“Query intent can be classified, according to Google, as Action (“Do”), Information (“Know”) or Navigation (“Go”)”

Well, it turns out that Google’s “quality raters” checklist got leaked, and while it wasn’t a bombshell of secret information, it does provide some useful insights (thanks for the 16 points of insight SEOMOZ!)

Do you have information on your website for all 3 different types of intent on your website? Here’s some ideas to be sure you actually cover with content on your website, this example is for a real estate site, but just think it out for your own industry.

Action: Search for a home, Get CMA, List a home, get a buyers agent, get a sellers agent
Information: Learn about community, learn about home buying/selling
Navigation: Your Office/business location, contact info

The in-exactitude of a message is equal to the amount of time taken to write the message multiplied by the expediency of the medium of communication

Words, Words, Words they’re everywhere and everything when it comes to your online marketing!  But, when you get down to the nitty gritty, the down and dirty, you may have realized that the content you so easily spit out in rapid order over IM or a chat window in Facebook seem to be a little less valuable than if you had taken the extra time to put those ideas and expressions of feeling and thought into a blog post, or even a static page of content on your website.

The average human being hand-writes at 31 words per minute for memorized text and 22 words per minute while copying”  -Brown, C. M. (1988).

So much more so the hand written letter, if the average person copies text at 22 words per minute, you can guarantee that most creative writing is more full of creative pauses and thought since you can’t just “backspace” over your error.

You should also consider that even the most well crafted sentence, if said in person, could carry so much more weight as you emphasize different syllables, stress the different nouns and elongate the sounds of a word to make it fit your exact feeling.  Be sure that you’re using all forms of for your business, from expedient chat messages, Facebook posts, emails and face to face conversations be sure to convey yourself and your business’s principles in your dealings with your clients honestly and openly you never know exactly what may turn someone from a client, to a fan and advocate who will help your business much more than a single financial contribution to your bottom line.

When it comes to web content, irrespective of whether it’s sales copy, informative writing or random thoughts and musings on a blog, it should be easy reading! Reading online shouldn’t be made a tedious task and for most of us, perusing websites and blogs is a leisurely activity.

Words can be to much of a good thing..

Personally, if an article (no matter how interesting its title) starts like a rocket science manual, I’m out of there! By all means, vary your vocabulary – by the same token I hate to read posts where a blogger evidently doesn’t know another word for ‘good.’ But stretching out a word count by fluffing up the content is annoying. Concise content makes for quick reading, ideal for the busy workaholic society we live in.
Now, I’m exaggerating with the title of this post, in complaining about ten words where one will do. More often than not, my peeve comes where writers use two words in place of one. Of course, sometimes there’s a need for this and child like sentences devoid of adjectives, for example, would make for bland writing. There’s a fine line between ‘concise’ and ‘bland’ content.
So, examples?

Unnecessary adverbs and adjectives

"A Sentence with to many adjectives is like Coffee with to much sugar."

There’s a time and a place for adjectives and sometimes they just sound out of place and long winded when read out loud. Take the sentence, “He was an incredibly intelligent fellow, but had an extreme lack of common sense.” When read out loud is lacks punch and crispness. A revision to, “He was an intelligent fellow, though lacked common sense,” is easier reading. That’s a 14 word sentence versus a nine word one.

Unimportant Information

If you’re writing an article on Barack Obama’s proposed health reforms, you would want to let your readers know what the changes are, how they would be affected by the changes and the obstacles the President faces. While it’s easy to wander off on a tangent at times, writing about Obama’s educational background or going into too much depth over the history of health in the US fluffs the article up and takes away from its point. After writing, read out loud and be critical. Ask yourself what the point of each sentence is and if you can’t find a purpose of a sentence, delete!

Repeated Information

Sometimes we repeat ourselves without even realizing we’ve done it. Even if you’ve worded it differently, the same point or fact made twice (even at opposite ends of an article) is just more words than necessary!

Squeeze Out More Words

Look for opportunities to crush and squeeze your verbiage. - Photo by Tomf

Once you’ve cleared out everything you think you can, read through again (preferably out loud). Look for opportunities to tighten up your sentences in ways not described above. An example could be changing:
“Whenever the Jones family got news pets, the neighbour’s children always tended to take to them quicker than the Jones boys,” to
“The next door neighbour’s children always took to the Jones’ new pets quicker than the Jones boys did.”

I know I’ve barked on about concise content here, but this should never come at the expense of meaning. The idea of concise content is saying what you need to say as tightly as possible – not about cutting points out in order to shorten a piece. Think punchy, crisp and natural sounding content and you’re well on your way to great copy.

Content creation is one of the most dreaded aspects of existing online for majority of the internet business owners.  High quality content plays a crucial role in creating a successful internet business.   Poorly written content results in poor readership, and thereby, fewer sales.

Here are 3 wickedly effective techniques to create content in a way that instantly establishes the connection between you and the reader:

Start off with what your readers already knows.

