Welcome to this week's MIND Your Business Podcast, presented by the minds at MIND Development and Design and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hoasting. Thank you for listening to this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher...thank you for the magnanimous interest on Pinterest. Whiff Roasters in Lititz, PA...thank you for existing, so that I might have your coffee and chicory goodness keeping me caffeinated and blissfully coherent. You know, until I discovered Whiff...which is only about 4 blocks from my house...I hadn't had coffee and chicory since I lived in Louisiana. Nobody seems to take it seriously up here, but I'm glad Whiff does:) Mmmmmmm! Set it and FORGET it!!! How many of you remember that catch-phrase? If you do, you're probably as old as me...God bless ya. ONLY one of the most memorable infommercials of all time...Ron Popeil's Showtime Rotisserie! It's SHOWTIME, baby...we're saving money on movie tickets, breakin' open a bottle of wine and watching the flippin' chicken roasting through the magic window of this rotisserie that I bought off TV! They don't call me a babe magnet for nothin'! Set it and forget it. I had a great conversation with a client a couple of weeks ago where he used that catchphrase with regard to how NOT to maintain your website. Your website is not a basted chicken rotisserie, my friends. You CANNOT "set it and forget it." You MUST be active in the maintenence of your website from your CONSISTENT blog posting to your paying attention to updates to your platform, plugins, etc. It ALL matters, friends, and it's an ongoing process...you cannot "set it and forget it." Maybe 10 years ago, but not in any recent memory. Nope...your website is an interactive arena and more and more the search engines are looking for indicators that you give a damn beyond "how much money can this website make me?" Believe me, EVERYONE gets it...you're a business and you expect your website to generate traffic which equals revenue for your business. This is precisely WHY the act of getting found in search engine results has become such a dad-blamed jigsaw puzzle. Because EVERY IDEA that YOU can think of to take a shortcut and game the system and get a perceived advantage has already been thought of, exploited and now YOU have to listen to ME blathering about how to do it the right way. What a conundrum! Hey, I realize that the act of getting your website designed, developed and up and running is time consuming and a lot of you listening here don't even want to deal with it. So....to keep with that negative mentality, I'm going to start this week's podcast off with a short checklist of the things you DON'T want to be hyperfocused on. Because these are the VERY things you thought you could "set and forget" a few years ago. Like the great webmaster geniuses REO Speedwagon said, You Gotta keep on rollin'....roll with the changes. Some of the things you thought you could take care of and never worry about again need some attention because things really HAVE changed in the last 5-plus years. So, here are some things you need to stop worrying about...or at least stop spending ALL of your energy on them...and you're going to be surprised at some of them. 1) STOP placing all of your focus on keywords. Hey, keywords certainly still matter, but they are not the be-all-end-all that they used to be. Thanks to all of the spammers we rightfully LOATHE, keywords themselves don't matter anymore like they used to...which sounds like a contradiction...it's a mystery, inside a riddle, wrapped in an enigma. YES, you want to be ranked for specific keywords that people type in when they're searching for you, but there's more at work here as AUGMENTING key words serve to strengthen the validity of the keywords themselves. Yes, I know your head is spinning right now and really it should be...this is all unnecessary if everyone would just be honest. Truth is, if the word Barack Obama appears on a page on your website, the search engine bots also expect to see the word "president" or "American president" or something to that effect on the same page to back up the fact that his name doesn't appear on the page for any other reason than he is legitimately being written about. Sounds crazy, but think of all those pages you've seen where it's an obvious Ad-Sense page but an attention-getting set of keywords that has nothing to do with the page itself appears on the page for the sole purpose of getting illegitimate ranking. Yes, the search engines know better. Bottom line...give legitimate information and write for your readers and you'll be okay! And oh, by the way...GREAT article about this by Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable from May 18...he was writing regarding Roger Montti's thread at Webmaster World that approached some of these things and I just thought it was a nice opportunity to put all that info in one place for you and add a couple of my own suggestions... U Got The Look...that's what the legendary webmaster Prince once said. "U got the look...it musta took...a whole hour just to make up your face, baby." See, Prince UNDERSTOOD...before the Internet was even in our HANDS...he understood that it takes TIME to make your website look good for the search engine bots. And it's an ongoing process... 