher conversion rate for eCommerce sites and for most others as well. There is a certain level of trust with visitors who searches for your brand. Wouldn’t it be nice if every visitor trusted you or was familiar with your brand.
2. Branded keywords boost traffic
3.Will show you growth and awareness for your brand

Keyword Research Tools

Here are some really helpful tools that I use when doing some more advanced keyword research.
Discovery
Ubersuggest.org
If you need help expanding your keyword list then this tool is a winner.

Keyword Competition
SEO Moz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool
This tool is the best that I have seen in determining a difficulty level for organic search terms.

Competitor Research
Sem Rush
If you have ever wondered what keywords your competitors are ranking for then look no further. This is a very powerful tool

It’s not always about getting visitors to your site, but about getting the right kind of visitors. The usefulness of keyword research cannot be emphasized enough. The tidal waves are coming and in this case you want to make sure you are right in front when they come crashing down. The stronger your keyword foundation is, the easier it will be for your business to adapt to the ever changing demands of search engines and customers.

SEO for the Average Joe: Website Structure and Crawlability

Posted on November 28, 2012October 1, 2025 by infogenix

SEO for the Average Joe: Website Structure and Crawlability

Found In Haystack 235/365: Needle — Photo credit to Jer Kunz on Flickr

How do search engines pick your website to rank for the right keywords from among millions of other sites around the world? It seems like a perfect example of finding a needle in a haystack, but they’ve created hefty programs called spiders or bots to do just that.

Googlebot, Google’s indexing program, continuously crawls the Web updating Google’s database of websites. When it gets to yours, it will take cues from the site structure and content to determine what your site is all about. Today we’ll talk about how you can optimize your site structure for the best results when the search engine bots find you.

Navigation

5615480036_2f363152cf — Photo credit to Dan Zen on Flickr

A good rule of thumb is the easier and more intuitive your site is to navigate for people, the easier it will be for the search engine bots to determine what your site is about. Organize your pages into a hierarchy that groups together related topics. If you have a large site, Google may not get to every page. So make sure your most important content is in the first couple tiers of pages. Ideally, these pages will be accessible from the main navigation bar on your home page.

Links between pages are the paths users and bots use to get around your site. In addition to the primary navigation bar, links between pages help visitors find their way around and tell the bots a little more about what’s important on your site. Use descriptive keywords as anchor text for links between pages. These can include links within the body of your pages, footer links, and images you use as buttons.

You’ll also want to avoid having elements on your pages that bog down the load time, such as large image files and videos that play automatically. The bots will get tired of waiting and skip pages that take too long to finish loading.

Tip: If you have lower pages you feel are important to have indexed, link to them directly from your home page — either in text, in the navigation bar, or with footer links.

URL Structure

Do the URLs of your inner pages look something like this?

www.yoursite.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8&Itemid=4

URLs with long strings of nonsense aren’t just annoying to people, they give nothing to search engine bots. Make your inner page URLs brief and helpful, like this:

www.yoursite.com/descriptive-title

URLs should also make it easy for people and bots to understand your site’s hierarchy. Include the paths in URLs for pages deeper in your site, thusly:

www.yoursite.com/descriptive-title/specific-topic

Tip: Use a hyphen (-) rather than an underscore (_) to link words in your URLs.

Redirects

Duplicate pages and links that don’t lead anywhere can be detrimental to your search engine rankings. The solution is to use redirects to lead bots and visitors to where you want them to be. There are two kinds of redirects that will serve most of your needs — 301s and 404s.

301 redirects — These are useful when you have multiple versions of the same page either because you’ve moved your site to a new URL or your site can be accessed from multiple URLs (ex. yoursite.com, www.yoursite.com, home.yoursite.com). You simply need to add a piece of code to the old or duplicate page telling Google and browsers to go to the correct page instead. Most visitors won’t even notice they’ve been redirected. Click here for instructions for creating a 301 redirect.

404 redirects — When you delete or move a page from your website, by default visitors and bots who try to find that page’s URL will be taken to a dead end 404 error page. It’s possible to customize your 404 pages so they look friendlier and give visitors options to continue on your site. This gives you a chance to conserve any authority your deleted page had built up and keeps visitors and bots moving happily through your site. Click here for a good tutorial on creating a 404 page.

Tip: Sites with large eStores tend to delete and/or duplicate content frequently as products change. Make sure you have a system in place to implement appropriate redirects where needed.

Sitemap

Sitemaps are just what they sound like: maps of your site that make it easy for visitors or bots to find the pages they’re looking for. There are two main kinds of sitemaps — html and xml. HTML are more useful for visitors while the search engines like XML. You can add both or just one.

Keep in mind that just because you don’t have a sitemap doesn’t mean Google won’t index your site. If you have a large site, having a sitemap may get you indexed a little faster, and may even get a few more pages indexed. It’s worth the time to put one in.

Tip: You can get a free XML sitemap file made for your site at xml-sitemaps.com.