Start with the familiar

Expand from there on to what they don’t know.   Milton Erickson, founding president of American society of clinical hypnosis, often lead his patients from what they know to what they didn’t know. This approach of presenting information increases your readers’ receptivity to your information and establishes a sub-conscious rapport between you and your readers.

Draw Out Your Readers

Well written content educates the reader by drawing the information out of readers mind.   Education originated from the Latin word “educare”, which means “drawing out from within”.  A story or a metaphor is perfect medium to let your readers “draws out” the information from their subconscious mind.  When you start telling the story or present a metaphor, the mind lets its defenses down and opens up.

Create “Aha” Moments

Valuable content is the content that creates “aha” moments.  It restructures and interconnects the existing beliefs and concepts.  When these concepts and beliefs integrate with an experience, it creates understanding.  Taking your readers to this point of understanding should be the ultimate goal of content-creation.  If you just leave your readers with insightful ideas, but don’t offer them any examples, their “aha!” moments never fully converge into an understanding.

Frame Your Content Effectively

Frame your Content

When content is presented with a well-designed frame, it becomes potent.   What the content is framed with decides the “stickiness” of the concepts presented in that content.  When you create content based on factors described above, your content draws your readers inside their mind and helps them absorb the information more effectively.

About the Author
Amy  C. is a consultant for a Phoenix Internet Marketing firm, Niche Solutions, LLC.  She is a full time business student as well as an entrepreneur in the niche of Tabletop fountains.  Amy invites you to browse her most recently launched collection of decorative solar fountains

Neighborhood Video Tours

As part of the process in deciding where they will relocate, home buyers are going to get as much information as they can about prospective neighborhoods and cities. You can provide a valuable service to prospective buyers by taking your camera, and taking some videos of your neighborhoods. You can also highlight the amenities available, so it’s advisable for you to write that information down and do a practice run before you roll film. If you have a real estate website, then you can embed those videos directly into the page to provide extra relevance to that area and subject.

Bottled at the Source!

You’ve all done it…you stare at your Google or Raven seo analytics trying to figure out why your bounce rate is so high. You follow the click paths, create client funnels, follow referral sources, and pour over charts and graphs until your eyes bleed but you STILL can’t figure out why the client left the page. ..You’re missing the most obvious source of feedback! The purest source you can ask for is your client! They have a usually have a “pretty good grasp” on why they would want to visit your website, what they’d like to have as a feature, what web content they’d like to read and why they might not like your current site! So how do you tap this reservoir of recommendations??

All You Gotta Do Is Ask Her Nice

Here’s my recommended tactic that you can use to get feedback from your clients to discover problem areas, services you don’t offer and type of content people are looking for. A simple interview.  First, Jot down a set of questions like:

• What would you expect to see on a site for (insert industry here)
• Is there any services our business can do for you online that would make you more likely to be our client? Like Schedule appointments?
• Do you have any unique ideas that would be neat to see on our website?

Second, is to set the client at ease first after approaching them for the survey. Perhaps a cup of coffee or a soda or if you’re a restaurant treat them to a free meal (you’ll definately make a bigger return on the investment of a single meal).

Lastly, make them feel like they’re special, and that their feedback matters deeply(which it should!). The  benefit from this tactic is that beyond drawing out some possibly new ideas, or reinforcing your current methods,  it will make an impression on that person! That additional level of contact could lead to word of mouth advertising as they tell their freind about their experience. If  your lucky, and the person is web-savvy then you could even garner a Yelp review, a blog post, tweet, facebook post or myspace comment about it as well!

Have you used this method to get feedback? Do you have some tips to making it go smoothly? Please feel free to share!

BTW:

Find the best paid search engine marketingservices from an interactive agency.

Pay attention to the bones of your Site: File Names

Well, I just went back and checked in to my Google webmaster tools account and discovered something very strange for this real estate and local centric website for La Quinta, CA…

I was totally confused why this site had so many different terms that it ranked for for “Skeleton”… Well I did some digging and realized that when I built the site, I had added the background image with the file name “images/skeleton.gif”. The rest of the site has NOTHING to do with skeletons but here Google is giving rankings for a wide mix of terms related to the main content of the page, as well as for terms related to skeletons! For example Google webmaster tools showed me ranking 48 for [Jack Skeleton] from Nightmare Before Christmas, as well as [skeleton in desert] which seemed to have used the geographic context along with the filename. The lesson here for your site is that filen ames are one of the many factors in how Google understands your website, so do everything you can to name them appropriately!

Youtube is now the 2nd largest search engine online, with 15 hours of video uploaded every minute it also is one of the fastest growing mediums online. This represents a vast opportunity when it comes to generating video content for your business. This is becoming even more crucial, as Google’s “Universal Search” is becoming more and more prevalent, and gives even more exposure to businesses than ever before.

