Web Empire

For those sites in your Web Empire that are intended to attract targeted traffic, which are the majority of your content sites, it is useful to optimize individual pages for particular keywords relevant to your topic. (I’m using the term keyword in the general sense, including keyword phrases). But what is the optimal level?

Many people have recommended particular percentages, or keyword density, for optimal search engine benefit. It is increasingly difficult, however, to walk the fine line between ‘highly optimized’ and ‘keyword stuffing’. The search engines are looking for keyword stuffing, and penalizing those who include a keyword too many times. Much depends on the exact keyword being used, and the context. Text in paragraphs do not naturally repeat the same keyword several times in each paragraph. Lists, however, may quite naturally contain certain keywords. It all depends on the specifics.

So how do you decide? Simple. Check the top-ranked pages for the keyword in question. I tend to use Google and Yahoo for tests like this, and ignore smaller search engines — but you might want to include a different one if there is a topic-specific engine for your subject. Check the top two or three pages on each search engine, and see what the density is for your search term. Target the average for those top ranked pages in your text, and you will know you are in a safe range.  With a little experience you will recognize if the top pages tend to be a bit low in their density, and know when it is better to exceed their density to help you reach the top ranking.

Is it possible to be exhausted yet refreshed? That’s how I feel about our recent trip to Colima, where we spent the Christmas holidays on the beach. The break from routine was refreshing, and I’m all psyched to get going on new projects for 2008. At the same time, travel is always tiring, so I need to catch up on a couple days sleep. Not to be however, since New Years celebrations have begun already.

So this post will be brief, as I talk a bit about blogging. I have already stated that blogs should be an important part of your Web Empire — there are many advantages to this format. I also suggested that you need to post frequently during the early stages of creating your blog — then immediately broke that ‘rule’ myself, by skipping a whole week on this blog when there are only twenty-some posts. Some ‘rules’ are very important, while others can be safely bent to suit your situation.

In this case, I am working on a long-term project here, this is not one of those blogs that will have lots of posts at first, then taper off. That is for search-engine fodder blogs that exist to feed traffic and links to your money sites, and/or for advertising income. This blog is a ‘personal branding’ blog, so it exists more for you — the reader — than for the search engines. For real readers, consistency is important. I can tell real readers I will not be posting for a few days, and they understand, so by setting a precedent early on it tempers readers expectations. You now know I will warn you if I will not be posting for a while, and that is to be expected occasionally. Search engines use algorithms to track frequency of updates, they only understand the numbers.

You should include one ‘personal branding’ blog in your Web Empire if you sell products you produce yourself, but never more than one such blog. It is too much work, for one thing. You can take an occasional break, but long periods without posts are interpreted as an ‘Out of Business’ sign. Content blogs, on the other hand, can provide useful information on a topic without needing frequent updating. If you produce a few hundred posts on gardening, for example, that information will continue to be of value when you stop posting. You should constantly be creating new blogs on topics related to your main subject — as fast as earlier blogs ‘fill up’ to a convenient size (typically 100 to 500 posts) they can be left without updates, and a new blog started instead.

I’m getting ready to leave for a few days, and thought I’d leave with a short post about the purpose of business. I’ll be on the Pacific coast a couple hours south of Puerto Vallarta, in an area where the beaches go on and on. The place my wife and I will be staying in has no Internet, and no phone. There are Internet Café’s nearby, but I don’t plan to visit them.

Why are we in business, those of us who are self-employed? To make money, of course, but why? It is not money for money’s sake. It is the freedom. It is being able to choose where and how we live (we live in Chapala, in central Mexico). And it is also being able to choose how much we work. I’m choosing not to work for the next few days, but to relax and reflect on 2007, and decide what I want for 2008.

Since I use WordPress I could have posted daily messages for the time I will be gone on this blog. It might have been a slight benefit for the SEO ranking. In fact I have done just that with some of my other blogs. But since this site is about the realities of creating and managing your Web Empire, I thought it a good idea to emphasize the benefits as well as the work involved.

I should be back before the new year begins … or maybe not.

Content comes in many ‘flavors’ — it can be text, images, audio/video, Flash, PDF or various other formats. It can be housed in a database, or in individual files. If you want your website to be indexed by the search engines so that they can send you free traffic, it should go heavy on the text. Images are OK so long as they include captions, and your HTML should have both the ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tags filled in the image tag, preferably with different text in each (though saying essentially the same thing, using different words).

Audio/video (a/v) formats are not indexed by search engines. Flash is not indexed. PDF is indexed by Google, but some of the smaller search engines can not read these files. Also, many users will see your document is PDF and click on the ‘view as html’ link Google provides. They never actually visit your site, and the rendered version is usually far inferior to what you have in the formatted PDF file, giving visitors and poor (and false) impression of your site.

