CASE STUDY: Developing Killer Content for Your "Artisans Website Portfolio"
The intent of these Notes is to present GOAL, STRATEGY AND METHOD for producing productive content with your "Artisans Website Portfolio" by furnishing a specific example, a Terra Cotta Restoration portfolio containing two projects:
- The Eastern Columbia Building
- The Million Dollar Building
OUR GOAL is to produce leads, obviously. A web lead has two segments, both of which depend on the production of rich, relevant, well structured and well targeted content:
- To get the Search Engine to refer the Qualified Visitor to your website.
- To engage, educate and sell the Qualified Visitor so that he/she picks up the phone and calls.
OUR STRATEGY is to use the Portfolio structure of the website to target the specific concerns of both the Search Engine and of the Qualified Visitor. These concerns are expressed as Keyword Phrases. Every Portfolio (and its constituent Projects) shall specifically target a closely related family of Keyword Phrases. For example, the "Terra Cotta Restoration" Portfolio and its constituent Projects (including Eastern and Million, and the others) targets the following Keyword Phrases, more or less in order of importance:
- Terra Cotta Restoration
- Terra Cotta Repair
- Terra Cotta Reproduction
- Glazed Terra Cotta
- Unglazed Terra Cotta
- Terra Cotta Patching Mortars
- Terra Cotta Coatings
- Terra Cotta Anchorage
- Glazed Polychrome Terra Cotta
- Terra Cotta Veneer
- Structural Stabilization of Terra Cotta
Paired up with any of the following Keywords:
- Seismic
- Los Angeles
- Pasadena
- California
- Los Angeles County
- Stainless Steel Anchors
OUR METHOD is to structure our content so as to be compliant with the concerns of both the Search Engine and of the Qualified Visitor. Fortunately for us, the concerns of both are mostly congruent, at the design of Google. The Search Engine expects that every web document be laid out in parts and it weighs and interprets the information it finds as follows:
Link Name field - Portfolio page: This field is very important because it is the name all your own website incoming links call the page. It is short so it should contain your most important phrase. I changed the name from "Terra Cotta" to "Terra Cotta Restoration" because "Terra Cotta" is too general a phrase to be useful and because "Terra Cotta Restoration" is the first, most critical phrase. The Qualified Visitor will appreciate the specific information as well.
Short Description field - Portfolio page: Better known as the Title Tag, this field is very important because it is used by the Search Engine to describe your page to their Visitor, the top line in every Search Engine listing. The Search Engine gives most weight to the first few words, so these words should expand and reinforce the message given in the Link Name. So it is that the Short Description "Terra Cotta Restoration, Repair and Reproduction" contains the three top phrases, in order of importance.
Long Description field - Portfolio page: This field should address the specific and known concerns of the Qualified Visitor AND contain a range of the Keyword Phrases expected by the Search Engine. Suggest that it be not over one paragraph. Be sure to express the unique value that you offer the Qualified Visitor. Caution! Do not try to game the Search Engine by stuffing this (or any) paragraph with Keyword Phrases or you will get an "OOPS" penalty (over optimizing penalty). If you use (but don't abuse) Keywords in a natural way and cover the concerns of your Qualified Visitor, the Search Engine will approve and rank you. Suggest that you imbed no pictures here because they will take away from the Project thumbnails down the page.
Short Description field - Project page: This field enables you to target important secondary phrases, such as "Restoration of Glazed Polychrome Terra Cotta", "Terra Cotta Veneer", "Structural Stabilization of Terra Cotta", "Terra Cotta Decorative Units", etc. Use the same composition guidelines that you used for the Short Description field - Portfolio page to target these lesser Keyword Phrases. This phrase is also important because it appears in the body of the Portfolio page.
Long Description field - Project page: This is your opportunity to summarize what is relevant and significant about the Project for the Qualified Visitor. Don't depend on the Project Images and Captions to convey these details as the Visitor may never drill down enough to see them if you don't say that they are there in the Long Description summary. Include enough technical and anecdotal details to give the Qualified Visitor a sense of the challenges the project presented and of your mastery. Use of technical terms enriches the document for the Search Engine. Do inset a small image to give the Visitor a sense of the Images they will find below.
Designated Image Caption field - Project page: This field is significant because it appears on the Portfolio page. Do use Keyword Phrases and technical terms (rather than proper names or building descriptions) in order to strengthen the targeting of the Portfolio page. For example, "Infiltration of moisture through cracks and joints caused much of the structural steel reinforcement to rust and expand, forcing apart many of the terra cotta units," is stronger than "At the other end of the Broadway Corridor on Spring St. is a building that is perfectly consistent with the building boom of the post-WWI frenzy that took place in many parts of the country," because it helps the Portfolio page more, and for no other reason. This note applies only to the Designated Image Caption field. All non-designated Image Captions can contain whatever description best suits the Image or no Caption at all, this note only applies to the Designated Image.
More general instructions can be found in our Summary Manual, or in the user area of the "Artisans Website Portfolio", itself.
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