Strategy For Creating Video Content

First off you need to get yourself any decent type of video camera, which at this point could be anything from a phone to a professional camera with a tripod setup. I personally recommend a GorillaPod, so you can setup and film on any surface, even uneven surfaces. Next you need to look at your business, what do you offer and how can you interpret that into video. I myself believe this is where many people give up, and walk away because they don’t feel very creative, however I suggest taking a pen and pencil, and writing down every time you find yourself describing something your company does that takes more than 5 minutes to explain. You’ll find all sorts of topics in your industry that need explanation, and chances are that your clients are online looking for that information. If you are the one to present it to them, then you are likely to be remembered when services are required, or be contacted to become the service provider right then and there. Also remember that you don’t have to simply take videos of EXACTLY what it is you do…for example, a Realtor might take videos of vintage homes in different neighborhoods around the city. This would give the viewer an idea of what the community is like, and possibly affect their future home purchases. Here are some more random thoughts on local based video opportunities.

• Neighborhood tours- short little 1-5 minutes talking about the different neighborhoods, and showing people around to give them a feel for the community
• Neighborhood info- Video of you on camera talking up the area, providing the highlights and low lights
• Local Events- Is there a local celebration, parade or problem you could video and describe?
• Homes/Architecture- Take videos of different style homes, especially of ones you are selling- You can do an overview of what makes this home part of that architectural style ( Bonus for Realtors, you can also let the viewers know that the home is for sale and how to contact you.

Tactics To Get The Most of Your Youtube Video

There are many opportunities to promote your website through the use of your Youtube video. First and foremost, make sure that you use an accurate title, a full description using complete sentences and tag the video with relevant topics. Be sure to add your hyperlink to your full URL first thing in the description of your video, example http://www.yourwebsite.com, because your video might be exported to other platforms, and if you add your full URL, it may be seen on a whole host of various websites. Make sure that you create a “Channel” for yourself, and give your site proper credit through a link where they allow you to add it, as well as again adding the full URL to the description. Also be sure to “Geo-Tag” your video, in the settings when you upload it. This allows you to set a specific geographic location for your video, which might be used as a trigger to appear in specific searches. One advanced tip for you is to make sure that your Business listing in the Google Local Business Center will let you associate up to 6 videos with your online business profile. This cross reference can strengthen the value of your business profile, as well as the value of the videos themselves.

Do you use video with your business? Have some thoughts on creating video content, please share!

Update: Wanted to add this link in to a list of other video sites where you can add your video, and a break down of how they link back. From @seosmarty

If you’re starting a static website(Vs. a blog), do you think it’s best to wait until you can start with a full compliment of pages, or to launch sooner and then build up over time?

I’m a firm believer that you should launch as soon as possible. The worst thing that can happen is that your site will be the worst site to ever exist. It might/probably will/most assuredly will be. But there are a million things you might have to do before it stops sucking. We learn more from failure than success, so get the failing/sucking over quickly. I mean, come on, you’re not the type to pull a band-aid off slowly, in other words, a total baby? Of course not! So start early, be humble, learn, grow, get feedback and develop from there.

My site is not even 6 months old, but I’ve had the best progress from commenting on others’ sites who I admire, building up relationships and learning from them. The key is that these communications need to be genuine, and then already established individuals are happy to help you out. I also found interesting/helpful content on www.problogger.com, www.menwithpens.com and www.becomeablogger.com, the last one which has video tutorials.

It would be good to look into where your niche goes. I heard Sphinn is a good place for bloggers, Digg and StumbleUpon is very wide and general. I participate on facebook, Twitter, and am branching out to develop my LinkedIn profile, as well as StumbleUpon (:)based on your recommendation). At first I found social platforms a little overwhelming and scary, but I’m finding a terrific crowd on Twitter. It’s really simple, good for a lot of info and some laughs.

Be hilarious. Or just not stuffy. The web is an impersonal medium, so letting personality shine through like the glorious rays of the sun parting the clouds is good. Letting your humorous anecdotes split forth into the internet like the Earth does in The Land Before Time. Let all readers bow in gratitude and good spirits, like gracious dinosaurs on the ridge of the paradise that is your site.

Update: Found a really great related post about new bloggers driving traffic to their site.

If you thought that video websites were only visited by bored, disillusioned youths in America, then the recent 2008 stats from Youtube should open your eyes!

The virtual audience actually has the highest percentage of users making an annual income of $50,000 – $74,999 annually, with 27 %. Even more surprisingly, nearly half of Youtubes users have an annual income that actually exceeds $75,000 dollars!

Adjusting Marketing to address your Audience

The numbers are there, America is becoming more and more enveloped with video, and websites that ignore this type of content for their site are losing out on a huge piece of the pie. As a site owner here are some quick ways to get into video

1. Film a product introduction for your site
2. Produce helpful tips for your industry
3. Cover an industry event like a convention or meeting

There are a variety of hosting platforms that are free to use, and embed into your website. You could use Youtube, Vimeo, or Viddler. However, if your video is quality and you want to get the biggest splash, then I recommend using http://www.Tubemogul.com where they syndicate out and track your video across a wide number of platforms. You of course can choose which platform you grab your embed code form, but this method will get your site out as far as possible. Natually you are also going to want to follow some good content writing and seo advice!