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25 Ways To Add Quality Content To Your Website - Part
1
By Robin Nobles
© 2006
We've known for a long time that quality matters to Google. In a
post Senior Google Engineer Matt Cutts made to his blog (www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-press-day-2006/),
"quality" was mentioned several times as being important to Google. Quality
matters when it comes to content, and it matters when it comes to
links.
However, building content and links doesn't have to be painful.
Web site owners tend to think of content in a very limited way.
So, let's
open up our creative minds and think of all sorts of ways of adding quality
content to a Web site.
A few things to remember:
- You're only
confined by the boundaries you set for yourself and your Web site. Allow
yourself to think in a totally different way than you've thought
before.
- Your Web site content should
be written for your buying customers . . . not for you. Your Web site
content should not be written for
the search engines. The search engines are not your target audience.
- Think
of the overall picture of your site, as if it were a living, breathing
entity.
After all, Web sites should continue to grow on a constant basis and never
be
stale or stagnant.
Let's Get into the
Fun Stuff: Quality Content for Your Target Audience
- A
calendar of events. This is ideal for sites like
real estate sites to show upcoming open houses; book stores
to promote
upcoming book signings or writers' meetings; collectors' sites
to show meetings across the country, etc. Be sure to allow visitors
to send
in their own event to be
posted to the calendar.
- Maps. Consider real estate
sites, hunting or fishing sites, camping sites, hotels, or any outdoor
recreational
sites
for maps. Be sure to add content at the bottom of the map that describes
the
map and
outlines its purpose as it relates to your site.
- Before/after
experiences. This
is perfect for products or services you're selling
where customers can write in and discuss how this particular
product or service helped
them. These could turn out to be mini articles, or use them
as testimonials.
- Pictures
from your customers. You
could set up a special place where past customers could post
their pictures
and journal
entries on your site. This is ideal for vacation sites, recreational
sites, wedding
sites,
baby
sites, photography studios, etc. How could you use this idea
on a Halloween site? On a flower site?
- Online
coloring sheets. Use your imagination here.
If you set up some coloring sheets about your
vacation
property, kids could color those sheets and post them online
before their
trip in their
own special online area. After the trip, their parents
could post pictures and
a
journal of their trip. This is their "Web site" about their
trip, all hosted on your site as a perk for booking through
your vacation
site. What are they going
to do with this information? They're going to tell their
friends, Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Edna, etc. They're going
to link to it. You can use this perk as part of your USP
(Unique Selling
Proposition) when differentiating yourself from
your competition. You'll be building one-way links from
your past customers, plus visibility for future customers.
Win/win
situation. You'll think
of many ways of adding coloring sheets (or similar creative
activities for kids) to your
site, if your site is the type that would work for kids.
- Blogs
or forums certainly
add fresh content to a site.
- Articles
or new pages of interest to
your target audience. Write new content on a regular basis once
or twice a week should be your goal.
- An
expert Q&A on
the main page of your site. Get an expert to answer
questions, and post one question/answer a week (or a day whatever
you can handle) on the main page of your site. Have past Q&A's
in a searchable archive on your site.
- Product
reviews. If your
industry has products or software
to review, consider writing candid reviews of those
products. Publish
the
reviews on your Web site as well as publish them
in a few of the online publications.
Readers are always interested in totally candid
reviews, where the writer lists the positive as well as the
negative aspects
of a product.
If you
have a
landscaping business, how could you use this idea?
What products do you, as an expert, prefer to use, and why?
- Short
tips. If your product or service lends itself
to short tips, write up a series
and publish them on your Web site. Send them
out in your newsletter.
Get
your readers
to send
in tips
as
they use the product. Offer a discount off additional
products if they submit tips.
- FAQ's. FAQ's
are content content
that your target audience wants to know. As
you get questions from
your readers, add additional Q&A's to your FAQ's to keep them
current.
- How-to
guides. People love "how
to" guides. If you sell online
plumbing parts, why not have a "how
to"
guide on installing a new toilet? Make it easy on your customers, and
they'll
come back to you again and again. Create a series of "how to" guides. Become
"The
Toilet Guy on the Net". May not sound too glamorous, but if you're highly
visible on the Net and are converting traffic to
sales, you can afford to be glamorous
OFF the Net!
(Continued in Part 2)
About the Author:
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