Website Development Issues Archives - Page 5 of 9 by Mark Murnahan

Produce More Website Content … But Why? SEO?

“You should produce more website content.” This is a pretty common message that many search engine optimizers will tell you. They say that “if you produce more content, you will have more website traffic.” Are they lying to you? No, but there is another piece that is missing. I am going to give you that piece, and it will not cost you a cent. I will give you the good and bad sides of creating more content on your website, along with some encouragement that it is not as difficult at you may imagine, so pay attention.

You want more website traffic. Don’t try to deny it. I want more website traffic, too. Website traffic makes me happy. It makes me feel vindicated for all my hard work. It makes me money … (insert sound byte of screeching tires here). Incorrect! More website traffic actually does not pay me a penny. It actually comes with a cost. Maybe this is why I am telling you the truth. I may just lie to you if I earned a dollar every time you click another page, but I do not. Go ahead and look around to see that I do not have a bunch of cost-per-exposure advertisements or cost-per-action links to “buy now” or “register here” on my blog. I have a couple of my own books listed to the left, but I am not force-feeding that to you. They are not my big money-maker. So, you may ask, “what is the catch, and why do you want to share this with me?” There must be something dirty in this plan, right? No, in fact, I actually do not want to sell you anything at all. I will explain, but first, I want you to understand some facts about producing more website content. I will explain why more website content is important, and also why it is not important.

Benefits Producing More Website Content

If you produce more written content on your website, there will be more things for Google and other search engines to add to their databases. This means that as long as you do everything else just right, you will have a higher chance of being listed when somebody performs a search. Do not underestimate the importance of this fact. Consider why Wikipedia is found so often when you search for something. Wikipedia has a lot of useful website content … things you want to know.

I recently illustrated the huge differences in website traffic based on adding new website content as compared to the reach of social media. I suggest reading “Twitter is Useful but Blogging is Better” and also a piece titled “10 Really good Reasons to Blog“. Your website really is the epicenter of your business efforts online, so you should treat it that way. If you are in business and want more business, you should really be producing more website content … but here comes the hard part.

Producing More Website Content Does Not Matter

Website content is important. It is important enough that more website content, alone, is not what really matters. Your competitors are producing more website content, too. The race is on, and now it will require marketing talent to win. Doing it right is what matters. Giving people information they want and need, becoming a market authority, and being ready with a solution for the reader’s need matters more. Volume of website content will get people there, but having something truly spectacular for them is what makes them a customer.

There is a balance to be found between more website content and great website content. Some content will get traffic and public attention, but people will only look further if it grabs them and pulls them in. The people who visit my blog because they searched for “best hookers” (and they do) are not buying what I sell, but it is a pretty darn popular piece of blogging content. The people who happen upon that piece because I referenced it, like I did here, are why I wrote it. There is also a lot of value in reaching the audience just outside of your focus using “lateral keywords“. This means keywords in a lateral and sometimes unexpected market.

Producing Website Content Gets Easier

Producing website content gets easier with practice, and it can really create a snowball effect. Just consider this: I set out to write a book about Twitter in 2009. I was just out to write one book, but all of the sudden it got easier and I wrote two more within three months. I also blogged enough to wear my fingers smooth.

You do not need a degree in literature to produce successful website content. I can prove this statement. The website content that I have produced over the last decade is viewed by hundreds of thousands of people per month. It has also earned me millions of dollars. I left school at 15 years of age and I am the CEO of a wholesale Internet company. I didn’t have the time or education to write more website content either. I am glad that I did, and it provided inspiration for the book “Living in the Storm“.

You can do this, and it really does make a difference. When you cannot, there are also a lot of website content producers available to hire out the work or to augment your efforts. There is also a search engine optimizer on every corner. These fields grow with each round of layoffs at companies that didn’t produce more website content in time to beat the competition.

When Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all the other tools you have tried just aren’t working like you hoped, it is likely that you simply didn’t produce enough quality content that people were looking for. Think about it like planting a tree. If you want shade, the best time to plant it is ten years ago. You cannot go back and plant it earlier, so the next best time is now.

Why I Do Not Want to Sell You Anything

I wrote earlier that I do not want to sell you anything at all. That deserves an explanation, because I really do not mean to seem rude or impersonal. The truth is that I am actually looking at the guy over your shoulder. I want your competitor. I want the one who is out to crush your business because they understand the importance of not only producing more website content, but also producing the content that will smash the competition. That is how I earn a living for my family. So, if you call me on the phone or message me, be sure that you tell me you are out to cause a marketing massacre for that other company who read this blog article (yes, they are reading it, too).

