After the trauma of my massive computer failures last week, I forgot to mention that the new Spring issue of Computor Companion is online. We have a bunch of cool articles in this issue, but my personal favorite this time is the one by James Byrd called “Search Engine Optimization Tips Using Site Content – Part 1.” I’ve been spending so much time talking about this stuff lately, that it’s nice to have it finally written down somewhere. In fact, at a meeting this week, a new client printed it out for reference.
As I’ve mentioned before, it seems that suddenly the whole world is waking up to the fact that a web site no one can find is basically useless. So I spend a lot of time talking to people about search engine optimization, or “SEO” as the pundits refer to it.
When it comes to SEO, half the battle is having a site the search engines can read. We help people with that. But the other part requires work on the part of the site owner. If you want your Web site to be found by searchers, you need to provide relevant content that people are seeking and get links from related sites in your industry. When you do that, the search engines bring tons of visitors to your site.
People get obsessed about what the search engines “want” as far as code, but once you’ve fixed your site so it’s search-engine friendly, what you really should care about is what people want. Both search engines and people want readable information. So, as far as tweaking the content on a Web site for a business goes, your best bet is to figure out what information other sites don’t cover that people are actually searching for. When you determine that, you write that content, people find your site, and then they contact you.
Okay sure it sounds simple, but it’s a lot of work. Yeah, ask me how I know 😉