One of the most common questions I get from people with small business websites (especially blogs) is “what should I write about?” They know that one of the keys to a successful website is to include lots of high-value content, but struggle to find ideas for new topics. Well, here’s a way to get some great ideas. It’s free, the answers are only a couple of clicks away and they use a nice thing called ‘time on site’…

Why is This Useful?

If you own a small business website then you need to spend your marketing time wisely and this includes time spent creating new content for your website. Rather than guessing at new ideas for content, this technique uses clues that are already there in your website traffic.

Analytics First

The key to this technique is to use the visitor analytics results for your website. If you don’t have analytics already running, you’ll need to install this first and run it for a decent slice of time – probably at least a couple of weeks. Google Analytics is very popular and works well, so I’ll use this as an example.

To install Google Analytics for your site, just head over to www.google.com/analytics and register your site. You’ll need to grab the tracking code and add it to each web page.

What to Look For

You can use the keyword traffic report as inspiration for new content. Just look under Traffic Sources -> Keywords. Take a look down the list of keywords and look for ones which match these criteria:

1. They bring you a decent number of visits already (definitely more than 1)
2. Average time on site is low (probably zero)
3. They’re relevant to your business and your website

The image above shows the ‘time on site’ column in Google Analytics.

OK, so why are these numbers important?

It’s because these keywords are already bringing you some organic search traffic (from Google, bing, etc) but your visitors aren’t finding what they want on your pages.

You might find that these are long tail keywords, and the phrases may not appear word-for-word in your pages. You’ll probably find that the pages where they appear aren’t really focusing on these keywords as a topic. Remember that visitors scan your pages very quickly and may move away if the search term doesn’t appear in the title, or early in the page.

What to Do Next

So now you have some ideas for new keywords and topics to write about. Create some new pages around these keywords, and make sure the pages really are focused around these terms. Use the keywords in the title, and several times in the page content (and as near to the top of the page as possible)

Other Questions and Ideas

Can you use bounce rate too? It depends. Bounce rate shows the number of visitors to a page who exit your site as soon as they’ve read it. You might think that a high bounce rate shows a bad page, but for some websites it’s probably fine. Blogs are a good example of this – your readers probably come to your site to read a new post, and then move away to their next favorite blog.

So what about keywords that are already successful for your site? Maybe you have some of these – lots of visitors AND they spend a long time on your pages (i.e. time on site is high). By all means write some more content around these keywords. This comes under the heading of ‘improving what works already’, which I fully support. You should  see more growth if you target the poorly-performing keywords though.

You might also see the time reported as ‘time on page’ instead of time on site. This is just the page-specific version.

Wrapping It Up

So there you go. This is a nice technique for finding new stuff to write about, and it takes away the guesswork. If you’re a small business website owner I think you’ll find this useful. Have a go and let me know if it works – you can leave a comment below or contact me directly.

[UPDATE: I got a few questions on the 'zero time on site' measurement. How can a visitor get to your site and spend zero seconds here? The answer lies in the way Google Analytics measures time on site. It looks at the time between the first page view on your site and the last page view. If only one page is looked at, there is no second page view so a zero is recorded. Visitors may be spending some time on the page, but this isn't recorded. ]

Other articles tagged with analytics

• Do you have to talk to a web designer before you can add a new page?
• Even if you can write code yourself, have you made it easy to create a new page, using templates and a separate CSS file, or even better, some kind of content management system?

The best websites grow over time and gradually get more and more useful content on them.

This keeps your readers (and the search engines) coming back regularly for more – a good thing.

One of the best decisions you can make for your site is to make this as easy as possible. If it’s a pain, you won’t update it and this is definitely not a good thing.

One of my subscribers asked me about this today. If you know me then you won’t be surprised to hear that I had a simple answer:

1. Get the right niche/keywords
2. Write superb content using these keywords

… and then (only then)…

3. Get started on the SEO tweaks

How can it be this simple? Well, it’s not really. Working out the answers to number 1 and number 2 can be pretty hard. It can take a while to get these right, and you should spend time perfecting them.

My point is that if you get the first 2 parts right, then they can have such a huge effect on your search traffic, any SEO tweaks that you make are not going to make much difference.

The other way to look at this is that if you’ve got the wrong keywords and/or your content is poor, there’s not much point spending a huge amount of time on SEO.

Don’t get wrong though. SEO tweaks are important, and they can help you to get that vital edge over your competition.

So don’t ignore number 3!!

This is a nice endorsement of my work. I love writing stuff that other people like – who doesn’t?

It’s also proof of the principle: good content beats SEO.

In other words, create something that people love, or find useful, or enjoy reading, and you don’t really need to worry about keyword density, long tails or meta tags. Why? Because if people love your work they will (re)visit it and vote for it by linking to it. Links to your stuff are hugely important for PageRank: lots of links will get you higher in the search positions.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s still important to think about SEO. We’re working in a competitive world, after all, and everything you do to get yourself an edge is (probably) useful.

There’s a limit to how far you can go with SEO though. Instead of spending hours optimizing your new page, or blog post, or Squidoo lens, get started on creating another one.

Make sure it’s good though!