Write Page Titles That Get Attention

Page titles that get attention are smart, short, and compelling. Without a good page title, the rest loses importance. If you want to write a page title that works, stop using so many words. Write like you want it to be read.

I am a conversational writer, and I use too many words. I write books and long blog articles. You use too many words, too. Most of us use too many words. We make sentences too long. If we word-it-up, we (think we) seem smarter.

Page Titles Get Clicked

Page titles are a top priority for SEO. Titles are indexed, and page titles are what people click to read the rest. Practice writing page titles. Write it in fewer words if you can. Make it easy to understand.

Try using Twitter if you need practice.

Stop using too many words.

Brandon’s Baseball Cards and Google SEO Starter Guide

Did you know that Google will help you to have better results in their search engine? Google provides useful advice on how to improve a website’s search engine ranking, and they did it with Brandon’s Baseball Cards. If you have never heard about Brandon or the example Google made with his baseball cards, I would not be surprised. There is a lot of information on the Internet, and it can be hard to take it all in. The information Google provides to explain search engine optimization is worth the time it will take to read and take notes. This is especially true if you are going to try do-it-yourself search engine optimization (DIY SEO) for the first time.

Google Wants to Index Your Site

Google wants to include your website in their index, and for good reason. When you can find anything and everything you ever want to know at Google.com, it is good for their company. This is how Google maintains its ranking as the number one search engine. Being the perfect go-to source for information is what drives Google’s AdWords advertising sales up, and keeps their market share strong. The biggest challenges website owners face mirror the challenges Google faces, and are as follows:

Billions of Competing Web Pages
Providing High-Quality Information

Google works very hard to provide the best results when users search the Internet. If your website is not among the top results, it is not because Google is out to kill your business, but mostly that somebody else had more relevant and easier to index information.

Google Will Help You With SEO

The efforts Google has made to help people better understand their search engine is not a secret. Any decent search engine optimizer (SEO) is aware of Google Webmaster Tools and Google’s Search Engine Optimizer Starter Guide. Most SEO will be happy to share the information with you just as I am here. A good SEO will be glad to know their clients have read the information so they understand the job we do. An informed client will understand the value of SEO work, and is less likely to fall asleep when we talk.

If you put this information to good use, and you do not try to cheat Google’s well-formed system, your Google ranking will improve and your website will receive more traffic. Better yet, it will receive more relevant traffic because people will be finding your site based on exactly what they search for. It will cost you nothing but your time and attention, but what it can return is extremely beneficial to your business. Now that I put it this way, wouldn’t it really seem crazy to neglect it? Really, this is free exposure to your business using the number one way that people find businesses to buy from. Doesn’t it seem like that is worthwhile? I believe your answer is yes, but you may be wondering what this has to do with Brandon’s Baseball Cards, so I will get to that.

Brandon’s Baseball Cards and Search Engine Optimization

If you do not already know what Brandon’s Baseball Cards has to do with SEO, it is only because you did not read “Google’s Search Engine Optimizer Starter Guide” yet. It is only 22 pages in length and I really hope you will take some time to read it. Even if you are a professional SEO, the information contained in the document may just be what your next client needs to help them understand how you can help them.

Since I know some of you will never take my advice and read the SEO starter guide, I will let the cat out of the bag. Brandon’s Baseball Cards is the product Google used in its examples. Go ahead and see what is at brandonsbaseballcards.com. If you did not guess, it goes to Google.com.

What Google Didn’t Mention

The information Google provides about SEO is very important, but it is not everything. There is not a single element that will place your link at the top of every search results page. If there was an easy fix, everybody would be doing it. Effective SEO requires marketing talent, and it is a mix of both art and science. If I could condense all that you need to know into a list of SEO lessons and make it simple, I would do that. As it is, there are still a lot of important tasks that a professional SEO performs. Two search engine optimizers will never achieve the exact same results, and implementation of SEO skills will vary. There is only one position at the top, and I hope to see you there. If you need help with that, ring me any time at *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE* (*REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*).

Just one more thing: Can you name the baseball player pictured above? Add your guess in the comments!

SEO Directory Submissions and Pink Ponies For Sale

Sometimes I wonder how pink ponies became so popular in today’s Internet marketing world. Then again, I guess I should stop wondering. People just love buying pink ponies and fairy dust. It is a shame, but when I look around the Internet and talk to people, I have to believe it is true. They think there is a magical fix for their dwindling or less-than-stratospheric profit levels.

