When I have a full time job, I run in the morning (2-6am). It turned out I can't make myself run, if I don't have a financial guarantee to afford food and equipment in the long run (literally, too), btw.
In winter, it is mostly fast, short runs, while in summer I tend to run for hours.
As Elizabeth, I also cook, but nothing fancy. It doesn't mean it isn't delicious though.
]]>When I have a full time job, I run in the morning (2-6am). It turned out I can't make myself run, if I don't have a financial guarantee to afford food and equipment in the long run (literally, too), btw.
In winter, it is mostly fast, short runs, while in summer I tend to run for hours.
As Elizabeth, I also cook, but nothing fancy. It doesn't mean it isn't delicious though.
This combo is just fantastic, if you have the patience to cook it (usually, it takes under an hour, or it can take less, if you use two heating elements or put it all into one pan).
I hope you have had a bite ;)
And to top it off, everything above is vegan (not just vegeterian), so it is suitable for everyone (except for someone not eating vegetables, if there is such a spicies).
On the weekends, when there isn't much to do, I often brush my English (been a while, though), improve my German and learn French. Learning languages is a good pasttime to keep your brain busy (and give you a chance to travel/communicate online easier).
Since I have to tag at least three persons, I'd like to tag:
]]>Lately, it's been noticed that Live.com spams the referrer logs of the websites, claiming that it is only about quality check.
]]>Lately, it's been noticed that Live.com spams the referrer logs of the websites, claiming that it is only about quality check.
But since they check it from only a small range of IP addresses, this can be noticed (which has been by plenty of people) and adjusted to, if someone is already doing cloaking. This is a really small job for black hats, really.
So what is really behind the scheme? Honestly, I don't know.
But for me, it screws my stats, makes me use Google Analytics instead of AwStats to see the top referrer websites and keywords. Why does Microsoft force me to use Google? I don't know, maybe thousands of employees didn't think much about it.
Technically, what I see is a lot of searches for single-phrase words, related to my site, such as 'website', 'links' and so on and they occupy top spots in the keyphrase stats. Obviously, I don't have such rankings, so they are fake.
Really, instead of making me a happy website owner, they add tar in my jar of honey.
If you decide to blog the IPs, you will be out of the Live index. Go figure. Quote from MSNguy from WMW:
The traffic you are seeing is part of a quality check we run on selected pages. While we work on addressing your conerns, we would request that you do not actively block the IP addreses used by this quality check; blocking these IP addresses could prevent your site from being included in the Live Search index.
But what's more, Live botting and crawling increases AdSense impressions, thus lowering the income from running AdSense on your website(s). And in Michael's and in my opinion, intefering with someone's income is unacceptable.
Is Microsoft trying to ruin the AdSense game for Google so others would switch to other contextual advertising schemes? Now that'd be a plot. And a very likely one, even though not the one admitted officially (read Michael's post for more explanation).
We shall see the answers to these questions soon, I guess.
]]>As a matter of fact, everything's pretty simple. Web building people (web designers, web developers, SEOs, Internet marketers, usability professionals, accessibility folks and others) spend at least 8 hours a day, building the Web. While doing so, they:
All this combined makes a pretty nasty picture for a person, who wants to stay healthy for more than 20 work years. Now, if someone has other had habits, such as smoking, drinking and such, the condition becomes even more sewere. But what can you do about it?
Of course, one of the choices would be to get another job, in the open air. But for 99.999% of us, that's not the choice, because we may be experts in SEO, but not in outside jobs, not to mention that some may have some careers in store for them online. So, what to do?
Naturally, you need to do something about it, such as:
In short, just do something to improve your life in your situation: you should be able to add a lot to the list (care to share in the comments?)
While some of us didn't pick the occupation we ended up at (who would have thought you'd have to learn everything from copywriting to accessibility to build/improve/promote a website?), it is generally a good idea to stay fit to be more productive.
By improving your life you will not only enjoy it more thoroughly, but will also be able to do work better, do more work and provide better customer care service.
The goal here is not to jump the gun and change everything at once, but to gradually improve your life. Taking it to the extremes won't help it (though longer vacation might). You only need to start thinking about it and to try find ways to get better.
