Category Archives: content

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5 Key Factors That Make Good Webcopy Great

 

The start of the month in internet marketing land should be called copytime. Every website out there is looking for brand new copy, from blogs to social media posts to web copy. Of these three important types of copy, only one is going to represent your website day in and day out. While none should be ignored or written off with any type of nonchalance, I personally believe that webcopy should be the most scrutinized of the three.

After all, many blogs are informal. Social posts aren’t meant to serve as your doctorate. But web copy, this is what the people are looking at when they get to your site. And not only that, it’s what the search engines are looking at when they rank your site. So, it’s easy to see why webcopy should be carefully crafted, but it’s not always so simple to see how it should be crafted.

Five Points to Keep in Mind When Creating Copy for Your Website

Here are five things that you want to keep in mind as you sit down to write your web copy:

1. Capture. The first thing your copy needs to do is capture the attention of your viewers. If you have some bland, boring headline followed by copy that drones on and on, you’re going to bore visitors right off your site (if not to sleep!). Be a little provactive, a little funny, stir it up. The average person browses dozens of websites each and every day, what is going to make them stay on yours?

2. Portray. Your webcopy should be very clear in conveying your value proposition. Visitors need to know exactly what makes you different from your competition. Why should they spend their money with you when there are 50 million other sites selling the exact same product or service? If you can’t answer this, then how can you expect your customers to understand it?

3. Stand Out. People don’t really have time to read everything you write. Even if you’re the most interesting writer in the world, eating a nice juicy steak is more interesting. You aren’t going to compete with reality, so make your content easily accommodating in that you have all key points standing out for quick scanning. Headings and subheadings are a must. Numbered and bullet lists help people get the information they need, do what they have to do and then get on with their life. You aren’t inviting them over for tea, you’re inviting them to learn what you have to offer them and then convincing them to take it and leave.

4. Describe. Description is vital for many products and services, yet so many marketers buy into the “picture is worth a thousand words” ideaology of content creation. Pictures are amazing, yes (videos are even better), but you need the details, features and benefits of your products and services in writing. Why? If nothing else, for the search engines and to rank for keywords, but trust me, there are still people out there enjoy reading everything they can about a product before making a purchase. Remember, an informed consumer buys more.

5. Perfection. Finally, it’s vital that your webcopy be absolutely free and clear of errors. No spelling mistakes, no grammatical errors, no txt spk. You want to convey authority on your site and nothing will lose it faster than mspelling a werd or too or making grammer errors or having poor punctuashun?

Overall, webcopy is to a website what a salesperson is to a brick-and-mortar location. You wouldn’t hire just anybody and send them out there uninformed and unpresentable, don’t do that with your webcopy.

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Overcoming the Curse of Knowledge with a Simple Survey

As internet marketers, we have many curses thrown upon us each day, but none so heavy as the one most of us don’t even take into consideration, The Curse of Knowledge. The Curse of Knowledge is a simple theory that makes a whole lot of sense when you finally learn about it, but can lead to serious pitfalls if you don’t. Simply put into marketing terms, when you look at the websites and material you create each and every day, you fail to see it with fresh eyes, thereby falling into the Curse of Knowledge.

 

What is the Curse of Knowledge?

Technically speaking, the Curse of Knowledge is a cognitive bias that makes it difficult for those with a certain level of knowledge to understand how those with a lesser level of knowledge view the problems and situations being discussed.

For example, if I had studied nanotechnology for decades and was asked to give a speech at a local high school, if I didn’t take the curse of knowledge into account, my speech would likely fly right over their heads. I’d be so excited about what is new in the field that I’d fail to have an introduction to basics and a way to make my concepts and terminology universally understandable.

For marketers, this takes place when the content on our sites speaks to an informed consumer, using terms and concepts that we might understand, but the average consumer doesn’t. This can be detrimental to your conversion rates because if someone doesn’t understand what you’re selling, why in the world would they buy from you?

