25 ways to Add Quality Content to Your
Web Site....
using ideas for at least 25 different industries
By
Robin Nobles
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 never 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 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.
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 questions
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 traffic to sales, you can
afford to be glamorous OFF the Net!
13. Content that solves a problem. Why do people visit the Web? To look
for information or to comparison shop.
If you can solve problems for your visitors, you’re giving
them just what they’re looking for online. For
example,
let’s say that you sell Oriental rugs. Your potential
customer might be looking for decorating ideas for her office.
Her office is very small, and she’s trying to think of a way
to add color. Most of the wall space is taken up with
windows and metal bookcases. You’ve created a series of
content that shows pictures of problems/solutions
that your oriental rugs have solved, including one with an Oriental
runner. Not only does the content have
pictures, it also has text describing each problem and the
corresponding solution. Your potential customer
found your page in the search engine results.
14. Historical data. Let’s say that you sell steel pipes.
What’s the history of steel pipes? Creating a page
outlining its history is quite appropriate. In fact, taking it a step
further, creating pages that compare steel
to copper and other types of piping; what causes rust; how strong is
steel; how valuable steel piping really
is (how steel piping is used in almost every building, etc.); how long
will steel last; and on and on and on will
create a whole section of extremely valuable content to a Web site.
Here’s the catch. Is this valuable to the
target audience of the steel pipe company? Think of one target
audience: vocational education classes all over
the US. This would be a great resource for them. If they linked to this
site, all of them being .edu’s, wouldn’t
this be a great link popularity builder for the site? Think about that
for a minute. We’re talking about quality
content and quality link building. Another example of historical data
would be a hotel on St. Simons Island.
The hotel could certainly provide historical data about the island on
its Web site as well as tour information,
etc. How could a site that sells mustang parts use this strategy? A
site that sells wedding dresses?
15. Interviews – the easiest way of building content yet!
Interview an expert in your industry. Send the
expert a list of questions and let the expert answer in his/her own
words. Don’t change any of the expert’s
answers, except to correct misspellings or grammatical errors. Always
be upfront with the expert, and always
maintain the integrity of the article and yourself. Write a series of
interview articles, and highlight them on the
main page of your site.
16. Seasonal articles. Is your industry “seasonal”
in any respect? If so, seasonal articles are always extremely
popular.
17. Statistics. Offering stats on your site is also another way of
adding content to a Web site. If the stats
aren’t your own, always indicate where you’re
getting them. Quote the source! How could financial or
mortgage sites use this strategy?
18. An advice column. This can be used for a dating site, or it can be
used for other sites as well. How could an
SEO site use this strategy? How could a decorating site? What about a
plastic surgery site?
19. Winners of the month. Let’s say you have a site where you
sell cut flowers. Get your Web audience to
send in pictures of bouquets and arrangements they’ve made
with your flowers. Post the pictures online. Pick
a winner of the month, and have that winner’s picture posted
on the main page of your site. Give the winner
a $25 gift certificate.
20. Using the flower example, create video tutorials for creating
flower arrangements. Make sure you sell all
of the materials they’ll need to create the flower
arrangements they can make if they follow the video tutorials.
21. Again with the flower example, have customers send in an outline of
how they created their flower
arrangement, the materials they used, as well as the pictures. Link to
all of those materials in your online
store. Be creative. Can you do something similar with your own Web site
in your own industry? What if you
had a costume site? An art site? Give it a few twists and use it on a
hunting or fishing site.
22. Send out a monthly newsletter offering your own tips, tips from
customers, sale items, holiday ideas,
the winner of the month, etc. Encourage readers to post their ideas to
the blog. Post past newsletters on
your site for more content.
23. A biography about someone’s life, if it relates to your
industry. You can see how this would work well if you
have a Civil War site or a used book store.
24. News events pertaining to your particular industry.
25. Community-related page, if this is a local Web site. For example,
you could discuss local restaurants, little
league baseball, school openings, etc., on community-related pages or a
blog.
We’ve only just begun with ideas. It all depends on the
industry you’re in and the products or services you
sell.
Put your creativity hat on and brainstorm.
In Conclusion . . .
Remember to think “quality” when it comes to
creating content. These ideas should help get you started.
And think about this point as well. If you start creating quality
content, what is certain to follow? Quality links.
Sites will begin linking to your content, because you’re
doing what you should be doing: giving your customers
what they want to see when they visit your Web site. They want to see
new and exciting “quality” information
that’s updated on a constant basis. You become the trusted
source of that information.
Don’t try to take the easy way out.
Success
isn’t dished out in soup lines. Success comes with hard
work.
Grab
a Free SEO Tip and have it sent to you by e-mail every day -
hundreds of free tips!
Subscribe or unsubscribe as often as you wish.
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 a free
"SEO Tips of the day."
Home
SEO
Articles Blog
Site Promotion Downloads
Course
Products
Links
Contact
Us Earnings Disclaimer