Creating
Content: The Easy Way
by: Steve Shaw
There is little doubt that quality content has a number
of real benefits for your web site, not least increasing
levels of repeat visitors, and valuable revenue streams
such as advertising and the sale of products or services
related to the content you provide.
The only difficulty is that creating such content
can be costly, taking up valuable time and resources.
This article examines different ways you can add content
to your web site quickly, giving you maximum benefit
for the minimum cost.
Syndicated Content Streams
Syndicated content is content provided by others for
use on your web site. Certain sites provide 'content
streams', where you can simply place a few lines of
code on your web page, and forget about it. The content
provider then regularly updates the content it provides.
The end result is that your site remains fresh and
dynamic, at virtually no cost to you.
The content provider either charges a fee for the
privilege of using their content, or they prefer to
benefit through traffic, such as by placing a link
adjacent to or within the content. One provider at
interestalert.com even offers to pay you for adding
a news feed to your site.
Here are a few examples of some content providers
you may wish to try:
1. http://www.1afm.com/free_content/ - provides a
range of different content types such as news headlines
or jokes.
2. http://submityourarticle.com/syndicate - a number
of different content feeds you can add to your site,
displaying articles relating to internet marketing
and online business.
3. http://www.brainyquote.com - adds 'quote of the
day' to your web site, from a range of different topics
and authors.
4. http://freesticky.com - an index of resources you
can use to quickly add content to your site, with
a wide range of content areas to choose from.
Free Reprint Articles
Free reprint articles are a type of syndicated content,
and they are widely available.
The benefit for you is the provision of quality content
on your web site, attracting targeted visitors via
inbound links from the search engines. The benefit
for the author of the article is their name and URL
in the resource box (or 'author bylines'), which builds
up targeted traffic to their web site, and builds
up their 'brand' and online credibility.
Here are just some places where you can find articles
to quickly put up at your web site:
1. http://articlecentral.com
2. http://goarticles.com
3. http://ideamarketers.com
Invite Content
Add a page to your web site where you invite your
visitors to submit their content, in return for a
link back to their own web sites. This will give you
a steady stream of content you can choose from, and
save you time in searching for it elsewhere.
As a twist on this, if you create original content
on your own site, make it easy for visitors to use
it on their own sites - remember, many of your visitors
will be actively or passively looking for content
for their own web sites. Just make sure they always
include a link back to your site in return, so that
you stand to benefit too.
Over time, as well as increasing the amount of content
on your own site, providing your content to others
will gradually but significantly increase your traffic
levels, and is far more effective than the more popular
'link swapping' craze, that usually just leaves your
link sitting unclicked in an unvisited links page.
The common phrase is that 'content is king' - the
Internet is a content-driven medium, and the more
successful web sites are those with the best content.
By using some of the techniques above, you can increase
the amount of quality content on your site with the
minimum amount of effort and expense.
Copyright 2004 Steve Shaw
Steve Shaw creates systems and software for effective
e-marketing. His powerful PopUpMaster Pro software
creates popups that beat the popup blockers and can
significantly increase your conversion rates. For
more information: http://www.popupmaster.com
About The Author
Steve Shaw has been marketing full-time online since
March 2002, developing software products and systems
for effect'ive e-marketing - for more information
see http://takanomi.com.
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