 

Overcoming the Curse and Boosting Conversion Rates

The key then, is to be able to see your website with fresh eyes, that is, a set of eyes similar to your consumers’ and not a professional in the niche. There are a few ways to go about this, one of which is probably going to net you the best results. Let’s take a look at your options:

1. Have Friends Look at Your Website. If you have friends or family that aren’t involved in your niche or the marketing industry, have them take a look at your site. Ask them to go through the site as if they wanted to make a purchase. You can even tell them the product you want them to find and purchase. Make note of where they get hung up, where they get frustrated or how quickly they find the product and make the purchase. In other words, track their movements for any signs of resistance and then work on eliminating them. Be sure to ask them exactly what they thought of the site afterward and recommend any improvements.

2. Set Up a Survey. Quite possibly the easiest and most effective way to find out where your visitors are having trouble is to set up a survey for those leaving the website. Qualaroo is a simple tool that will allow you to generate a survey and place it on the important pages of your website such as your checkout page. Ask why the visitor decided to leave the page and if they have any suggestions on how to improve the page/visitor experience. While you won’t get an answer every time, the ones you do get will be some of the most valuable (and free) marketing research results you’ve ever gotten.

It’s also important to follow the visitor flow charts on your Analytics and metrics tools. Finding out where customers drop or bounce off the page is important, as is the way in which you fix it.

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Crafting the Perfect ‘How To’ Blog for Your Website

Since Google is cracking down on website scraping (even though Google is the biggest website scraper out there giving viewers condensed content scraped from other sites right in a box at the top of SERPs), the ‘how to’ article has become a bit of a taboo. In reality, unless you have an entire site built around ‘how to’ articles (i.e. eHow, Yahoo Answers and Instructibles, etc.), you are fine to go ahead and continue using this click-heavy format:

– Introduce the problem
– Present the benefits of your solution
– List the steps
– Provide detail
– Wrap it up and call to action

 

The Right Way to Write a How To

In fact, since everyone else is scared to write a ‘how to,’ you’ll be one step ahead of the competition. Just make sure you do it correctly, that is to say, in the following order:

1. Introduce the Problem You are Solving. Obviously, you want your reader to know that they are in the right place to solve their problem and that you are the person that has the solution. Make the reader understand that even if they don’t realize they have this problem, they likely do or will, and thus, need to read the solution.

2. Present the Benefits of Your Solution. Why is your solution better than anyone else’s solution? Why should the reader keep reading? Are you going to solve the problem in the blog or are you going to provide half the steps and then a free eBook download at the end with a comprehensive look at the solution? Are there going to be videos? Is this a multi-part blog? Let them know!

3. Give Them the Steps. Your steps should be laid out in a list, a screenshot, a picture, etc. Just give them them the basics and a brief explanation. If you need to, you can get into more detailed paragraphs or chapters on each step in later blogs or an eBook. But laying out the steps in a numbered or bullet list will allow faster-paced readers to skip to the sections they need. Perhaps they have half of the solution and just need the last few steps. Remember, the easier you make it for every single reader that comes to your site, the better it is for you. Cater to the beginner, but also make it easy for the seasoned pro to glean what they need and get on to the next step. Don’t waste anyone’s time and they won’t waste yours.

4. Detail is Key. The detail to your solution is going to be key here. For instance, if you provide a solution without an example, what’s to say that the writer really has life experience solving this problem? They could just be an affiliate for a product spinning content from their associates. Graphics, step-by-step instructions, easy to follow language, all of this falls under detail.

5. Conclusion. Your conclusion is where you wrap up the ‘how to’ and recap the benefits that your reader now possesses. It’s important to never forget your call to action. If you don’t have one specifically and are just writing an informative or authoritative blog, add your contact information and have the reader sign up or contact you for more details. You can also link to other solutions you’ve provided, or have an opt in or email sign up for a newsletter or eBook.

