Content is king

Content is the most important factor for websites trying to attract visitors to the information on offer. By having lots of quality content you can greatly increase the visitors numbers for a website.

The majority of internet users are trying to find information. The visitor will stop searching when they find the information they are after. The visitor will stop at the website they first encounter that offers quality information that satisfies their needs. Visitors will return to, and recommend websites they consider to be quality rich.

Don't forget how important content is

With so many factors to consider, and tasks to complete, webmasters and SEOs often overlook the quality and quantity of content on offer within a website. It is common for webmasters to spend too much time designing and tweaking the look of a website, or studying and implementing SEO, that they overlook the content of a website. For websites that offer information, and are looking to attract visitors to this information, the content is king, everything else is secondary. A website with the best content, but no design, or SEO will ultimately be the best website in the genre. Even without a graphical design, just relying on basic HTML tags, information is easy to read and understand. Even without completing any major SEO work (just a few backlinks), a content rich website will eventually be found by internet users, who will recommend and link to the website, generating organic SEO.

Search engines only see content

If, like the majority of information websites, you rely on search engines to generate traffic to your website, then you need to satisfy the search engines. Search engines cannot see nice layout designs, graphics, flash or any fancy presentation ideas. The search engine bots will strip away all of the graphical elements out of a page, and then digest the content. Search engine bots only care about content. They use the content to establish what a page is about, and what the website is about.

Think about your visitors

Website visitors want to easily digest and understand the information offered by a website. They want to quickly find the information they are after. They want to read text and see links underlined (so they know they are hyperlinks). They do not care if a link is a button, which you may have done because you insist on using a certain font. Most visitors don't want to use a pretty looking Flash widget, they want to see text, hyperlinks, and pictures where necessary (photos, maps, etc). When building a website, always start with your content, and add niceties, such as Flash, after you have exhausted your content writing work.

Sourcing content

They are many ways in which to source content for your website. Writing the content yourself is the best option, but also consider free articles. If you are an expert on your website topic write as many articles as you can, until you have exhausted your knowledge. Invite visitors to your website to contribute articles and content, to increase the websites content total. Be mindful of using duplicate content though, as you may incur a search engine penalty.

Deciding what content to include

Many webmasters find it difficult to think of content to write and add to a website. However, with a little brain storming, it is normally easy to establish a big list of topic related articles. I personally write a list of article or page titles, related to the topic in question. Then for each title I give a summary of what each page will achieve. I then start to write, page-by-page. As I write the pages, I think of more pages to write, and information to write in the other pages, always updating my page list. At the end of this process I end up with many pages, ready for inclusion in a website. As a rule, I write at least 500 words in each page. See the writing your own content guide.

Don't devalue your content with SEO or design

It is a common SEO mistake to devalue content by adjusting it to improve search engine results. Without content of the highest quality, your SEO efforts will be wasted. Making changes to a page is a vital part of SEO, but carefully consider each change. Put the content first, SEO second. Ask yourself, 'will the change devalue the content?' If so, don't make the change.

Don't remove areas of content because it doesn't fit into a graphic design template, change the template! Always ensure your graphic design is very flexible and accommodates content of varying sizes.

Always put your content first, SEO and graphic design come second.