7 Reasons why you should add more content to your website.
Posted Thursday, June 22nd, 2006. Filed under Internet Marketing Tips, Link Building.
Here are 7 good reasons you might want more content on your website. Your homepage has lots of backlinks but few words, so you're losing out on your most powerful page since it's hard to rank for phrases that don't appear on the page. You've got 50,000 pages but only 100 have more than 50 words, risking supplemental status.
You've got the same content as 50 other sites, so Google will try to choose the one it thinks is "real," and it might not be yours. You've got hundreds of product pages with only a small description, making it hard to avoid supplemental status let alone rank for anything.
There's nothing on your site that's link-worthy to your peers or anyone else, so quality researched content can garner natural backlinks without asking for them. You've been targeting only 3-4 big phrases while ignoring the long tail, and content pages covering lots of 3-4 word phrases helps pick those up. Google tries to rank "resource pages" high, and resource pages tend to have lots of original content.
Reader Comments
Spencer Hoyt: Thanks for the great tip, Jim. I give this advice to all my customers but have a hard time getting them to practice it. A list like this is a good way to give them extra incentive.
IncrediBILL: Your whole premise about going supplemental seems to be Google-centric, which is good advice since Google generates the most traffic. I tell people to figure out ways to make employees and customers generate content, like product reviews, which keeps fresh content on the site.
Shimon Sandler: Another reason to create new content: continuous fresh content is one way to get the bots to keep visiting your site, index content quicker, and maybe increase your PR.
Jim: Nice call Shimon! That should be #8.
stevepfseo: Set up a weekly addition of content and let people know about it. Build a how-to section and add a new article weekly — the bots and the people will return.
MikePedersen: Content sells and the search engines love it. There are still too many "salesy" sites doing the hard sell instead of offering valuable content that builds credibility and sales.