As you can see, there is absolutely no reason to abandon such a highly effective blog format. Google is really just trying to punish ‘how to’ sites at large, not the average internet marketer.

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Running Out of Things to Blog About? 3 Tips to Get You Back on Track

In this content heavy market, blogs and reviews likely drive a large chunk of traffic to your site and sales from it. Unfortunately, this also means writing (or outsourcing) a steady stream of blogs for your website, which means you are working with limited resources. If you’re paying for your blogs, then unless they are making you more profit than they cost you to outsource, you’ll eventually run out of capital. If you’re writing your blogs, you’ll likely hit some dry spells where you don’t have any more good ideas for blogs (if you haven’t hit some already).

 

Three Techniques You Can Use to Create Fresh Blogs When Yours are Stale

For those that have run out of topics to blog about, take comfort in the fact that this happens to just about every internet marketer that doesn’t have a team of writers tirelessly wracking their brains for killer blog topics. So if you find yourself teetering on the brink of an empty tank, try these three techniques for refilling your think tank:

1. Play I Spy. Unless you are the only person or website in the world in your niche, in which case just say that in blog after blog since there’s no competition, you likely have saturated marketplace to deal with. While that’s difficult for any number of other reasons, for blogging purposes, it could be a goldmine.

Simply go on a little “spying” mission to your competition’s blogs and see what they are blogging about. This could give you inspiration in any number of ways, maybe you see things from a different perspective and find ways to differentiate yourself; maybe you think your competition is completely wrong and you can blog why.

Most importantly, see which topics have gotten the most social shares or comments, those are the topics that your demographic wants to read or talk about, meaning you need to be covering them. The point is, use your competition’s blog to not only stay relevant with everything that is going on in your niche, but also as some motivation to set your site up as more knowledgeable and authoritative than your competition’s. Do this through blogging.

2. Look Inside. After you look around you, you should start to have some inspiration or ideas for blogs. Now, take a look at your own personal journey as an internet marketer. Think about your successes and your failures, these are what interest people.

Without a personal spin or attachment to a blog, it simply reads as some research that some copywriter did and then threw together in a few minutes. You should have some sort of personal story to relay that shows why what you’re saying matters.

People want to learn from other people’s mistakes as well as follow in the footsteps of their success. Outline what went right or wrong for you, how and why it happened, and share what your readers should take away from that. (It helps if what they take away is whatever you’re selling, but not every blog has to be sales-driven.)

3. Use Buzzsumo. Buzzsumo is an amazing search engine that is geared towards filtering through the metrics and results of content marketing. You simply enter a search topic or keyword phrase and then find all of the content that’s been published on that topic or keyword.

You can filter by date, type of content (e.g. articles, interviews, giveaways, videos, infographics, etc.) and then see how many shares each link has gotten across the various social media platforms. This will help you keep your finger on the pulse of the industry as well as come up with fresh blog topics.

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Making it Hard to Say No Gets More Yeses in Marketing

The last thing we want to hear from our leads is one simple word: No. No is the death of a sale, the end of a funnel, the loss of a lead. So while it might seem pretty obvious that you want to give your leads more chances to say yes, some internet marketers don’t follow through with this. For example, think about the classic website that you land on after a Google search. You read through the content and at the bottom, there’s a link that you can click to learn more, or in reality, make a purchase.

But why is the only option to say “yes” all the way at the bottom? What this essentially means is that every other spot on the page is a chance to say “no.” That’s bad marketing. You never want more chances to opt-out than to opt-in. So what’s the solution? Make it harder to say no by giving more chances to say yes!

 

Increased Calls to Action

First up is the obvious: increase the number of CTAs you have on your site and in your copy. Now, this doesn’t mean simply put links at the top, bottom and middle of your content, get creative with it. Opt-ins and other calls to action can be placed all over your site, in the banner, on the side scroll, in a pop-up. The more chances you give your leads to say yes, the more likely it is that they will. If you make them search for a CTA, chances are you’ve already lost the sale by that point.

