Optimize your content in the dead of winter

January 31, 2008 by  

So this is a good example of how things evolve for a solopreneur. A few weeks ago, in response to some inquiries I had about the complexity of a generalist’s web site architecture, I wrote a blog and included a concept diagram using my web sites as an example. Note: I’m a firm believer in never waiting for a client to test a new idea; I always use myself and RedShift as a case study.

Around that time I was trying to get a handle on SEO/SEM, not so much because I planned to delve into it in a big way, I just have that kind of “need to know” personality, and I like to learn fast, in an experiential way. So, by extending the web architecture map, I was able to quickly get a good “view” of how my collection of online content could be optimized for SEO/SEM, both natural search and paid advertising. Coincidentally, I was contacted to do a paid (confidential) interview on SEO/SEM strategy. I pay attention to these kinds of synchronicities. As solo’s, we often have little else to help us sense we’re on the right track.

Well here I am three weeks later, having invested a great deal of time and effort, and happy with the results so far. I’d describe what I’ve accomplished, as critical “prerequisites” to the actual mechanics of SEO/SEM. And there’s an inherent paradox to these prerequisites and optimization: the more content you have the worse it is and the more content you have the better it is. I’m a generalist offering a range of programs and services, so I have a quite a bit of content. So it was a big job. But without depth of content, the opportunities for SEO/SEM are limited or non-existent. My #1 recommendation: content is king, create often, think iteration, not perfection.

The following broadly summarize my experience completing the prerequisites, although there was a lot of additional detail work.

1. Plenty of my content had to be written, re-written, cleaned up, tightened up and re-organized. There’s no shortcut; its just a lot of hard writing work.

2. My landing pages were not good, heinous actually, and what I expected them to do (i.e. conversion goals) was pretty ridiculous. They needed major re-work and re-thinking, but the writing was not so difficult and the concept diagrams provided a good guide.

3. Links matter, and I tripled mine by better linking all my web content assets together.

4. As the optimization work progressed, things that did not integrate tended to jump out. Some needed to be trashed, some needed to be re-grouped, some need to be re-placed. This was fairly major, affecting the programs and services that I offer. They were weaknesses that I knew existed but had pretty much ignored. I think making the changes was easier as part of the optimization prerequisites process.

So a colleague was shocked when I told him that I’d still not determined that small professional service providers with optimized content could get to the top of search rankings, or if paid search ads even made sense for solo psf’s. But you want to have the option because the potential for a more even playing field is still an unknown. An even more important, although unexpected result, is a body of content that’s now aligned with my business purpose and business model. And even better than that, I have new content, frameworks and programs to offer, based on what I’ve learned and the experience I’ve gained.

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Filed under: alignment, Belief, career, Consciousness, Creativity, going solo, integral, Natural influence, SEO/SEM, shift
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