When someone coined the phrase “content is king”, they meant it. Every website must have content. From blog posts to merchandise descriptions, the content of a website determines it’s value to an visitor. If your thinking of building a website, the first thing to consider is the content of your pages.
What Content Is
The information on a website is its content. Common content you may find on the internet are news reports, product information and jokes; these are all examples of typlical content found on websites. Other types of content found on websites are photos, and audio content as music or podcasts. What type of content are you going to put on your website?
Choosing Content
What content should you put on your website? Well if your just building a personal website, you could probably add information about any subject that might interest you. There’s a website called Freesticky that provides free content for websites based on different categories of interest. For some other examples, try Googling for “free content” or “free <your subject of interest> content“. This can lead you to find valuable resources of content and information for your website.
If you’re a business building a website to promote your products or services, then you’ve already got an idea of what type of content your website is going to provide. Some advice would be to make sure that your website content states clearly what you provide to a customer, and why you’re better than others competiting with you. You may also want to display a blog, or other type of regularly updated content on your website related to your business. This tells customers how well you know your business, and lets search engines know that your website contains fresh content.
Good Content
Content drives the web, but It’s hard to define what good content is. The quality of information your website provides depends on who you are providing the content for. Although it’s hard to create a one-size-fits-all copy, here are some tips that are acceptable for most people:
- Originality
Good content takes personality and thought. Information can be found anywhere, but understanding takes personal interest. - Understandability
Your content should be easy to understand by using relatively basic language and grammar. If a child can understand it, it’s good for everyone else. - Organization
Keeping your information organized and formatted correctly makes it easy for people to find what they’re looking for. By showing information in the order of how important it is (heirarchy), you provide different levels of understanding for the reader (I’ll talk more about this at another time).
Remember that if you don’t have any information or purpose for your website, it will not do anything for you. If you have content on your site that is easy to read and provides understanding about your subject, people will flock to your website even if you have no pictures or or flashy animation. There’s more value in the content you provide, and not the color of your font.