Step-by-step lessons

• Create valuable content to attract the search engines
• Create valuable content ...Part 2
• Build an attractive website to display the content

Other resources

Create valuable content ...Part 2

The value of content

In the previous lesson I described how Google is picky about the quality of content it displays. It makes sense for Google to be like that because its mantra has been, from the beginning: RELEVANCE. The good news for you is that doesn't apply just to the stuff that's already posted on the Web - it applies to all the new content too.

Googlebot is a robot program, also called a spider, that crawls the Web at lightning speed looking for fresh food: good content. If you, the economist, create a Web page that describes a recession better than anyone else has done before, that will be noted by Googlebot. When I teach this class to college students I always give them as an assignment the creation of a commercial website. The students have no problem with the programming or the artwork, but when it comes to content they're stumped. Usually, they have nothing to say! When I tell them that they have to write 4 or 5 pages of 500 words, it's like asking for the moon.

Leveraging your experience

You, the boomer, have accumulated tons of material on your subject of expertise. Probably, most of it is already in a digital format, in the form of Word documents or .PDF files or Excel spreadsheets. To Googlebot, that is a veritable goldmine waiting to be exploited. If the material is not already written down, you'll have to write it, counting on your knowledge and experience to do that.

My first suggestion: pick a subject you know a lot about and then popularize it. Don't say "Duh!". There are lots of webmasters who do the opposite - pick a subject that's popular with searchers and write content for it, even if they don't know a lot about the subject, hoping that they can bluff their way through.

Second suggestion: identify your intended audience. If you're an economist you're not writing for other economists. You're writing for a blue-collar baby boomer who's worried what a recession would mean for his retirement planning. If you're a car salesman you want to give an ordinary Joe insider tips on how to get the best possible deal on his car purchase and avoid buying a lemon.

Third suggestion: organize your material around keywords. The term "keywords" is crucial here. In Web jargon, it refers to the words that searchers will use to find content. You, the car salesman, have to think like the average customer searching for a good deal. Certainly words and phrases like "buying a car", "best deal", "tips", "negotiate" would be used. There are surely several others that you've heard countless times from your customers. Gather the material that you have, arrange it to fit and then write an article full of keywords, something like: "Insider tips on getting the best deal when buying a used car".

Keywords are crucial

Picking keywords is not always easy. You'll get better at it as you go along. And there are tools to help, which we'll get to shortly.

The key to keywords is to think like a searcher. I teach computer programming. When I write my websites I have to think like a student. And that's not easy! I know that the first criteria is that it must be "free". Then there are the common themes: "samples", "assignments", "examples", "source code", that apply to most pages on the site. Since most sites contain many pages, I can concentrate on more specific keywords like "math functions" deeper down.

Regardless of the subject, some keywords are fairly standard. Anything that has to do with training should use the words: "tutorial", "learn", "lesson". Almost any subject can offer: "tips", "techniques", "tricks" and "how to". The idea is to use your expert knowledge of the subject to provide useful information to a non-expert user. Whether it's "Finding a cheap hotel in Rome", "Buying a laptop computer" or "Filing my tax return", you want every user to your site to say: "This is great information! I've got to bookmark this page!". Just a word on some specifics. In the previous example, "Filing my tax return", I should be aware that there is a local component to that search - the searcher may be in the U.S., Canada or Australia. Whenever I cover a subject that may be specific to a region I should make sure that the name of the region figures prominently in my list of keywords.

Getting back to your source material, it may be possible to find things that match the keywords that you want to use. Even letters that you wrote explaining technical terms to a customer may be of use. And briefing notes to your boss would provide a great starting point. Any training sessions you delivered would be valuable.

Don't worry about the format of the data. We'll cover that in the next lesson. Most documents can be converted fairly easily to a Web-friendly format.

Disclaimer: in case the boomer reading this happens to be a corporate lawyer, I emphasize that these suggestions do not apply to proprietary data, trade secrets, insider trading tips, confessional conversations, or anything else that you are sworn to keep private.

Tools to help with keywords

To discover what people are searching for, start with a common word or phrase on your subject and look at the frequency of all related expressions that were used. There are several keyword search tools that are available. One of the best tools to use to do that is called Trellian Keyword Discovery. The free version is usually good enough to give the rookie webmaster a lot of information on the popularity of content keywords.

To use the tool, go to the site: Keyword Discovery.

For example, suppose that you want to write about "horoscopes".

For your site to become popular you have to make sure that you mention at least the first 3 or 4 expressions several times in the homepage. We'll cover the actual creation of content in the next lesson and I'll explain how often you're supposed to repeat the words. That's called keywords density.

Now, if you want to see what people are searching for on a day to day basis, there is a new tool out called: Google Trends. It's updated every day so that you always see what's Hot but, you can also compare themes over time to see what is gaining and losing in popularity.

It may not be of much use to a webmaster to track keywords on a daily basis but, if you can spot what's coming and you're quick to adjust, you may be able to cash-in on the next fad.

You can see Trends on the Google Labs site at: Google Trends. Have fun!