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25
Ways To Add Quality Content To Your
Website - Part 1
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We've
known for a long time that quality matters to
Google. In a post Senior Google Engineer Matt
Cutts made to his blog, "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 nevër be stale or stagnant.
Let's Get into the Fun Stuff: Quality
Content for YourTarget Audience
1. 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.
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2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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?
5. 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.
6. Blogs or forums certainly add fresh
content to a site.
7. 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.
8. An expert Q&A on the main page of
your site. Get an expert to answer
questíons, 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.
9. 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?
10. 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.
11. FAQ's. FAQ's are content
– content that your target audience wants to
know. As you get questíons from your readers,
add additional Q&A's to your FAQ's to keep
them current.
12. 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. Be The Toilet Guy on the Net.
May not sound too glamorous, but if you're highly
visible on the Net and are converting traffïc to
sales, you can afford to be glamorous OFF the
Net!
(Continued in Part 2)
About The Author
Robin Nobles conducts live SEO workshops in locations across North
America. She also teaches online SEO training. Localized SEO training is
now being offered through the Search Engine Academy. Sign up for SEO tips of
the day at seo-tip@aweber.com.
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