Quality Content Rules the Web

Sharon Housley of FeedForAll.com writes a great article on developing quality web content.

Here's the abbrevieated version:

Fresh Content

The age old question keeps coming up, how do you retain website
visitors, how do you make visitors return to your website? The
answer should come as no surprise, fresh content. Content is
truly king, the fresher the content the better the site. What
many web stie owners fail to realize is that there is an endless
supply of content on the web that is freely available to
webmasters.

Not only can public domain material be freely used and
syndicated on websites, but a number of content publishers
provide content in exchange for a link back to their websites.
A variety of contents related to the website theme that is
integrated into the website will attract the interest of both
search engines and web surfers. The key to taking advantage of
free content is integrating or including content that is
directly related to the theme of the website.

1. Articles
Article repositories exist that categorize articles.
Searching the repositories using keywords that are related to
a website's theme will result in a wide variety of articles
available for publication that are related to the site's
existing web content.

Use the following to locate topic specific articles:

Article-DirectorySite.com
Free Website Content
GoArticles

2. RSS Feeds
The content of many RSS feeds can be syndicated. The added
benefit of syndicating feeds is that they are frequently updated
which will result in a steady stream of fresh changing content.

Webmasters can navigate categories of RSS feed directories to
locate related topic feeds or search for feeds using keywords.

Search the following directories to locate related RSS feeds:

RSS Network
RSS Locator

3. Forums
Consider creating a community forum where like-minded
individuals or at the very least individuals with a common
interest can discuss problems, concerns, related products or
ideas. The forum posts will generate a fresh stream of new and
self perpetuating website content.

Free Forum avalable with all the CD WebMaker Hosting packages:
PHPbb

4. White Papers
Provide white papers, customer profiles or endorsements that
detail how applications can be used in a specific industry.
Creating a white paper section that explains how a specific
product or service is used in a specific industry to solve a
problem or increase productivity gives potential customers
insight into how a specific service, product or technology will
help in the course of a day.

Sample White Papers


5. Newsletter Archive
If done properly online marketers see an almost instantaneous
sales or traffic increase when they send newsletters but many
do not benefit long term from the newsletter. Consider creating
a newsletter archive, the content is already built, why not
benefit from the potential traffic and unique phrases used, to
attract new or potential customers?

*FREE* E-mail Newsletter software included with all CD WebMaker Hosting
packages:
PHPList

6. Blog
Ride the technological wave. A daily journal with information
related to product or service launches, specials, technical
tips and new product announcements.

As search engines combat the problems with artificially generated
nonsensical web content, web site owners must integrate quality,
themed content that is going to legitimately interest prospective
customers.

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