Content, Content and Content
Whilst building your site is a relatively quick process, its the ongoing content generation and population of your site that will take time and is what you will devote time on each day to work on. We call this ‘building out your site’.
Don’t try to “finish” your site. There is no such thing. Your site will constantly evolve as you keep adding fresh content to it.
I always look at it like this in real estate terms:
1.Your domain name is the land in internet space.
2.Your site is the house on the land.
3.Your content is the furnishings within the house.
Each page or post of content you create is like a tentacle stemming from your site that will reach out to a new branch of people. The more posts and pages you create the more exposure you have on the web and thus people you will bring in to your site.
Have you ever noticed why Wikipedia features on pretty much every search result? Its because they have tons of content on tons of search terms.
Internet Search Engines
Internet search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo are the battlegrounds and its from here the main source of your sites traffic will flow from. Google has something like 65% market share of all internet searches and something like 95% of mobile searches.
Your aim is to get ranked within the first few page results of each of these search engines for each of your posts/articles that are targeting relevant keywords. It is for this reason that we are looking to focus on keywords that are being searched a good amount of times and that attract the least amount of competition. Less competition will result in quicker page one rankings.
You wont always be able to achieve this as some keywords are simply more competitive than others but in aiming for this you are always asking yourself, is your content being built around the right keywords? Read my article on selecting the right keywords for further help on this.
Writing Content
As you will be starting to gather, the content you create around good keywords is key to keeping your readers interested and engaged. However, many people fear writing content.
What you need to understand when creating content is that you do not have to create a work of art or literary masterpiece. You simply want to write from your preservative and convey your content, whether it is a review, article, or tutorial naturally in your own language. When I say good quality content, it has more to do with what it is doing for the reader, than the style in which it is written. Do not spend days mastering one article, they should be over 600 words (Google likes this) and be informative and not difficult to read.
So what should you write about?
The list is endless but try some of these for size:
- articles relating to your niche
- news and hot topics
- analysis of your niches sector
- product reviews,
- comparisons,
- your personal experiences,
- top tips and tricks,
- common mistakes,
- training,
- tutorials
Each of these content types can be used for any niche so look at your niche and try to come up with as list of things you can write about but always have in mind the reader. Its usually good to create 3-5 categories and then create a sub list of maybe 10 topics within that category.
People come to your site and want to leave having improved their position, whether this be knowledge, information or entertainment so always ask yourself have I given the reader something to go away with and a reason to come back to the site?
Content generation can come in the form of YouTube videos these days which is increasingly popular and can leverage a lot of traffic itself.
Podcasts are another growing medium which again can be leveraged on your site and give users access to your content on the go.
“Always ask yourself have I given the reader something to go away with and a reason to come back to my site?”
The list of types of content goes on and there really is no set way of how you should go about creating this. But start by simply creating some and start building out your site. Don’t be frightened of getting things wrong – if there is such a thing!
You will soon learn what is working for your site and what isn’t and what types of content are bringing in traffic. Keep working at it, and have the user in mind so that you are always aiming to deliver a great experience for them.
You can by all means look to the internet for inspiration of types of things you can write about but you should not copy. Google will punish you if it detects that you have copied or plagiarised from another site. This goes for pictures too as well as other intellectual property such as logo’s and branding.
Do not be afraid to turn to Wikipedia and other authority sites in your niche for ideas and inspiration but make your content unique so that you are not punished by Google.
Use Social Media To Leverage Traffic
I wont go into the power of social media here but suffice to say that you can bring in lots of traffic by creating a social profile on the major social platforms and leverage your content on these platforms.
Some of the main players are Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Google+, Tumblr, and LinkedIn but there are lots of others that you can use and the idea is to gather followers that are interested in your niche and then roll out
your ongoing content to your followers to see, share, like and re share.
An example is tweeting a link to a review you have made which will take the reader to your site. If you gather a good following this can be extremely powerful and drive in lots of traffic as each viewer can potentially share your content which can soon magnify your exposure.
You can fall into the trap of spending too much time on your social platforms so try to keep it strictly business and keep these separate from your personal account – unless of course you want to access your friends and family for your content.
When your site is built out, you should start to see traffic coming in. Keep working at this until you have a healthy stream of visitors, at which point you can start to think about Step 4 – Monetize Your Site.