Content strategies are critical for Web success, especially SEO and as such – it’s a valuable commodity. In many organizations, it can be difficult to get content produced, so it’s very important to get as much mileage as possible from every piece of content that you develop. The ultimate goal is to get your content “out there” and generate as much awareness as you can for the piece, which will drive targeted visits, links, “mentions” on social media, etc.

Here’s some tips for getting extra mileage out of your unique content.

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“The best proof of love is trust.” ~ Joyce Brothers

Dr. Joyce Brothers doesn’t know it, but she may as well as add “Wise Search Engine Marketer” along with her already well-known expertise in Psychology to her portfolio. This quote can pertain to how search engines view your content; if they “trust” your content, you’ll see their love reflect in the form of search engine rankings.

“I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk.”

Taking calculated risks is something that should be done in life and with your website. Like what Dr. Brothers says: if you can handle what could result to be “the worst”, then you ought to take the risk. Perhaps this risk is creating a piece of content that might be a little different than the “corporate norm” that you have been producing which might help you attract some visits and links to your website. Or maybe it’s setting up a social media marketing campaign for your company and becoming as transparent as possible. If you can take the worst, take the risk.

“The world at large does not judge us by who we are and what we know; it judges us by what we have.”

You might as well replace “world at large” with “Google” in this quote: the Google does not judge your website by who authors it and what that author knows; the Google judges your website by the content that you have on it. That’s why having unique and compelling content on your website is so important. You may know the Seattle Mariners’ history from club creation to today, from the first-ever starting line-up to the category leaders in club history, but Google doesn’t care if you don’t have it on your website.

“When we lived within six blocks, Aunt Sarah or Aunt Mary knew all about the boy who you were having this blind date or this first date with. So we knew all about the boy.”

Well… can’t certainly tie this in to anything regarding SEM… so…

“When you come right down to it, the secret of having it all is loving it all.”

Love your content and you’ll begin to see it pay off in spades. Love what you’re writing about and love what you’re doing. As search engine marketers, we can’t help you love your content… we can only help you get it in a position where search engines can trust it (love it as well) and Internet users can judge it.

I provided a guest post NWSEM’s blog where I talk about how we use the concept of building authority to shape how we work on clients & campaigns. The article highlights how this approach applies to the interplay between SEO, PPC & Social Media and features some interesting stats.

Attain SEM Success Through Authority

“The driving principles of SEO have always been content & authority (in the form of links). Since Google came around – this principle has never changed even as the tactics have. As the search results page has gotten more competitive, and social media has started shedding light on a brand’s strengths and flaws – it has become more important and difficult to cut through the noise and capture attention. Improving the perception of your brand as an authority can help you do this.”

Read the rest of the article on the NWSEM Blog

I checked the Major League Soccer (MLS) website on Saturday to see the fixtures for the weekend (because I’m a soccer nut) and noticed that they were announcing a new website redesign. I found it kind of funny that they were announcing this with the website I was on being the exact same. I soon discovered that they had their site redesign on another URL entirely… which isn’t the best way of doing things.

In any case, I thought I’d run down some of the best practices for a website redesign and see where the new MLSSoccer.com website stood in my opinion. After going through some of the bigger issues and evaluating the new website, I would like to give a yellow card for the MLS’s effort for their website redesign:

Here’s why the new MLS website deserves a yellow card for their site redesign:

1. Announcing a website redesign on their old URL that tells users to go to a new URL. I wouldn’t approach a website redesign this way. I’m also hoping that in due time, the MLS web team makes the switch to the new MLSSoccer.com domain permanent by assigning 301 redirects from old URLs to their corresponding new URLs.
2. Their old website has some “official” branding (such as, on the top, the “official site of Major League Soccer”). I don’t see anything like that on the redesign.
3. I’m seeing some weird 301 redirect issues. If I type in “mlsnet.com” in my browser bar, I go to the old site. If I type in “www.mlsnet.com” in my browser bar, I go to the new site. Very odd and can be confusing to site visitors.
4. The new site’s custom 404 error page is a bit lacking (please click this link so we can get this URL in their top content report for Google Analytics). Ideally, especially with a site redesign situation, you would want to have a mini-sitemap here for users to be able to quickly get to their wanted destination.