Pink Pony Rental: $180 Per Month

I do not like to call people stupid. I try to inform them, instead. It usually doesn’t work, because the majority of people really love pink ponies, fairy dust, and all the other Internet marketing magic that gets sprinkled into their eyes every day. I can only try my best to save one or two of you.

I see a lot of “SEO companies” (that’s search engine optimization for the record) offering packages for placing companies at the top of search engines for search terms. The packages often consist of submission to a squillion search engines and directories, building incoming links to the client’s website, and a bunch of other magical fairy dust. Some of them will say their magic potion includes creating h1 tags (Google h1 tags and see where my article about h1 tags is), meta tags (serious, this is a joke) and HTML title tags (sure, that is all it takes).

What bothers me is how hard some people’s heads are when you try to explain that pink ponies and fairy dust are just ways that pretend SEO companies take people’s money and then leave them thinking that this whole Internet thing is a big unicorn chase. I hope this is not the case with you, but based on the numbers … the real hard facts … you probably have a lot of room for pink pony rentals deep in your heart. If you keep reading, I am going to smash some pink ponies into tiny little bits and eat them. This is not for the faint of heart.

Maybe you believe in magic, and you aren’t ready to put down your “My Little Pony” doll. Fine, but maybe you should mark your calendar for a good time to have somebody pop that bubble for you and help you to do things that actually work. You know, things that actually increase your profit and create more sales. If you are in business, profit is what you need, right? Not precious little pink ponies and fairy dust. Just in case you are not ready or you are in SEO relapse, I will give you a fun little pony video to look at while your competition continues reading and takes away some more of your profit.

SEO Magic Takes Research, Targeting, and Talent

Call it “SEO magic” if you like, but real Internet marketing and SEO takes research. Real research … the kind that compiles real data and has a focus on real results. You do not get that with an out of the box SEO service offering … for any price.

Once the research is done, online marketing success requires a targeted approach to reaching the right audience. The research tells who the audience is, but knowing where to find them and targeting their attention is another task. This is often skipped and companies end up with the equivalent of trying to sell knitting needles to race car drivers. Is that the right audience to spend your money marketing toward?

When you understand who and where the audience is, it takes marketing talent (yes, you should click on the link about marketing talent) to convert those lookers into buyers. This is the artistic part of SEO and Internet marketing, and an important piece. If you get this part wrong, you can just drop a signed blank check in Times Square right now. Your money is wasted … gone … poof … it disappeared!

After these things are handled, it takes more research and understanding the marketing data to know where to focus the next efforts. When you discover what works, it is time to keep doing it, only better than before. That is what takes profit into orbit.

Oh, and I probably should not leave out the huge fact that it takes a website that does not suck. Here, read a story about a $150,000 website that sucks.

When you think about these things, maybe you can drop me a comment to tell me how stupid I am for never submitting this blog to any directory other than DMOZ. Maybe you don’t know what DMOZ is. Well, the pink pony salesman probably doesn’t either. He probably does not have thousands of incoming links pointing at his site, either. That is because most SEO fail at link building.

Real SEO Providers Eat Pink Ponies

I was talking to one of my SEO buddies yesterday as we dined on some pink pony burgers. He was telling me of a prospective client who came to him for search engine optimization. The man had a great product and wanted my pony munching friend to perform some search engine marketing for him. My friend, who had no reason to lie to me about this, told me he could make this guy’s product a smash hit. I mean, the way he described it, he could have sent this guys profits into orbit. A serious SEO guy knows when they can totally smash a market, by the way. We have research on our side.

My friend went on to tell me that after talking to this guy a bit, the potential client said he could spend $180 per month to sell his machines. Where in the heck did this guy get the figure of $180 and what kind of pink pony did this guy smoke? Seriously, a $180 per month budget to make a serious impact in his company’s profits? Is this really what people think we SEO people do? Do people really think that a person who can send their profit into orbit is going to live on minimum wage? Wow, so the one person who can truly make the biggest impact on company sales volume is worth all of $180 to the company?!

What really made us taste our partially digested pony burgers was that a lot of people think the same way. They have it in their head that there is some automated magical fix for marketing success. They think that the same thing that will work for a car dealer should work for an accident attorney, a construction company, and a real estate developer. The industry of Internet marketing has deteriorated into a pack of thieves who pick the bones of desperate companies who really so badly want to believe that there is one single magic pill they can buy over the counter and fix everything that ails them.

Those machines my buddy spoke about sell for a minimum of $14,000 and included a good profit margin, by the way. So, anyway, it kind of made us both gag on our pink pony burgers and face the fact that most people are really not ready to take their market seriously. They are not ready to push their marketing go button.

