The number one thing you can do to improve your website is add content. Content is the key to driving traffic to your site. Your content needs to be page specific. What I mean by this is that each page should have very detailed information regarding that page title. If your page title is Boston Based Widgets, then you content needs to contain those terms. Keep in mind that as you write your content you don’t just want to copy this term over and over again, that will get you banned from the search engines. Instead, construct reasonable sentences that will make sense to your reader. But also pay attention and utilize things like bullets. Most users won’t read this content you are writing, but they will read the bullets or other call to action items on your page. Write a good amount of content that will attract your prospect. Your prospective customer will find your site because Google, Yahoo, and MSN will crawl your site and index all the content, making it available as a search result. The more content you have on this particular topic, the more likely you are to be found. When addressing content, you have to think about the law of averages here. The more tickets you have for the lottery, the more likely you are to win it. However if you don’t even have one ticket, you have no chance in winning the lottery; therefore you must create your “tickets”, to get entered into the lottery.

You can edit your existing content to improve your rankings on search engines. Once you know where you rank and where your competition ranks then you can formulate a plan. Review your competitor’s website to determine what they might be doing to be ranked well on a particular search engine. Read their content, look over their site. Never copy their content that is against the law. However you can create your own content by learning what they have done. Simply begin editing the content on your site to reflect more of what you have learned from your competitors. Don’t be afraid to learn new things from other sites, and don’t be afraid to try things on your site. Consider including some call to action graphics that will get noticed by your visitors. Make these graphics clickable and deliver the user to a form page to complete when they click the graphic. Keep that form small so that the prospect will complete it.

Content is an integral part of your website. It is what keeps people coming back to your site.  Take CNN.com for instance, as news breaks they are updating their website with up to the minute news and always changing the content to their website.  They currently are receiving almost a million hits a day to their site (click here to view statistics about CNN.com). 

One of the main reasons we emphasize content is this reason, if you keep the same content on your site month after month how do you expect to change the way visitors use your site?  Taking a few steps to keep them coming back will not only increase the amount of traffic your website sees, but can help your company increase business.

1. Change your content frequently. This does not have to be an everyday event, but reread a page and add/change content periodically (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly).  For instance read your About Us page; Have you added new employees? Is there any information on there that has changed since the last update?

2. Add a page to your website.  Adding a page will give your readers as well as give search engines a new page to read (yes, even search engines read your site).  Keep your readers coming back for more.  Another way to do this is to add a blog to your website (click here to read our blog entry on blogs).  Real Estate Exchange has taken advantage of this recommendation.  Some of their topics for their blog have been; 6 Things to Remember when Moving, Insurance Policies, and Precocious Killdeer joins the Real Estate Exchange just to name a few.  A blog gives you an easy user interface to add pages and content to your website.

3. Add a Refer A Friend Box. By adding a refer a friend box on your website will allow your visitors to easily send out an email to them from you saying, “Hey, checkout this website, I think it is pretty cool”.

By using these examples to improve your company will give people a reason to come back to your website.  Feel free to give us a call to answer any questions you may have or to help you implement any changes you would like to have happen to your website.

Greg Whitehead
PHP Developer
Toys for Tots Liaison