Just last week, we launched an updated version of millernursery.com. Miller Nursery is a retail garden center and landscaping company located in Johnston, Iowa. Although, they are a small business they have maintained a fantastic website for years! And because of that they’re continually rewarded with thousands of pageviews from organic search engine traffic.

Content: The Key to Search Engine Traffic

The key to their success has always been great content. (In fact, that serves as a good a reminder for anyone who wonders,  “How can I get more search engine traffic?”) In particular, Miller Nursery maintains an extensive online database of plants that do well in the Midwest. This database easily accounts for over 95% of their web traffic.

But as would happen with any content-rich website, overtime it became unwieldy and hard to maintain. Our solution? We took Miller Nursery’s existing site and ported all the content into a new custom WordPress theme (pictured). Now their “plant encyclopedia” can be managed from very user-friendly interface. In addition, we restructured their content to be even more accessible to search engines.

Perhaps you’ve seen this happy little icon being paraded around the internet. Almost every blog displays it. This blog is no exception. It has come to almost universally symbolize what’s known as an RSS feed.

But what is an RSS feed? And more importantly, how can an RSS feed fit in with your marketing strategy and benefit your business?

What is an RSS feed?

Explaining RSS feeds presents a somewhat interesting challenge. The difficulty comes not from the complexity of RSS feeds but instead their simplicity. RSS feeds are so simple that it’s hard to articulate what they are without falling back on what they do.

On the most basic level, an RSS feed is a small file on the internet that contains webpage content in special format. This content is just the “good stuff” (i.e. text, pictures, and the like). No fluff (i.e. menus, styling, etc).

(A brief side note: What does RSS stand for? That depends on who you ask. RDF site summary, rich site summary, and really simple syndication are among the options. In any case, these phrases don’t really explain much of anything which is why few people use them.)

Why RSS feeds?

That being the case, why would anyone want to use an RSS feed? … Because the simplicity of RSS feeds is what makes them powerful. And the real power of RSS feeds is that they allow people to access webpage content in a very efficient way.

Without RSS feeds, the only way people could check for new content from their favorite websites would be to actually visit the website. But RSS feeds make it possible for website updates to come directly to the people who want them. All they have to do is subscribe to the feed using their favorite “feed reader.”

Internet users like RSS feeds because they can efficiently stay up to date on the websites that are of interest to them. And businesses place a high value on any means of communication by which they can disseminate their content to an appreciative audience. So from that standpoint it is easy to see why RSS feeds have become so popular.

Additional integration

Really though, we’ve just scratched the surface here. If you’re marketing a business, RSS feeds can serve as a hub for many other powerful integrations.

For example, email marketing. It’s possible to create an RSS-based email marketing campaign. That means, you can automatically send out emails with information populated directly from your website’s RSS feed to anyone willing to subscribe to your list. And this campaign can be very easily integrated into other social media sites.  You post the information on your website once, and the content is automatically distributed via several channels to an appreciative audience. Now that’s power.

If you’re interested in learning more about how these techniques can benefit your business, be sure to contact us. We’d be happy to tell you more.

It would be inadvisable for a business to stay on message 100% of the time when it comes to social media. For one thing, if people get the feeling that you’re constantly trying to sell them something, they will quickly lose their appetite for the content you produce. For another, if you don’t address your customers’ interests, they’ll probably just think your company is boring.

Some examples of tangents that work for our clients:

Miller Nursery

Miller Nursery (a central Iowa garden center) posts images of wildlife on their Facebook page to keep their audience interested during the winter.

Advanced Restoration Service

Advanced Restoration Service (a southwest Iowa fire and water damage restoration company) posts recipes on their blogroll to encourage repeat visitors.

LB Asset Strategies

LB Asset Strategies (a California asset management company) posts travel tips to engage their affluent audience.

Before…

After…

Our solution integrated their new blog with an RSS-driven email marketing campaign. This enables them to post community news on their website, and automatically send that information out to their email subscribers and Facebook fans.

To view the whole project be sure to visit rcph.net

The term and the industry of SEO came into vogue at a time when the internet and search engines were very different. 10-15 years ago, a webpage’s place in search engine rankings could be easily swayed by adding and organizing specific types of content in a webpage. Pandering to and taking advantage of search engine quirks is basically what SEO was all about. These techniques were unsustainable.

Fortunately, search engines got a lot smarter. It’s well known that when it first came out, the Google search algorithm was innovative. What’s not well known is the net effect of that innovation: Simply put, Google killed SEO. And there seems to be no SEO-resurrection in sight.

The great disconnect

So this leaves, web professionals in a rather awkward position. Consumers demand SEO. However, they fail to realize that there is a huge disconnect between what they’re asking for and what they really want. Consumers ask for SEO. They want traffic. So various companies choose to go different directions with this. Here are three among several options:

1. Snake oil. Most commonly, companies that sell SEO use antiquated methods and either don’t know or don’t care that their customers are wasting money.
2. Ignore SEO. Out of a sense of professional integrity, many web developers simply choose to not advertise SEO. They meet customer demands but don’t encourage wasteful spending.
3. Educate the consumer. This group sells a highly specialized service. They don’t make empty promises, and the results they produce are tangible and valuable.

At Solvent Web we attempt to employ strategy number 3. You might have guessed as much.

Changing SEO (Semantically)

In order for you (the consumer) to distinguish between our services and those of SEO hucksters, we’ve tried to make our points of differentiation clear from the outset. First off, we don’t really like the term SEO. Not to get too picky with semantics here, but truthfully “SEO” is a bit misleading. It somehow implies that simply by optimizing a website’s content traffic will flow in from the various search engines. As we’ve already stated much more is required.

We prefer to take an integrated approach to the subject of website traffic. Our services incorporate the following techniques with the goal of increasing the right kind of traffic on your websites.

• Link building
• Content optimization
• Traffic analysis
• Advertising
• E-mail marketing
• Social media optimization
• And yes even traditional search engine optimization (although that’s a small part)

In addition, no marketing strategy exists in a vacuum. For that reason, when we employ the aforementioned techniques we do so in accord with the specific circumstances and needs of our individual clients. If you’d like to learn more about how we can tailor our services to increase traffic for you website, feel free to contact us or examine our list of services.