Links on computer-related health issues:
(Yes, it is very original to scrape links from Google Top 10 for 'computer related health issues', but you can do better.)
What other dangers you think the Web building people should be aware of and how would you advise to improve the working/living conditions?
]]>This is yet another post about improving this very site for those, who read the posts, but don't receive feeds to their reader.
It has come to my attention that some people can not access the feed through the URL they have subscribed earlier (such as http://improvetheweb.com/feed/).
Do you have any problem with receiving feeds?
If you do, do let me know via yuri @ improvetheweb.com pr by commenting here.
]]>This is yet another post about improving this very site for those, who read the posts, but don't receive feeds to their reader.
It has come to my attention that some people can not access the feed through the URL they have subscribed earlier (such as http://improvetheweb.com/feed/).
Do you have any problem with receiving feeds?
If you do, do let me know via yuri @ improvetheweb.com pr by commenting here.
If you know someone who does, but doesn't read the site, could you possibly show them this post?
Thanks.
I have, supposedly, done everything for the feeds to work for old URLs, too.
However, I have also added a mod_rewrite script to remove the slash from the URL. Possibly, this could be causing the problem. I wonder if there's a huge problem or not, though (or whether it exists at all).
Thank you for letting me know.
Yuri
]]>In comments to a couple of recent posts, it was said that the site looks awful. As much as I wanted to see how well the web developers, SEOs and such respond to the text website, I also want to understand, how much people prefer a text theme or a graphic theme on this site.
]]>In comments to a couple of recent posts, it was said that the site looks awful. As much as I wanted to see how well the web developers, SEOs and such respond to the text website, I also want to understand, how much people prefer a text theme or a graphic theme on this site.
So, I am running a poll: which theme would you prefer on Improve the Web, text, graphic or mixed?
Thank you for voting.
]]>Mo/Year Unq All Pages Hits Bnd/wth
]]>Mo/Year Unq All Pages Hits Bnd/wth
Jul 2006 65 99 630 1314 3.78 MB
Aug 2006 472 1830 3898 6922 89.30 MB
Sep 2006 869 2917 8533 15669 198.10 MB
Oct 2006 1604 4859 14733 30203 354.53 MB
Nov 2006 2179 7240 20947 41894 698.68 MB
Dec 2006 2530 8647 24075 44070 903.55 MB
Total 7719 25592 72816 140072 2.20 GB
As you can see, I started at the end of July and was nearly doubling the amount of visitors for the first two months. I largely contribute this to the quality of content and social bookmarking.
Direct traffic: 91.1%
Search traffic: 3.8%
Referral traffic: 4.3%
Yet again the kudos to social bookmarking (the buttons at the bottom of my posts) or maybe ordinary bookmarking (I guess I need a browser friendly script for this, eh?)
- Google 585 590 (~87%)
- Yahoo 69 69 (~10%)
- MSN 22 22 (~3%)
- Unknown search engines 12 12
- Dogpile 8 8
- AOL 6 6
- Ask Jeeves 5 5
- DMOZ 1 1
- Alexa 1 1
As you can see, Google does a good job at filtering out the spam (and/or simply takes more factors into account to rank websites). I am surprised I do so bad at MSN, as I have a nice amount of links to my site. Do they have the sandbox effect too?
[keyword] 12 1.8 %
content= noodp 11 1.7 %
how to create a website 9 1.4 %
natural websites 6 0.9 %
product benefit 5 0.7 %
how to write website copy 5 0.7 %
optimizing websites 5 0.7 %
emotions that colors portray 4 0.6 %
creating a charity 4 0.6 %
principles of internet marketing 4 0.6 %
how to write a simple will 4 0.6 %
adwords ppc website conversions 4 0.6 %
mass directory submission 4 0.6 %
charitable websites 4 0.6 %
blg 3 0.4 %
keyword research 3 0.4 %
how to create a search engine 3 0.4 %
how to creat a website 3 0.4 %
advantages of social bookmarking 3 0.4 %
content= noodp > 3 0.4 %
steven bradley 3 0.4 %
charity web sites 3 0.4 %
keyword research strategies 3 0.4 %
to 158 5.9 %
how 112 4.2 %
website 108 4 %
a 81 3 %
of 53 1.9 %
charity 52 1.9 %
for 41 1.5 %
the 39 1.4 %
websites 38 1.4 %
create 37 1.3 %
content 36 1.3 %
write 36 1.3 %
Nothing unexpected here, though I don't understand why a page about Matt Cutts videos ranks for 'content="NOODP"'.
