everybody can improve content

The most important thing on any webpage is content. You should always try to provide the best possible content in your field of business. This can vary between different intends of website owners, and there are different possibilities how to create and maintain your content.

Content is for the user
Even if the topic of this FBA is about Search Engine Optimization, you should think as a possible visitor or customer when writing your articles/content for your webpages. A potential customer is not interested in the history of the company; he probably wants to find reviews and further information on the product he wants to buy.

Example 1 (searchterm “word tipps”)
We have searched the internet and found very interesting information about word tipps. You can buy word tipps at following online stores; these will provide you with further information”

This shows how webpage content does not suit the users demand. Probably this text would not be referred to by other websites, nor would a search engine spider consider this as helpful information for the keyword combination “word tipps”.

Example 2 (searchterm “word tipps”)
On this webpage, we try to provide useful tipps for the use of Microsoft Word. You can browse the different tipps, for example on formating, sending attachments through word and other word tipps. If there is any information you miss on this webpage about “Word tipps”, please contact us.

This page provides clear information and real “word tipps” that should help the user. It is more likely that webmasters place a link to this webpage when writing about a similar topic. Also, the search engines can analyze this content better.

Duplicate Content
If you are not writing your content yourself, you can use it from other sources. There are many sources where content is available for free, one of the best known content resources is “Wikipedia”.

Nevertheless, it does not make sense for search engines to display the same content two or more times in the search engine result pages.

As an effect, if you don’t want to get your website filtered out of the results, you should provide unique content.

If you are buying content you must also take into consideration that this content has been exclusively written for you and is not used elsewhere on the internet. Exclusive content is more expensive, but you don’t have to take the risk of being filtered out of the search engine result pages.

Summary “Producing Content”
In order to please search engines and your visitors, you should provide unique, error-free, interesting content with a clear focus on your information. Try to keep your content as accurate and up-to-date as possible.

Interactivity and Content from Visitors
If you have to deal with the problem to provide content as a search engine optimization expert, there is the problem that one always has limited time or limited budget, or, as in most cases, one has neither time nor budget, because clients often want to see immediate results with a minimum amount of budget involved.

In order to produce content more easily, programmers have come up with the idea of content managment systems (CMS) and Weblogs in order to save time.

Nevertheless, you need to write or buy this content yourself.

Ways to receive content from your visitors
If you have enough visitors, it is possible to let them contribute to the development of your website. This is easier when you are dealing with topics of general interest, like “soccer”, compared to product information or webpages of companies.

FAQs
The simpliest way to achieve useful content from your visitors is to answer their questions. Try providing a form or E-Mail address where they can send in their questions, and answer them on a webpage named “FAQs”.

This does not only create your content, it also helps possible customers, because their possible questions had already been answered in advance.

Advantages

Easy to implement
Questions should be easy to answer
Disadvantages

You need to take your time and answer the questions
If there are a lot of questions, you should think about your general product information first
FAQs are not really interesting content for most visitors, if they want further information and no answers about tax policies etc.
Forums
Another possiblity to receive free content from your visitors is to add a possibility to discuss, for example a forum, and integrate it in your website. Of course you should focus on the topic of your website.

There are many different types of forum software available, most of them are free. In order to work, these need a MySQL database and PHP installed on the server.
Examples of forum software

phpBB 2 > free board software, easy to install
Woltlab Burning Board > costs from 25 to 200 € , provides some extra features
Advantages

If you are deciding to start a forum, it could become a well known resource in the internet world, and you can establish your company as an expert in your field without having to invest money for advertising.

If you are lucky, other experts in your field will decide to add content to your forum and discuss improvements about your products/news in your sector.

Disadvantages

It takes a lot of time to build up a forum, and until it is running by itself, it needs a lot of investments from your time budget. Searching News, posting discussions, and moderating your forum could take up to 2 hours per day.

Wiki
Another possibility that is rarely used by webmasters is the possibility to add a wiki to your webpage. Wiki is another word for “fast”,; every visitor can change, edit, delete or improve content. There are many different software systems of wikis available, some of them only take 5 minutes to install and are easy to configure and maintean. You should also take into consideration that many visitors might not know that it is possible to contribute content to a wiki, or even what a wiki is.

In this case, you need to tell them clearly what the intended purpose of this possibility is.

The best example for a well running, adminstrated wiki, is “Wikipedia”.

Advantages

You don’t have to provide content yourself, everybody can improve content, your webpage can grow very fast without extra time.

Disadvantages

As well as with providing a forum, you need to moderate your wiki, delete spam entries, and manage the quality of the content that has been entered.

Summary of Ways to receive content
There are many ways to receive free content from your visitors, nevertheless, you need to moderate and analyize the content, and invest time. If you do so wisely, you can profit from the contributed content.