Although I believe a great domain name can help catapult a company’s website over others in search engine rankings, I believe the content on the site is as important when a person develops it. Owning Lowell.com and having the Lowell Spinners section at Lowell.com/lowell-spinners.php probably helps my website’s rankings (although the second “lowell” may be overkill”), it’s the good and fresh content that continues to drive people to the site during the season.
If your content isn’t accurate, some people may not even notice, and it’s just a bit of a disservice to them which they won’t realize until they bet a friend at a party and turn out to be wrong. Others who are experts on the topic, the people who might want to advertise on the site for example, will think it’s unprofessional if there are many errors. At best, they will send you a small email to point out your inaccuracies. At worst, they won’t return to your site and won’t contact you about advertising.
It’s also imperative that the content is unique to your site. Sure, a city’s history doesn’t change, but they way it’s presented should be unique to your website. Facts are facts, but oftentimes, one site leaves off some facts and each site’s information is different. Research is important to get facts correct, and that can mean researching a variety of trusted websites and offline sources for the correct information. Oftentimes, it can be as easy as calling on an expert to get the information. This is time consuming and expensive, but it’s well worth it.
Tomorrow, I will provide some insight in to hiring a good copywriter and preventing plagiarism/content theft. A domain name, cool web design, and great SEO are all very helpful to driving traffic, but good and unique content will keep visitors returning for a long time.
ALL GREAT points. Branding is really what you are speaking of- which is all about reputation and the user experience.
Once you have an accurate, good looking site, minor branding technciques like ES and Castello’s apply to the bottom page bottom help to establish an image of “bigness” and proessionalsm. Silver Media is much better than Top Notch Domains in these cases.
The Associated Cities affiliation adds to the professionalism when you site is worthy of the label. Advertisers judge a lot on image, presentation and minor details.
Elliot’s sites hold their own against the Internet Broadcasting (http://www.ibsys.com/) sites that publish for all the local stations. This is where advertisers are spending money now and this will be their frame of reference when making a first impression to earn their dollars.
Having a good media kit that shows you understand the demographics of the town and the needs of advertisers or printed rate card to leave behibnd on personal calls can also add to trustmark.
And don’t forget to do the Leland Hardy- get masses to wear t-shirts with your logos all over town. Even if you have to co-brand them and donate to an organization. Kelowna’s smart cars are a perfect example of the offline attention that can cement credibility.
People will say “yes I know that name. I’ve seen their cars. Or I’ve seen they support the Boy’s Club.”
These details, as silly as they sound, all work.
Please excuse the fast-finger carpul-fused typos in the previous post.
I can’t stress this enough- your content needs to be updated regularly. From my personal experience, I have found that there is nothing so repulsive as stale content- those spiders hate them!
Jes, thw search volume goes on. the traffic and the questinons to unique content rocks also in germany!