As you can see, the most stuff people find is about 'how to create/write content' or 'how to create a charity website'. The charity page seems to be quite popular (thanks to Bill, in part).
Of course, getting traffic for 'blg' and '[keyword]' is pretty amusing, as I didn't find my site with these on Google. Hopefully they have found what they were looking for.
Sure, the site content is pretty targeted at developing websites. But it has to show up for some bizzare word combinations:
What to make out of it? Create more focused content and don't play with ranking for irrelevant phrases like Danika Patrick for a non-Danica Patrick related website.
Normally, if it is obvious that your page brings untargeted traffic, place a note at the bottom of the page with a link to a more relevant page. For instance, if I get more toothpick traffic, I'll spend some time on researching some good 'toothpick benefits' website for the curious visitors.
Here are the top pages that brought me traffic:
As you can guess, writing good stuff pays off. Maybe I should start writing more articles for other websites, after all. (Though the majority of the traffic (91.1%) did come from direct address - bookmarks, type ins, etc.) Rock on, social bookmarking.
The SEO by the SEA visitors are partly from the [excellent] blogroll, but most are from the recent 2007 predictions and prophecies on the search marketing industry.
To think of it, posting at forums probably doesn't drive as much traffic, but the relationships I built there (with Steve and Bill, for example) are more than worth it.
Time Visits
0s-30s 6702 77.5 %
30s-2mn 330 3.8 %
2mn-5mn 158 1.8 %
5mn-15mn 199 2.3 %
15mn-30mn 159 1.8 %
30mn-1h 407 4.7 %
1h+ 668 7.7 %
Average time on site: 463 seconds.
Actually, it is pretty astonishing to have such a high bailout rate. I hope this can be explained by the visitor viewing patterns (opening a new window, entering a site, subscribing to a feed and leaving, etc). The average amount of time looks pretty solid, though. 8 minutes of reading articles is a notable time investment. Enjoy your reading :)
And, finally, the amount of subscribers.
And I am not entirely sure what it is. Let's look at the stats:
Url Views Bytes Entry Exit
/feed/ 6089 72.91 KB 3449 3416
/feed/atom/ 3658 45.26 KB 1191 1376
/feed/rss/ 333 4.30 KB 7 8
The stats above are from AwStats.
The entry means the page was accessed directly. What does it mean when it says that? Are the feeds delivered through the reader? To Bloglines?
As I had 7.5k unique visitors this year, I guess it'd be okay to assume I have about 4.5k of subscribers. Prove me wrong by telling me exactly what happened :) I am more likely to believe at the 2-3k gang, though.
You may say that I need to switch to Feedburner. But I don't like the intermediary between my feed and the reader. It takes more time to load, too. I'd happily learn my RSS stats, but I don't want to sacrifice a few seconds of my every subscriber just for this. Stats aren't that important - what one does is.
I now have somewhere under 100 posts and around 400 comments. Most of the comments are links, so I think the real comments are about 30-50. And Akismet has blocked just under 2k spam attempts (most of them in the recent week).
Check out the other statistical information on other websites and learn how they analyze it:
I'd like to thank all my readers for their attention to my blog, patience to read it all and also those who help this site reach more people. Thanks!
Also, what are your 2006 achievements that you'd like to share? Maybe you need some advice on what to do (website-wise) in 2007?
]]>Lately, Bill Slawski and I have talked a bit about the future in the search engine marketing industry. The first part of the discussion is located at SEO by the SEA. Check it out for quite an interesting discussion and more prophecies.
Below is the second part of the discussion plus my own musings. Enjoy (and feel free to link to it, too).
]]>Lately, Bill Slawski and I have talked a bit about the future in the search engine marketing industry. The first part of the discussion is located at SEO by the SEA. Check it out for quite an interesting discussion and more prophecies.
