Creating strong web site content is an anchor for long term site success and optimization. What do I mean by content? Content is essentially interesting, original articles about your business and industry. What do I mean by “interesting”? Your content must be original and unique so that site visitors to want to read and learn something from it and others web publishers will view it as an authority resource to link to.

There are no shortcuts to creating great content for your web site. The best content takes time to generate and is created the old fashion way with strong, factual research, drafting methods, revisions and finally, great presentation and layout for the web. You must be an expert in your subject matter, have research sources at your fingertips and creative efforts to back you.

On the path to great content, there are no tricks and rehashing of other’s information and content; no scraping or borrowing – at least not without proper reference to the original work and authors and definitely not without good reason. In the case where you run or own your own business, chances are, you’ll be able to create the best content on your own. So go for it!

Content creation for web sites varies depending on your business type. For example, Business to Business (B2B) services content is much different than a Business to Consumer (B2C) retailer content. It may be worth a series of blogs just to cover the varying content creation strategies for different industries and businesses. Here I’ll simply cover content creation ideas, as a brainstorm, rather than industry or vertical specific topics and strategies.

A couple a couple of helpful hints to generating good web site content:

1. Write your own articles: If you know your business well, are passionate about your products and services, write your own articles. Write as much in depth content that you can and try to focus it into content groups starting with overviews and shrinking down the concepts and subjects into more granular topics. Get as granular as possible; you’d be surprised at how much information you can extract and publish about a topic or product. If well organized into a directory on your site, the granular subjects can be extremely good content for capturing searchers. To organize your information and article structure, create a wire-frame or topic-tree so that you can see your structure.
   
2. Research – remember that not all research is conducted online. Visit your local libraries.
   1. Study the history of your industry
   2. Study the history of your products
   3. Is there a cultural significance to your business and products?
   4. Is there a geographic focus and preference for your products and services?
      
3. Hire an expert: It may well be worth it for your company to hire an expert writer in your topic area. You may be served well by contacting trade group members who may freelance and write about your subject matters. Check the writer’s references and then hire them to write on specific subject matters that you want to address and about which you want to inform your site visitors. Sit with them to review your content goals, and have them submit drafts that you agree to edit with them.
   
4. Solicit featured writers: there are tons of writers who are up and coming and looking for a name. Up and coming writers may be deeply interested in your content area, and may be able to generate great content in exchange for products and or services or just for the exposure on your site – so long as you retain the copyright, but they get the BY LINE.
   
5. Install a reliable blogging software: A blog is a great way to keep your site “alive” with current content. You can provide various levels of administrative and authoring access to allow various stakeholders from your organization to contribute and write articles.
   
   
6. Pull XML feeds from news sources and create Pipes: In certain situations it can be helpful to pull data from other reputable websites and feed that through on your site. Just note where it is from and remain within copyright guidelines. And while from a technical SEO perspective, this may not create any further direct “keyword rankings” (in and of itself) for your website, it can help make you site a “destination site” – just so long as the information that you are pulling through is not boring and is presented in a unique manner. With some advanced tries in programming and code structuring, a system like Pipes can be helpfu. One such system now offered by Yahoo.
   1. This can be created as a “news” section, or “what’s hot and new.”
      
      
      
7. Create Client Testimonials: gather testimonials regarding each of your products and services from your current clients, and create those into web pages.
   
   
8. Product Reviews: create a section of your website where clients and buyers of your products and services can write reviews on your own. Create the functionality to approve or deny reviews in a queue.
   
   
   
9. Check your competitors: look at the website’s of your competition to determine how you may best differentiate yourself in content. You want to remain as unique and original as possible. Be a leader with your content. Internet users like originality. What are some areas to differentiate?
   
   1. Writing Style – play with different styles of writing. Creative writing.
   2. Imagery – find unique images that are not used elsewhere. Give the images a caption. If you can and have budget, hire a professional photographer to create great new images for you that no one else has.
   3. Formatting – should you create lists or long, in depth paragraphs? What’s the best style for your target audience? Think of novel ways to present information to your audience.
      
10. Create Multiple language versions: multiple languages increase your page count and the volume of your site.
    1. Create more content and more pages and be a resource to international visitors increases
    2. the likelihood that other websites will link to you and increase you’re the likelihood that you’ll receive international traffic (if you are interested).

Once you’ve written all of your copy, make sure the pages look great.  Unique images or good stock photography can go a long way towards making your content really shine.

The above ideas do not need to be the primary content for your website, but more back-up material to create a site that is actually worth visiting and can be a resource for interested browsers – who, if served the appropriate calls to action at the right times and search queries, can become clients and buyers of your products and services.

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