Just can't say it enough, Content is King

[Kenny]

I was looking for some free backgrounds today and ran into
this guys site. He has a good way of getting the message out.

Here is a nice little piece on content.

To put it bluntly, your content will make your site drown in a sea of
mediocrity and sameness, or make others wish their site were more
like yours! There are four keys to successful content:

Creativity
Uniqueness
Quality
Updates

Creativity in presentation and layout sets your site apart visually.
Writing in your own style or voice, using your own words, is the
uniqueness that sets your site apart mentally. There is no substitute
for quality. Without quality your Creativity and Uniqueness will be
lost. And finally, adding new material regularly brings visitors back
for more. Too often, home pages are nothing but link lists or 3,000
pictures of Fluffy the Cat, and sit there gathering dust with nothing
new added for months at a time.

Don't Get Me Wrong
There's nothing wrong with link pages, but for most, they're best
when used as an adjunct to your site and not as the primary focus.

If your main content is only links you'll have difficulty getting listed
in search engines - after all, that's what they provide. They want sites
that have more than that. Good links, when you have other content,
however, can be considered as an added value to your site. I have
bookmarked some sites for the quality of their links.

What About Fluffy?
Isn't she cute? There's nothing wrong with a few pics of Fluffy, just
don't overdo it on your home (index) page. Everyone won't be as
enamored with the Fluffster as you are so offer the pics on a
seperate page.

Ideally, on the pet page, offer thumbnails that link to the bigger
pics. Use a graphic editor to resize the images to make true
thumbnails. By creating thumbnails folks don't have to wait as long
for Fluffy to download. (waiting for Fluffy to download! Sounds
like... nevermind) Then they can simply click the link to the pics
they do want to see.

So What's Popular?
Sites that enjoy high traffic and keep 'em coming back have one or
more of the following elements. The more of these elements you
incorporate, the better your chances of web popularity.

» Depth

Create an ever-expanding world. Even if you plan on a specialized
site you can find different subjects to tie in with it in an entertaining
or useful way. If you were doing a site on Stress in the Work Place
you can have a serious page of ways to cope and a humorous look
at ways not to deal with it. Be creative. Try to imagine what you'd
find if you were the visitor and someone else were making the site.
What would David Letterman do with it, or Rush Limbaugh, or
Dear Abby, or anyone you admire!

» Originality

Are you a recreational poet? Are you good at drawing? Do you
write short stories or tell good jokes? Put it up! Whatever makes
you unique and sets you apart from the others is a great place to
start. Everyone is good at something. Think about your strengths.
People want to see what is uniquely you. From the beginning of
time to all eternity, there is and will always be only one you.

Celebrate who you are, for no one can be you better than you can,
and you can be no one else better than you can be yourself. That
makes you very special indeed. YOU are better than
one-in-a-million. YOU are better than one-in-a-billion. YOU are
one-in-an-eternity! Think about that. When you're that special, why
would you want to play follow-the-leader?

It can be pretty boring to cruise through a site with absolutely no
personality to it because the webmaster is playing monkey-see
monkey-do. If you're not being yourself, who will? People don't
want to read the same old stuff they can read in a thousand other
places that all sound the same. They would much rather read about
your unique point of view, providing you're not some psycho idiot
who really shouldn't be allowed to roam free.

» Serve a Purpose

Serving the needs of others means traffic for you. For me, it means
sharing my talent for graphics, teaching, and my ...um, unique
sense of humor (charitable to me, aren't I?). I manage to sell
enough of my products along the way that I earn my living at this.

Maybe in time I can sell enough to become filthy, stinking rich,
who knows? I wouldn't mind being a little stinky!
I try to entertain as I serve a purpose. Sure, some folks think I'm
nuts, but that's just a lucky guess. Think about what kind of service
you could offer. Put up a help page on a topic you know about.

You don't have to be an expert, there are plenty of people who
know less. If you get questions you don't know the answer to, find
it. Then you have new content and something fresh to offer. There
are many ways to serve the internet community, find your own
angle and go with it.

» Variety

You can offer as many experiences as you can think of. I have
more planned than I have time to implement. Build depth with
variety. You needn't do it all at once and create a big project. Work
on it one idea at a time and do it up right. Become a mini-expert on
the things that interest you. If you work on your interests you're
likely to do a good job of it and others will recognize your effort
and reward you with return visits, email, links to your site, and
purchase your goods if you offer any.

» Friendliness

Think about your favorite sites. Do they have a sterile, officious
approach or do they have a bit of personality? The answer for most
is the second choice. One of the nicest unsolicited comments I've
ever received said..."I really love your site, it feels like you're right
there with me." Makes a fella feel good. Doesn't pay the bills but it
feels pretty good just the same. The point is, talk to your guests like
you talk to your friends and you're on the right track, providing
you're not a complete jerk in real life.

Even business sites can benefit from having a little personality to
them. One of the complaints I've noticed about web sites is that
they are sterile. No personality, sterile antiseptic writing, and a lack
of imagination and creativity all add up to BORING!

Rules of Thumb
Create your own content. Copying others is not only redundant and
unimaginative, it could be illegal. Each page published has inherent
copyrights whether it says so or not. Fines can go as high as
$100,000 plus damages. Original content is the best content.

Keep download times in mind as you build. Try to keep each page
under 40k and 4 screen lengths. I call it the Rule of 4's - mainly
because it's my rule so I can call it what I like. That, and it made
more sense than calling it pudding.

Be yourself. There will be plenty of folks who will like you for who
you are. This is especially true for personal sites. People visit
personal home pages to learn about YOU...your originality, your
creativy, your uniqueness. You know you're wonderful, let your
light shine!

Keep working good idea's. If you have a page you're happy with or
get compliments about, find a way to expand the theme with related
material or simply go for a series of pages with the same topic.

That's basically how my site has grown from the original site of
about 15 pages, to over 500 pages by the end of year 2000.

Find a way to serve. In many ways the net is one big sharing
community. Find your niche.

Variety is the spice of life! Expand the web world of you with all the
things that interest and amuse your own self. If it's something you're
interested in, so too will others be.

BoogieJack

Good Advice there lads and lasses.

Peace,
Cyberian

 

[Lasher]

Nice post, rep added. There seems to be an endless debate between development and PPC and in my over-simplified view of the world it is pretty obvious:

If you have top quality premium .COM typos or keywords and make nice income from PPC then sit back and enjoy the PPC while you wait for those 6 figure sales. For the rest (most of us) that were later to the game there's still plenty of opportunity registering good 2-3 keyword domains and building nice content around them.

 

[jaydub]

-db- used to have a sig a couple of years back that said...
.Com is not king...content and development are king...

I am NOT trying to get the PPC'ers in a panic....I have just always remembered and liked that and thought that it was appropriate to mention it here....

 

[dgridley]

I'm certainly not getting rich (far from it), but I wonder how much NamePros would ever have been worth in terms of revenue if it had initially been parked, and never developed? I think it may take longer, but development rules over parking any day IMO...