Content creation should go beyond your website. For most businesses there is value in letting the customers or clients know that you are an authority in your area, and that means that your expertise should be on display online as well as in the shop. This is also one of the essential elements in online placement. The more quality content that is associated with your products and your business, the more likely it is that those online pages will be ranked high in various searches related to your business, and the better the chances that any links from those pages to your site will help to bump up the placement of your actual website. That’s a huge plus.
So how do you do that?
Contribute to a related blog – If there are already popular blogs related to your business or your product you may want to contact that blogger about contributing. Most are looking for quality content. Each blog will have their own rules concerning the types of articles which may be submitted, and usually they need to be informative pieces as opposed to promotional. Only choose quality blogs for this. A bad link today can do more harm than good.
Start a blog – For businesses that have the resources this is a good tactic because you are able to control content, comments, and block out competitors from contributing. If you choose to start a blog, have a plan. Be sure to have at least a couple dozen subjects to be covered to start with and be sure you are able to expand. Since it is your blog you can do whatever you want with it, but try to suppress the temptation of turning each post into a sales letter. The point is to become recognized as an authority, getting too promotional can compromise that goal.
Make a wiki page – These are pages, similar to Wikipedia (and if you can create a Wikipedia page even better), which provide encyclopedia-type information. These pages always rank very well because they are providing facts. Given the choice Google will always give their customers facts over sales pitches. These types of pages should have a very academic tone and should be void of any selling.
Online FAQs – Businesses sometimes have a FAQ connected to their website. Yours can be a part of your site, or you may want to keep in separate from your site, depending on the image your site is trying to convey to customers. One of the biggest pitfalls of a Frequently Asked Questions page is only answering the questions you want people to ask. That is a huge and frustrating mistake. If there are common questions that you do not necessarily want to address from your site, that is okay, just make your FAQ section separate from your site.
Shopping Guides – Sites like Amazon and Ebay get a lot of hits unrelated to people who actually are looking to buy a product at that moment. Google likes those sites (just like they like informative blogs and wiki pages) because often the various product descriptions themselves contain the information being searched for. Consider making an informative guide to your products or services. This can be part of your main site or separate, but keep in mind this should be less promotional, so you may want it separated and then linked to your website where you can close the deal.