After much recent studying of search engine trends and our rankings and hits from them here, I realized something. Although you don’t have to be a techie to know what HTML is, or to Google for error messages you get while installing scripts you found on the net, you are apparently allot more techie than the vast number of people who are searching for words like webpage or web design or Myspace or just blog. So after looking at our site carefully, I realized something, we overshot the biggest audience with most of our content. We’ve completely left the total newbies behind. Although we cover terms like HTML really well, absolute newbies have no idea what HTML is so why would they search for it? We don’t have anything for people who want to know, but don’t know what to search for to find out. (and so they look for things like “How do I create a website” and stuff of that nature.
To that end, I’ve started writing a beginner tutorial that aims to explain in the simplest way possible what the Web is and how it works, and filled it up with beginner search terms in the hope that it will result in more traffic from MSN/Yahoo/AOL/Altavista not to mention Google. Admittedly, this is partly an experiment in Search Engine Optimization on my part, but I believe that when I’m done it will be a very useful resource for absolute beginners to at least gain a basic understanding of how it all works.
July 15th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Franki, I really like your approach, starting well before actual HTML and targeting more likely starting points such as MySpace / Facebook. Nearly 10 years ago my first exploration into web page development was using Homestead WYSIWYG editor and free hosting before starting to play with the code.
Cheers,
Gary