Remember, the three tenets of every good website are that the viewer should get there and immediately know:

1. Where they are
2. What they can do there
3. Where and why to do it

The third tenet is the one to be concerned with here, if they don’t know where to click or why, your page has failed. Which brings us directly to our next point, the why.

 

Increased Rewards

Back in the simpler days of online marketing, having one reward would be enough. Give me your email and I’ll send you a free eBook. Sign up for this newsletter and you’ll get 15% off your next purchase. But with so many different avenues of traffic, it only makes sense that you should have multiple levels of rewards. Yes, get the free eBook by joining my mailing list but also get 15% off by liking me on Facebook and get a free website health report by entering your website URL here.

The more points of contact you wish to produce and maintain with your leads, the more rewards you should offer to increase the viability of those contacts. Remember, most people are fairly savvy about what happens when they give a like on Facebook or a follow on Twitter, as savvy as they are about the spam that occurs when they give out their email address. Prove to them that there is value attached to each of these channels by giving them actual value for connecting.

 

Make the Choice Clear

One of the most effective CTAs out there right now include a combination of a pop-up, a reward and making it very difficult to say no. You’ve likely already seen it on QuickSprout or WordStream, when you’re surfing the site, a seemingly random pop-up occurs with a question that has a very pointed answer. You then have the option to say yes or no, with no being a fairly ridiculous choice so that you have to mentally admit that’s your intention.

For instance, a website about money investment might have a pop-up that says, “Do You Want to Learn How to Invest Like a Pro?” The two choices would be:

Yes, I want to retire early

OR

No, I’m fine living paycheck to paycheck

Which would you choose?

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Two Blunt Ways to Get More Clicks through Your Headline

Content marketing is bigger than ever so that means tons of articles and blogs are going up and being shared each and every day. With social media being such a large part of the virality equation, we all know the importance of a good headline. But with click-baiting reaching its slow, but inevitable death and so many other articles and blogs out there on similar topics, what’s to set your headline apart from the rest of the pack?

Now, we all know about the fundamentals of good headline writing, catchy, tells the “get,” puts the keywords or phrase in the beginning, makes the viewer want to click and read more, but hasn’t anything changed since we learned these rules? Absolutely.

 

Writing Headlines for a Weary Audience

The main thing that has changed is not the way we create content itself, but rather, the way our audience perceives it. That is to say, they’ve been there, clicked that. Your article likely won’t be ground-breaking (though it might be, in that case, I’d like to read you instead of the other way around!), but that doesn’t mean it can’t sound some horns and trumpets on the way in.

Here are two great methods for bluntly writing headlines that will bypass the red warning lights headlines like these can sometimes give off:

1. Here’s Why You’ll Use This Headline. I like to call this the “here’s why” blunt approach. Here’s why you’re going to buy my product. Here’s why you don’t need your cell phone anymore. Here’s why your dog is killing you. Whatever it is that you have to tell them, boom! It’s right there in their face now and there’s no denying it. What this does is it generates curiosity while literally telling them what they are going to learn if they click on your headline and read your article. It’s pure subtle genius and that’s why you’re going to start using it.

2. The Best Headline Tip Ever: Telling Them What it Is. Okay, so we’ve all fallen victim to writing “the best” headlines, that is to say, headlines with the phrase, “the best” in them. Of course! People Google “The Best so and so” all the time, we want to rank for that. Are you selling the best so and so of all time? Probably not. Do you have the best tip in the world for making money online? If you did, you wouldn’t be sharing it. Look, nobody really expects the best when they click on a headline, but they also know that if a headline is vague like that, chances are it’s just some lazy marketer trying to get some traffic. Not anymore! Behold, The Best Way to Use “The Best” in Your Headlines, Tell Them! Essentially, what you want to do is tell the reader what it is you are calling the best before they click. For example: “The Best Hot Dog Ever, Ball Park Franks.” Or, “The Best Online Marketing System: Bill Gates Finally Weighs In.”

