Just a few years back, most people would tell you that you want to create your own hub of information and keep it private, safe and hidden for only your visitors to check out.  These days though, to be discovered – you sometimes have to leave your confines and go out where the people are gathering. 

Take Your Content to the People

You want to use content aggregation websites, like YouTube an an example, and take your content there for the people to see.  Rather than diving people to your home, you are taking your content and bringing it to where the people are.  Lets say you made your own movie. Older promoters and marketing gurus might say your best way of getting noticed would be to get people to come to you to see the movie.  In modern times – you have to take the content to the people. A place like YouTube is a comfort zone for people, where they like to spend their time and they know what they are getting.  If you can get your content nested in there, it could mean you have a better chance of getting noticed.

Take your content out to as man content aggregation sites as possible.  If you are promoting a video or commercial, YouTube is the perfect place to make sure it is uploaded.  People use YouTube to search for videos – so you want to make sure your video is there too.  In turn, you are creating one more gateway for people to come in and notice you and your own domain, projects and more.

Search engine optimization is another form of marketing, you you might not have thought was marketing before.  SEO, at it’s core, is the process of improving visibility of a website in search engines by learning what works and what doesn’t work – as far as website content goes. Your website is one of the most important ways you can reach new eyeballs or clients, so lets learn more about how you can do so more successfully. 

Here are my top ten marketing search engine optimization tweaks you should make to your layout.

1. Make sure you setup a XML sitemap and get it submitted to Google, Bing and Yahoo.  This gives each of these big search engines a roadmap as to what you want indexed, and how important each webpage is.
2. Make sure that each page has a unique set of meta tags and a unique title too.  You want these details to reflect the content of the webpage you are looking at.
3. Find other websites that share content like yours, and see what you can do to get links coming from their website to yours.  You might offer a link exchange, or something more.  Use your imagination.
4. Create a website that is easy to use.  This will do more to build up your popularity with people, and in turn could result in more links back to your website content.
5. Do not be afraid to not index certain pages that might be seen by Google ad duplicate content.  For example, on my own websites I never ask for the search engines to index any of the category pages.  It is much more valuable if they index each story or post I write.
6. Pay attention to your website statistics.  You can use the statistics package your website hosting came with, or another tool like Google Analytics to quickly see what your popular pages are.  Once you see the popular pages, start to check out the keywords and sources of traffic – so you can try to duplicate this same thing that made that webpage popular again.
7. Use the headline tag hierarchy correctly.  When writing up a webpage, make sure the h1 tag goes at the top, h2 is next, and then h3 and so forth if you need them.  Not only does this make your webpage more usable by the reader – search engines also like it when you correctly divide your content up using these HTML tags.
8. Do not get too worked up over what a website’s Google PageRank is.  It is only one small part in how Google ranks websites and lists them in the search engine results.  Just because website has a high PageRank number, that does not mean it will get listed first in the search engine results.
9. Write excellent content.  This one might seem like a no brainer, but you would be amazed by the number of people who come to me with one sentence on a webpage and then ask me why they are not getting listed in search engine results. Search engines love content – feed it to them.
10. Give people something they want to link back to.  Some people might say link baiting is bad, but in all honesty it is just excellent content that people want to share. 

One more thing you should remember is that there is no perfect science when it comes to optimizing your website content for the search engines.  It is much more a process of trial and error.  These basic tips though should help you set the foundation for a great website you can use to market your ideas, products or whatever else you have to market to the public.

This one took me a little while to figure out, but finally found the right way and the quickest steps on how to get this done. I love Google Analytics more so than some of the other web site statistic scripts out there.

Many people get it installed and don’t know what to do next. This should be a good stepping stone in how to familiarize yourself with it.

First, login to Google Analytics, and click on the web site in question’s profile. You just need to click “View Reports” next to the domain you wish to find the popular links for. Next, scroll down the page till you find where it says Content Overview. This shows your pages from most popular to least popular.

Here you only see five, but there is a little “view report” link in this box too. Click it. You can also get to the same place by navigating in your left sidebar to Content and then click on Overview. Here is, well an overview of all your content settings. Now on the left side of the page, under “Overview” click where it says “Top Content”.

Here you have it, your most popular or top content on your web site. By default it should show you the top ten, but you can bump that number up around the bottom of the chart where is says “Show rows:”. To change the date range that you are pulling the content from, be sure to edit the time line you see at the top of the web page.

So there you have the best way to pull up your most popular content on your web site via Google Analytics. If you have any other how to questions with this great tool, send ‘em my way and maybe I can turn this into a series of helpful posts.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am totally happy with WordPress – but, there are several cool alternatives that might be worth checking out for your next web project.

Drupal – Drupal is a little more of a WordPress on steroids. Lots of goodies and better membership system in place too.

Nucleus CMS – Possibly the best WordPress alternative out there. Gives you all the same features, add-ons, plugins and support.

Textpattern – Flexable and open source blogging solution – much of the same WordPress look and feel.

Serendipity – This is a PHP-powered weblog application which gives the user an easy way to maintain a weblog or even a complete homepage.

Joomla – Like Drupal, might be too feature rich for the casual blogging fan – but a good engine for in depth web sites or basic blogs.

LifeType – A “state of the art blogging solution” is how LifeType describes themselves.

Habari – Looking at more blogging script alternatives, I ran across one that promises to be, “next-generation blogging.”.  I don’t even know what that means, but I do have to admit Habari has a bright future in t-shirt slogans if nothing else.

Wikiblog – This one tries to mix the blogging and wiki sides of things into an interesting mashup of content creation.

eggblog – While a little light on documentation, Eggblog looks to be a nice alternative blogging script for those of you who might not want to follow the fold and use WordPress or one of the other more popular solutions out there.