• Your car dealer says she will call you back at the weekend. She doesn’t.
• You promise to get back to a prospect on Tuesday. You leave it til Thursday
• The spam email promises a discount on your favorite drugs but when you open it it’s just garbage
• Your latest blog comment promises useful feedback but it turns out to be just a bunch of link spam

Are you getting wound up? It’s probably because this seems very familiar. Promises get broken every day.

It’s the promises that people keep that you remember. If you break your promises people will forget you. Very quickly. Don’t forget that a promise could be a number of things:

• A Google AdWords Ad for your website
• A Google hit returned for a keyword from one of your pages
• Your book cover
• Your URL
• Your autoresponder delivery schedule

These all promise something to the visitors who clicks on your ad, or opens your book, or types in your URL, etc.

The words in an AdWords ad promise to show something relevant when your visitors arrive at your site. Your URL (include any file/pathnames here) promises some content related to the words that it includes.

If you promise to do something via any of these paths and then don’t do it, you will disappoint your customers and they may not come back.

No one likes a broken promise.

Is your website design too complicated? Do you have too much technology? Or, is it easy to understand what your site is about and is it easy to use?

With all this web technology around competing for your attention its easy to get distracted by what you can put on your website, rather than what you should put on your website. These days it’s not hard to get some flash animation or even a soundtrack. But do these actually help your website? Do they help to attract and retain visitors? Do they help add lots of useful content so you’ll be indexed by Google and the other search engines?

Don’t get me wrong, some of the best websites are able to combine great technology with compelling content. They are also successful. For your website though, don’t be too distracted by these until you’ve made sure you’ve developed something that’s really useful for your visitors. They may be initially impressed by your flash intro (maybe) but it may not keep them coming back for more.

I was wandering around the National Gallery in London today and staring in wonder at the amazing works by Rembrandt, Monet and Da Vinci. What is it that makes these so special? After all, they are just pictures, aren’t they?

It struck me that one reason is that here you are viewing the original work. This makes a big difference. It doesn’t matter how many copies you’ve seen on postcards, in books or even online. When you see the original the effect is amazing. You know that this is the source of all the copies. This is the piece that the artist worked on in the first place. You know it’s been touched and looked at and admired by many thousands of people.

How does this relate to a website? I knew you’d ask.

The internet is great because it allows easy replication of content and distribution worldwide. This means that the internet is full of copies of original work. Think about it. Bloggers copy posts from other blogs (if they are kind they will link back to the original work). Writers take original content and change it (just a bit) and build their own site. The worst is when you claim credit for someone else’s work (you are a fake).

The problem here is that this is not adding much value and certainly not creating anything original. What happens when you find something on the web that is original? You take notice. You read it. You might contact the author. You might even spread the word about it. These are good things for website owners.

What can you create for your site that is truly original? It doesn’t have to be a Cannelleto or a Cezanne. Above all, don’t be a fake.

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]]> http://www.infinite42.com/blog/are-you-original-or-a-fake/feed 1 http://www.infinite42.com/blog/do-you-have-a-gourmet-website http://www.infinite42.com/blog/do-you-have-a-gourmet-website#comments Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:05:59 +0000 dr.richard http://www.infinite42.com/?p=16 There are a lot of parallels between great website design and gourmet cooking.

I enjoy cooking and I’ve been inspired many times by Gordon Ramsay. He has a passion for great food and amazing customer service. If you want to have a great website then have a think about these:

1. Great cooking starts with the best ingredients. For a website, if you have high quality images, well-written content and relevant links to your site then this is a good start
2. Michelin 3-Star restaurants use the freshest ingredients. Make sure your content is kept up-to-date and don’t allow it to go stale
3. 3-Star restaurants also show great consistency. Is your website consistent with itself and with your email messages and with your advertising and with your interaction with customers?
4. Great dishes are simple and use a balance of tastes that complement each other. Does this remind you of your site, or is it a random mix of ideas and technologies?
5. Successful chefs show amazing passion which comes through in the food that they serve. Is your passion evident in your site?
6. Successful restaurants have a clear theme and delight their customers so they spread the word and keep coming back for more. Does your site do this?

It’s easy to get distracted by fancy technology and quick schemes to grab visitors. Ultimately though you’ve got to ask whether this is helping you to have a great website which customers like and keep coming back to.

You can get yourself a 3-star website too.

There are a lot of blogs out there. Millions. Most start with a post or two and stop there. This is a great way to guarantee that your blog will get lost amongst the others. The key is to keep updating it and make those updates interesting, relevant and authentic. You also need to promote your blog by building links to and from other blogs and websites.

Remember that the content is key here. Keep updating it but make sure it’s the best you can do.

The page you spend most time developing, or

The page you spend the most time promoting, or

The page that loads when someone types www.yoursite.com, or

The page that people see first when they arrive at your site, or

The page with the highest PageRank, or

Your most popular page?

You might find that you get different answers for each of these. If so then you might not be making the most of your website. If a page is popular but doesn’t have much useful content, this can be improved. If visitors don’t arrive at the home page, you need to think about what they see first, and where they might go next. Make sure you don’t use up all of your best ideas and effort on the home page – other pages can be just as important.