The book Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff was a smash hit when published as it appealed to peoples sensibilities with its premise that life was too short to worry about the unimportant items. I must admit I purchased a copy and the short pithy one page stories appealed to me. People like quick digestible fixes. Attention spans are down the toilet these days as people Tweet, Facebook and send SMS to communicate with each other. Look at your email inbox and you will see that most messages are just 2-3 lines. My email inbox 5-6 years ago was full of much longer emails than it is today. People spent more time writing and composing email to get a better message across then. How many times have you had a long drawn out email discussion purely because the initial email didn’t have all the facts which eventually came out through probing and multiple iterations? A lot I bet.
Unfortunately the same approach applies for SEO. Clients look for the quick fast fix. They think that some with some backlinks, a few extra pages and they can just wait for the great keyword ranking to appear. However this cannot be applied to on page optimization. Too many people look beyond the small stuff for their site when seeking that precious ranking on Google or other search engines. When I tell clients that they should write good content, focus on their title tags and work the simple basic stuff such as alt tags for images their eyes glaze over in most cases as they think that there is a one big hammer that can be used to grant them instant ranking for competitive keywords. They are not prepared to sweat the small stuff! Here are some examples of the small stuff that I tell people to focus on for their site that does not require huge expertise and will help their site greatly in the long run. It is unique to on page and with a regular posting schedule will benefit their site search rankings, their existing customers and even their own product and business knowledge.
Make Your Content Sweat
Lazy content writing is everywhere on the internet. It is so attractive to hammer out 200-300 words on your business and submit is as a site page and hope it will benefit the site. You have got to work your content and make it come off the track sweating like a pig. Remember when you did term papers in school and the hours that you put in to create this content. Why did you put such an effort in? If my own memory serves me correctly (yes I was one of those students!) it was to get a good grade and also to impress my teacher. I bet you often spent a week or more writing those 2-3 pages of content and your bedroom floor was covered in the different drafts.
You should apply the same approach to any page of content that you produce. You hope and expect that your web pages will be viewed by hundreds and perhaps thousands of people. It needs to be attractive to this audience and stimulate them or they won’t bother staying to read it. If you even want some natural linking then it needs to be outstanding A+ work.
Let’s take a fictional example. Let’s say you want to create some content for Sports Bars in Boston (it’s my post so I can choose the topic OK!). It would be easy to write the lazy copy and just list the top 10 sports bars and a short piece of text on each with their contact details and perhaps a picture of each. This is the lazy approach and won’t be of benefit to the reader. For optimal content you could start with the following.
- Contact each sports bar and interview the owner over the phone. Ask them to send you a short biography of themselves and how the bar evolved. Ask them for a picture of them and the team that work there and their names if they are open to this.
- Visit the bar and interview the customers and even video them telling you what they like about the bar. If you can’t do it yourself ask the bar owner to do this with a simple smartphone. Post the video on the site and have one for each bar.
- Do a review of one of their bar snacks or their specialty beers.
- All of these bars have T-Shirts. Invite people to post images of places in the world or events where they wore those T-Shirts. Have a prize for the funniest or most unusual location.
- Invite reviews of the bar from the clientele on a review page
Now I literally brain dumped these topics here. There are probably 10 other items that could be added to creating a sweaty bar page. You may say “But that’s a ton of work it will take me ages….” Yes it will take time and effort but good well written content is what search engines and visitors like. I didn’t make this up. Matt Cutts from Google is constantly saying this. It is a pillar of search engine optimisation to have this good content.
Bring Your Content to the Gym Regularly
To get fit you need to work out regularly. Although the fitness magazines say you can get ripped in 30 days this may be the case but if you don’t continue with the workout you will be back to square one 30 days later. The same applies to your content. It needs to be worked out regularly and sweat. Content goes stale easily. Situations change and the content may not be relevant. In the example above the owner may change the menu item that you reviewed or some of the staff may leave and you could put in a new piece welcoming this new person on the page or site.
Keeping an editing and update schedule makes sense. It shouldn’t consume a lot of time but if you decide to update or check 10 pages per week and update a few of these then this sensible update plan will yield benefits.
Have the Smelliest Sweatiest Shirt in the Gym
The say the top athletes and sportsmen get their through 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. To go that extra mile you need to become fanatical about the subject. Read and scour the market for new information on the subject and write and publish about the topic. Again don’t just go the lazy route and do a quick search on the topic. Dig deep into the topic and find information that may be in the common domain at the moment. In the above example for instance you could do the following.
- Contact city hall and ask them for copies of the licensing laws for sports bars and bars in general. Write about this topic.
- Find out where the first sports bar in Boston was. See if any of the staff are still around. Get their thoughts about how things have changed.
- Contact the Boston Celtics, Bruins and New England Patriots press offices and tell them what you are doing and ask them if any of the players have favorite sports bars and can you do an interview. Hey it mightn’t work out but if it doesn’t you can still write about the experience. Tell the respective press offices what you are doing and they might be more receptive.
- Create a Google Map of every single sports bar in Boston. It may take a while but worthwhile. Some stag party may find it extremely useful!
Keep Your Equipment Clean and in Working Order
You need to keep the site sharp and in shape. Once you have the above content available it is important to make sure that it works well. Revisit the SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide and read it from start to finish. I bet you thought that you weren’t a beginner, right? You are always a beginner I think. I go back to this regularly and make sure that I am keeping to the basic premises. Check your title tags, make sure images have good Alt Text. Develop your own must-have list of items that every page must have before it is published.
Rest
Rest is important in keeping fit as well and you should walk away from your content for a few days or a week to give you time to look at it with a clear set of eyes. Often when I am writing something I get tunnel vision and can’t see problems with my copy. So stepping back from it makes sense. When you revisit after a break a point can jump out at you that you didn’t spot before.
Show off the Body
Finally when you are happy with the body (of content boom boom) you can show it off. Why not plug it in social media and through your various distribution methods, get it out there and get more feedback. Flex that new body and be proud of it.
