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Composing "good" page content


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RULE #1: Search engines love content.

RULE #2: Customers love content.

 

Why not give them what they want?

 

When crafting content be mindful of document structure. When creating a page I always start with an outline. That's right...just like back in school. If you can create an outline with 2 or 3 levels or main topics than the page content is already formed...then it's just adding more words :)

 

As an example, let's say were writing a page on a Blue Widget product. I might have the outline something like this:

What are widgets? (INTRO / DESCRIPTION)
--Widgets are like yonkers
--Widgets are better than yonkers

My Widgets are Blue (COMPARISON / PITCH)
--What other widgets do my competitors have?
--Why are Blue Widgets better?

Available for a limited time (CALL TO ACTION)
--Only XXXX left
--While supplies last
--For a limited time
--Buy 2 and get 1 free

As you can see the page message and flow are mapped. The only thing left to do is fill in the spaces. It is much easier and to create page content when you have an outline already made. The additional benefit is that you also have a map of document structure tags to use. The above would be coded as:

(h1)What are widgets?(h1) (INTRO / DESCRIPTION)
(h2)Widgets are like yonkers(h2)
(h2)Widgets are better than yonkers(h2)

(h1)My Widgets are Blue(h1) (COMPARISON / PITCH)
(h2)What other widgets do my competitors have?(h2)
(h2)--Why are Blue Widgets better?(h2)

(h1)Available for a limited time(h1) (CALL TO ACTION)
(h2)Only XXXX left(h2)
(h2)While supplies last(h2)
(h2)For a limited time(h2)
(h2)Buy 2 and get 1 free(h2)

Please note that proper H tags do not parse well on the board so I used placeholders for the actual tags above.

 

Of couse, use CSS to control the display of those H tags!

 

Something that is relevant to both search engines and customers alike is that the page has to have "meat and bones". Don't stop with a document structure...the more content you have between the spaces the better!

 

Search engines use a relatively simple comparison of HTML tags / content ratio. If your structure is all H tags and the anchor text for those tags it is nothing more than an outline with no content. To the customer that skeleton structure won't make sense and most likely will not close the deal. Customers like to feel they are making an informed choice and the more information you give them the more confident they will be to purchase from you. Also, it will have the same affect on the search engines. The more content you have between the lines the "better" that engine will feel about referring someone to you for information.

 

[NOTE to the vets: yes, I know that last line is a weak analogy but you know it's technically correct :)]

 

(1) Create outline

(2) Take the time to fill in the spaces

(3) Keep the keyword stuffing for the blackhats

(4) Use clear, easy to use wording

 

Remember, you need good document structure and content not only to get the customers to your site (spider traffic) but also the close the deal once they land on your site.

 

To see your document structure as a spider use the W3C validator and choose the Show Outline option.

 

Good luck!

 

Bobby

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This is all excellent information from a very knowlegeable user of osCommerce. I suggest you follow his guidelines and utilize a few of his contributions and watch your site transform. Thanks Bobby!

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Tony,

 

Thank you for the kind words! You're making me blush :)

 

I wanted to get a few threads going in the new forum to help kickstart the process of store owners adding their insight and knowledge. There are over 50,000 registered members on the forum...imagine if everyone added one tid-bit of knowledge that they feel put them over the top and helped them become successful online. This new channel would be the most valuable source of information for new store owners on the internet.

 

So, everyone help the cause and add what you can!

 

Bobby

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  • 2 weeks later...
Tony,

 

Thank you for the kind words!  You're making me blush :)

 

I wanted to get a few threads going in the new forum to help kickstart the process of store owners adding their insight and knowledge.  There are over 50,000 registered members on the forum...imagine if everyone added one tid-bit of knowledge that they feel put them over the top and helped them become successful online.  This new channel would be the most valuable source of information for new store owners on the internet.

 

So, everyone help the cause and add what you can!

 

Bobby

 

Hey Bobby,

 

I tried the validation tool you suggested on several different pages of my site, but all I get is this error:

 

Sorry! A fatal error occurred when attempting to transcode the character encoding of the document. Either we do not support this character encoding yet, or you have specified a non-existent character encoding (often a misspelling).

 

The detected character encoding was "charset".

 

The error was "".

 

Any ideas what wrong?

 

is it my site that is screwed up or is it the validator? :huh:

 

I know I will have to implement all of these things into my site eventually, but can you give me some insight on what the Basic tools I need to have on my website to make it Search engine friendly?

 

In other words can you look at my site and make some suggestions to me?

 

My Webpage

 

I'm really lost when it comes to this stuff, and I'm paying a fortune for my adwords campaign with little result.

 

Help!!! :blink:

My Favorite Quote from a movie.

 

Question: How do you know women sooo well?

 

Answer: I think of a man, then take away reason and accountability.

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Look at your HTML source code...this is your HTML tag:

<html HTML_PARAMS>

Fix it...

 

Bobby

 

How should it read? :huh:

My Favorite Quote from a movie.

 

Question: How do you know women sooo well?

 

Answer: I think of a man, then take away reason and accountability.

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The settings is defined in each includes/languages/*language*.php file. As an example, the define statment should look something like this for includes/languages/english.php:

// Global entries for the <html> tag
define('HTML_PARAMS','dir="LTR" lang="en"');

Then, when the page is parsed it would output like this:

<html dir="LTR" lang="en">

 

Bobby

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  • 2 years later...

Hi Bobby,

 

I am looking into putting content pages into my site. I created an ABOUTUS.PHP page in the /shop folder and ABOUTUS.PHP in the language folder. HOw can i make this page appear in the Information menu module? How do i link it?

 

Greately appreciate your help!

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  • 3 weeks later...

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