Isulong SEOPH Contest

Isulong SEOPH: 25 Ways to Add Quality Content to Your Website - Part 1

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 Your Target 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.

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)

posted by RB2 @ 6:10:00 PM