Having been responsible for generating much of our own unique website content through web copy-writing for the Web Wise Business website, along with the increasing requirement to write for our clients, I know first hand the challenges surrounding the creation of web content that is both unique, and that people might actually want to read!
With search engine algorithms demanding fresh content as a significant factor in determining website rankings, it can be a daunting task to keep up with the pace at which new content is produced on the world wide web. Especially in the micro-blogging age we find ourselves in with people Tweeting and blogging from the train, traffic jams or even the pub!
However, while certainly challenging, producing regular, unique and valuable content is not so difficult as to be considered impossible, especially if you approach the task correctly. The following is a few of my thoughts on both creating the actual content, and the overarching strategy behind creation of unique website content.
Unique Web Copy-writing
Creating Content
- News Isn’t Necessarily “New” -
News is one of the most typical, and more easily produced types of content for your website, yet, as the title states, news doesn’t always have to be “new”. While writing articles on your own company news is easy, you might not always have interesting news to cover. Where possible, you should endeavour to make your content fresh and unique, yet it is entirely possible to create new and unique content for your website by re-covering a news story from another source.This can range from covering a story or issue from the industry/area you are involved in, providing your own take and opinion on the story, to taking a seemingly unrelated news story and examining how it relates to your industry and/or business. Remember, newspapers and magazines do this all the time! - Putting the “U” in Value – What would make you want to keep reading content on a website? Keep you visiting the site again and again? Make you want to link back to it and tell your friends about it? These are questions you should ask yourself regularly when writing your unique website content. Providing a news, or informative article that offers some value to your reader, or improves the user experience on your website will significantly improve your chances of fostering visitor loyalty and generating links to your website.
Web Content Strategy
As with all things, having a good plan or strategy is key to generating successful fresh website content. Knowing why you are producing your content and what you wish to achieve by doing so is worth outlining before you begin actually creating the content whether you are writing news about your company and the industry it is involved in, in order to encourage visitors to view your website as a hub for valuable information, or if you are providing informative articles and guides in order to assist readers in achieving a task, or in making a decision (such as a guide for selecting a dishwasher), this can work especially well if you provide the service or product that you are informing the reader about.
Once you have worked out the aims and goals of your content, it is worth considering how you will go about creating said content. There are a few ways of doing this beyond the obvious “writing it yourself or having a colleague write it”:
- The Obvious “Writing it Yourself” -
As stated, this is the obvious way of creating unique and interesting content for your website. This can be done either by yourself, a colleague/employee or external agency. The downside of writing your own copy is that it can be a time consuming job, particularly if you wish to do so on a regular basis. Paying someone else to do it for you can be a good way of ensuring that you don’t fall behind with doing so. - Isn’t There A Quicker Way Of Doing This? -
Not able to find the time to write your own fresh content and/or can’t afford to pay someone else? It is possible to get around this problem by enabling your website to add “fresh” content itself through RSS feeds etc. While the content itself won’t necessarily be “fresh”, it will be fresh on your site. Pulling RSS feeds also enables your website to keep up to date information or articles on current topics, which will assist in relevancy to searches and potentially assist your search engine rankings for related terms. Have a word with your web developer about this if you don’t already have this ability. - Can’t Someone Else Do It? -
The answer to this is “yes, someone else can”. User generated content can be one of the best means of easily generating large volumes of fresh, unique content on your website with a minimum of effort on your part. Fostering a community website is no easy challenge, however, getting it right can enable you to reap serious rewards. The key to creating successful community websites, beyond publicising it well to the community(!), is creating an environment which makes it as easy as possible for users to add their content, be it pictures (Flickr), videos (YouTube), product reviews (Amazon) or topical discussion (NFL.com). Don’t be fooled into thinking that you won’t still have to provide content, but you won’t necessarily have to provide as much content in order to achieve loyal site users. Even the occassional (once or twice weekly) piece of content, on a topic that is both interesting and relevant to your target audience, and which provokes comment or discussion, can encourage significant amounts of user generated content.
So what are you waiting for? Sit down and start planning your strategy for creating new, interesting and valuable content and start compelling your target audience to visit your website and stick around/link back to it.
), or posting your content on a well supported forum/social networking group profile etc and obviously to sites like Stumbleupon, Reddit and Digg. Naturally, the more places your content appears, the more people are likely to see it and therefore visit/link to it. Positioning goes hand in hand with the next element, timing.
