Title: Everything you needed to know about FairFestival website content and were afraid to ask.
1Everything you needed to know about Fair/Festival
website content and were afraid to ask.
2009 OAAS Convention Computers Technology and
Your FairFriday February 20, 2009
- Content the easiest and least expensive way to
increase your website traffic -
- Presented by Doug van Wolde
- On Behalf of WeGo.ca Website Developers Inc.
2Website Content
- What is it?
- Why its important
- How to test it
- Tips to improve it
- Questions
3Mini Bio
- In the Internet industry since 1997
- Started my own business in 2001
- I help other businesses develop their online
presence with a focus on web marketing - Manage or administer about 50 web properties
- Built 100 websites
- My primary clients are in the Fair and Events
industries - Websites I visit frequently
- Flickr.com, Geni.com, Facebook.com,
mdhsreunion.ca, marketingmag.ca,
marketingprofs.com, itworld.ca, emarketer.com,
zdnet.com/techupdatetoday, clickz.com - Hobbies camping, mountain biking, photography,
African Cichlids - Visited Fairs in 2008 12
4Web Content and Other Features of Your Website
5Elements of a Good Website
6What are the Benefits of Good Content?
- Your message is delivered
- Make your impression
- Create a reason Visitors keep returning
- Cuts down on administrative type phone calls
- Provides a pipeline of information for the press
and other media - Helps to spread WOM (pages, text and forms can be
linked to e-mail and other blogs) - Drives visitor traffic to your website
- Cause Visitors to take action (They will choose
to attend your event)
7More than a Fad
- Canada has 21,800,000 Internet Users
- They have the Internet on computers, now? Homer
Simpson
8Basic Business Tools
9Whois Behind Your Website?
- Web Developer/Content Manager/Administrator
- This is someone hired or employed or volunteering
within your organization that you trust to manage
your web affairs - Web Hosting Service Provider
- This is where your content is stored
- Usually off-site in a shared hosting hotel like
the one at 151 Front Street in Toronto. - Domain Registration Provider (Registrar)
- This is a company you pay to maintain your domain
name
10How will most people find your site on the Web?
- What media will a Visitor use to find your
website?
11What is web content?
- Pictures
- Text
- Video
- Sound
- Any type of electronic document can be uploaded
to your web server and linked from your website.
12What is the best type of content?
- Text
- Search engines rank your websites importance
according to the text content it finds valuable - Good search engines rank the text based on what
the robot thinks a human will find valuable - Your task as content Managers is to find out what
Visitors want on your website
13Content Is King
- What is meant by the term "content" is written
text in plain vanilla HTML or a variant that
produces good clean text that can be indexed with
ease by a search engine - Photos and video cannot be indexed by the search
tools of today
Text
14Bad Content Example
15Good Content Example
16Why content is important to your fair?
- Because the web is so important to many people
who visit your fair - If you have nothing to say, you wont generate
any actions - Gain or improve Search Engine Rankings
- Especially Google
- You are competing for attention
- Visitors will choose how they spend their time
and money based on what you have to offer.
17Page Activity
- Ask your Webguy/gal for a report of your page
activity. You will probably find out that most
visitors to your website want to know
18Traffic Report
- Measured by unique visitors
- markhamfair.ca by week
- Throughout the year is 4,000 Visitors per week
- The week before the fair is 35,000 Visitors
19Search Keyphrases
- bromefair.com first week in February
20Content Management Types
21Manual process
- You create and edit HTML pages in one application
and then use a separate FTP application to get
your pages to the web server. - Pros This works great for those who like to get
technical and offers full control over every
aspect of the site. - Cons This method requires technical expertise of
HTML tags as well as FTP server access and offers
no way to simply edit content. This method is
suitable for web professionals.
22CMS
- With a content management system, you have a
one-stop shop to manage all the technical details
of building the site, which lets you focus on the
content itself. - Pros The content is finally separated from the
HTML, and updates no longer require knowledge of
FTP, HTML, or server information. - Cons A CMS is a very involved system for simple
sites. It is expensive to buy, implement, and
maintain, and it usually requires its own support
staff.
23Blogging Platforms
- With blogging tools such as Blogger and
WordPress, you have the functionality of a
stripped-down CMS. - Pros It's very simple to create and update
content. There is often no cost associated with
these tools, and they offer easy-to-use, readily
available templates. - Cons Many websites built on blogging platforms
look alike. Editing is limited to the blog page.
24Content coaching
- A content coach is a copywriter or wordsmith in
the web publishing business or Search Engine
Optimizer SEO (perhaps even your current
Webmaster). - Pros Ensures content is placed in the correct
location on the site to maximize search engine
traffic, also ensures that all the pages stay
intact, and you follow web etiquette - Cons Delay in publishing while you wait for
updates.
25Volume and Frequency
- How much text should you add and how often?
- Lots and always would be the best answer
- Search Engines are continually looking for new
text that might help Visitors - Google has an entire site devoted to helping
Webmasters achieve better search results.(Google
Webmaster Tools)
26Search Engines
- More than 80 of markhamfair.cas search traffic
comes from Google
27Testing
- Collect data from your online forms, blogs, WOM
and telephone complaints - Put yourself in the Visitors chair
- What would they want to see and how easy is it to
find? - Test searches with popular keywords
- Fall fair Milverton
- Concert Lindsay September
- Raspberry jam contest Bolton
- (name 10 topics or reasons why someone would come
to your website? What do you imagine the visitor
is looking for?)
28Testing - Results
29Customer-Focused
- Visitors are on your site to find a solution or
solve a problem. Does your Web site content draw
these prospects? - To draw them in, make sure your Web site engages
Visitors by offering customer-focused content - that speaks to their needs
- and provides a solution to their problems.
- Talk less about you and your company and more
about your customers' needs and concerns. If your
content is customer-focused, Visitors will stick
around and ask for more.
30No Shortcuts
- Dont cheat
- Theres no substitute for good content. Visitors
must find your site valuable based on the
information it contains. - Theres no such thing as great results instantly
with submission to 300,000 search engines - Uniqueness of content
- Make sure your content is different from the
other fairs or events - Copying text might event get your site banned by
search engines - If you have a budget for content, hire a
Copywriter or Content Coach - If you dont have a budget, enlist the volunteer
help of a Contributor - A Content Contributor can be anyone in your
organization who is good at writing, recommend
the work be approved/reviewed before publishing
31Essential Fairs and Exhibitions Type Content
- Prize Book Text
- html
- PDF
- Other contest information/Demo Derby
- Exhibits/Displays/Shows/Attractions
- Administration/Parking/Contacts/
- FAQ
- More?
32Summary
- Find out what real people want from your site and
provide that content - What is it?
- Text
- Why its important
- Its how Search Engines rank your site
- How People find you with keywords
- This translates into attendance at your event
- How to test it
- Web Statistics
- Google Reports/rankings
- Gather Feedback
- Tips to improve it
- Focus on Customer/Visitor
- Apply what you learn from the tests
- Always be adding new text
- Make Content unique
- Get a content helper
33Questions