Below is the second part of the discussion plus my own musings. Enjoy (and feel free to link to it, too).
Let's list the trends first:
It should be dull not to expect Google not to advance as far as it did this year. I'd figure the next direction would be
Yuri:
Why not? They have excellent analysts and tools to analyze people. They have solid background on this. It├втВмтДвll be more like Linux than Windows, though, for Google-fans.
They already have a number of Desktop applications, so it is only a matter of creating a Google File Manager (the OS). ├втВм┼УGoogle Toolkit├втВм┬Э?
Bill:
It would be fun. Imagine having something small enough to be put on a USB drive, so that you can use your own operating system in public places like internet cafes and libraries.
Yuri:
I├втВмтДвd expect him to just retire and live on his stocks. Or he could start a pure white hat company for fun (to see how it is from the other side of search). In fact, I can see him doing it still being hired by Google just fine ├втВмтАЬ or they├втВмтДвd just buy a couple of SEO/SEM companies.
Bill:
He seems to be having fun doing what he is doing. But he also seems to have fun interacting with the SEO community. Who knows?
Yuri:
Speaking of communication. I think we├втВмтДвll see more people from Google being open for the public to relieve pressure from Matt and Vanessa, because even Vanessa is getting questions she shouldn├втВмтДвt answer being a Google Sitemaps product manager.
Bill:
I agree. I think Google just hired another person for that team, too. I could anticipate some more openness from them. It makes them look good.
Yuri:
I├втВмтДвd expect to see at least five (5) Googlers being open to the public. Most importantly, they should be real Google workers (like Google engineers), not some PR persons, just hired to do the ├втВм╦Ьsocial├втВмтДв thing.
Yuri:
Hmm. Australia? I can├втВмтДвt see how anyone can remotely close on Google now on search. Unless they develop a completely new algorithm, based on semantic text analysis (like the enterprise search you described). There is a search engine (used to be Haika?), giving out exact answers to questions, so it may give it a try.
Bill:
Been seeing some interesting patent applications sneaking quietly into the patent office database from that part of the world. Will they build something with them? I don├втВмтДвt know.
Yuri:
As I said before, I doubt anyone can rival Google search, but it will certainly rival MSN/Yahoo.
While link bait gained a significant coverage this year, it is only a start. Now it is going mainstream. There are link baiting services opening up by the pros.
While the difference between linkable content and obvious bait for links has become apparent only recently, the chasm between them will be opening even wider. Some, hopefully, will spring to delivering value to their visitors through quality content. Some will be thinking of new ways to generate buzz about nothing and new ways and structures for their Digg titles.
Social marketing is related to link bait, because it allows it to spread. But it is more than just link baiting. It is about counting on the people to spread the message, not your ads on other websites. Savvy marketers will create new ways to build upon the new trend, probably through bloggers and blogging networks, to gain new ways to get exposure to the target audience.
Yuri:
More focused social bookmarking websites will appear (focused on a particular topic). I can see environmental, political and sports bookmarking services being extremely popular. Maybe there will be Digg clones on a wide, wide variety of topics. The more long tail, the better.
Bill:
I noticed a number of sites like this in the past year. I think it is a trend that will continue.
Yuri:
More marketers will learn of SMO and try to enter the arena. Some successfully, some not so well. However, the same thing happen to it as it did to link bait. Marketers will learn to manipulate the people on the new level and people will have to learn how to avoid the manipulating marketing message from the social optimization efforts.
Then something new will have to evolve, such as a way to manipulate people for them to write good product reviews. Human reviews is the next thing after SMO, IMHO. Most likely, there will be a mix of social marketing and human reviews. Human reviews will be the currency of social marketing, not digs or links.
Bill:
Good point. I think that the ability to add reviews will grow, and they will become more popular.
Most likely, blogging networks will go main stream, as it has proven to be a quite interesting type of cooperation between bloggers. Especially, when blog networks can be used to reach a much wider audience, they will be used by the bloggers themselves and by the advertisers.
In 2008 (nah, not 2007), probably, a blog network will be as common as a blog. A close ring of friends or of sites about a single topic can simply create their own blogging network to be more credible and noticeable.
