I just finished a call with a client, which is what led me to write this blog entry. On the call, we were discussing page content for his new website. Without realizing it, I found myself saying “Your website content is like a trade show. You have one minute to make an impression and keep a prospect’s attention. What do you say as you shake someone’s hand and make introductions?” His response was that his trade show pitch wasn’t at all close to what he wrote for the website page that discusses that same topic.

The reason I came to this illustration is that this client is from a B2B technology company. The writer of the content speaks at an educated level and tends to go into significant depth on the “how” when writing content. In actuality, he simply needs to discuss the “what” and more importantly, the “what’s in it for me”. He’s absolutely great at demonstrating his product and is very good at explaining the technology behind his offering, but the web page isn’t a demonstration. You simply are not afforded that much time. It is a handshake or an introduction.

My ten-year-old daughter is, in some ways, like my client. I call her the “clock builder”. If I ask her the time, she doesn’t just give me the time. She wants to build me the entire clock to help illustrate how she reached the point of knowing the time. I love her to death, but she is way too much like me. We are clock builders by nature, which is good if you are a clock builder but not so great if you are writing content for a basic web page.

Back in my early twenties a sales manager at my first job said “Rebecca why can’t you just tell me the time? Why do you always have to build me the clock?” He was right. Many years later I still want to build everyone the clock. I have to make a conscious effort to simply just tell them the time. I’ve learned to adjust my clock building tendencies when I’m writing content for a website, although I still struggle with building the clock for my husband or friends.

The pages of your website only give you enough time with your visitor that is equivalent to a handshake. They are brief moments that allow you to connect with the visitor’s needs or wants. You must provide enough in depth verbiage to offer value, but not so deep of content that you make the visitor feel like they just fell into a graduate level course at Harvard.

My client is a smart man and not a clock builder. I suspect he will have a much easier time adjusting than I did years ago.

When I originally accepted this project, I could see Google had indexed about 1,000 pages within his domain.  While it would take some time to migrate and optimize this many pages, I was up for the challenge.  The goal is to give him a more SEO friendly site that he can maintain himself in WordPress. If that meant throwing in some plugins and optimizing 1,000 pages, so be it.

Last week I reviewed his Google Analytics reports, dug deeper into his content pages, and investigated his existing website’s structure.  Through Google Analytics I could see he didn’t have 1,000 pages, he had about 10,000 pages.  Why were they not showing up in Google’s index?  Well I figured this out a bit later as I reviewed page by page content on his existing website.  Of these 10,000 pages, about 3,000 or so are the exact same pages.  Okay, three different pages, but applied to 1,000 different products.  You may be asking yourself so what and thinking I am a drama queen.  To me, the drama queen, all I saw was a big red flag waving with a large Google logo hovering overheard.  This was trouble with a capital T.

These 3,000 plus pages represent duplicate content to Google.  Why would Google cloud their index with 3,000 pages of the exact same content?  Google won’t do it.  It would simply corrode the overall search results, which would frustrate Google users, so Google is not going to do it.  Google will also most likely penalize the overall site for this mass amount of duplicated content.

I have already told my client I will not migrate this duplicate content.  The SEO consultant in me cannot do it, because I know it is wrong.  The website designer in me won’t do it, because I know it will degrade the user experience as well.  So I get to now explain this to my client and hope he understands that my intentions are good.

Now I will return to his website, his Google Analytics reports, and to the broken sitemaps to see what else lurks beneath the covers of this existing website.  I believe my 3,000 pages of duplicate content is only the tip of the iceberg and I am afraid the Titanic is getting ready to go down.

Thankfully, I was wrong.  WordPress liberated me and it has liberated many website designers and business owners around the world.  It is liberating because it is free and it is easy enough for normal – non website designers – people to use.  WordPress is robust enough to create elaborate websites, while simple enough an in-house marketing person or business owner to add content and update.

A case in point is a client that just launched a WordPress website.  The client is an ERP consulting company based out of Denver, Colorado.  More importantly, the client had a limited website needed to upgrade because the company is rapidly growing.  I proposed WordPress and the client agreed, then they jumped fully into design mode with me as we added plug-in upon plug-in to do such things as automated imports of news feeds, polls, quizzes, videos, events, live chat, and on and on.  As a web designer I love this enthusiasm.  It is great to offer a suggestion that your client not only likes, but that they build upon with their own ideas.

At the end of this project my client has a website that is robust, functional, and has solid growth potential.  They can maintain it internally or hire a million different WordPress experts around the world to jump in at anytime.  They are liberated and a little open source package called WordPress made this liberation possible.

The client and their transformation reminds me of a saying my Grandmother always said.

Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today.  Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.

A normal website is a fish, but WordPress is the lesson of fishing.

WordPress and Joomla are common open source or free software packages that are available for download and usage via the Internet. These two CMS packages represent a easy to use software program that allows provides the backbone or a website. Both come with fairly basic functionality that can be expanded by searching for and adding any number of plugins. These plugins are mini-applications that perform a specific action or task for a given website. While many times free and easy to install, they do pack a powerful punch for building a tripped out website and pimping this website to meet a company’s or webmaster’s specific requirements.

Plugins come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can create a social network, help provide SEO or search engine optimization, or they can provide quick contact form for website visitors. There are many and they are readily available for open source CMS’s packages regardless of the webmaster’s knowledge level.

In fact, in all honestly, WordPress plugins require little effort to install. The webmaster simply needs to find the plugin, click install, and review the available setting options. The plugin does all the heavy lifting and work.

So before you second guess the power of a CMS package, you might want to review the available list of plugins. These little guys can take your website from ho-hum to outstanding in just a few clicks.

This “quirkiness” of Internet Explorer may given companies with older websites something to think about and presents a need to reconsider a website refresh.  How do your prospective customers view your website and what type of perception does it give to visitors?  It depends on which version of IE they use, as well as your website’s CSS file.  Unfortunately the results may surprise you.  Remember that your website is one of the first things prospects see in regards to your company.  This image can quickly lead to dead prospects if this image is distorted by poorly written CSS code or a lack of understanding for browsers and more importantly different versions of IE.

To do a quick health check of your website, visit www.gomez.com and check out the gizmo.

It generally takes a third party to point out a website’s physical and esthetic flaws. Sometimes it takes a few hundred of your dearest friends and colleagues to convince you that your website is ugly. An ugly website can come in many shapes and sizes. It may have a horrendous color scheme, a nasty logo, outdated architecture, inappropriate images, spelling errors, or it just might be difficult to navigate and locate information. Regardless, these ugly ducklings exist and they seem to be growing and living well past their intended lifecycle.

As a small business owner or C-level executive, listen to those around you and seek outsiders’ opinions. If someone you know and trust or even a prospective customer tells you your website has “issues”, it probably does need a refresh or a complete overhaul. Seek outside help and seek it quickly, before you are labeled one of the ugly ones. This isn’t the playground and you won’t hear your girlfriends whispering behind your back. All you’ll know is you are receiving little traffic, few conversions, or virtually zero website leads or sales.

If you are a small business, how grand does the website need to be? In actuality, the average small business does not need an overly elaborate website. For businesses that do not sell their actual products via the Internet, like home builders, dentists, or accountants, a good website needs to provide enough information to obtain a phone call or a in personal visit. The website needs to make the visitor feel comfortable and drive further interest. It needs to convert the website visitor to a lead. This could be done in five pages or twenty. It depends on the nature of the business and the product.

The important task is to develop something. Additional pages or content can be added as needed.