2) Second big tip...and it's actually a mash-up of two tips...STOP focusing on longtail phrases and STOP focusing on ranking for specific keyword phrases! Focus on longtail phrases Focus on ranking for specific keyword phrases The factors that he would go as far as to call deprecated, as in, no longer used by Google are: Keywords Focus on longtail phrases Focus on ranking for specific keyword phrases Lean code We don't like being told that we can't control something so crucial to the well-being and longevity of our business...of our respective LIVELIHOODS!! This is why soooo many businesses go into panic mode and, therefore, make themselves succeptible to the LIE that someone can guarantee to get you AT THE TOP of the search engines. And I mean for RELEVANT searches...NOT the crazy long-tail-keyword searches that some SEOs try to sell you on. BEWARE long tail keyword focus, friends...the more words involved in a keyword search string, the more opportunity there is for the person typing in those keywords to misspell things. No one likes to talk about it, but we have ALL seen what horrible spellers many of us are...thanks to Facebook, Twitter and social media in general. And people get DEFENSIVE about it. lol Like it or not, folks, bad spellers are looking for your business online, too. Anyway, remember that Google THEMSELVES tell you in their best practices that even THEY can't guarantee where you will rank if you do everything right. So...what does all of this have to do with Panda? Panda is all about what Google refers to as "thin content." Google wants to reward your site for NOT having thin content and penalize sites that have thin content. If you're wondering what "thin" content is...think about the sites you've visited and the articles you've read on those sites. Ever read an article that tells you absolutely NOTHING? It doesn't state a true opinion, doesn't give any REALLY useable advice...it just kind of takes 3 or 4 paragraphs to leave you EXACTLY where you were BEFORE you read it? Now, I'm not talking about reading RELEVANT advice that you happen to already know. I'm talking about NO advice and NO real opinion and NO real guidance. They're all over the place online and most of them are poorly written. And many people are PAYING to have them written. And then they're not paying attention to what's on their own site! You can't get true ENGAGEMENT with your audience if you're not offering value in your content. Again, this is where many businesses throw up their hands...or throw up in general...because after about a month these businesses realize that it's NOT such an easy task to come up with the goods week after week, month after month, year after year. So that's what I'mmma gonna help you with today. Planning out your content for the coming months and the whole year so there's a purposeful method to your madness. : Planning out your content so when Panda comes along with another update you can just go on with business as usual. Incidentally, the irony of this is that Panda Bears themselves have a diet that consists almost entirely of leaves and shoots from bamboo plants...which have VERY little nutritional value...so little in fact that Pandas have to eat between 12 and 38 kilograms of this stuff EVERY DAY! To put that in perspective, that's between 26 and 83 POUNDS!! So think of the Panda algorithm as going through the virtual bamboo that is Internet content and trying to find that small percentage of content that actually OFFERS INTELLECTUALLY NUTRITIOUS VALUE. That which we animals known as HUMANS might be likely to share for others' consumption, as well. 3 main tips I'm giving you today 1. Be aware of current news and events in your line of business or your field of work 2. Don't shy away from that which you believe your audience already knows and state an original opinion. 3. Be aware of seasonal effects on your business, as these bring some natural topics with them. 4. Don't be afraid to revisit topics from 6 months ago or longer First...the most obvious one...BE AWARE of current news and events in your chosen field. If you find yourself befuddled and often don't know what's going on...hey, it happens...go to Google and type in your field of work and when the search results come up, simply click the "News" link that appears along the top of the results. You'll see links in a row that say WEB, IMAGES, SHOPPING, VIDEOS and NEWS, respectively. Click on "NEWS" and you'll be surprised at what you'll find. I just Googled "What do pandas eat" to get the information on bamboo that I shared with you earlier and then I clicked the "NEWS" link like I'm telling you to do and I get a whole list of PANDA related stories...10 arrested for Panda Poaching in Southern China...Giant Panda at the Washington DC zoo might be having another cub... Don't rely SOLELY on this, as you've got your trade papers and such, but this is a REALLY good and EASY resource for you, especially if you find yourself constantly in a time crunch. Speaking of time, we're gonna take a quick break here and when we come back I'll detail those other three tips for you with some time saving advice to help keep your content engaging... ================================================ We are back on the MIND Your Business podcast and talking this week about how to keep your content engaging, progressive and, well...THICK...so you don't have to worry about Google Panda and its constant quest to erradicate THIN content. We addressed the first and most obvious tip, which is to be aware of current news and events in your area of work. Hey, when news happens in your field of business it's a NATURAL opportunity for you to talk about it and give your take. That brings us to the SECOND tip I have for you this week... Don't shy away from that which you believe your audience already knows... and