Your web site content helps you get in search engines, speak to visitors, and ultimately get visitors to buy, contact you, or follow a link. Meanwhile, your content has to be updated at least once a month if you want to get return visitors and search engine traffic. To be successful, you need to have a web content strategy.

Web Content Strategy Components

There are four basic ways you can get content for your web site.

Licensed content that you can publish on your site for a one-time or recurring subscription fee, or in exchange for putting a link to the authors' site under the article. The main benefit of this kind of content is that you can build up your site quickly. The drawback is that the content is not original, which means you will get little search engine traffic from it--hundreds if not dozens of other sites will be publishing the same content. Also, within a few years, the subscription fees or the value of visitors who leave via the required link to the author's site will amount to more than you would have paid to have original content professionally written.

What Kind of Web Site Content to Use

So, which of the four kinds of web site content should you use on your site? Ideally, all four. That way you'll maximize the amount of quality content your site can have.

But, the precise ratio of the four kinds of content you end up using will depend on the goals of your site. Some examples:

User-contributed content: A website that handles support issues will likely have a lot of use for a user forum. A professional services firm would probably be better off without a forum, with all the user-contributed content in the form of testimonials. Ask your visitors and customers for ideas on content they could contribute.

Scheduling Content Updates

Search engines, especially Google, seem to give pride of place to sites that regularly update their content. Regular content updates also give visitors a reason to return.

In short, if you have thirty web pages worth of content this month, it's better to post one page each day rather than put them up all at once. To make sure you do this, schedule an hour each day for updating your site's content.

One way to get regular content updates for your site is to start a blog, a "web log" in which you write your thoughts and post news. The one disadvantage is that many web users are getting tired of blogs, which are often not well written and contain more opinion than information. Search engines, too, seem to be featuring blogs in their results less often.

Identifying a Content Provider

Ever wonder how Bill Gates keeps the MSN and Microsoft sites so content-rich? Doesn't he get RSI from writing a thousand or more pages a day?

You guessed it: Bill Gates does not write the content for any of the Microsoft websites. Nor should you write all your own content. All successful website owners have someone else write a large part of their content. This person or company is called a "web content provider."

Your web content provider has to be a person or company with proven experience writing content for the web, rather than just print content. Ask to see writing samples. You might even ask if you can commission just a single page to start with, for evaluation purposes.

In short, your web content is too important to leave to chance. Make sure you have a strategy for getting the best content. Contact a content provider to develop a web content strategy today.