RELEVANCY Two

Remember we said that RELEVANCY was the Hercules of words when it comes to establishing your web presence? We mentioned several important things related to that in the last post. This time we want to look at another aspect of how you make your page relevant.

Be Consistent. You do not want mixed messages all over your site. The focus of it should be clear all the way through. If you are not all about something, the message that you want to get out is not getting out. You need to be consistent. Say something on your site and then have the rest of what you say be supportive of your main message. That includes graphics, polls, flash, links or textual content. They need to be related to your message. If something that you post on your site is unrelated, it is better to leave it off. The question of relevancy, which the search engines are asking, is answered by the argument of consistency. Make the argument in a variety of ways and forms if you wish, but be sure that it is one argument. Otherwise, you will be arguing with yourself and the searcher is likely to cut and run, not wanting to get involved with family squabbles, and all.

Part of the exercise of being consistent is offering your message using a variety of platforms. For example, if you choose to have a complimentary video link, make sure your searcher is not lead down a long, dark, scary path of confusion. He should be able to access the message in a click or two. Remember the movie, Deliverance? Not a destination of choice. Nobody wants to end up in Virtual Deliverance, so treat your visitors kindly by making your consistent video easy to get to.

Also, make sure your headlines and your titles are consistent with your message. Don't make your visitor perform mental gymnastics to try to figure out how a headline might be related. It is not the visitor's job to analyze your site to be able to make heads or tails out of it. That would be your job. And you had better do it ahead of time or else the visitor will be gone leaving you alone connecting dots by yourself. And arguing with yourself, of course.

(...to be continued...Next time: Be Clear and Complete)