By Donald Nelson, owner of A1-Optimization, which provides search-engine optimisation and article-writing services.
If you want to achieve lasting success with your website then the best route to take is to build a content-rich site.
A site with varied and informative articles and plenty of information generally, will be big hit with users and search engines alike.
When building content try to solve your viewers’ problems without making them buy something
In case you have writer's block or are unsure how to create more content for your website, here are some tips to help you get moving.
1. It's not always about sales
When building content try to solve your viewers’ problems without making them buy something.
Of course, you have set up your website to either make money or get something out of it, but it is not productive to build scores of pages with hard-sell messages.
People use the net to find solutions to their problems. Provide answers to these problems and you will win the respect and trust of your readers. This is known as ‘pre-selling’ and is just as important as selling itself.
So, before you start tapping on your keyboard, get your readers’ interests at the forefront of your mind.
2. Write about what you know
Share your knowledge with the readers.
If you’ve set up a website it means that you know something about your particular field or have some special interest in it.
Suppose you’re selling digital cameras. Why not write some articles reviewing the available cameras that are on the market? Or why not write an article explaining what people should look for when they buy a camera? A lot of people don’t have the foggiest idea about digital cameras and would surely be happy to get some unbiased information before buying something.
3. Do research and turn dull reports into interesting articles
You can build on what you know by doing a bit of research on the web.
Conduct a keyword search for ‘digital cameras’, or whatever your field is, and you’ll doubtless find web pages about the topic in hand. Often the information is just listed as a list of bullet points.
Blend this information with your own experience to create new articles.
You can quote or cite other articles that you find on the web (with hyperlinks) if they are particularly useful. In fact this is the original idea behind Google's system of PageRank: particularly good web pages earn links, or "votes", from other sites.
