When you are creating a website you want people to come back to over and over again … and a site you want people to recommend to others, it is important that it has depth and  flavour.

The interwebs are full of vanilla sites that are little more than online brochures, they have no depth, no personality – no real reason for people to want to come back again.

Talking to a client today, I was suggesting that to really build loyal followers and increase visitors to their site, it needs to have more personality, and more insider information than something as relatively flavourless as a wikipedia page.

Sure wiki is a great resource, but how often do you refer to the same wikipedia page more than once?

No personality resides there, and you really don’t expect much in the way of fresh information to be added on a regular basis.

For your site to really draw the traffic, make sure it is fresh and flavourful, with plenty of zing to it!

(Next post, how to add some zing.)

Enjoy!

Karen

For a long time I have been thinking about starting a blog that provides a chance to share some of the things I have learned along the way about marketing and communications.

For many years (I started in PR early in 1987) I struggled with the label PR consultant – and even after being their parent for 17 and 19 years, my sons still don’t really understand what a PR person actually does.

That’s because when a PR person is really doing their job well, they are invisible. Ironic really – biggest marketing problem you could ever have – no visibility. But, the fact that the industry survives and thrives is largely due to referrals between those businesspeople in the know. And these days, a lot more profile due to the fact that bloggers are now being exposed to the PR practitioners skills.

So one of the interesting things about transferring my skills to the world of SEO and online content is that to an extent, SEO is really the same. If you are doing it well, it is seamless and invisible to the casual viewer.

Ultimately, great SEO helps website owners create awesome content that naturally draws lots and lots of viewers, keeps them in the site for a while, encourages them to come back, and inspires them to recommend your site to other people.

That’s what works.

So what do you do as a business owner if you don’t have that kind of website?

My suggestion is to spend some time with yourself (and your business partner/s, senior staff, stakeholders) really thinking about what it is that inspires you about your business. What keeps you in the game, what do you have to offer your clients or customers on a daily basis?

Once you have worked that out – and you might record it in pictures (of happy, excited customers perhaps), words, video or audio … then it’s time to really get creative about how to instil that inspirational content into your website.

If you are excited about what you have to offer, then other people will pick up on that if you communicate it well.

Thing is, communicating something exciting is hard to do with words alone.  The more ways you can convey that excitement via your website, the better.

• Think tangible.
• Think interactive.
• Think compelling images that are worth more than thousands of words.
• Then find the right web maestros to help you make that happen.

Get it done, then keep feeding it with your personal source of excitement and inspiration. Don’t just put it out there and forget about it. Treat your website like your children – it needs your care and attention every day.

Whew!

So that’s it.

My first post in Stream of Consciousness SEO … and it was!

Look forward to streaming some more with you very soon.

Karen