There are a lot of people in small businesses that are reliant on other people to change and update their website.

How many of them still send out their letter typing to be done by someone else?

The current generation websites, called ‘Content Management Systems’ or CMS for short, allow normal people to be able to quickly update, change and add functionality to websites themselves. There are now lots of CMS about.

Which CMS will win?

Typically, web people want the technical stuff to win (who doesn’t want to feel needed?). The users want the ease of use stuff to win.

From where we sit, we’ve seen ease of use always trumping over ‘high technology’. Microsoft didn’t have the best technology, it wasn’t the most secure, but it was easy to use and easy to develop on. So is Wordpress.

Whichever software gets the widest acceptance, then goes on to get even wider acceptance. The spiral happens because ease of use makes things quicker, and therefore less expensive. When it’s less expensive then more people do it, and when more people do it, the competition keeps costs down.

There is big change afoot, and rather than us re-hash it, you might want to watch this very neat summary.

The technology has to get out of the way, we have more important things to do. Nicely put.

Without a doubt, the Wordtracker SEO case study for the Chicago Tribune and LA times is the best case study for SEO that we have read to date.

What makes it so interesting is that it revolves around ‘news’ as a subject which is always a hot topic for SEO strategy.

News and blogs and links, it makes for a fantastic example of what can be done. The sheer scale of the achievement is impressive, the problems encountered during the effort were significant and the satisfaction must be enormous.

The final reason is that it shows enormous consequences for their organisations that don’t do SEO.

If you look for Search Engine Optimisation on the web, after 5 minutes you’ll see this phrase ‘duplicate content‘ start to pop up. Even worse sounding is ‘canonicalisation‘ , often spelt (incorrectly?) as canonicalization on the other side of the pond.

They’re loosely related issues, and together these are the root of the most common of SEO problems and a lot of websites ’suffer’ from it.

By the way, ‘Suffer’ is another one of those SEO people phrases. The rules say you have to come up with emotional language that is inversely proportional to the amount of dull technicality, which these issues definitely are.

Lets get to the point.

You can test for this very easily – many pages on your website may say exactly the same thing. Don’t believe me? then try the following

• www.example.com/
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.php
• example.com/index.php

There are others, and the issue is discussed by a Google engineer recently. Whatever you do, don’t say ‘duplicate content penalty’, it’s just not like that.

So WHY is this an issue?

Vital Google juice, link equity, or authority in other words, that is bestowed by people linking to your pages, well, it’s reduced if they’re linking to different copies of the same page. You most definitely want all the links you can get ‘adding up’ on a single page.

It helps you rank better, and whilst issues might often be overstated on their own, the value of a listing on the first page of Google can be exponentially more valuable than one on their second page.

Fix small problems first and the big ones get easier!

Worst of all is that this issue can affect your website stats. People ending up on different versions of your pages will show up in different rows on your reports. Think of the horror, how could you possibly endure incorrect stats? I know I couldn’t – but how on earth could we make the right decisions?

At this point I could get technical and talk about server based 301 redirects, which solve the problem, but maybe that’s another post, or maybe you could ‘google’ that and see what comes up.

Also, here is a link to help… A great .htaccess 301 redirect generating tool - remember, back up often!

That website has both the www and non www version of their website pages up and running….now that’s funny, in a vaguely, inversely proportional, way.

Let negative comments sink in a while, and get past the urge to retaliate. Although it’s natural to defend yourself, 9.9 times out of 10 you’ll regret acting in haste.

Think about it.

1. You ‘may’ have misunderstood the real meaning of the comment, so when you re-read it, give people as much benefit of the doubt as possible. People don’t always say it right, so it’s best not to make things worse. Besides, at least someone made the effort!
2. Other readers will likely be very even handed, and over reacting doesn’t show you in a good light.
3. They may have misunderstood the article, and they’ve done you a favour. A gentle explanation will help round the conversation off nicely.
4. They may have a good point, and now is your chance to show just how willing you are to take other’s views into account.
5. Don’t do anything that makes you ‘look like an idiot’ – people are quick to judge, even if they don’t bother to work out the context.

The next question then: Do you publish negative comments?

1. Not in all cases, but it is an opportunity, if you look at it in the right light.
2. Encourage comments by responding in the right way, it might just produce a positive comment next time.
3. Don’t forget that responding in a  good way is a great way to ’show’ people what you’re like
4. Don’t underestimate the intelligence of the rest of the readership, we can all spot the unreasonable from a mile off. Some people may even jump to your defence.
5. Try and turn those negative ones around. Some people are just built that way, get over it!

If you try and hide a negative conversation, then it may just take place somewhere else.

Pause…..I wonder if I should leave the comments open on this post.

Why don’t we get this out of the way? I mean, you can’t have a blog that says ‘hello world’ forever

Part of the problem with ‘planning’ your blogsite, is taking up the time which is better spent actually doing it.

My recent mantra is that it is much more important to start quickly than start perfect. So, with that thought, here’s what this site might end up being about…..

Search Engine Marketing is a multi-skilled activity, with a whole bunch of people who each have part of the picture. Maybe if everyone contributes, then we all might pick the rest up, and we will have perfectly balanced Karma with all the wonderful people who helped us along our own path.

A community is a bunch of people with a common interest, and in this instance, the site is for people who want to discuss blogging, search marketing, generating leads and ultimately getting new business from a website…..

….and of course it’s for Conversationware people, it’s customers and friendlies. We want to help, and a very efficient way of doing that is via a website, a blogsite in fact. It’s a 24/7 platform for recording questions and answers, with the odd opinion thrown in. The odder the better.

Seemingly then, a good way to get started is to set out who and what the site is for.

Matt