How to have unique content?

May 13, 2008 No Comments »

Unique content on the Internet has become sort of a cliché. It’s very difficult to get 100% unique content on your blog or website because the moment you’ve picked a topic to write about, the access to publishing being so (fortunately) easy on the Internet, somebody has already said something about the topic, and sometimes scores of people have presented their takes on the topic.

But there can be one thing that is unique: your voice and style, and above all, your opinion. That is something that helps you stand apart. Opinion is something that differentiates an expert writer from a casual writer.

How to form that opinion? By gaining information; fortunately, that too is quite easy on the Internet, since so many people are writing on the same topic, most of the time. While choosing a topic, think about how much it resonates with your interest and intention. By writing on that topic, what do you intend to achieve? Are you writing on it merely because you see everybody writing on it, or you’ve really got something to add to the ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas, or you want to expand your horizon of knowledge by researching and writing the topic? Or you simply want to share your wisdom with your visitors and help them improve their lives?

Once you have figured out why you want to write on the topic then you can decide what approach to follow. Whatever is the reason, you have to form an opinion. Go to other blogs and forums and read what others are saying. Are they absolutely right, partially right, a bit wrong, or way out of the line? If so, why? When you can think of a why, you’ve got an opinion, and once you’ve got an opinion, you’ll automatically voice it using the right words, and this will make your content unique.

What is easier? Creating linkbait content or requesting people to link to you?

May 12, 2008 No Comments »

I was thinking about increasing traffic on my websites, especially this blog and my copywriting and content writing website. I fare well on the search engines for some good keywords and expressions, but they are a selected few, and I’m working on optimizing my website for other keywords too (there are more than 40 keywords my website must rank high on, and doesn’t, yet).

But it’s not just generating content, you also need links from other blogs and websites to achieve more traffic, both from search results and direct links. I never feel comfortable (actually, never done that) approaching people to put my link on their blogs or websites. Comments etc. too I don’t leave any (I plan to focus on that) and I don’t participate much on online forums (I plan to focus on that too). But the thing that I like the most is producing content, and I think that’s the best of generating incoming links. In the near future I plan to write a lot for my website, and also for other blogs and websites.

Exchanging links or requesting people for links actually demands greater effort. Write an excellent blog post or a well-researched article and many people will voluntarily link to you. What do you think?

Content first or design?

May 10, 2008 5 Comments »

Nice discussion going on, on Jeffrey’s blog, regarding what should come first: the design of the website, or its content. He stresses that designers should deeply study the content of the website before getting on with the design.

I have had experience from both the sides (oh! this sounds kinky). I have made websites, and now I create content. For me it’s never been a hard and fast rule. It depends on the focus of the website. Of course it helps if you know what sort of content the website is going to carry.

When designing websites one should keep in mind that it’s not the design that plays a dominant role; it’s the content, because after all you communicate through your content. Of course design should be pleasing and if you are a web designer or a visual artist then the visual elements on your website should be attractive to look at, but if you are a writer, or a consultant, or providing a product or a service through your website, then the most important thing is the message, the content. The entire design should evolve around the content.

The design is like a gadget, take for instance a TV set. No matter how cool-looking your TV set is, if there is no program worth-watching, the TV set is of no use.

TimesOnline is making 200 years of its content available online

May 09, 2008 No Comments »

Via the beta version of TimesOnline, according to this link at Journalism.com, you can go through the archives of the content produced by The Times, Sunday Times and TimesOnline published since 1785. The archive will be free to its users, initially, and then perhaps they will be charging a fee for the access. Recently the Wall Street Journal made its online content free and I think other online publications will soon be following suit. Anyway, it’ll be quite fascinating to go through the old archives.

What sort of content should go on your blog or website?

May 09, 2008 1 Comment »

When it comes to your website or blog, what matters to you the most, the quality of the content, or the quantity?

The SEO experts say you must have lots of pages on your website in order to fair well on the search engines. The more content you have, the greater is the chance of attaining the “right” keyword density.

Although your rankings don’t merely depend on your keyword density, to an extent this works. I have noticed whenever I put more content on my content writing website, my traffic increases and so do the business queries (hence I’m planning to make it a regular business promotion exercise). But it doesn’t mean your website should become a dumping ground for every sort of corporate content and some kind of auditing and planning is necessarily, as rightly pointed out by Andy Budd in his recent post.

When clients approach me for their content writing projects I’ve observed they rarely have a plan. They just have a basic idea of how many pages the website requires and at the most, the titles, and the keywords they think should be appropriate to target for. Since 90% of the clients don’t have a content strategy, I have started offering it as a separate service (of course I’m charging for it). Now I tell them what content should be there. A website must have a clear content orientation.

Last year I worked with a client who sent me an Excel sheet listing around 150 pages. All the pages were clearly marked for different sections and he had a clear idea of what the individual page was going to achieve for his corporate website, and I think that is the right approach to take.

What about the blog? I think it’s OK to have non-relevant blog posts now and then as long as your overall content sticks to the theme of your blog. For instance if you publish a blog on web design and development, it’s OK to share your experience of cooking a chicken with your audience; but it doesn’t mean that after every second post you begin to share your cooking secrets with them because it will totally derail the primary purpose of your blog: showcasing your skill as a web developer.