content ideas

Regardless of what type of website your are looking to have, all great websites have one thing in common. It may not be noticeable at first, but it’s true. Any great website has great “content“. This will undoubtedly lead to another question. What is “great content“? Or, What is “content“? Content can be described simply on a broad scale, as something that fulfills the needs or wants of someone looking for your site. Content can take many forms. For an e-commerce website, it can be clearer pictures that explain the product better than other stores. It can be answers to questions your target audience has, or help tips. The medium of how you deliver content irrelevant. What is important is that it is helpful to your audience, and that they can understand it.

How do your make your content helpful?

This requires two things and only two things. Your content needs to offer something the target visitor wants, is looking for, or would interest the visitor if they new it existed. The second thing is that it needs to be relevant to your target audience. For example, if you have a website that services manufacturers attempting to source products from china, you want to give them information that would help them in the process, but also can be understood by your target audience. Every industry has specialized jargon, acronyms, technical terms, etc. that are not understood by a beginner, but are common knowledge to anyone who has been in the industry for a while. Are your articles targeting those in an industry that already have substantial knowledge, or those looking to get into that industry? This is crucial because the two will result in drastically different content. Keeping this in mind when writing your content and it will go a long way. You will notice on this website, that most of our articles are written explaining concepts in pretty simple terms. This is because our target audience is not industry SEO professionals. We offer internet marketing management services such as SEO , PPC, and website conversion optimization. It would make no sense for us to write articles that are deeply technical for our target audience. Although many would find them helpful, and we do write them from time to time. Our main goal is to establish rapport with potential new clients. We want to be helpful to the person who know’s they need to become competitive in online marketing, but we do not need to overwhelm them with technical jargon. There are plenty of great blog’s for do it yourself SEO. I suggest Seomoz.org if you really wan’t to start the long process of becoming an SEO expert. We do like to give great information at Orland Search Engine Marketing. We just can’t help ourselves.

SEO and your content

Now the you have the right content, it is time to get it seen. SEO to most people is a lot like Golf. If you play Golf you will understand this. Most people become self taught at Golf. They learn how to swing wrong, but then make little adjustments here and there so that they are able to still hit the ball. If you are going to train them the right way they are going to get worse for a little before they get better. Search engine optimization is just like Golf. Most people learning a couple things, hear about long tail keywords, and then go stuff them everywhere they possibly can. I know because that is what I did! Experience can be really helpful. They then end up getting hit with an over optimization penalty from google. This is where Google decides you are trying to game the system, and you see your website fall out of the index for the terms you were trying to rank for. After a period of this “over optimization” they get past the glass ceiling and then can use SEO in a helpful way. Organic SEO if done correctly, looks like it was never done at all. There will be no awkward sounding sentences. The keyword phrase will not appear 80 times in one article. Usually for the beginner less is more. Just shoot for using you keywords in your articles a couple times. If you need a tid bit of technical information, add on modifiers to your keywords phrases throughout your articles. Modifiers are those terms that people are most likely to search for along with your main phrase. For example, when it comes to “SEO”, people will use organic seo, cheap seo, affordable seo, orlando seo, seo for small business. Make sure that you get those variations into your articles. Just make sure that your keywords fit the topic.

Great content ideas

I want to make sure that I do not take credit for these, as the ideas have been rewritten all over the net. I just wanted to make them easy to find. If you have another great idea, please feel free to add it in a comment. If it is a good one, I will take it out of the comments, put it in the article and give you a link back to your site.

Top ten lists

People love lists. They always have, and always will. How many times do you think a womens magazine comes up with truly new news, compared to how many headlines about a new way to bust 10 pounds before spring break. They use these things to get you interested. Lists are quick, effective, and people love them. Take some time to make a great top ten list and you are on your way.

Question and answer format

Q and A’s are a great way to get keyword phrases in without sounding akward. On top of that, they provide for a more laid back structure to how the article develops. People find them easy to read because they scan the questions to see if what they were looking for was asked.

How to or tutorial

Everyone loves a free how to. This is one of the strongest forms of content. If you had a problem doing something and have been able to figure it out. Tell people how you figured it out in a step by step tutorial.

Asking a thought provoking question

While the tutorials are there to answer questions, asking a question can be a great way to stir up conversation. Some of the main ongoing conversation in our industry are whether to use white or black hat SEO tactics. White hat SEO is when you play by the rules. Black hat is exactly the opposite. If feel I should put a disclaimer here. Using only white hat is a no brainer if you intend for your website to be around for any length of time. Often times, the people that use black hat tactics have thousands of sites that are used like scrappers. They do not care if a site gets banned. YOU DO! go White Hat. We use 100% white hat tactics.

Feel free to read through our articles and find more great information. If you liked the article, take an action. Leave a comment, link to it, or digg it.

Define Content, Your Website, And SEO