Net Results
Helping your business succeed online.
Published by nrichmedia (www.nrichmedia.com)
Printable
PDF Version
Volume 4, Issue 3 – May 2008
In This Issue
Welcome
Seems we, out here on Vancouver Island, just got a tease of summer – three days of very warm, sunny weather. I finally brought out the shorts and put the long sleeve shirts away for the year. But now, looking out my office window, it’s cloudy, windy, and much cooled down. Funny how quickly things change, isn’t it?
You’re just waiting for the segue, aren’t you?
Alright, here it is… Just like the weather, the Internet is always changing – sometimes very rapidly. The better web sites are in a constant state of flux. If they weren’t, they’d become stale very quickly and wouldn’t be the top sites that they are. In this issue’s featured article, we’re going to talk about how you can apply that fact to your web site.
Enjoy (both the weather and the newsletter).
Featured Article: The Benefits of Articles on Your Site
So, you’ve got your web site all designed and produced and up on the Net. Bring on the new clients! Aside from sitting back and booking new appointments or shipping out your environmentally friendly products, you’re done, right? Well… no.
Oh, right, maybe do a little marketing of the site, get some incoming links, let the world know your site’s out there, and then you can start getting results. That’s it, now, right? Uh, not quite.
Okay, enough of this imaginary two-person conversation.
Yes, it may be true that you can take a bit of a break and rest on your (or your web designer’s) laurels for a short while, but if you want your web site to really, you need to think about the long term. Keep in mind that on the Web the “long term” may only be a few years. If you haven’t touched your site in that time, it will have gotten very stale and you’ll probably have witnessed the number of visitors to your site decreasing and the results diminishing by the week.
If you want people to return to your site on a regular basis and for Google and other search engines to consider your site worthy, you’ll need to update its content, at the very least, every three months. That should be the bare minimum.
It may not be easy or practical to change the content on the existing pages of your site very often. But just about every business or organization, large or small, can publish articles on its web site on a regular basis – whether that’s every day, week, month, or quarter. There’s always something you can write about that will be of interest to your target audience.
Not only does issuing articles give your clients (and potential clients) a reason to come back to your site on a regular basis, but each article increases your site’s overall amount of content. And, if the topics are varied enough, each time you publish an article on your site, that will be one (or more than one) new way for Google to find your site.
Let’s say you have an environmentally friendly building company. If done properly, your site should get picked up by the search engines for terms such as “environmentally friendly building,” “environmentally friendly architecture,” “green building,” (plus your geographic region) and so on.
That’s all good. But, what about industry- or region- specific issues? Your site may not be ranking highly for as many of these as it can. Especially if there are new issues popping up all the time. That’s where articles come in handy.
Sticking with our example, perhaps one month you can write about new solar panel technology. If written and linked well, this article may ranked highly by Google for search terms such as “solar panels,” “using solar energy in buildings,” etc. Since your article focuses on solar panels in particular, it should (all other things being equal) have a much better chance of ranking high than another site that simply mentions solar energy among many items on a page. Google will see that your article page offers specific information about the topic of solar panels used in building.
The same sort of idea is true if your target audience is, say, on Vancouver Island, and you write an article about building specifically in harmony with Vancouver Island’s ecology. Doing so would potentially get your site ranked well for search terms such as “eco-friendly building Vancouver Island” or “Vancouver Island ecologically sound houses” or “green architecture for Vancouver Island.”
It may seem like a chore to come up with new ideas and write on a regular basis. However, you’ll soon see that the possibilities are endless. Just think of information that you would find useful or interesting if you were a customer. Or make a list of common questions that your clients ask.
As for finding the time to write, just commit to setting aside a specific, regular time. For example, if you decide that you’re going to put out a new article every month, why not designate the last Friday morning of the preceding month to write it? Or whatever works with your schedule. Once you make the commitment it’s not too difficult to stick with it. In time, the effort will pay off with more traffic to your site, more repeat traffic, and, ultimately, more business.
* * * * *
Want more valuable information like this to help your socially responsible
business become an online success and get the results you've been looking
for? Subscribe to Net Results, our FREE
quarterly newsletter by filling in the form at the top left of this
page.
About nrichmedia
nrichmedia creates innovative and unique web sites and other multimedia
for ethical and socially responsible businesses and organizations.
We also offer green web hosting, web site maintenance, CD-ROM production,
and more.
nrichmedia was founded by Nathaniel Richman in 2000. Nathaniel graduated
from the Vancouver Film School with a Certificate of Recommendation
in Multimedia Studies in 1997 and has been working in the web design
and new media industry ever since. He previously received a Bachelor
of Mathematics degree (Honours Actuarial Science) from the University
of Waterloo and worked in the pension consulting industry.
Nathaniel works with other designers and programmers, according to the
needs of the project, to provide the client with the most professionally
designed web site and other marketing material as possible.
"Nathaniel came highly recommended and I am very pleased with the way he was able to put together a website that reflects who I am personally and professionally. He listened to me and could take some very basic and simple ideas I had and transform these into a Website design that totally resonates with me. I appreciate the energy, effort, and creativity that put all that I had written into a crisp, clean, and professional web page design. Something that I could never do on my own and well worth the investment. I would recommend Nathaniel to anyone wanting a professional looking website."
- Klaus Klein, Parent and Teen Counsellor
To learn more about nrichmedia’s services, view
our online portfolio, and read glowing
testimonials from many satisfied clients, please visit www.nrichmedia.com.
Green Web Hosting
nrichmedia is pleased to be offering green web hosting services. Our
standard package includes 500MB of disk space (which is usually way
more than most small to medium sized businesses require), email and
webmail accounts, and web statistics which allow you to track how many
visitors there are to your site, where they come from, what search
terms they used to find your site, etc.
What makes our web hosting green? A few things, really:
- Our hosting is shared on powerful, energy
efficient servers so the amount of electricity we use is minimized. We maintain our
own dedicated environment within these servers so that we have full
control over performance and security.
- The electricity used by the servers comes from hydropower, which,
although not ideal, is one of the more environmentally
friendly means
of power generation.
- We’ve purchased wind power certificates to offset the
amount of electricity that we do use. Wind power is, of course, a natural, clean, and abundant energy source with
little or no negative impact on the environment.
If you would like to switch to nrichmedia’s green web hosting,
please click here for details.
Charitable Causes
nrichmedia donates 5% of proceeds on all projects of $500 and above
to charitable organizations. We are pleased to have supported and continue
to support several worthy causes. To see a list of the organizations
we support, please visit www.nrichmedia.com/causes.htm.
Archives
To view previous editions of Net Results, visit www.nrichmedia.com/archives.htm.
Pass it on and Enjoy
Please feel free to pass this newsletter on to anyone who might find
it useful.
Want more valuable information like this to help your socially responsible
business become an online success and get the results you've been looking
for? Subscribe to Net Results, our FREE
quarterly newsletter by filling in the form at the top left of this
page.
Printable
PDF Version
 nrichmedia
is located in Courtenay (in the Comox Valley, on Vancouver Island),
British Columbia, Canada, and thinks and works globally! Thanks
to the Internet, we're able to create web sites and other multimedia
for clients all over the world. You can contact us by
or by telephone, at 250.871.7424.
|