 

Delivering the Goods

After you’ve come up with this killer headline for your content, it’s time to deliver on the promised goods. Don’t disconnect your headline from your content or you will never get another click from that reader again. When a reader clicks on your headline, they have an expectation and you have a duty to deliver on that, if you don’t, you will break their trust and no matter how great your product or service is, you won’t make one sale from that content.

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Are You Testing your Unique Selling Propositions Enough?

Conversion rates are all-important to marketers. The more we know about our products and how our audience perceives them, the better we can market these goods and services to increase conversion rates. Unfortunately, many marketers overlook one of the most important adjustable aspects of their products, the unique selling propositions (USPs).

 

What are Unique Selling Propositions?

USPs are the features and attributes of a product or service that sets it apart from its competition. It’s what makes the iPhone not the Android. It’s what makes a Mac not a PC, it’s what differentiates one product from another and causes a buyer to buy. The unique points of your product or service that you’re selling online should shine through in the product description, giving you a simple and fast way to get the USPs up onto your website.

 

Testing your Unique Selling Propositions

Of course, this all seems pretty simple if it weren’t for one thing, chances are, you’re not the manufacturer, simply a supplier or point of sale. As an internet marketer, you’re likely going up against tens, hundreds or even thousands of other websites and marketers selling the exact same product or service. That means these marketers are out there looking at the manufacturer’s product description and putting the standard USPs up on their sites.

So now, what you have is an over-saturated market full of non-differentiating sites, all vying for the same customers with nothing more than a small profit margin to work with to sway a conversion. Yes, there is SEO and sales and marketing funnels and a ton of other things that can help you out here, but that’s not the point of this article!

The point here is that a simple test of your USPs and how they are displayed and arranged can make your product or service seem different to a buyer, even if it isn’t.

 

Steps for Testing and Optimizing your Unique Selling Propositions

Here are simple and easy to follow steps that will allow you to increase your conversions by paying more attention to your USPs:

1. Identify all USPs.
First, find all of the USPs of your products and services. These are simply the strong selling points that appeal to consumers. Take careful note not to put your own prejudices in here as not all USPs are of equal importance in the minds and eyes of your audience. They are what matters, not your opinion, so be sure to identify all USPs.

2. Place the USPs in Prominent Positions.
Next, start testing the USPs by placing them prominently throughout your site. Mention them on social media and highlight them in the product descriptions. What you are doing here is testing the waters.

3. Track and Monitor Results.
Next, be sure you track all of your USP placements to see which ones affect the highest rates of conversions. Some selling points will resonate more with your demographic than others, these are the USPs you want to continue to highlight.

4. Segment Your Audience.
As you keep testing different USPs for your products, you’ll begin to notice that certain USPs work better than others even within your target demographic. For example, you might notice that some trigger words work better with men than with women and among those men, some USPs work better in the 14-26 year old demographic. The more you are able to segment your audience, the better you will be able to reach them with targeted ads that harp on the right USPs.

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The Art of Blogging for Viral Shares through Emotional Connections

BuzzSumo recently released a report on the top 10,000 most-shared and viral articles on the Internet. While some of the results were obvious (e.g. having a picture increases your virality), some results are worth taking note of. For instance, did you know that long content with more in-depth research gets more social and email shares than shorter articles? Or that there are certain emotions that you should aim to tap into while creating content to up the content’s viral factor?

It’s true. So aside from the obvious take away about writing some more long-form content, what can you do with your blogs and content to tap into the right emotions to trigger shares?

 

Create Awe

The largest number of viral content shares out there were lumped into the emotional category of awe, 25%. That means that 1 in 4 of the top 10,000 most-shared blogs and articles out there were able to awe their audience. Whether this was with amazing facts, unique photos or breaking news isn’t really the point here, the point is that you need to shock and amaze your audience with your content if you really want it to go viral.

