Fresh content – that is the grail of the Internet. Everyone
wants to have it on their site, everyone wants to be able to
access it on other sites. Audiences are hungry for it.
But how do you manage it? And how do you ensure your
traffic keeps coming back for it?
Blogging
One of the most popular new methods of constantly
refreshing content is by maintaining a blog, short for
weblog. This is almost an online personal or public journal
you maintain as often as several times a day. On private or
personal web sites, it may often take the form of a diary. On
a business oriented website, a blog is generally updated
daily or a couple of times a week, and contains information
about your business or your product rather than personal
feelings or thoughts.
One of the best things about blogging is that you can write
all your content for a week and store it on the blog engine,
setting entries to be released to the public blog daily or
whenever you want them released. So you can maintain a
daily blog even though you only work on it once a week.
Blogs, however, are time-intensive and may be too much for
a busy business owner to maintain.
Articles
You can also maintain fresh articles on your site weekly or
monthly. If you do update articles on a regular basis, make
certain that the release date of the current article is
prominently displayed somewhere on the article's page so
that the surfer can see that the article is fresh. You should
also maintain a dated archive of all the articles you've had
on your site with their release dates at the top, so that
casual browsers can also see you have a track record of
maintaining fresh content.
But many web surfers go to your site, click away, and never
return. How can you keep them coming back?
Newsletters
An emailed newsletter can be the most powerful tool you
have to maintain repeat customers. It's a simple concept.
You compose the newsletter in either plain text or in HTML.
Allow your customer to sign up for free to receive your
newsletter in their email every time it's released. Collect the
email addresses, compile them into a database, and send
out your newsletter on at least a monthly basis.
But it is a little more complicated. After all, you want to
drive traffic to your site. Instead of putting entire articles in
your newsletter, consider putting a teaser to certain articles
in the newsletter, with a link to the article in its entirety on
your website. Or insert a special coupon in your newsletter
that the reader can redeem for special bargains or freebies
on your website.
You can include a "what's new" section in your newsletter,
highlighting any new products or developments on your
website and directing the reader to appropriate links. And
you can also allow other people to advertise in your
newsletter, focusing on those with whom you have an
affiliate relationship.
Another idea for your newsletter is to run a contest or
survey. Everyone likes to win stuff, and everyone likes to be
asked what they think. If you have a large email newsletter
list, you can offer a gift certificate as a prize, but require
anyone interested in participating to come to your website to
sign up with their email. This gives you the added advantage
of being able to compare the contest signups with your
email list; are they significantly different? Or is it pretty
clear who your best customers are?
Updating Content Frequently
Regardless of how you run your newsletter, you should
never neglect your main site. Update its content frequently.
Make sure all the information contained on it is correct and
recent. Most importantly (though for a slightly different
reason), make certain your home page has something fresh
on it at least every month.
This isn't for your customers. It's for the web spiders. When
spiders catalog your site, one of the things they've been
looking for recently is differences from the last time they
spidered your site and what's on your site now. If you don't
have any differences this time, or the next time, or the next
time, the spiders will decide you have a static website, and
your ranking will go down. Frequent updates, or even just
shuffling things around, on your home page will prevent this
from happening.
