You can compete in the search engines in lots of different ways, but it starts with putting masses of content on your site. In some cases, when going up against a well-off competitor, you may have no choice but to stack your website full of content. You can analyze their site’s pages to find out what types and how much content they’re using to propel their rankings. Then, try to evaluate where your competitor is lacking and where to focus your attention. I always suggest using lots of images, text, and video.
The major search engines use some kind of link popularity to rate Web pages. It may be time to stop adding content if you’re certain your site is more optimized than your competition. If you’re not sure what links are, then you may want to read a little about link building basics for SEO.
As you may have guessed, the best way to create content - write it yourself or get someone else to write it for you - is a challenge for most local small business owners. First, it’s extremely time consuming and most people find writing to be difficult. Even if you find writing easy, the end result is often trash bound. Maybe you know someone who can write well, and perhaps you can convince them to write a few paragraphs for you. But, usually the powers of persuasion can’t get you 10, 20, 50, 500, or 5,000 pages of content. You could always pay somebody, but who really wants to pay?
The next several parts of the Noggin Blog will be helpful for those who don’t know how to get more content on their site. You may be surprised to hear that there are resources for this type of thing, and we will continue tomorrow’s post with the first resource - you.