A blog about anyInput, experiences running it, and thoughts about my day job

My Filipino SEO, Oliver, posted some great tips on creating content. And that is definitely the way most web masters go about creating content. Let’s look at the different methods of creating content in more detail.

Creating Your Own Content
Sure you can create your own content. But be aware that in order to make your site successful, you need to be creating content all the time. For those of you that like to write and are good at writing and have a lot to talk about, then this may be OK for you.
In all, this method is the most expensive and time consuming way of creating content. Also, you are in control of the content. An example of a webmaster creating content is a blog. There are many successful blogs out there that are updated frequently.

Having Users Create Content
Another option is to have a database driven site in which users generate the content. The site can be a pre-made application such as a forum or a custom made application. One tradeoff made here is the development time. If you like to code and not write, then this method may be for you. When the forum becomes popular, users will generate hundreds or thousands of pages per day. However, you are not in control of what users post and it can be complete garbage from a search engines perspective.

Using Content from Other Sites
You need to be really careful when using this method. Yes, anyone can take content from another website and use it on there own. However, this may be illegal and unethical. Besides, search engines want unique content. Also be aware, that you may be penalized for having duplicate content by search engines. The key is to find a source of content that is untapped and content that is OK to use such as content from the government. This is how I create content for anyInput. More this later.

Definitely, a website that has a lot of contents impresses visitors, this is because they come back again and again to see updates on articles, news, tutorials and a lot more.

But what about websites that sells products and database driven sites like anyInput.com, anyAssets, anyUI and anyInfos?

While product based websites contains things to sell, and mostly database driven sites, it should also contain description, promotional articles that would support the integrity of the product you are selling, maybe a dummy site or subdirectory that will contain marketing techniques that points them to the products you are selling like promotions, discounts or other things that explains the beauty and strength of the products could be made. Otherwise, your site will be found dead, NO visitors, NO sales.

Another tips for creating content on your site is to make an appeal to the buyer or visitors that will drive them to visit your site again and again. Be sure not to copy other sites’ content, which some owners or even writers and webmasters do to save money and time. You could derive thoughts and ideas from them, make an original article and claim them as your authored one, besides you don’t want to face infringement and plagiarism issues, right?

A good content shows the writer’s own personality and flavor. But an informative contents should be based on what really had happen or is happening and not a personal opinion. It can be based on what you have experienced especially when talking about problems that you have solved or technique and tips you have discovered.

Make sure what your site is explaining should be understood by many. Use the English language as much as possible, since it is the primary business language the world understands, although there are a lot of language translation tools available for those who can’t. This ensures that people knows what they are reading and will not be mislead, since you are promoting your site internationally.

Remember to check your grammar everytime a content is published, this will increase your site’s integrity and will tell people that you are serious in your internet business and that you are really professional.

Last thing here, always make sure you do daily or regular updates. People will be more excited to visit your site again and again to see the newest content and updates. This will avoid being tagged as a boring site.

This posting goes in line with what I have been saying about niches and SEO.

Firstly, you must know your niche. Then you must discover low competition keywords that are about your niche. Google ‘keyword selection’ and you will see adWords keyword selection. Although the tool is really to help Google suck money out of your pockets, it is free and is a good starting point for helping you find keywords relating to your niche. There are other keyword selection tools out there such as the pay service, Wordtracker. From your niche keywords, an overall website theme will become apparent. On each page of your site you need to place some content from your theme. This will enable search engines to identify that your site is about the theme and possibly rank your site well for those low competition keywords.

Now an example. Say you have a site about “comic books.” Through keyword research you discover that ‘beano annual collection’ and ‘dark comic collectors’ are low competition keywords with a decent amount a traffic. Out of those phrases you could develop a few sentences for you theme. Then you include some of those theme sentences on most of your pages.

This is the strategy I will give a shot in the next couple of months. Stay tuned.

Many people I have talked to over the years essentially say to me focus on a niche when starting a business. A family friend, Don, said that I should focus anyInput at a niche such as stamp collecting, comic collecting, coin collecting or etc. My uncle said I should focus on a niche for monthly subscription fees such as “hotel inventory software.” Further, there are countless examples of successful websites that have a niche market. There is a wine collectors forum and a php developer forum and forums about anything imaginable. You need to start out in a niche first.

Once your business has a good chunk of a niche market, then you may decide to go after another niche. If you keep growing you may discover that you now own a general market. A perfect example of this is facebook. They started with colleges and were in that market for years until recently they took on the general social networking market. Another example is Amazon which began as an online book retailer.

Even though, I knew about the importance of niche markets, I never applied the idea to my sites. They are all general sites about a vague topic such as “free online storage” or “maintenance software.” These ideas are not focused and will probably not pick up steam. So I have finally decided to use a new strategy based on niches for new sites that I created moving forward.