Create Quality Content

I know that a lot of readers will be looking for a quick fix to getting traffic to their websites and will start off with the mantra of “If you build it, they will come”. However that is NOT the case in reality. You need quality content that is targeted for you audience.

To many times I have seen the advice that all you need to do is search the Internet for articles and post them on your website and all of a sudden you will have floods of traffic to your website. This has been a pitfall that many have fallen into, myself included.

Most of this mantra was aimed at gaming search engines and tricking them into believing that you had lots of good quality content. This may get you some initial traffic to your site but if it is not specifically relevant to what your site is all about then the viewers of the article will click away from your site and look for something more relevant to what they are looking for. So in the end this kind of strategy was aimed at search engines and not at the end user.

In this day and age, that kind of strategy will only hurt you and not help you. The search engines have improved their algorithms to the point that you will actually be penalized for tons of non relevant content. The ideal way for you do attract visitors to you web site is to provide the information they are looking for. You become the expert that others are looking for. When you provide valuable relevant information on your site you gain credibility with the user. When you have credibility with the user, you are someone that user will go to when they have questions or need additional information regarding the topic they are searching for.

Now there are lots of ways to create this relevant content. I suggest writing it yourself. When you write it yourself, you have a vested interest in your site and can tailor that content specifically to your audience. An added benefit of writing the content yourself is that you actually become the expert that your prospects are looking for. When you do your own research and create the articles for your site you understand the ins and outs of your businesses better than anyone else could.

If you simply don't have the time to write your own content then consider hiring someone to write the content for you. This method can work for you but be prepared to spend some money on it. The pitfalls of having a ghost writer may be that your writer does not know the topic as well as you might. What the ghost writer thinks might be great content may not be along the same lines as what you are looking for. You also run the risk of your ghost writer selling the same content to other sites as well. If you do decide to use a ghost writer make sure that you own the copyright and that the content is not sold to any other sites. Unscrupulous ghost writers will get around that by modifying the content so it is different enough to pass muster for being unique to you. Ghost writers can be helpful if you don't have the time of the desire to write the content yourself but you have to manage that relationship and cultivate it so you get quality content and not just some regurgitated pablum scraped off the Internet.

This takes me back to writing it yourself. I myself have hired ghost writers with very limited success. What I could afford was some guy in India that did not have a 100% grasp of english language and I ended up having to edit grammar problems. Now I am not an english major by any stretch of the imagination. I'm sure I have broken many rules of “good” writing myself in this article. But (bad grammar) when I do the articles myself, my viewers or users are used to the voice I use in the articles and know it is me that is writing. If I publish articles written by other authors, they can tell it is in a different voice and know that it is not me doing the actual content. They get used to my style (or lack thereof) and can associate easily with the article.

So the bottom line is; create your own content. Become the expert that people are looking for. Make your content personal and relevant to your site as only you can.

Mac