this is justwebcontent.com

I’ve just taken up the post of Online SEO Manager for barablu.com, a leading light in the field of Mobile communications over Internet Protocol or MoIP.

Barablu have been around for around a decade perfecting VoIP technology which they then pioneered onto the mobile platform. Don’t think I’m saying this just because they’re paying my wages, but the barablu app is a marvelous little thing: Not only can you get crystal-clear phone calls for FREE via almost any Wi-Fi enabled device, you can instant message all day in circumstances where you wouldn’t normally be able to.

In fact, Barablu is an extension of the Bikini Effect, since it’s not just giving away 95% for nothing, the whole tool is free!

So, I hear you cry, why haven’t we heard of Barablu before. The short answer is that while the folks here have spent many years getting the technology right, they haven’t paid much attention to letting people know about it. As a result, the younger upstart, less-fully featured competition gets higher in the Search Rankings because they spent more time on marketing.

The upshot is this: Your site needn’t be selling the world’s best thing since the invention of sliced bread to outstrip the competition IF you take time to implement the very basics of good website design.

The bad news for the competition is Barablu is now on the case: in the coming weeks and months, I’ll be implementing as much SEO expertise as I can get my brain around to make barablu.com the market leader as well as the technology leader.

Watch this space — or failing that, watch the Barablu Blog

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I discovered an interesting post on SEO Blog spidersecret.com the other day, although it dates back to July 24.

Headed “So what if you give most of it away?: The Bikini Concept“, it discusses the thorny question of free content in an original way.

Put simply, a bikini displays almost all the vital assets of a beautiful girl (or an even an ugly one) yet despite this giveaway concept, it remains more exciting than a less revealing one-piece exactly because of what it doesn’t show.

Lure on a G-String

It’s easy to apply this to content. Give almost nothing away and your reader is likely to become frustrated and drift off. But the more you give the deeper he or she is likely to go. Draw them in far enough and they are more likely to buy the bits they cannot see because they can see the quality that’s on offer.

However, there are differences too. Unlike the bikini, there is scope to hide more content than you reveal and still achieve the same results, as long as what is on show is of the highest standard. The issue is having enough quality content to show to all comers.

The Bikini in Action

Once again the message is to create as much quality content as possible: write often and write soon.

I’m often asked why I produce this site when all I’m doing is giving away content trade secrets for nothing! The reality is that all this site will practically achieve is to whet the appetite of people needing content answers. When they appreciate just how much I know about the subject, they are more likely to ask for a private opinion on how their website could be made better. The bikini effect in action.

And that’s just as well, because it’s probably the only time I’ll experience the bikini effect myself!

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If you’re new to the wide world of the web, or even considering the relaunch of an existing site, then you should really be giving some thought to a strategy for content.

A lot of sites around today happened without a content plan: they simply grew organically from the germ of an idea and the basis of a design. That’s all right for hobby sites, but when it comes to content for a purpose wishy-washy organic won’t cut it.

Obviously, you want a richly-populated, deeply interesting site; one which will attract those all important back links from popular sites because it has something interesting to say. Like a novel, every good website content needs a plot. And while that plot may develop over the coming years, it should always fit perfectly with your business objective at any point in time: there should be no gaps, no awkward pauses, no pages that are hinted at but just aren’t there.

So from the get go, you should have a plan for web content so that as your business grows, the content grows with it. Get it right and within five years you’ll have a huge resource on your hands with a minimum of effort. Get it wrong and you’ll be left with a nightmare of time-consuming revision, rewriting and damaging contradiction.

Back-Breaking Back-Links

And there are great SEO benefits in well-planned and seamless content. Right now you’re probably thinking about cross-linking campaigns and not looking forward to the prospect. It’s a laborious enterprise and more trouble than it’s worth, not least because the websites most likely to reciprocate are those with the smallest page-rank and hence the least clout SEO wise.

But, if your site is full of interesting joined-up content, there’s more chance that sites with good page rank will link to you automatically. You don’t have to be a TIME, Wikipedia or a BBC to be interesting enough for TIME, Wikipedia or the BBC to link to you: you just have to be relevant, original and authoritative.

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1. Write Rubbish

If your content makes no sense, if it’s dull and irrelevant, if not even your mother would make it all the way through, then you can be sure it will be bad for SEO. Make content interesting, make content readable, make content fun!

2. Duplicate It

There’s nothing quite so annoying as content repeated again and again. I mean, there is NOTHING so annoying as content which is repeated time after time. Really, repeating content again and again and again is really, REALLY, really annoying. The search engines don’t like it either, you might even describe it as SEO’s worst nightmare. Don’t use content which is duplicated (or even just summarized) elsewhere on the internet — even if it’s your own copyright, especially if it’s duplicated on the same site. Check for originality on copyscape.com if you’re not certain, and even if you are. Even if the content is your copyright and has been copied by someone else, it can hit your SEO if the copying site has a higher Page Rank than yours.

3. Make It Invisible

For search engines, invisible text equals SEO scam. Technically, making content invisible to the naked eye — for example, making it the same colour as the background or making it transparent or putting it in comment tags — comes under the heading of “Black Hat SEO”, or cheating. It’s a way of artificially loading content with keywords [SEO, content, search engine, timeshare, cialys, pre5cription5] to bump up the density, and the search engines got wise to it years ago. It will hurt your SEO.

4. Use JavaScript To Present It

Search engines just won’t index content which is provided by JavaScript. There have been too many SEO scams using scripts in the past and Google and the rest aren’t taking chances any more. If all you can see in the content source code is a ton of JavaScript, then you can be sure that the search engines won’t be seeing it either.

5. Make It Chaotic

Content should make sense. Part of that is how it is organised. One of the best ways to ruin your SEO is to order content in an illogical, inconsistent fashion so that the reader doesn’t know whether they are at the beginning, middle or end. This extends to your <h> tags: use them in the order <h1>, <h2>, <h3> … <h6>. Keeping content organised means the search engine spiders can crawl it, index it and rank it to the best effect.

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