If you live on the Treasure Coast of Florida and are dumbfounded by the term Search Engine Optimization, you may as well continue to read this article. I am not going to promise to cover the wide array of do’s and dont’s of search engine optimization, but I am am going to talk about the one thing that really matters when it comes to being found online.
What is that one thing?
CONTENT!
You may or may not have heard the phrase “Content is King”. This term has been thrown around ever since Google showed up and knocked us off our feet as the best search engine to date. What is content? Well, content is any page on your web site it is that is index able by search engines. In an effort to explain the difference between a web site that has normal content versus a web site that has great content, Let’s use our imagination real quick.
A business owner named Allen has a pest control business in Port Saint Lucie. He has a web site that consists of five typical pages. His pages are typical for a small business web site and look something like this.
- Homepage
- About Page
- Services Page
- Contact Page
- Pricing Page
The above page list or site map is very typical of a normal small business web site and in a lot of cases it may be just enough to get Allen to show up in the top results when someone searches for “Port Saint Lucie Pest Control”. That is the idea right?
Now let’s say Allen has a competitor in Port Saint Lucie and his name is Bubba. Bubba’s business name is Bubba’s Bug Control. Let’s just say that Bubba has no idea about the web but knows he wants to show up above Allen each and every time someone is searching for Pest Control Services in Port Saint Lucie.
Is it achievable for Bubba to beat Allen “at the top” if Allen is already number one? YES!
The key is having Bubba use content management system(s) to populate his web site with more pages and more information that Allen. In fact, Bubba’s web site will more than likely have the same main pages as Allen. The difference between the two web sites is Bubba is going to take our word for it and begin to add articles or blog posts. What in the world is Bubba going to blog about?
WHAT IS A CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM?
Well, we aren’t pest control specialists, we are web designers, but we have some ideas. Let’s make up some possible articles titles that Bubba can write about.
EXAMPLE ARTICLE LIST:
- How to hire the right Pest Control company.
- The difference between a cockroach and a palmetto bug?
- The right way to treat for Termites.
- Pesticides that are dangerous around kids.
- Safe Pesticide application.
- New Pesticide on the Market.
- Knowing if you have a bug problem.
- Florida Pest Identification.
These were made up in two minutes, but could go on forever!
Now that you can see how easy it is to generate a list of possible articles, let’s talk about how exactly all of this content gets indexed and ultimately makes Bubba’s phone ring with new business.
Once Bubba begins to blog, his website will begin to get crawled by Google and in turn, Google will begin to store his page(s) and display them in search results when someone is searching specific things like “Pesticides that are dangerous around Kids” The more content he has with keywords that pertain to his business and his geographic location the more traffic he will get. More traffic can and will lead to more business.
LET’S TALK GEOGRAPHY:
When Bubba has finally added all of this content to his web site, he now has something special about to happen. Potential customers in his area will continue their daily searches and when they do, it is highly likely that they are going to be looking at exactly what Bubba wants them looking at. HIS WEB SITE and more importantly his PHONE NUMBER.
This is because the master minds at Google know where you are searching from. Even if you search a generic topic they are always going to show you local results first.
These local searches can fall into two categories.
A. Someone searching for a specific service
B. Someone searching for a generic topic not interested in services at that time.
Of course Bubba wants to target group A, but group B is not bad either. You are marketing to someone that will eventually need a pest control service, so why not wow them with your web content so it becomes a resource for them. Chances are they will remember you name and service for future use.
TURNING YOU WEB SITE INTO A RESOURCE:
This is the final point we would like to make. Building a simple web site is great and everyone business should have one. The key though is to turn your web site into a resource with all kinds of information for those seeking information about what you do for a living. The more valuable content you have the more likely you are to have people reading your content. When Google sees how much great relevant content you are producing, they will reward you with placement for terms that you have targeted. This is where and when a web site becomes a true business tool.
IN CLOSING:
If you stayed with me throughout this article, I hope you learned a little bit more about how content plays a role in your search engine optimization. Please understand that there is a lot more search engine tools and techniques. We just wanted to touch on the most crucial issue involved. If you are interested in learning what Magnetic Media Works can do for you, we encourage you to give us a call. Typically we can ask a handful of questions and have some solutions figured out quickly. We aren’t afraid to talk to people and look forward to hearing from new clients each and every day. I hope you enjoyed this article and hope you continue to visit our blog! Feel free to share this article with your friends, family, and coworkers!
Keep Rolling!
DOUG SAPUSEK
Magnetic Media Works
owner/designer
(C) 772801.1796
(E) magnetic.doug@gmail.com
COMMENTS for wordpress admins
If you are a Magnetic Media Works client that uses WordPress as your content management system(cms), you need to read this. We have noticed that some of our clients are not been moderating their comments and are missing out on business opportunities as well as creating a bunch of maintenance work for themselves. Please take some time out of your busy schedule to read this to understand wordpress and it’s commenting system.
In this article I will cover the following topics:
What are comments?
Why comments are extremely important!
First, Let’s define a good comment. A good comment is a comment that pertains to the post or page. A person may ask you a specific question about a specific product or service, or they may want to thank you publicly for creating a great product. Either way, you can reply to these people as the admin and create more than just a static page. When comments begin to fire back and forth you begin to create a social environment that lets potential customers begin to feel even better about what you have to offer. On one hand, these comments back and forth show an active business to customer relationship and that is pretty hard to beat. On the other hand, unanswered comments can produce the opposite effect.
Now, let’s discuss the spammers and why they insist on creating annoying comment moderation.
The spammers are in place doing what they do best. They are constantly dropping links to sites other than and not relative to yours. Why are they doing this? Well, in theory the more “backlinks” to their listed page the more valuable it becomes and it begins to show up for better search engine placement.
I said “in theory” a moment ago.
I said this because backlinks are a strong and powerful method for achieving better search engine results, but Google does place value on the the links that are generated. If you own a landscape company and you have a ton of backlinks from insurance and cosmetic related webs sites, google may just throw the “SPAMMY” flag and you could lose traction in the search engine results very quickly. Let’s not forget how much of a pain they are! It takes time reading through and determining whether or not the comment is from a relevant business or person. If you have problems with extreme amounts of SPAMMY comments, send us an email and we can install some software that cleans that up!
Where the commenting system is. (See visual steps at the end of this article)
Your commenting system in located in the control panel of your web site. First log in using your username and password that we provided you. Next, you will want to look on the left hand side of the dashboard and you will see the left hand navigation panel. Look down for the comments tab and click it! You will now be looking at all of your comments. The latest “unapproved” comments are near the top!
How to approve, delete, or mark a comment as Spam.
All you have to do is roll your mouse over each comment. As you do the comment you are hovering over will turn yellow. You will also notice some additional text appears under the comment itself. You will see options to approve, delete, or mark as spam. Click the option you desire and move onto the next one! It is pretty easy!
We hope this article was easy to read and understand. If you are having trouble with any of this, please send us an email, and will will make arrangements to contact you and fix your issues. As always, thanks for being a Magnetic Media Works client and we look forward to continuing to serve you and you business!
How to manage comments in three steps:
Step1
Step2
Step3