by Bill Hartzer

You would think that when planning a new web site or a totally new version of your web site that you can sit down, make a list of web pages, create the content, and forget about it. That is simply not the case. If you take a look at the current search results for most popular search phrases, you will see that the best web sites (the ones showing up at the top of the search results) not old, static web sites. They are, in fact, updated on a regular basis and contain a lot of good content on their subject. That brings me to the most important point here: you cannot expect to create a few web pages and expect that web site to rank well in the search engines (especially Google).

When it comes to Google, they want to deliver the best user experience. When you go to Google, you expect to find what you are searching for: if you do not, then you will turn to another search engine. So, if you are looking for "red widgets" then you would expect to find a web site that has a lot of good information about "red widgets". So, if you are a company that sells "red widgets", how would you go about getting a top search engine ranking for "red widgets"? Creating more content on your web site about "red widgets" than any other web site on the internet about that subject will most likely bring you to the top of the search results. Show the search engines and your web site visitors that you are the expert on "red widgets" and you will be rewarded with good search results.

It doesn't matter what your do you your web site. In fact, if you sell "red widgets", then educating your potential customers about "red widgets" will make them a more informed consumer. Those potential customers will trust you: they will want to do business with you.

How Do You Create Content?
How do you create content? How do you create great content? How do you create content that people will want to link to without even asking? That probably could be a whole other blog post. But, there are a few options to consider: create the content yourself or hire someone to create it for you. It really depends on your industry that you are in, but generally speaking there's going to be some way to add additional content to your site.

Doing it Yourself
One simple way of adding content to your site on a regular basis would be to add a blog to your web site. If you're a corporation and you have a corporate web site then perhaps adding your press releases to your web site before you put them out on the newswires is an option. Or, if you are an online retailer then perhaps adding a blog to the site and picking one product per day to review would be enough. Other options, depending on your site, could include user generated content. Adding a message board, adding product reviews, aggregating the latest news from your industry might be an option.

Hiring a Writer
Depending on your industry, hiring an outside writer to create the content (write blog posts for you), industry-related articles, or even reviews of your products is an option. I have recently seen blog posts outsourced to writers (contractors) for as little as $5 per article/blog post. And I've seen them as high as $100-200 an article depending on the subject. There are places to hire writers, such as Craigs List or even Guru.com.

Adding Content Regularly
Whatever you do, whether or not you hire a writer or add the unique content to your web site yourself (not copied or duplicate content), it's important to not add all the content all at once. For example, if you were to hire someone to write 100 on-topic articles or blog posts, you would want to add them on a regular basis to the site. Even if they're delivered to you all at once you would want to perhaps post 10 of them at first; and then one or two per week or one or two per day. Take a look at how often your competitors (the web sites that are already ranking well in Google) are adding content to their web sites.

The bottom line
What's the bottom line? If you have a one or two web page site then most likely you're not going to rank well in the search engines. Look at your competition: how many web pages do they have on their web sites? Use the site:domain.com command to see how many pages your competitors have. To compete, you will need at least that much content on your site: or even more content. Having more content and adding more content to your web site on a regular basis will bring you better search engine rankings.

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