Adding valuable content to your site

typinghands Once you have finished designing your website, it’s time to move on to adding the actual content.

Continually adding UNIQUE and RELEVANT content is extremely important for both earning and maintaining your search engine rankings. Not only do search engines care about content, but your visitors do too.

After all, why visit your website again and again if the content is old and out dated?

Creating new content sometimes sounds difficult, but can actually be accomplished rather easily. Here are some easy ideas for generating new content for your website.

Add articles to your website
Don’t panic if you do not consider yourself to be an excellent writer. Articles do not have to be long, drawn-out masterpieces. Articles can also be a short collection or list of tips related to your website topic. For example, if your website is all about wedding favors, you could offer daily/weekly/monthly tips on planning a wedding, bridal showers, honeymoon or similar.

Still unsure of your writing capabilities? Articles do not have to be written by yourself to benefit your website. There are many free article databases where you can find articles to use on your website: ArticleCity.com, EzineArticles.com, and Articlesbase.com

NOTE: Keep in mind that other websites will also be displaying these same articles on their websites. You will want to add some original content to keep your site unique.

Add a blog to your website
Blogging is an easy way to add content. They are super-easy to set up and can be used to advertise special offers, reviews, tips, etc. Popular platforms include WordPress, MoveableType, and Blogger.

I personally use WordPress. It allows me to write my content for the month ahead of time. I schedule the date for it to appear and WordPress automatically adds it for me. This saves me a lot of time!

Add more pages
This is an easy task to accomplish but not always something that gets thought of. Many webmasters cram too much information onto a single page. Split your current pages into shorter pages. Your pages will load faster, and you will instantly create more pages. The more pages of content you have, the more information you can provide to your visitors and the more keywords you can target.

Utilize RSS and XML Feeds
RSS and XML feeds are not new developments, but they are good for adding content to your site. Look for websites with similar topics to your own that provide feeds and add them to a page on your website. Why? Feeds update regularly leading the search engine spiders to believe that your website content also updates regularly. You can find feeds to add to your site at the following websites: Free Feeds Directory, and Yahoo! News Feeds

Add newsletter archives to your website
If you currently offer a newsletter, consider adding your archives to your website.

If you do not currently run a newsletter, consider adding one. I will discuss more on why later. Check with your web host, they might offer a newsletter manager with your account. You can also try these popular options:

Add product reviews
Provide recommendations to your visitors on products/services that would interest them. For example, if you run a website about pets, you can add reviews of local groomers, pet stores, pet treats, and so on.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. Other content (depending upon your website topic) can include worksheets, photo galleries, message forums, and/or editorials.

Once you have finished adding your initial content, you can then move on to step five: optimizing your website for search engines. Just remember that adding content is not a one-time deal. You will want to update your website on a daily/weekly basis, or at bare minimum monthly.