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Website Content? (Part 2 of 2)

(Click Here for Part 1)

Both search engines and customers love fresh, updated information. Some people groan at the thought of having to work so hard at adding new content, but it's not as complicated as you think!  

Newsletter  

Start a newsletter! Ask visitors to sign up for your newsletter (never send unsolicited emails) and set up a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly schedule to deliver your newsletter. Then stick with it!  

For example I bought a magazine subscription online from a site that gave me the opportunity to sign up for specials.  Everytime I get their newsletter I check out their latest specials before deleting it and have also used this service to send subscriptions as gifts to family members.  If I didn’t get their emails I probably wouldn’t have subscribed myself or purchased subscriptions for gifts.  

Your newsletter may be product offerings and specials mixed in with useful product reviews, or it may be a recap of what's going on in your industry. If you aren't a writer, find articles available for reprint in your industry. Make sure the newsletter has some value to the reader. Archive the newsletter on your site for additional content and make the archives available for browsing.  

It is very easy to set up a email database in Outlook Express or Windows Mail and simply compose and send your newsletter by email.  

Feedback & Reviews  

Unsolicited feedback is a powerful convincing tool! Let your customers tell other customers why they love you. It's much more compelling than your own claims, if handled well.  

There are many ways to handle feedback - the easiest way is to simply set up a form to allow customers to submit their feedback. You can then publish the ones you choose (with permission).  

Often people can be enticed to write a review or testimonial for your site in return for a link back to their site. This helps them with link popularity, but it helps your site as well by showing that a real person wrote that review.  

Ask The Expert  

Invite visitors to submit questions and someone in your business answers them. The questions and answers can then be published online. 

This not only helps you to keep a finger on the pulse of what customers want to know, but also helps to ensure that you are adding new content to your website on a regular basis. It can also save time by answering questions online rather than having to answer the same questions over and over again by phone or email.  

Summary  

If you are interested in building loyalty and interest in your company as well as repeat business and you want to get increased traffic from search engines, you have to offer more to your users. If you create a plan for content that offers value and interest to your customers/visitors, you can have a site that is built to sell AND drive repeat business.