Bill:
More, more, and even more of them. And more blogs from companies.
Yuri:
More corporate blogs, indeed.
I├втВмтДвd expect related blogs to form in networks: blog networks, the new blog format of the future (IMHO).
Local site optimization has long been a secret of experienced marketers. Now it is becoming more and more well known, thanks to numerous blogs on local search, such as:
I'd expect the search engines (Google, for instance) improve the efficiency of detecting the location of the customer, their goals and the physical location of the business (along with the quality of the local search results, embedded in Google organic results).
Gone are the days when the companies alone were brands. Now real people, with real names become brands as well (or more) known as the companies. Haven't you heard of:
Quite often, the companies are themselves dependant on their stars. For instance, Danny Sullivan leaves SEW/SES. What happens? The crew leaves with him. What becomes of SEW/SES? Anything, but not much (IMHO).
So, in the next year, we'll see the rise of this phenomenon and, probably, it will be as common as company branding in the recent decades and centuries.
Bill:
Baidu presently allows paid search results to appear in the regular organic results, without indicating that those are paid to be there. I can see that causing more people to turn to alternatives.
Yuri:
Will still be filtering its population access to the outer world. More companies not to enter the market or enter through agreement to filter information.
Bill:
I don├втВмтДвt know when it will happen, but I expect at some point for a number of Google India employees to leave, and start something on their own.
Yuri:
India will continues to be a sweat shop of the web industry, while several quality companies are bound to appear, after all.
However, I don't see a reason why a Google employee prefer to leave such a company (especially in India with its SEO cheap labor), while I certainly see them starting or consulting on various side projects.
Yuri:
It is amusing (as I don├втВмтДвt live in the US) to observe how much info the US government can get about a citizen. Much more than Google. More battles between ├втВм╦Ьyour info is needed to protect you against the terrorists├втВмтДв and ├втВм╦ЬI want my life to be private├втВмтДв people/politicians/bills/etc.
Bill:
Yep. It├втВмтДвs a pulling in two different directions that could freeze them into not doing much at all.
Yuri:
I├втВмтДвd expect a major outbreak, this or next year, for the government to realize that prying into peoples├втВмтДв lives isn├втВмтДвt what people love. It won├втВмтДвt significantly stop them from doing what they do, though.
Yuri:
Ain├втВмтДвt gonna happen. He has long gone to promoting NNgroup and won├втВмтДвt return to UseIt. Unless some ├втВм╦ЬNielsen mocking site├втВмтДв creates a sign up form and sends him a letter to redesign a site and ask him to really deliver value, signed by thousands of people. May be, he├втВмтДвll do it, then. Then again, probably not. He is way up there and shouldn├втВмтДвt notice those little ants asking him to change his shoes.
It is weird though. UseIt got him the popularity he enjoys now.
Bill:
Would be shocking if he did. He has had people do redesigns of his site (without his permission), and display them, and they turned out pretty good. But I have been surprised by him commenting on some blogs where I didn├втВмтДвt expect to see him, and offering some great suggestions and ideas over the past year. Who knows.
Yuri:
Jakob lacks the connection with his audience to follow what interests it. If all his major clients tell him his site needs to go Web 2.0 and someone offers a way to do it (that├втВмтДвs an idea for you, Nielsen fans), he might redesign.
That being said, he did say his site design is good for what it is supposed to do: to let people read. It won├втВмтДвt surprise me, if he adds an ability for the readers to rate and comment on the content, some day.
Yuri:
Digg will need to find a way to tighten its algorithm and keep good relationship with its users. Hopefully, it├втВмтДвll do so right and get rid of spammers, while keeping the interested folks. Or it├втВмтДвll pass its glory moment.
Most likely, Digg will reorganize its content, tweak its algo once more and make it harder for members to get to the top (to promote the stories).
Bill:
I wonder. Will it have the staying power of a slashdot? Should it reward more for intelligent and insightfu and interesting material found on the web? I think it will become more heavily moderated, with human moderators, but that might not be a bad thing.
Yuri:
Rewarding quality stories and comments as well as adding human moderation is one of the ways to go. I suspect inside human moderation is the way to get rid of Digg manipulation.
