Article Surfing Archive

So, having come up with a workable definition of what content actually is in my last article, lets move content for your website, newsletter, e-zine or even for your blog.

The first point to address when considering this question is, what is it the you are actually trying to achieve with your online efforts, whatever form such efforts might take.

For example, are you looking to just inform the viewers of your website about facts, information or data about a particular subject? This might be the case if you published a blog about you favorite sport, or the best way of looking after King Charles Cocker Spaniels, for example.

Likewise, the scenario would be a similar one if you were publishing a newsletter for your offline, real world 'fork lift trucks for hire' business.

The third possible scenario is that you are promoting or selling products or services on the net, and be looking for content for your sales 'pitch' page.With such a pitch page, almost inevitably, you will have a clear target market for whatever it is that you are selling, whether you sell one product or one thousand!

For example, if you sell motorcycle accessories, you might have a huge range of products, but your target market would nevertheless be motorcycle owners. If your only product is a top secret fuel additive that reduces the gasoline consumption of, say, a Honda XR650R motorcycle, your target market would still be exactly the same.

What we are talking about here are what almost everyone on the net calls a 'niche' market, that is, the exact target group that you want to see your message and take some action based on that message.

So, before deciding where and how to find your content, you need to define your niche. Be as accurate and as precise (you might say 'narrow') as you can when doing this, because, in my experience, the wider and less realistically you make this assessment, the less chance you have of being successful.

Okay, let's say that the 'niche' is defined accurately, where do we go from here?

Not so very long ago, finding content was an absolute breeze. You popped a simple search into Google or Yahoo, followed a few of the results until you found something that you thought fitted and you copied it, with the authors information 'box', to your website. Hey presto, instant content! To a limited extent you can still do this, and there is no doubt that this is absolutely the easiest way of 'padding out' or filling up your site or newsletter.

The problem with this is that the major search engines are less and less happy with this method of using content, and without some kind of solid representation in the search engines, chances are that your site will get you nowhere. The reason that such content, called 'duplicate content' is not going to work longer term is pretty obvious when you think about it.

What are 95% of people doing online, each and every day? They are simply looking for information. So, if 100, 1000 or 10000 website owners 'clog up' the search engines with exactly the same pages and articles about exactly the same topics, how happy are the information seekers going to be? Not very happy at all, I think we can safely say.

They then either start complaining to Google or Yahoo, or (far, far worse as far as the major engines are concerned), they look at other search engines next time they hit the net.

There are more and more search engines launching on the net every day, all fighting and clamoring to rip the market out of the hands of the big boys, so it's a very, very serious battle as far the bigger player are concerned.

So, using simple-to-access duplicate content, whilst extremely quick and relatively painless, is not going to get your online business anywhere in the current market.

To conclude for now, once you have defined your niche, and narrowed it down sufficiently to make your targets attainable, do NOT waste all that time and effort by then turning to duplicate content.
Your content has to be unique, 'stuff' that can only be found on your website.

And whilst using unique content is not as easy as just copying other peoples work (pretty obviously, really) there is no doubt that the rewards will far outweigh the extra time spent creating such original materials.

Exactly how to go about doing this in the quickest and most efficient manner will be covered in detail in the next article.