More Content To Your Site
By Matt Jackson (c) 2007
Content is king and your content site is your kingdom. When the adage "content is king" was first coined, the web was, in many respects, a simpler place for Webmasters. Creating a website with ten to twenty pages of keyword rich content would generate excellent search engine results and a mass of traffíc as a result. Note that keyword rich has now been replaced by keyword optimized – a subtle difference, but a difference nevertheless.
However, the web evolved (difficult to imagine that it's only now considered web 2.0). With the evolution of the web came a much greater demand from web users. Where the static content site was once the epitome of everything good about the Internet, that is less true of the most recent incarnation of the World Wide Web. Your website visitors demand more, but are you able to provide it? We look at various methods of including more content on your website.
More Pages
OK, we'll deal with the most obvious method first. Add more pages. It's simple and it might be considered old school to many, but it still has a place. The more pages of content you have, the more information you can provide and the more keywords you can target. The math is simple and the technique is devastatingly simple.
Try to add new pages for new topics and, if a particular topic looks like being too verbose, split the page down into several parts. Hostíng plans usually allow for a lot of disk space so you should have no problems with space limitations in this respect. Content Management Systems are often included as part of a hostíng control panel, again making it much easier to add more pages to your website.
Add An Article Directory
This is a similar approach to adding more pages in many respects except that it allows for a slightly different structure. An article directory is an excellent way to provide visitors more information on the topic of your site. Articles can be categorized, and include deep links to the appropriate pages of your site.
Articles are very marketable, in the sense that if they are well written, other websites may be inclined to link to the article or even republish it in full with all links to your site left in place. If you simply want to add more content, and use the resulting pages as online real estate, then you could consider accepting article submissions from other authors and Webmasters. You receive free content while the authors receive exposure.
News Section
News items related to your industry or even your business can be a good excuse to regularly add content. As a general rule they will contain what will turn out to be reasonable long tail search results and you can optimize the pages. Good news or press releases may be picked up by other industry news sites providing you with more exposure as well as genuinely useful content for your site.
Let's not overlook that it's always good to brag. Modesty will not win you customers, so if your business or website achieves something big then brag about it. Inform your customers how they too can benefit and the advantages that your news gives to them.
Forums
Some believe that the forum is becoming outdated by more modern web 2.0 applications and portals. While this may be true, the forum can still be used to your advantage although only in the appropriate circumstances. Forums provide a means for people to communicate with one another, and if you can create a vibrant and lively forum, you will instantly attract regular visitors.
The forum can also be used to direct your website visitors. If there's a particularly hot topic, then link to it from one of your pages. If somebody (even you) posts a particularly beneficial post, then link to it from one or more of your pages. Conversely, you can also point forum readers to the main pages of your site. It is possible, with certain forum applications, to replace all instances of a word with a link to one of your pages – a quick way to flow traffíc into your main site.
Blogs
Who hasn't heard of blogs, right? They caused a huge debate when first introduced. Early bloggers claimed they would be the future of the Internet while more skeptical marketers and Webmasters decided their popularity would dwindle eventually. The former certainly came true and it seems there are blogs everywhere, within every industry, and on every conceivable topic.
Blogs have been turned into books, books into blogs. Blogs have even been turned into TV series and, again, vice versa. If you're not blogging then you're not communicating because a blog really does provide a superb way of communicating with your visitors and your customers. And, you guessed it, it allows you to add a lot of good content to your site and will usually draw good search engine traffíc for your efforts.
Frequently Asked Questíons
An old favorite of the Internet marketer. The FAQ page serves a number of purposes, but primarily it is used to prevent an excessive number of telephone calls and emails with simple questíons. An FAQ page can also be used to highlight some of the main benefits of your service or product. For example, if you sell trainers, and deliver them the next day, one of your questíons could be:
"Q - How long before my Nike trainers are delivered?"
"A - We provide next day delivery on all orders placed before 2pm"
That's a very simplistic view, but it can help to sell your product. Also ensure that you include some of your more important keywords through the questíons and answers.
Knowledgebase
A knowledgebase is essentially the next step up from an FAQ page. Instead of having a single page with all of your questíons and answers you would create an article or short article that concentrates on one question or one tutorial. Once you have built up a good number of these you have an excellent point of resource, a good way to attract visitors, and a method of keeping unnecessary customer communications to a minimum.
Feeds
RSS and XML feeds are not new, but they are good for adding content to your site. Look for other sites within your industry that provide feeds and embed them into a page or several of the pages of your site. This can help with SEO because the better feeds update regularly and the search engine spiders believe your site content updates regularly.
These are just some of the more basic but effective methods of adding more and more content to your website. Anything that enables you to add more words has the ability to help improve traffíc and conversions, and provide your customers with an invaluable resource that they will hopefully return to time and time again.
If you don't already have a blog, then get one. At least one. You can combine a blog with other methods of adding content. For instance, you can add other people's articles, or your own articles to the pages of your blog. Alternatively, you can use a blog as the news section of your website. They are easy to design and typically very easy to establish and integrate into your website.
About The Author
WebWiseWords crafts various forms of web content. If you are looking for anything from article writing to blog writing, then visit the WebWiseWords site today.