There you have it – nine other tools you can use to get your content published and your articles out there to the world. Have one I missed?

If nobody fights back against these guys, they win and we all have to pay the price for it. I recently found one web site that will go un-named (no reason to give these guys free press) stealing content from my podcast, WebHostingShow.com. Here is the un-edited version of his responses. I sent the first e-mail asking for the content to removed and for him to respond within five days or less.

Not totally out of the question – right? Here is his reply:

Hello Mr. Keller, we are not using site webhostingshow.com for these news, than using rss feeds from domaintools.com. And under every message there is your name and your email – notice to people that YOU have written those texts. So, please see with domaintools.com are using their rss feeds are legal or not.

Oh so they are saying it’s DomainTools.com that is stealing my content – not them. Hu? Yeah didn’t make much sense to me either – the DomainTools.com folks are a great team of people, not like this idiot who can’t even spell my name correctly. I replied trying to clarify, here is the next response:

Mr Keeler, we are using material that domaintools.com provides via rss feeds for free. So I do not see any copyright abuse. If you think this material is copyrighted, please contact domaintools.com first. If they remove your blogs from their site, they will be automatically removed from our site, too.

Oh so all content published via RSS feeds are free for the taking, happy I got that cleared up.. no wait, it is still my copyrighted material I did not give him permission to post. That is the fact plain and simple – so yet again I try to explain the situation and ask for some clarification.

Wish I could say this story had a happy ending, but afraid thus far it is not looking that way.

• Should You Hire A Copywriter?
• Navigation Menus on Left or Right?
• Content Ideas and Inspiration
• Using MySpace to Build a Cult
• WordPress Theme Generator

Know of any other Web development topics, links or questions you’d like to see me cover? Send them my way and I’ll do my best to get it done.

Mitch at Lunartics asks “How do you keep your site content fresh and manageable?” My answer to that question is “You don’t!” In the ideal situation, your community will do this for you. They’ll post new articles (which may require your editing/approval), submit tips for blog entries, start interesting discussions on your forums, dig up coupons and deals to share with your other readers, etc.

The Social Bubble Web 2.0 Crowd

I don’t think that should always be the case though. There are situations where a public or social driven Web site is good. Just look at Digg.com. The only problem is Digg is only good if you don’t bother to read the comments.

Once you get into reading all the Digg comments on a story you feel like you are back in junior high school.

“This so blowz!”

“This story is so a dupe of one like I posted…”

It ain’t exactly Shakespeare folks! Not all of them are bad, but after reading a few comments down from just about any story I always feel just a little stupider inside.

The Mindtank of Multiple Folks Blogging (or Group Blogs)

Another section of the content culture I have to say I do like is the group blogs like Lifehacker and the many Lockergnome blogs. Although Lockergnome seems to be more watered down these days – I think it still belongs in the worthy mentions camp.

The One Man Showcase

I think there is still a place though for a one man act though. Why? You get to know the person more. It is a much more personal and enjoyable experience when you can read one really good writer in comparison with twenty five typing monkeys.

All three can be enjoyable and each have their place in the Online world. As a man who has many one man acts – I can only hope what I do does not become a lost art anytime soon. Which is your favorite?

I ran across a Web site that was reposting content word for word from Firefox Facts.

Now I have seen maybe a post here or there taken from one of my blogs – that I can live with. Even if they are spam blogs – I can’t go around and fight every single one of them. This one though just made me mad. So what did I do?

Well first I contacted the Web site owner after doing a whois search on the domain name in question. That didn’t end up being too fruitful. After that I contacted his Web host and his Web host’s data center. Did that work? Yep.

As of right now the stolen content is off the Web and I feel good about getting these folks shut down. Now yes, they could go to another Web host and start all over again – that is the bad thing about these types of setups. I’ll be keeping an eye on them though. The lessoned to be learned here is do not steal my content! This guy picked the wrong geek to mess with.

If you want to read more about how you can protect your content, I would suggest checking this post out from Lorelle on WordPress:

+ Applaud Those Who Warn You: Your Blog’s Content Is Being Stolen

Updated – Well it wasn’t The Planet that took them down. Apparently The Planet is happy to have them. Here is the response I got from their abuse team:

To Whom It May Concern:

Please note that below-referenced copyright infringement notice does not substantially comply with the required notification elements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (“DMCA”). Please note that we have not passed on the substantive merits of your claim.

So The Planet won’t take down a splogger or could it be since they were already taken down they can’t really do anything about it?

One thing that I have not done in a while is an interview with somebody. In fact, I think it has possibly been a year or longer since I posted one on any of my Web sites I run.

Well, that is all about to change – but I need your help. I want to write and post up a few interviews (maybe weekly, every two weeks, monthly) right here on Mitchelaneous.com.

So I have the drive, the inspiration and the willingness to get this done. What am I missing? I need somebody to talk to. You see that is where you come into the picture.

I don’t care if you are Bob Parsons from Go Daddy or Jimmy down the street with his new Web project. As long as you have something to say and it is somewhat related to the Web development and Web hosting world I would like to talk with you.

Just drop me an E-mail and let me know what you do and your ideas and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Now some might say I go a little overboard when I criticize the Web Host Industry Review, but that is because I would like to see them get better. Anything I have said has not been really meant to be taken in a mean spirited way. I just think from time to time they could do better – and it is nice to see that they have come through with that via the new WHIR Blogs.

So I might be the first to poke them with a sharp stick – but I will also offer them a pat on the back when I see something that I like. Keep up the good work Liam!