A great way to do this is to present visually stunning graphics with mind-blowing facts and data connected to a personal story that takes the reader’s breath away. You want them to be so struck with awe that their immediate reaction after reading the content is, “I have to share this with so and so.” Of course, not every blog you write can be awe-inspiring; sometimes the info you have to share just isn’t that exciting. But try to approach your content creation from this point of view and if you can figure out an angle, go with it. If not, try being humorous.

 

Evoke Laughter

Humor and laughter came in with 17% of the most-viral content out there, meaning that if you can take your reader away from the mundane life he or she is leading or get their mind off of the mindless drivel you are talking about, do it. Laughter is a great way to get information and data out there, not just for viral purposes, but for creating an impression with the customer as well.

Of course, not everyone can be Adam Sandler and not every situation is appropriate for comedy, but throwing a few funny analogies out there isn’t that difficult. Just make sure they are appropriate and not cliché (nobody wants to hear a knock-knock joke unless it’s clever!). If you want to be subtle about it, you can even just have funny subtitles, like maybe instead of writing “Evoke Laughter” here, we could have written “eVoke Laughter with Funny eMails.”

 

Be Amusing

While laughter and amusement are closely associated, it is noteworthy that BuzzSumo separated the two emotions, with “amusement” claiming stake to 15% of the most-shared content out there. While humor and laughter can be amusing, this isn’t the only way to capture this viral emotion. Quizzes are amusing, in fact, 7 out of every 10 of the most-viral content out there is a quiz. Find different ways to amuse (and involve) your audience through your content and you’ll see a ton of success.

 

Stay Away from Sadness and Anger

Unless you have a strong business model built on sadness and anger, try to stay away from evoking these emotions. For instance, tapping into sadness to get donations to kids in Africa or abused pets will work for virality, as will getting people so angry about ISIS that they share videos, but this generally doesn’t go over well in the internet marketing world.

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Visual Storytelling as a Means for Conveying Data without Falling Asleep

3 in 10 of the 3.4568% of all top-20 ranked Final Five finishers have all…hello? Okay, just checking to see if you’re still awake. Data has a way of putting people to sleep, not literally, but more of a “mental check out.” Data can be mind-numbing, even if the story that the numbers are telling is mind-blowing. Unless you have a real love for numbers and hard data crunching, chances are you’d rather have the information presented to you in a more amiable manner.

Your customers are no different. Sure, they do care that your service or product can increase their profit by 15% over the next 3 months if the quarterly return on their initial investment is plus or minus 5% (adjusting for a 2.5% margin of error), but they don’t want to read this sentence to find that out, I didn’t even want to write it!

 

Using Visual Storytelling to Compel and Inform

One of the easiest ways to get around this problem is to practice what we call, Visual Storytelling. The art of Visual Storytelling isn’t really a mystery, instead of telling a story with words, use a visual reference to get the point across. Perhaps the simplest visual cue that lends itself to data and numbers is the standard pie charts and line graphs we all grew to love in elementary school math class.

Still, as boring or standard as they might seem, it’s much more visually compelling to look at a line graph that goes way, way up rather than looking at something like this:

* 1/04/12 – 25.5%
* 5/28/12 – 28.5%
* 8/23/12 – 32.6%
* 10/2/12 – 41.8%
* 12/25/12 – 53.5%
* 1/29/13 – 69.1%

That’s a lot of information to take in, even if it is pretty simple to look at the right column and notice that the numbers are going up. But it’s still much easier to see a line graph shooting up through the roof showing profits and gains going up. Further, a line graph will get some points across better than data can. For instance, unless you have a real head for numbers and a keen eye, you probably didn’t notice that the rate the percentage above was going up increased drastically as time went on. Whereas the first percentage jump was 3%, it was followed by approximate jumps of 4%, 9%, 12% and 15%. And did you factor in the different dates? Of course not! That’s too much data to grasp just looking at numbers!

