Forum Moderators: not2easy
First time posting here. Nice forum!
I just bought "Google Hacks", a recently published book from the O'Reilly guys. The last chapter of the book includes a section called "26 Steps to 15K a Day".
One of the 26 ways is "Content" and they suggest building one page of content per day (between 200-500 words). The problem is that I run an online greeting card website. Mainly my pages are made up of Flash greetings, animated gifs and midis.
I know that BlueMountain, American Greetings and the other big boys who have high PR's don't have this type of wordy content either. I had a PR of 6, but recently it dropped to a 4 (literally overnight). Any suggestions on what I should focus on as far as content? I can create some articles on things like gift giving, floral arrangements, candy and other things that greeting card websites sell on the side I guess? I'm guessing that folks who come to my website to send free greetings wouldn't even bother reading them.
1. How about a history of the greeting card page. And then you can have pages on the history of Valentine's day, Halloween, Xmas, etc.
2. greeting card etiquette
3. famous greeting cards
I think that is also the kind of informative content that can get the occasional link to you also.
Kevin
Welcome to WebmasterWorld - kind of funny how you find something written by Brett and then, not knowing, come to his site to ask about it - ironic.
Good article though, and you'll find lots more great info here.
I guess you should try and think outside of the box a bit here.
What could be good content related to the topic of your site? Getting into some creative technique like cluster building etc probably won't hurt.
An offhand idea: stories around sending/receiving gift cards.
Hint: those could come from your users, perhaps triggered by some award...
I'm guessing that folks who come to my website to send free greetings wouldn't even bother reading them.
Perhaps not... but would people searching for that kind of content find it and visit your site? Would some of them become repeat visitors, bookmark you, come back later to send greeting cards, or use whatever else you offer?
The SEO value of adding additional content pages is that you expand the scope of the site and the range of search queries for which you'll be found.
You use Blue Mountain as an example of a successful site, but Blue Mountain didn't get to the top by search engine rankings. In fact, nobody ever searched for them because their service (witty online greetings) had never existed, until Blue Mountain came along.
So it's not relevant to compare yourself to them in the context of search engine marketing, and maybe, just maybe, not relevant to base your marketing strategy on a search engine, as that may not be appropriate for you. Maybe...
The Blue Mountain success stems from Viral Marketing: One person sends it to another, and it grows exponentially from there.
If what you are doing is similar to Blue Mountain, then perhaps the marketing strategy should be based on a Viral Model and not a Search Engine Model? Something to think about.
On the other hand, "online greeting cards" is a highly trafficked keyword phrase and worth pursuing, so yes, adding content is a great idea. FAQ pages and Knowledge Bases are a great place to start.
Have a monthly contest, users get to create their own greeting cards via a form (you set the standards for taste of course). The submitted "cards" go through you first, you then post them on pages which also contain good descriptions on the page about the site and greeting cards in general. Users then vote (poll) for the winner and you use the text as one of your upcoming cards to add to your site. Adds text content through the user, gets people interested either in creating or voting. Just an idea.
"If what you are doing is similar to Blue Mountain, then perhaps the marketing strategy should be based on a Viral Model and not a Search Engine Model?"
Excellent point, martinibuster. In addition to expanding my content, I'll be spending some additional time researching the Viral Model to learn more about the best ways to benefit from that as well.
Thanks again folks!