People Don’t Want the Truth: They Want Pink Ponies!

This all got me to realizing that people don’t really want to hear the truth. I have become pretty popular for telling people what they need to hear instead of what they want to hear. The crazy thing is that they may like to hear the real truth once in a while, but it is like watching a horror movie. It is like entertainment, but it could never happen in real life. Like Hollywood. They like hearing how their Internet marketing guy made millions of dollars conquering a market. What is sad about this is that the Internet marketers who actually have earned millions upon millions of dollars for themselves and their clients (yes, like me) are the guys you really don’t want to hear from, because we will pop the bubble you ride upon and give you the truth. We make fun of those guys. See … here I am in a video making fun of them, while subtly showing you that I am not full of pink pony poo and actually have been doing this successfully enough and long enough to buy a few toys of my own. Yeah, I didn’t do that selling pony poo … I did it making my clients a whole lot of profit!

Anybody who is tired of renting pink ponies and watching money slip away, what you really need is a pony slaying marketer. The presentation may be a bit crusty and abrasive for some people’s taste, but there is a reason serious pony killing search engine optimizers hang up the phone when people ask for a price before they even consider the real reason they called … the profit!

NOTE: If you like buying pink ponies, save us both the trouble and just drop me $180 per month in the mail. It will help me to cover my $1000 coffee expense while I work 25 hours per day to crush companies who try to compete with my clients.

SEO Contracts, SEO Proposals, and SEO Espionage

SEO Contracts Should Not Require a Cryptograph — SEO Should Not Require a Cryptograph

Search engine optimization can be a pretty deceitful field. There are a lot of challenges to the SEO every day which can make us look bad as an industry. SEO is a very lucrative field, which makes it prone to excessive competition and it is frequently a target for fraud. The fraud can happen on both sides; from the SEO, as well as from the client. I have a couple ideas on the topic, and I hope this will benefit you, whether as the SEO or the potential SEO client.

Considering that the SEO professional has to look over his or her shoulder at all times, there should be little wonder why even the best SEO with good abilities and intentions can come off as shady. After all, anybody who feels suspicious all the time can appear suspicious, themselves. This suspicion of SEO services prompted me to question how we must seem to potential customers when they read the SEO contracts, proposals, project scope, retainer agreements, engagement letters, needs analysis, non-disclosure agreements, and etcetera.

Many SEO proposals and SEO contracts that I have read lean toward being a bit ambiguous and one-sided. I am “guilty” of this, too, and I have even heard it from clients in my decade plus in this field. What is sometimes hard to overcome are some of the reasons the SEO contracts are ambiguous … and why sometimes they should be.

What to Include in SEO Proposals

The question of what to include in the SEO proposal is a tough one. I think a lot of SEO must have felt that little pang of uncertainty after they have crafted a brilliant SEO proposal and present it to the prospective client. Some of the questions the SEO may ponder are whether the prospective client is just using it to try and implement the proposed work internally, using the SEO proposal to shop around, or even stealing the brilliant work to provide the proposal to their shady SEO who was too lazy or incompetent to do the research themselves. I suspect that every good SEO is cheated at least once.

How much can you include in the SEO proposal before the client thinks they can implement it themselves (which seldom works well for them), and how little can you include in the SEO proposal, yet still convey a high value? There should be a balance, but my approach has often been to just put all the cards on the table and give them the gold. The problem here is that so many people view SEO as a science (see “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Art or Science?“). Clients do not always realize that SEO implementation is not created equally, and there is also an artistic side to SEO. There are many degrees to doing the job right, and even the same strategy implemented by two different SEO will yield different results. After a potential client ends up hanging themselves on that rope you give them, they lose faith in you and even the whole prospect of hiring out SEO services.

The other side of the coin is to show very little strategy in the SEO proposal but provide a lot of proof. In this case, it may look like the SEO strategy is weak and not show enough value. Proof of concept and SEO case studies are fine, but many people cannot relate that into their world due to inherent doubts about SEO.

What to Include in SEO Contracts

A great SEO proposal must be backed up with a great SEO contract. Putting too much information in the SEO contract can have the same results as with the SEO proposal, but worse, this time you are asking them for a signature and money. Leaving any ambiguity may look unprofessional or dishonest, but making it too rigid comes with a risk of not being able to provide the right responses the client needs under changing market circumstances. Just imagine the contract that says exactly what the SEO will do, but then you find an instance where market changes say that you should do something different.

