Winning Online

Web site technology and development is unbelievably important, especially when it comes to logically and logistically arranging sections, building content management systems, and making a site map that is intuitive and user-friendly in its navigation.  But — you can build the most beautiful shell with the most amazing looking Flash and the greatest bells and whistles, and without alluring and regularly-updated content, that Web site will be a one-off.  A one-visit wonder, if you will.  With the internet and your web site in many ways being defined by search, without filling that shell regularly and with a solid content stream, your site will fall by the way side.  Without direct traffic - which most of the time is predicated on name appeal or a viral effort behind it - no one will find your site.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, did it make a sound?

On the web, that answer typically is no.  Having an official Web site is integral to doing “business as usual” but to be found, to be relevant, and to be worthwhile, content - whether it be the written word, video, or audio - needs to be streaming through; People need a reason to come back to your site.  If it is just a brochure on the web, one visit is all that is needed and then abandonment will be your buzzword du jour. 

Our team was sitting with a client last week, discussing this very fact.  They have a very clean, nice, and user-friendly Web site.  But since the site launched, updates have been minimal.  So we tried to show them - through a typical Google search - why regular content updates and “movement”, even if it is the allusion of, coming from their Web site was important.  This is a client who in many ways is okay with not coming up prevalently in search (and is probably just fine with keeping a low profile publicly), but, those who might speak against what they are doing - as well as their competitors - come up on the first page of search.  For the search term we used to show them as an example - what you would assume a typical web user would search - they came up deep down on the second page of search.  This was keeping them almost completely out of their own conversation!  There was no real voice on their behalf.  Regular content is critical to their communications.  A dialogue is happening already and their Web site, while clean and pretty, is not there to balance the debate.

And while approval of regularly-updated, NEW content may not be feasible for this client, there are plenty of ways to get around that: By simply repurposing previously approved content, time-releasing large content pieces into smaller digestable updates on a schedule, or utilizing good materials from news sites or comparable industry web sites.  Before you know it, regular updates within that pretty shell can at least put them - and you - in the conversation.  

Search engines ostensibly determine Web site relevancy by the amount of updates you make and the amount of sites linking to you, as well as the targeted use of key words.  Two out of the three are in the administrator’s control.

When that tree falls, make sure people are there to hear it because a dialogue is always happening in this forest.