Yuri:
Google gathers a lot of information about people, so, if Google clearly proves and guarantees not to give out the data to anyone (including the US government), personalization of search should become popular.
Bill:
I don├втВмтДвt know if we will see a lot of advances in personalization over the next year. Instead, query refinements and suggestions based upon groups and communities, like Google coop may become something that Google pushes.
Yuri:
I agree ├втВмтАЬ one of the major directions Google is going now is to find the human-reviewed websites to base his quality on. Google Coop and Google Custom Search Engines (also using Coop) is one of the ways to achieve this.
I├втВмтДвd expect Google add (and use) some algorithm to determine site quality by human behaviour, but that├втВмтДвs another story.
While Google certainly won├втВмтДвt be aiming at collecting more information, it will have to make an effort for people to persoanlize their search results.
Yuri:
├втВм┼УGoogle buys a TV network to broadcast YouTube movies and splitter ads around them├втВм┬Э
├втВм┼УGoogle shows video AdWords ads on his TV YouTube network├втВм┬Э Could be quite popular, why not?
├втВм┼УA new folk video movement starts: creative movies are shown on the Google and other TV networks├втВм┬Э
Bill:
It would be fun. I could see a Google TV network.
Bill:
Two different major directions:
1. more focus on local
2. more focus on multimedia ├втВмтАЬ images, video, audio including radio.
Yuri:
1. Local search, yes. Absolutely.
2. Blogs for traffic links, too, I├втВмтДвd guess (some SEO friendly templates should become popular, such as Cutline by Chris Pearson).
3. Agreed on other media ├втВмтАЬ I├втВмтДвd think SEOs will need to communicate with the customers.
Bill:
I can see more companies trying to do SEO type stuff internally, and as part of their marketing departments.
Yuri:
I├втВмтДвd expect SEO to be at least remotely known by the designers and web developers. Real SEOs will transform to Internet marketers and will be consulting the rest of the crowd.
Bill:
There may always be a small fraction of the industry out for a fast buck, misleading people.
Yuri:
Yeah, but I├втВмтДвd expect their customers to know who they are hiring, thus decreasing the amount of old school or low quality marketers.
Bill:
There are a lot of people working for free, building templates, plugins, widgets, and improvements on open source systems like WordPress, Drupal and others. I can see a percentage of those trying to do something more commercial, and working on their own CMS systems.
Yuri:
Yes, I can certainly see a couple of commercial CMSs appearing, along with more sophisticated free templates.
Bill:
One for now, but possibly growth in the future. Maybe even within the next year.
Yuri:
Same here at ITW.
Do check out the second part of the discussion and predictions with Bill Slawski at SEO by the SEA.
Since we are soon into 2007, you can well read about the 2007 predictions:
]]>Anyway, here goes:
]]>Anyway, here goes:
Warning: eat whatever you want, in moderation, while remembering to have some protein, especially, if you exercise. If you stick to a certain food direction, do it at your own risk and know the dangers beforehand.
No, that means I have not had a glass of wine since then. I was only drinking wine/champagne at holidays/birthdays for 4-5 years before this, too. Now, I suspect that nearly everyone has at least tasted vodka, but that's another story.
Now you don't have an excuse to say that "All Russians are lazy, eat raw meat, wear warm cozy fur hats and coats and drink vodka every day". Now, we don't have bears on the streets too (Zoos, mostly), but don't tell everyone - it is a secret.
Now I have to tag someone, I guess (take cover): Natasha Robinson, Chris Pearson, Seth Godin, Steven Bradley and Elizabeth Able at Cre8asite (how's that - tagging a collaborative blog). You folks have to post five things people don't know about you and tag the other 5 blogger-victims.
]]>Charities may have a wide range of goals, from raising awareness to influencing social actions, raising money for research to effecting change one individual at a time. Their scope of activities may be local, regional, national, or global. They may seek volunteers, donations, or corporate sponsorships.
Before we go into depths of lining out the plan, let's examine how charity websites and organizations are different from other websites and companies:
Due to the above circumstances most non-profit organizations find themselves in, their website represents something really awful and not exactly ready to accept donations. Most often, they are not promoted as well.
