Blogs and your website
To improve your website, add a blog and focus visitor attention on fewer, more effective pages
Updated content is essential for website success. Unless content is frequently updated, there's no reason for visitors and search engines to return.
Yet, most websites are rarely updated! This is because updates usually require time and money:
- Time, to write and format updated content-or write, and then send, your words to someone else to format and add.
- Money, to pay someone else to format your message and post the new content.
Blogs eliminate design and formatting as obstacles to Internet success. Blogs make it possible for anyone with basic word processing skills to add new postings to their blog in just a few minutes-or less.
Equally important, blogs encourage conciseness and frequency. Blogs encourage you to think in terms of short "ideas" and "sentences," rather than long, detailed articles that-unfortunately-often, never get finished and/or added to your site. The best blogs often contain numerous, short postings. Blogging success is based on the frequency, relevance, and timeliness, of your postings, rather than their length.
Although sites like Blogger and TypePad make it easy to get started in blogs with minimal cost and time, these blogs may remain "orphaned" and not promote traffic to your "main" website.
True, you can add a feed from your blog hosted on Blogger and TypePad to your website, but this may not attract enough visitor and search engine traffic.
Here's a 3-step program to enhance the effectiveness of your existing website:
- Create a blog on your website, using software like Movable Type or WordPress.
- Eliminate unnecessary pages on your website. These include rarely visited pages or pages lacking a defined purpose.
- Focus on fine-tuning the remaining pages until they generate the desired response.
I recently discovered a website that offers a model of what a simple and practical website should be. The site is efficient, focused, and easily updated. You can visit it at www.fresh-books.com.
The site is the major marketing tool of Matt Wagner, a self-employed professional who is a busy literary agent. (Matt placed my latest book, Design to Sell.)
Matt's website is based on a single graphic, repeated at the top of each page. There are only five pages to the site.
The home page is simple and focused. It introduces Matt to first-time visitors, establishing his competence by describing some books he's recently represented. The home page, like the other pages of his site, only has to be updated once or twice a year, when Matt updates his client list and adds recently published books.
The blog is where the action is on Matt's site. Whenever appropriate, Matt adds a new post to his blog, using only as many words as necessary to educate and update his clients and prospects while maintaining his visibility in the publishing community.
In many cases, just a sentence or two-plus a link-is enough. In other cases, postings can go on for several paragraphs. Because blog postings are automatically categorized, visitors can easily access a wealth of information-far more, in fact, than sites with more pages, but less meaningful content!
If you have a large, complex site that isn't making a measurable contribution to your profits, perhaps you should consider adding a blog and simplifying the remaining pages. This helps you focus your time on:
- Creating short, frequent, relevant, blog postings that reflect your expertise and keep your website both visible and fresh.
- Promoting your blog and website through search engines and RSS feeds.
- Replacing inefficient pages with fewer, more efficient, pages fine-tuned to generate measurable, profitable, visitor response.
Your efforts will be rewarded with a simpler website you can update yourself, without cost; one that does a better job of attracting qualified traffic and creating profitable new business opportunities.
Contact roger@designtosellonline.com for assistance creating a focused and easy-to-update website for your business. Download the free resources at left and ask about future online training events.
Let me help you replace clutter with focus, and complexity with results.
|
