So you’ve had your website or blog for a little while, but it’s beginning to get a little stale already. Content planning comes in handy when keeping up with the demand for fresh content becomes overwhelming.

Both audiences and search engines need a reason to surf by your site each day. The more often they come, the higher your page ranks in search engine results. Try these tips to inject some new life into your website content planning and boost your website traffic:

5 Easy Content Planning Strategies

1. Get in touch with your audience. If you’re not clear on what type of content will keep whetting your audience’s appetite, ask them. To improve your website content planning, conduct online surveys or polls from time to time.

You can easily post polls daily using online services if you don’t have polling capability built into your site. Also, keep surveys short and sweet and provide an incentive; people are more likely to respond.

2. Be seasonal. There’s always a market for stories that are seasonal, such as summer or Christmas, or stories that are timely, such as Valentine’s Day or a special month. Take an hour or so to do some brainstorming and jot down the articles you can create around these themes.

3. Respond to an unexpected or major event. When these events, such as Hurricane Katrina or Michael Jackson’s untimely death occur, audiences often want more information or insight. Think of creative ways you can serve their needs during your content planning.

4. Solve a problem your audience has. This is an essential part of website content planning. You can create SEO content or articles around perennial problems your audience has (such as gardening or coping with the flu), or unexpected problems or hot-button issues.

Remember a few years ago when tainted pet food grabbed the attention of pet owners everywhere? Pet website and blog publishers who were on the ball knew the importance of providing their audiences with timely information they could use to protect their pets.

5. Eavesdrop on social networks. At this stage, you’d be remiss to not include the buzz on social networking sites such as Facebook, Digg and Twitter in your content planning.

Sometimes your website audience just gets into a topic before you do. After all, you may be busier with other things such as upgrading your site, marketing, or customer service. Social networkers can help you to stay in the loop so that you keep your website content fresh and engaging.

For help with content planning and brainstorming for your blog, newsletter or website, contact us today.

Source: Core Content Media
Type: Original SEO article
Keyword density: Content planning – 2.4%

Content Planning – 5 Easy Ways to Keep Websites and Blogs Fresh by Core Content Media is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://corecontentmedia.com/contact/.

You’ve got great website content, but search engines aren’t showing you any love – and your visitors are clicking away sooner than you’d like. What’s the solution? For starters, try avoiding these four mistakes:

1. Not Optimizing Old Website Content.

Most website and blog publishers are aware of the importance of optimizing their new website content. However, old content often gets overlooked during the SEO process.

Some blog and website content is perennial – it has value year after year for your visitors. This is especially the case when you have content that’s solution-oriented. “How-to” posts and articles are some of the most popular searches conducted on the Internet.

Even if you have articles that are a few years old, it may still be worthwhile to optimize them with strong keywords and keyword phrases. It only takes a few minutes to conduct keyword research using a tool such as the new-and-improved keyword search tool at Google Adwords, or other effective keyword research tools.

With those powerful keywords in hand, even if you just use them to rewrite the title, subtitles, the first paragraph, and the final paragraph, it can make a difference to your page ranks.

2. Not Using Enough Long Tail Keywords In Your Website Content.

Competition for short tail keywords on the Internet is fierce. So, if you’re still stuck on page three, four or 10 of search engine results pages, you’re not taking advantage of a very simple technique – inserting long tail keywords.

Consider that the search term “health” produces 124,000,000 searches on Google’s keyword tool. But, “women’s health care” brings up 60,500. You stand a far better chance of getting to the first or second page of search results for the long tail term than you do using the short tail keyword.

Many website visitors don’t browse past page one or two of search results. So, it’s very worthwhile to include long tail keywords in your blog or website content to boost your traffic.

3. Not Maximizing Internal Links In Your Website Content.

Ignoring internal linking is another common mistake publishers make when creating content for websites or blogs. Instead, many focus on external or back links, while not taking advantage of the benefits of internal links.

Not only do internal links enhance the usability of your website for your visitors; they improve your website’s structure and how search engines crawl and index your pages. Even better? Internal links are SEO tools you have total control over. You don’t have to rely on someone else linking to your site, or posting comments with your url to create back links.

Once you have enough content on your site, focus on creating contextual links to other posts or articles your readers may find interesting or useful. Also, be sure to use strong keywords or keyword phrases in your anchor text when building internal links in your blog and website content.

4. Not Tracking The Popularity of Your Website Content.

It may be very important to you to publish certain types of website content for your audience. But, if you’re not giving them what they want they won’t come as often, which affects your search engine’s rankings and your revenue. Your content strategy needs an overhaul.

So how do you do that? Start monitoring and tracking your visitors behavior on your website or blog. Those handy domain tools aren’t just for show — they provide valuable insight into the type of website content you should be focusing on.

Over time you may be able to afford to try convincing your visitors that they need the other less popular content on your site. But, in the online world, a visitor just has to click on their mouse to get to your competitor. It’s best to start off by giving them the website content they want.

Avoiding these four website content mistakes will help you to stay on track for reaching your SEO goals and building a loyal following online.

Source: Core Content Media
Type: Original article
Word Count: 656
Keyword Density: Website content-2.4%