As you see from above, charities may not have a stable web development department and income. But what they have is their industry online, their passion for the cause and desire to work for it. Let's see how we turn the not-for-profit websites disadvantages and turn them into their advantages.
Just as a business web site needs to define their business objectives, and design their site around the goals that they want to accomplish, a nonprofit charity needs to consider who they want to reach out to with their web site, and what goals they want to meet with their pages. So it is important for everyone involved with the website project to remember the charity goals and reinforce them with every decision they make.
One of the important aspects of a charity is its cause. The greater the cause, the deeper it resonates within the people, the easier it is to promote the organization. That's why to build a noticeable website online, information of which will be spread via word of mouth, a charity ought to host a community on its topic (cause) on its own site, i.e. have a forum and, maybe, a blog (it is good for other reasons as well, stay tuned).
Okay, we need to have a forum. But before a forum, the site has to offer something to the visitors, not just a form to donate any amount of money. That's why it is vitally important for a charity site to have quality content. The content will attract the readers to the site, keep them and encourage people to link to your site (for a reason, other than just the charity cause).
As a non-profit organization has to have grounds for its cause, there have to be some research information, available to it. This information is an excellent example of what kind of content can be placed on the site.
Another is thoughts, ideas on how to prevent predicaments (related to the site topic), how to cope with related injuries, diseases, what to do after the rehabilitation period, etc. In short, charity sites need content that will provide value not only to the people, who are affected by the organization, but to everyone.
Here are a couple of examples of communities and content types a charity site can build:
As said before, great content can make it more likely that someone will link to a charity's site, and become an evangelist for the organization. Here are some more ideas for developing content from Bill Slawski:
Narratives can be one way of helping people understand what a charity is aiming to achieve, with real stories about real people. A charitable organization isn't nameless and faceless. It's a group of people who have gotten together to help others. Let people know who the people behind the organization are, and why they have gotten involved. Let visitors know something about the people or animals or communities that the charity aims at helping. Tell stories about them.
One of my favorite charitable organizations is a bird rescue and rehabilitation clinic. On their web site, they introduce us to some of the people who work for the organization, what they do, why they joined, and what their goals are. They take pictures of the birds that they rescue from oil spills and other accidents, and followup with images of those birds during the rehabilitation process, through to release back into the wild.
Make it easy for people to be responsive when they interact with the charity's web site.
If the charity has been around for a while, and has a history, tell that story. Let people know who they are working with, what the organization has accomplished in the past, and what its goals are for the future. Keep people informed of the initiatives the group is undertaking, and news about goals attained in meeting those efforts. You want people thinking that this is an active organization, which is making a difference, and can make more of a difference with their help.
Having such versatile content on your site should make your charity website not only The resource on industry information and the cause, but will also help you establish more trust with your potential sponsors, will make you more effective in promoting your cause and influencing people to improve the world.
Mind you, that's just some ideas example. A person from a non-profit can think of more ways how he can make his website useful for the charity-cause community. Especially, if the person is the chief in there (or at least the most passionate activist).
Read more about quality content.
Alright, now that we have scratched the surface of what the website should offer, let's go about creating it. Partly due to the limited funds (a good graphical template costs $1500+), using free CMS and a free CMS template may be preferrable for a charity.
Though the resources may be quite slim (at the start, at least), special attention should be made to actually developing a working, stable and scalable website. As far as I can see, Drupal seems to be the system of choice for building versatile websites (though truly large websites on Drupal do require some tune-ups and extra hardware, but who doesn't?). At any rate, anyone can hire a Drupal developer to setup the website for him, even a charity on a small budget (you pay only for installation, customization and the tuning thing, not for CMS and template design).
CivicSpace is a specialized version of Drupal that has been developed to be helpful and useful to nonprofit organizations and charities. If you have the technical skills to install Drupal, you should be able to handle installing the CivicSpace version. They will install, create themes, and even host sites for affordable prices.
Of course, you can talk to a quality designer you like and ask him/her, whether he/she will do the job for free. If the designer sympathizes with your cause, he/she'll do the job. Of course, you'll give credit to his work by linking from the footer, from the about page and post about him/her on her blog and forums, as well.