 

Infographics are Visual Storytelling Aids that Work

Of course, as mentioned, line graphs and pie charts are rather basic, so it’s a good idea to combine them into infographics. Infographics can have a number of different mediums for visual storytelling, all combined into one big sharable chart. They can also have blurbs next to the chart to get your main point across, giving you a simple, short and sweet way to explain your content and data without hitting people over the head with numbers and analysis. Of course, sometimes you need to do that, so don’t let this stop you, but thinking of alternative (and more viral) ways to get your point across is always helpful.

 

A good thing to keep in mind when relating data and stats to customers is that it doesn’t have to be boring just because it is informative. For example, you can have some humorous content in the infographics or even tie the data into something more lighthearted. For example, maybe your product increased sales for a specific brand at the same time reruns of the Big Bang Theory started airing on Channel 5. The point is, make your numbers more fun while still getting the point across.

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The Importance of Unique Relevant Content

No matter what type of website you have, for Internet Marketing there are 3 words that mean more than anything else

Content is King

These three words should be remembered at all times and used as a reminder that on site SEO (search engine optimisation) is just as important as off site SEO for two particular reasons:

Search engines do assess the quality of content and it can elevate your rankings

It is ultimately what will impress potential customers and encourage them to buy.

Although we are talking about improving your search engine rankings in this email, the second point is an important one to remember because your website should still be designed with your customers in mind. Online marketing should take care of the search engines.

The content you need is…

a) High quality,
b) Unique to your site
c) Relevant to the products and services you are attempting to sell. If it does not check all three points then you are getting it wrong.

High quality content will not be crammed with keywords but will instead contain keywords scattered in the text to remind search engines of its purpose. It will be well written, make sense and be completely unique.
Unique content is exactly what the label suggests so it should be written specifically for your site rather than copied from someone else’s site. There are tools you can use to make sure that your content is unique so investing in one of them may not be a bad idea.

Finally, the content on your site should always be relevant to the topic in question. For example; if you sell hardware goods then putting up content about women’s fashion is not a good idea. So what difference does it make?

Most people that are new to maintaining a website will dismiss content as one of the last things they need to worry about but this is simply not the case. Having relevant and unique content on your site can make a world of difference to your rankings. It fulfils many of the criteria set by search engine algorithm for high ranking and can also help to draw traffic to your site.

After all, visitors need to be able to find what they are looking for.

With all of this in mind, you really must take the time to look at the content on your site. You need to make sure that it is of a high quality as well as being unique and relevant. However, there is another aspect of content that you absolutely MUST consider.

The concept of fresh content Fresh content is not a difficult concept to grasp. In fact, it is pretty simple to understand so you should have no difficulty with it. It is literally adding more articles, information and other such content to your site on a regular basis.

There are plenty of ways that you can add fresh content on a regular basis but there are some that are more popular than others. For example, most major sites have a blog or an article section that content is added to whereas others choose to have an RSS feed added. Whichever you decide to do, you should update it at least once a month if not once a week to achieve the results you want.

Why add fresh content?

Now you know what fresh content is and how to add it, you need to consider why you need to put the time and effort in. Well, it is primarily to attract two things to your website:

Spiders -No, not the eight legged kind but rather the search engine kind. Spiders crawl your site to update your ranking periodically based on the content there. If you do not update your site then a search engine may well visit less frequently in future. If you update it regularly then you will find that spiders drop by and your rankings change on a more regular basis.

Humans – If you want to build trust and invite visitors to come back again and again then fresh content is the way to do it. It gives the impression that your customers mean a lot to you and can keep your visitor number and conversion rates high.

There is one other point that should be made about adding fresh content on a regular basis and that is the overall effect it has on your site. It helps to build authority. The more relevant and fresh content you add, the greater the authority your website seems to have on the topic. This not only improves your ranking but also increases the number of other people and companies that are willing to link to you.