Forum Moderators: not2easy
help please
thanks
accent
well anybody could write volumes about this but I simply don't have the time. I can offer up a good suggestion however.
Blogging is a great way to add content to your page every day. If you have it set up to archive daily, and you post a couple good quality paragraphs (minimum) every day viola! You are adding a new page of content to your site every day ;)
Just be sure to add a link to your site pointing at your blog (if your blog isn't built in to your site) so the spiders can find it.
If you don't like the idea of blogging you can write as many new pages as you want and include them in a site map. Check out the search function if you don't know about site maps. Of course, you'll want the spiders to find your site map so include that in your (hopefully) text based navigation. Also, links to these supplemental pages should be found naturally throughout your site, but site maps serve as a list of "chapters" of your website, as well as a portal for spiders to crawl all your pages.
Good luck and just keep at it, you'll get there! Keep reading around here too. There is plenty of valuable info to be learned.
[edited by: Michael_Weir at 4:44 pm (utc) on Dec. 28, 2004]
I wouldn't worry about your site "looking dumb" if you add content - just build deeper clusters of content. Be sure there is a clean and short navigation path to all content, but you can keep your basic navigation structure.
thanks
accent33
Does what? Blog software won't create the content, but it does integrate it into your site with very little effort.
Wow, now that I think about it. That's a lot!
(And of course banners and adsense gets slapped on every one of them.)
There's plenty of free blog sites out there. Search google.
I do this not only because of the search engine ranking, but also to provide my visitors with quality content each day and a good service.
Most of the content I upload is written several weeks or months before. So when you have some time over write content then save it so you can upload it once a day.
Good Luck!
Chris
finding a place to add them should be no problem if they're on-topic with another limb of your site.
It seems quite difficult till you get it right - if you are running a corporate site / company site with very few things to write about.
There is always some way to think up new stuff. For example, say you are a printing press.
You write about your people, give profile pages to eahc of the main technicians, pages for each of your machines, pages with their specifications, pages with their advantages over other types of printing, pages with samples of printed material, testimonials, new developments, new printing events etc. I hope that gives some idea.
Thanks.
Of course, it requires an ability to write great text and a willingness to invest time required.
I have had customers buy custom content in bulk and then parse out the articles to allow for frequent site updates.
We write the content they want and make sure it meets their needs correctly. Then, all they have to do is add on new articles as they deem fit.
You could comment on the article, or not. This way you always have new content, yet are not required to "generate" new thoughts.
Whatever your site's main topic is, you can always add more content. Each additional page may not be the content that every user is looking for, but each additional page is something that someone will look for, eventually.
The problem, as I see it, has three parts:
1: Figuring out the content you should add to the site.
2: Writing the content.
3: Figuring out where to put it.
1 - Figuring Out the Content
You can do this in tons of different ways. When I was recently searching to expand content on one of my sites, these are the steps I took.
First, sit down with your topic and a blank sheet of paper. Try as hard as you can to FORGET everything you've got on your site right now. Next, clear your mind of everything except your site topic. Now - brainstorm. Write down everything that comes to your mind, no matter how closely or loosely associated with your topic each idea is. If you run out of ideas, start asking yourself questions. "What would my mother want to know about X? What would Harrison Ford want to know about X? If I could meet the maker of X, what would he say about it?"
Once you've exhausted your brain, take a break. Put away the paper. Go away from the topic for awhile.
Next: search the web. What are other, related sites saying about your topic? What are seemingly unrelated sites saying about your topic? (Ah-ha! They're actually related, which gives you some extra ideas.)
Next: ask your friends/coworkers/busdrivers. Either be direct ("I really need to add more content to my site about X ... do you have any ideas?") or be indirect ("Barkeep, give me a pint of Guinness. Oh, and say, did you hear the latest about X? What did you think about it?"). But ask people, and give them a chance to add fifty ideas to the ones you've already come up with.
Finally: pull together all of your sources. Yes, you'll have about a thousand dumb ideas that won't generate a page of junk. But you'll have several gems to work with, places you can add totally new content, places you can expand existing content, and places you can work in tangential content.
P.S. Keep that piece of paper that you've used to make your lists. It'll come in handy later.
2 - Writing the Content
Can't help ya there. Either do it yourself or hire it out.
If you want or need to do it yourself, try not to think of it as an overwhelming task. A few years ago I participated in National Novel Writing Month ... I churned out a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Was it terrible? Mostly. Was it difficult? At first. But then I realized I only needed to write 1667 words a day. That's nothing. I've already got 475 words in this post!
Stephen King has said he wakes up early and writes at least ten pages every day. They may be awful pages that don't all get used in his novels ... but he faithfully writes 10 pages a day.
If you sit down and write as little as 250 words a day - 250 words! - you'll have generated tons of content for your site in no time.
3 - Where to Put It
Oh, sure. Some of the stuff you write will go right into the hopper. But believe it or not, most of it can go onto your site and will generate traffic!
Remember that piece of paper you used to generate all of the silly lists of content ideas? Get it out and take a look at it. It's likely that there are lots of groupings of ideas on the list.
Sample list - Widgets. Red widgets. Small red widgets. Famous people who own small red widgets. Famous peoples' collection of widgets that include red widgets but also include blue and green ones. Red widgets for midgets. Widgets and the women who love them. Widget school. Accesories for widgets. Accessories for red widgets that work with blue widgets. Accessories for red widgets that don't work with blue widgets.
you'll see natural groupings and linkages emerge simply from the way your list was written (or scribbled). Do you already have a section on red widgets? Add the 'small red widgets' and 'accesories' articles there. Already have a FAQ on widgets? Link to a fabulous article on widget school from the FAQ.
Feeling stuck? Add a "Miscellaneous Widget Information" section to your site and just junk all of the extra articles in there. Link strategically to and from those articles. They don't have to fit perfectly - and they don't have to be displayed prominently. But they can still work for you.
Last Thoughts
Content can be a bear. But I've found that the hardest thing about dealing with content is getting up the momentum to do so. Just starting the process - either by doing some of the things in this post or doing it your own way - is going to get your site cookin'. It doesn't matter whether you use grace or brute force to get the content onto your site - because you'll benefit from the content either way.