Note: You should make sure that you like the work of the designer, before you start working with him.
Now that we have found a platform to build our site on, let's see for the forum software. One of the best ones are Invision Power Board and vBulletin. I have participated on forums on both platforms and I must say I like them both, though I'd prefer vBulletin for a website. It offers nice features, loads pretty fast and also has some plugins, such as vbSEO to make it really search-engine friendly.
Good forum software costs some money, but the price isn't high enough to stop the good people from contributing to the cause, right?
Now that we have an installted website, we need to fill it with content. Generally, the easiest material to create is articles (or blog posts). Creating 50-100 informational, educational articles should be good enough to start promoting the website (it is easier to link to sites that have quality content on them).
You can take any of the content ideas from the list above and create a section for it on your website. It is a good idea to create sections one by one and filling them with plenty of content, before creating another section. This way, you create useful resource on a topic - not something spread thin on a huge website with lots of sections.
Setting up a blog and a forum from the start might be helpful, as it'll allow you to convert the early visitors to your constant visitors and maybe, contributors. This way, those forum members and guest bloggers, have joined you from the start, will feel especially important for your community and organization. You'll be able to build strong friendly relationships with them, which should result in many unexpected pleasant surprises.
Don't engage with advertising anything on your site just yet. Let your site age, gain repeat visitors and the momentum. In a year or two, the site should be ready to advertise the really useful products to your community.
Read more about quality content.
Some might just slap up a website, fill it with content and start marketing it. But to successfully attract donations, you need to make sure your site works as effectively as it can. Here you can use some SEO services, website optimization or usability consultants and such. You can either pay them (the costs will be compensated by increased site efficiency pretty quickly) or have them help your cause, if they find it dear to their hearts.
The core goal of improving your website is to ensure that every visitor, interested in donating to your charity cause, will donate, in fact. There are numerous things that may help, but it is pretty hard to make your site natural without having any web-related experience.
Of course, some measures the Web specialists will come up with will attract more traffic and links to your website - which is good - but the key to your site success lies in converting your site visitors to sponsors, evangelists or just in improving peoples minds, so they could improve the world themselves. That's why for them to understand what you have to offer, having a human-friendly, usable website is a must.
Of course, if you have willing people on board, you can ask them to learn all the site-related delicacies. It'll take several months to learn the basics and a half a year to a full year to learn some advanced stuff, so you don't need any website optimization consultants. A good step to learn about improving websites would be this very blog.
If anything, most likely, without an external (or internal) site consultant, you'll need to:
Read more about website optimization.
One more thing about site improvements. The best case would be when you or your designer integrates all site aspects in the design process. It will ensure that you will have less to do or won't have to redesign your website. The same thing relates to creating (writing) content.
So, the best way would be to have educated staff on board or use the services of a website optimization consultant before the web designer starts to work. Luckily, Drupal seems to be more or less user friendly, but the majority of issues come from hand-crafted content and site structure.
Now that you have a ready website with some content, you can start promoting it. Generally, it all comes down to letting all the (potentially) interested parties know that you exist and they should spread the word about you. Let's make a small list right now:
More marketing ideas from Bill:
Though a charity organization doesn't sell anything, it doesn't mean that the image of the organization should be neglected online. The image is created not only during the design procses, but through site content and marketing methods as well. As the core of charity organizations is providing value to the needing people, the site development, optimization and promotion methods should be focused on providing value as well.
Giving online will not only align well with the charity image (brand, if you will), but will be most effective as well.
As you can see, there are plenty of opportunities to improve and promote your organization and your charity website. The trick is to find ways to provide value to the people, interested in the cause and to communicate, build relationships and cooperate with them. If your aim is to make a better world, start with yourself and your local community and then reach the online community. Act together and you'll make an impact.
As you may have noticed, this post was written together with Bill Slawski, a well-known (in certain circles) SEO and admin for Cre8asite Forums, who is famous for reviewing various Web-related (Google, Microsoft, etc) patents and translating them to the human language at his SEO company site and blog, http://www.SEObytheSea.com.
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