The SEO contract can be a deal-breaker, especially if it is going before a board of directors with a bunch of people who do not have a clue about SEO, or marketing at all for that matter. When you have a company filled with a bunch of people doing all they can to be sure they still have a job tomorrow (most companies), the last thing you want is for them to vote something down just because they didn’t understand what they were approving. This applies to small companies and large, and even a one-person company has a “board” of sorts.

Consider What the SEO Contract Represents

Everybody wants to avoid a lawsuit. It may sound too simple, but let’s look at what the SEO contract really represents. It is a contract that says that the customer agrees to pay “x” money in exchange for “y” services. If everything goes just as planned, and everybody involved is on the up and up, the contract should actually be a very useless piece of paper. Looking at it this way, you can see that the contract is mostly in place solely to make everybody comfortable in case it has to go to a court to be upheld. This is the bottom line with a contract. It is really useless as an instrument unless or until it is contested by one party and is brought to a courtroom or mediation.

With the purpose of the contract in mind, it should be easier to prepare your agreements in a way that addresses these basic components of “x” money for “y” service. A lot of the fluff beyond that is mostly there to address irrational fears. Not all of it, but this is the case with much of the content in most of the SEO service contracts I have read.

I have spent a significant amount of money having contracts reviewed and prepared over the years. I recall something one of my attorneys once said when I asked him to review one of the contracts I used for my customers. He said that the contract looks great, but that he could not “bless” the contract, and for that I would need a priest. He went on to say that any contract is only as good as the people signing it or in the worst case, the judge who makes a ruling on it. Looking at it this way, I may suggest that you just be sure to use waterproof ink before you splatter it with holy water.

SEO Espionage is an Irrational Fear

To the SEO: Collaboration between SEO is great, but sometimes the SEO has to know when to watch his or her back. Right? Well, the answer is yes and no. Most of the time the fear is irrational. I know that many SEO have used my work to build upon their services and their knowledge base. They have used my contracts, my proposals, and they have used SEO espionage to take food from my kids’ mouths. Should I concentrate on that, or the fact that I have done my little piece by using integrity and ideas to make the industry stronger?

I place providing value to the industry very high. I have been giving away information and putting my ideas out here on the Internet since the 1990’s and somehow people still pay attention. They flock to things like my very old article on h1 tags, and constantly find me when searching for SEO contracts. Being useful and providing value is a good thing … a very good thing. When you look over your shoulder with fears that somebody will get a leg up on you, it is easy to miss the big picture. There are enough SEO clients out there, and even if somebody takes your prized prospect away, there is always another one better suited to be your client.

A better way to look at it is that if you are working with a good spirit of collaboration between SEO, the whole industry becomes stronger. When the industry becomes stronger, your business becomes stronger. The market for good SEO will never be saturated. Really, pay attention: “The market for good SEO will never be saturated.”

Why SEO Contracts Don’t Matter

If contracts were ever a deal breaker, it should be with the credit card industry. If people actually read everything they agree to by using a credit card, spending habits would surely be a whole lot different, and the credit card industry may not even exist. It is not because they are all that bad, but reading the contract can be a bit scary.

Think about this and tell me if you can relate. I have purchased a lot of things over the years. I love buying stuff! When I think about the things I wanted the most, I recall that I barely even paid attention to the contracts. I already knew that I wanted to buy, I had a pretty good idea of who I was dealing with, and I knew that I would not have the “thing” I wanted until I signed the contract.

An extreme example is when I purchased the house I live in. I went to the closing at about 4:00 p.m. and signed about a squillion contracts by the close of business. I did this with little more than a brief explanation from my real estate agent of what I was signing. If you have ever purchased real estate, you surely know what I mean. Your hand probably got cramped before you were done, right? Now consider whether you read and scrutinized every line of those contracts.

As I consider the people who signed contracts with me over the years, I recall that some of the happiest ones barely even scanned through it. They had an absolute faith in my work, my integrity, and they wanted the help that I can provide them. The ones who got hung up on fine details of the SEO contract simply did not have that faith in me. I had failed them long before it was time to sign the contract.

I hope that you will consider this, whether as a prospective SEO client or the SEO provider. Getting the job right and having a signed contract is really the last thing that should matter. Gaining the client’s trust should never come down to the contract, but rather all of the gains that the SEO contract represents.

SEO Contract Examples

If you would like sample SEO contracts, proposals, or other documents, just leave me your comment here on my blog. Let me know what you think of the matter, and what kind of document you need help with. If I have something I believe will be useful to you, I will post an example here in the comments. If you can provide some input to help others, whether as SEO or client, add your piece. Collaboration is a good thing, and usually a whole lot more useful than coming off as shady to avoid somebody stealing your work.