Content, Content, Content

It’s natural and desirable that you should want your website to be well designed and professional looking. But it’s far more important that you offer valuable content and promote your site effectively.

How do you create good content? By focusing on your audience’s needs, not on what you’re selling.

The internet is a vast warehouse of information. Most people – 75-90% according to research – search for information through the search engines.

To get a good presence or ranking on search engines you need quality content, now more than ever. This is partly because the search engines have links with the directories – and directories rank sites according to their editors' opinions of their content.

The rankings at www.dmoz.com, the Open Directory Project, powers the core directory services for the Web's largest and most popular search engines and portals, including Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit, Alta Vista and hundreds of others. The LookSmart directory feeds its results into MSN and www.about.com.

So you need to impress the directory editors with some good content. And you can create good content by, for example:

• Offering objective analysis and commentary on your industry or subject

• Inviting others to write articles for your site (you can incentivise them by providing a link to their site or allowing a subtle plug, provided they’re not competitors)

• Providing a news digest

• Listening to and addressing your customers’ concerns and ideas

"Keep People Coming Back"