Podcasts and similar a/v presentations may be easier for some people to produce, and they are popular for some sites, but you miss out on a lot of free search engine traffic, and need to make up for that with other means of promotion. Ideally you should have a complete transcript of the audio, or better yet that plus a verbal description of the video portion, but that can be a tremendous amount of work to produce. At the very minimum, if you want to include a/v material, include a good description of the content.

So in most cases, we will be using primarily text material for our content, or graphics with text descriptions. Where do you get that material? I have already mentioned public domain content on the post Free Content. Finding public domain material that has not already been published online is one way to use this material without running into duplicate content problems.

Writing all of your own material is time-consuming, but it doesn’t cost you money, so for the budget conscious beginner it may be the preferred choice. Just be sure to double check your spelling and grammar. It does not have to be great prose, worthy of a Hemingway, but you need to be able to get your point across to your audience.

Another way to get data is to pay for written articles. There are few unscrupulous sorts who try to fob-off copied material as their own, after just changing a few words here and there … so be careful who you deal with.

Creating a database is one of the best ways to produce content. Select some aspect of your subject area, and produce a database by copying information — not by copying copyrighted material, like descriptions or reviews, but by copying things like names, statistics, feature lists, options, etc. If you have an automobile site, for example, you can create a database by make, model and year, showing which options were available, which engine sizes, etc., etc. Always try to put more in your database than you need for your site — that way in the future, when producing a related site, you will have more material to choose from if you want to extract part of that database onto your new site, without duplicating the information on your original site.

You can also buy databases full of content. Since they are for sale, they will not be unique, so you should not use one database as the basis for a website, but it is a great way to supplement other material. Also, by selecting a few fields from one database, and a few others from a related database, you can create a unique mix that looks different enough from what others do with the same data that you won’t get penalized for duplicate content. Also, by selecting a sub-set of the records from a database, you can randomly rotate some material, giving your site an appearance of freshness. Remember, you are building a Web Empire, not just a website.

In an earlier post I suggested that those who do not already have a website go immediately to Wordpress.com and open a free blog. I’d like to elaborate on that statement and talk a bit about getting started in general, for those who have not yet begun their Web Empires.

The important thing is to take action now, so you will have something to build on. There is no reason to wait. You don’t need to learn more before you start. You have no excuse. Start a blog, and begin posting daily. Choose any subject matter you have an interest in, don’t worry about making money or choosing a profitable subject or anything else — just start it.

Of course a free blog will never be your main site, or even a major part of your empire. But when you do start building the money sites you will have had some experience with making at least one type of site — your blog. Also, you will be able to link from your blog, which by then will certainly be getting frequent visits from the search engines because you post frequently, and have never stopped posting frequently. That link will ensure that the search engines find your money site right away, giving you a jump start.

When you have two or three money-making sites going you can decide if you want to continue adding new posts to your first blog. It depends on the following you have by then (how many people read the blog) and whether or not you can get money out of the subject. If it is something advertisers are willing to pay for (and we will cover how you figure that out in another post) then one or more of your money sites can be on the same subject as the blog, and you can use the blog to drive additional traffic to the money site.

Why do I recommend Wordpress.com, which does not currently allow advertising, rather than blogger.com, where you can place ads? Because blogs should be an important part of your Web Empire, and it is more important (and will generate more profit in the long run) to learn how to use Wordpress software. When you get your own web hosting and domain, you can install Wordpress and be up and running in no time, since all you have to learn is the basic installation and configuration — you are already familiar with the mechanics of adding and editing posts and pages from your experience on the free blog.  That will be worth more to you than you can expect to earn from a free blog on blogger.com.

When it comes to your first ‘real’ site, the first site that will not be on any free hosting service, you will want to get much of your content ready before starting the site, unless it too is to be a blog. I’d suggest a more static site for your first, and add more blogs later. As mentioned elsewhere, it is best if this static site be database driven and modularly designed — you don’t want it to look static — so your first one will take a little time to build. Don’t worry, with a bit a practice it will get easier and the work will go faster.

Before you can begin gathering data for your first site, however, you need to decide what your Web Empire is going to be about. You need to choose something that lots of people are interested in — cars, sports, travel, cooking, health — there are hundreds to choose from. Pick one that you are passionately interested in, and your odds of success will be much higher.

Next, decide what sub-topic within your general subject area will be the first ‘neighborhood’ you will build. Think of your Web Empire neighborhood as a country within this great empire you will rule. Sub-areas corresponding to the five examples we gave for general subject areas might be — race cars, baseball, National Parks, Mexican food, longevity — of course there are hundreds or thousands to choose from, depending on the main subject.

Finally, take a very specific area of specialization from within your sub-area to be the subject for your first website. Again, using the same sub-areas, we might choose — Formula One race cars, the Detroit Tigers baseball team, Yosemite National Park, Mexican Salsa Recipes, anti-oxidants — or any of the hundreds of other subjects you could choose.

In our next post, we will talk about gathering data for your first website. Generally you have two choices: spending money, or working hard.