Website Automation For Small Businesses

Website Automation For Small Businesses
11.07.06
Andy Stetzinger


As our companies CTO and lead software developer, I am often asked about some of the "features" we employ on our website. Most of the tid-bits go unnoticed by the untrained eye, but from time to time, individuals do pick up on some of the things we do, and want to know more about them.

While I won't reveal any trade secrets in this article, I will share some of what we do, and why we do it. If you choose to employ the same tactic, that is up to you.

Feature #1 - Self Spidering
We "self spider" our sites multiple times a day, depending on the nature of the site. If content changes often, we self spider more. The reason for this is pretty simple: speed. Major search engines, once told, will look for a specific file when they spider a site. As long as that file is kept up to date, then your information is kept up to date as well.

Feature #2 - Self Cross Publishing
You might be reading this blog entry on one of several different websites. We only publish it once. Our websites pick up this article live and present it to you for your reading pleasure. Statistically speaking, this increases the readership of our blog, and decreases the amount of time needed to keep up with a blog. Not to mention the updated content on each of our sites.

Feature #3 - Self Published PodCasts
While we may not employ any dramatic routines in creating our content-rich, not-to-miss, you'd-better-be-listening podcasts, we do something a little different with the processing of the files. We self publish to different feed sources as soon as content is updated, and, if not updated, we let them know we have no current changes. We also employ a self updating feature on our local podcast page to present the user with just the latest podcast. We have no interaction with regards to updating our podcasts other than uploading the file itself.

Feature #4 - Magic KeyWords
On some of our sites, we use a system I like to call "magic keywords". In essence, the keywords from the page are derived from the page itself. Pages automatically become self relevant, and search engines love them.

We use a lot of other techniques on our various sites. The main thing is we don't often touch our site - they self optimize. Why spend the time working on your website when you can spend the time working on your business?

~Andy