If I were in the MLS web team’s shoes (err, cleats), I would have made the switch from the old MLSnet.com website to the MLSSoccer.com one with 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new before the first Matchday in the regular season. That being said, the MLS web team did a good job with the new website with how SEO-friendly it is: there are lots of text headlines, a MUCH cleaner URL structure and more. In fact, I like it a lot better than the old website. But they could be doing a much better job on the website redesign launch than what they’ve done now.

And lastly, my one sentence of actual footy analysis:

Great action in the first weekend, some fun games (and goals) to watch, tough for the expansion Philly team to go into Seattle for their first game and even more so with the red card and MLS players need to work a bit on their first touch.

These tips are intended solely for programming developers and not copywriters, site architects or graphic designers. We will be releasing SEO tips to help guide those individuals in future posts. If you are looking for some good e-commerce tips you can read Ian Lurie’s post 24 E-commerce development tips.

Here we go…

1. Make sure every page within a website possesses the functionality for customized page titles and meta descriptions or at the very least (for larger sites) the ability to assign unique business rules to these fields.
2. Each page should contain at least a single H1 header and if plausible, corresponding H2, H3, etc… headers as well. There should only be a single H1 per page which acts as the “title” for that page. The corresponding H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6 tags should be used to identify related sub-pages. Linking to the sub-pages via the headers is recommended.
3. Images on the website should possess a customizable alt tag field especially if that image is being linked to another page. As any developer knows, the alt tag field is used to describe what an image is depicting but it also acts as the anchor text (of sorts) for hyperlinked images so consult with whoever is responsible for optimizing the site to ensure the alt tags are search term enriched.
4. Choose a primary domain and apply 301 redirects (a permanent redirect) to all other domains and point them to the primary domain. 302 redirects (a temporary redirect) will not pass along any search engine value nor will any other type of redirect.
5. For redesigns or overhauls apply 301 redirects for every moved sub page to tell search engines that “this page has permanently moved here”. When redirecting sub pages make sure to point them to their replacement page and not the homepage. The only time you want to point a sub page to the homepage is when it no longer exists.
6. Each page should be named after the targeted search term assigned to represent it (or at least a portion of the term) and should be displayed that way within the URL.
7. URL’s should be structured in a way where there are multiple tiers. Websites with depth are seen by search engines as more relevant (if they are properly optimized) because it shows them that there is a wealth of supporting content on a particular subject matter.
8. The website should possess an auto-populated site map that is less than 150 links and is linked to from every page on the site. If there is a need to represent more than 150 links simply create a second site map page or as many pages needed to encompass the entire site. A quick note, larger sites with a lot of authority (link juice) and history can get away with simply linking to the high level landing pages.
9. Reference CSS and JavaScript code through an include file. This will lower the page size, move the relevant body copy further up the page and lessen the chances of search engine spiders receiving an error.
10. Create a customized 404-Error page that closely resembles the site map.
11. Every page should posses a single dedicated URL no matter how many different ways there are to navigate to the page or how many places the page appears.
12. Ensure that there are not any broken links within the site.
13. Assign the nofollow attribute to links that point to “irrelevant” pages like the privacy policy, terms of use, etc… You may want to consult with whoever is responsible for optimizing the site.
14. Create a robots.txt file and block search engine spiders from indexing pages not meant to be visible in search results such as the shopping cart. THIS ALSO INCLUDES STAGING SITES.
15. Do not use iFrames to display any information meant to be spidered and indexed by search engines.
16. For all of you dot net nukers, reduce your Viewstate code.
17. Place analytical script just above the closing body tag.
18. Direct users to a “thank you” page after they perform a conversion on the site.
19. Hook up separate RSS feeds for press releases, blog posts, articles, etc… Basically any content that can and should be syndicated.
20. Create xml feeds for sites that sell products, real estate or anything that can be uploaded to Google’s Merchant Center and related portals.

Obviously there’s more so what’s missing? Share additional SEO development tips below.