More of us are becoming aware of the benefits of going Organic. Organic gardening, organic food, meats raised on organic feed and so on.

When we consume organic foods, we get more value from the food in the way of nutrients.

When it comes to your website, you should be thinking organic as well.

An organic website should be rich in information (nutrients) which is “food for thought”. As with organic food, nutrient rich or information rich websites provide more value to your visitor, which in turn may produce a higher conversion rate (sales) for your business.

When we introduce additives to our food, we actually reduce the nutrient value. It may look like we’re getting more, but in reality they’re only fillers that tend to leave us less satisfied. It won’t be long before we look for something else to give us what we’re looking for.

The same holds for websites. When sites are missing the good quality information we crave, we quickly go some place else to find what we need.

Another phrase associated with organic websites is Organic Marketing.

Orgainic websites, having an information rich presentation, providing good quality, authoritive food for thought, designed to attract your prospective customer, keeping them coming back for more, and also helps your ranking in the search engines without the need for key word programs.

Many of us have been approached by the major search engines to buy into the paid advertising key word programs. You’ve seen them, those first 3 or 4 paid advertiser links on the first page of the search engine results. They appear above the organic (free listing) search results.

These key word programs can be thought of additives when used with websites lacking in good quality information. Unlike adding seasoning to your food preparation, they typically result in acting like fillers specifically designed to drive traffic to your website. Conversion of that traffic into sales may be another thing all together.

Key word programs can end up costing you $100, $300, $700 or more per month, and fail to produce the desired conversion results you are hoping for.

How could this be?  My website gets lots of traffic, but we’re not getting sales!

While it’s true the key word programs can drive traffic to your website, if you’re serving junk food, folks are going elsewhere.

Questions you should ask yourself about the content you are serving include; Am I being clear about my product or service offerings?, Do I sound like the expert in my field?, Do I appear as mediocre or ordinary?, Does my competition do a better job at appearing credible?, and most importantly, Can my content be found on other websites (referred to as Duplicate Content)?

Nutrient rich content leads to a clear understanding about your product and service. When you are the authority, people will realize your credibility and be inclined to do business with you.

Avoid just copying and pasting content from other sites, even your suppliers, into your website. If you need help writing the content for your site, you should utilize the services of a professional copywriter. This small investment will boost your credibility and help toward increasing the conversion rate of your organic website.

Over the years of building and analyzing websites, I’ve noticed, in a fair share of sites, more attention has been afforded to the About Us page than to most other pages on the website.

It seems there must be a passage in one or more holy books that says, Thou Shalt Have an About Us Page.

While there may be legitimate uses for an about us page, more efficient ways to emphasize the “about us” information, lending credibility to your business can be utilized, while placing emphasis on important aspects about you and your company throughout your website.

Take for example the following common information given on a typical about us page:

“Our company is located in some town and state and has been providing widget sales and services since 2000. We have a combined experience of 90 years in the sales and service of widgets.”

This abreviated example will be sufficient to present the concept of eliminating the about us page and creating content and layout designed for your website visitor.

Let’s start with “Our company is located in some town and state”. This information is best presented in the header and/or footer of each page, as part of your call to action such as your logo or contact phone number and/or email address, thus removed from the about us page.

Next we look at “… we have been providing widget sales and services since 2000″. This important information belongs on Each Page either in the header, footer, side bar or a sub header line. Repitition is key.

Now we come to the credibility of your company and services by defining the following: “We have a combined experience of 90 years in the sales and service of widgets”.

Credibility is important and this blanket statement can be expanded in such a way to bolster your company credibility while possibly adding a face to your business.

Assume your company has a sales and service division, each with one or more employees. An effective use of space can be achieved by placing a quote and photo of the individuals on the associated pages.

For example, let’s say you have a page defining your services. Placing a brief information panel introducing the manager of your service division, Bob Smith, with a statement such as, “Bob Smith, Manager of our Services department has 20 years maintaining and repairing major brand widgets. He oversees his team of experts to insure you are satisfied with your widget maintenance and repair”. Below this statement, you could also place a photo of Bob, putting a face on your service division.

Now, when your site visitors view your services, they are also able to see the credibility statement about Bob and your company (which may go unnoticed on an about us page). When the customer calls, you have placed a face and name to the voice on the phone, and you have effectively removed the need for this information on your about us page.

Applying this technique to any information you would place on your about us page, enhances your website with “Quality Informational Content”.

A little thought and preparation goes a long way toward providing an effective layout packed with information and credibility, without an About Us page.

What does Optimized Theming mean?

To optimize means, “to make as effective, perfect, or useful as possible”, while theming is used to “create a unifying or dominant idea”. So Optimized Theming is to create an effective dominant idea.

Now what does this have to do with websites?

In the world of Optimized Website Design, content is your weapon, it is what you use to identify and present a need and apply a solution to fill that need. This is a natural extension of your keyword research process as your optimized theme will surround and reinforce your best or primary targeted keyword phrase.

As an expert in your field, you would pick a specific topic to focus your content. For example, a doctor may pick a specific ailment for his dissertation, while an auto mechanic might pick a specific repair to write about.  To define this methodology a doctor writing about psoriasis would hesitate to include a lot of information about the heart and cardiovascular system, or the mechanic writing about tire repair, would be less likely to be talking about the proper operation of the cooling system.

Skin disease and heart disease would be two different dominant ideas, as would be tire repair and anti-freeze. Your primary keyword phrase is your dominant idea or theme.

Focusing on a dominant idea or theme, is the first step. Next comes the optimization process and is where you build supporting content to make your case. A good word count target would be in the area of 500 to 1000 words. As an expert in your field, it would be relatively easy to come up with 500 to 1000 words of content, and in reality, you may have much more.

For a web site, or web page, much more than 1000 words may be daunting, and cut down on the number of people that will actually get to the end.  This means editing out the superfluous content or embellishment  and stick to the facts as much as possible.

Your content should be focused on the dominant idea or theme of your targeted phrase. You can always create more pages later on, to either go into detail or write about related themes as they pertain to your dominant idea. Cirelle can help provide unique supporting content, optimized to your theme.

Why is this important?

This brings me to the search engines. Search engine algorithms (of which there are many) take into consideration foremost, quality focused content. This allows the algorithms to identify the focus of your web page, and consequently will provide your content to their users when a search is done for your keyword phrase.

Their (the search engines) business is to provide links to quality content based on the user’s search criteria. If they produce junk results or unrelated results, users will go somewhere else to get their information. Hence search engines will reward a web site with a top link for well optimized, themed content.

Remember, you are the expert, your content should reflect this. Being the expert you will find less (if any) need to copy and paste from the work of others and your content will be unique, in presenting an optimized themed web page.

You’re standing around at a gathering sipping on a cocktail when someone walks up and asks; “So… How’s Your Uniques?” Smiling you respond, they’re doing just fine, as a matter of fact, I just had them cleaned last week! I suppose I will get a few more wearings out of them when the weather gets warmer. Standing alone again, you continue to sip your cocktail.

Knowing some basics can help you understand the type of traffic you’re getting to your website, Random or Targeted.

While unique visitors represent new visitors, you also need to watch the return visits. Say you have 10 unique visitors to your site, and the total number of visits is 10, this looks like nobody is returning and you may consider (more…)