state an original opinion. Yes, a news story has been reported elsewhere, but it doesn't mean you have to ignore it. YOU have your take...your OPINION as a PROFESSIONAL about that event or news story. SHARE this with your audience. DON'T assume that they already know! You are using your blog as YOUR communication tool to build trust with YOUR audience as a reliable resource!! They need to hear information from YOU and they need to hear YOUR opinion on that information because THIS is how they see your passion and how much you CARE about what you do. If you don't care, why should they? If you DO care, your audience will see this and they will care more. I used an example of this last week on our Social Media at Work recap podcast...Mark Schaefer shared in his presentation in Harrisburg what is my favorite example of how this method works. There is a winemaker in France who started his winery a few years back and found that he had about 600 competitors in an area about the size of Lancaster county. Fortunately for him, most of these wineries didn't take social media seriously as they had heritage on their side and relied on the fact that they had been there for 100, 200 years and everybody knew who they were. Anyway, this winemaker regularly blogged on his website and posted YouTube videos for 2 and a half years...as a result, he built a following of people who cared about him and his wines as his videos brought people out into the field and put them face to face with the heart of his work. One year ago he posted a 50 second video showing how to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew...at this date he has over 9 million 800 thousand views. Bear in mind that there are NUMEROUS videos showing how to do this on YouTube...but NONE of them have 9 million views. Bottom line...give YOUR take, even if it's something you've seen before. Now, my THIRD tip for you this week...BE AWARE of SEASONAL effects on your business, as these bring NATURAL topics with them!! It doesn't work for ALL businesses, but it does work for most. You will see seasonal flows in your business...use them to educate your audience and bring them closer to the heart of what you do. If you're a homebuilder, there are differences in what you can do in the winter as opposed to what you can do in the summer. If you're in the healthcare field, each season brings with it different allergies, illnesses, etc. from pollen in the spring to flu in the winter...of course, there's always the common cold, too. How do the seasons affect YOUR business? If you do outdoor work, how does a hail storm or blizzard affect your business? Think about these things and how you can share the experience with your audience and bring them closer to the heart of your business. For so long, we've had the concept of "turnkey solutions" and presenting our business in a perfect manner thrown in our collective faces. We're all human...people looking for you online want to KNOW you're human just like they are!! And finally....my Fourth TIP...this is my favorite one... Don't be afraid to revisit topics from 6 months ago or longer There was a great segment from the Colbert Report with Steven Colbert a few years ago where he interviewed the progressive rock band RUSH...one of my alltime favorite bands. He made a reference to the fact that in their first 10 years or so as a band, they became known for writing very lengthy compositions that sometimes took up an entire side of an album....like their classic 2112 or my favorite, Hemispheres. Anyway, Steven Colbert asked them a funny question and they all got a good laugh out of it. He said "Have you ever written a song so long and epic that by the end of it you were influenced by yourselves?" lol Funny part is that's a GREAT point of reference here...as you accumulate an archive of blog posts - blog twice a week and in 6 months your archive will be 52 posts - as you accumulate an archive of blog posts, go back and take a fresh look at some of your older posts... Times changes, opinions change, knowledge increases, growth happens...as you look at some of your posts, you will find that, indeed, you may have either a different take or something pertinent to add. Maybe if you wrote about a really good, effective method for training your dog you have since found an even BETTER method...or you want to add something to it. Revisit those topics...you may be surprised at how engaged YOU are yourself. And if YOU are engaged by your own material, imagine how OTHERS will feel. You just might be surprised at how much you can indeed inspire yourself by taking a moment to appreciate your OWN efforts. I'm not talking selfishness, I'm not talking egomania here.... I'm talking about what a joy it really can be to look at the work you've done and be able to say "Y'know...I'm proud of that" and get closer to your OWN heart in what you do for a living. Thank you so much for listening to this MIND Your Business Podcast, presented by MIND Development and Design and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hosting. We all really hope you found this information helpful and empowering for you to improve and get more out of your online presence. Thank you Whiff Roasters in Lititz, PA for the delicious coffee and chicory blend. Thank you for listening on iTunes and Stitcher and for the interest on Pinterest. Send us your questions through Facebook, comment on our podcast page, email us at info@minddnd.com or just click that naturally delicious ask a question button on the right side of our podcast page. See you here next week!