Six tips for building a content rich website

If you want to achieve lasting success with your website, then the best route to take is to build a content-rich site. A site that has varied and informative articles and information will be big hit with viewers and search engines alike. In case you have writer's block or are not sure how to go about creating more content for your website. Here are some tips to help you get moving. 1. When building content try to solve the problems of your viewers without making them buy something Of course you have set up your website in order to either make money or "get" something out of it, but it is not productive to build scores of pages with hard-sell messages. People are coming to the net to find solutions to their problems. Provide articles, information and answers to these problems and you will win the respect, and trust of your readers. This is known as "pre-selling" and it is just as important as selling itself. So, before you start tapping on your keyboard, keep the interests of your readers in mind and then begin. 2. Write about what you know and share your knowledge with your readers If you have set up a website it means that you know something about your particular field, or have some special interest in it. For example, suppose you are selling digital cameras, why not write some articles reviewing the available cameras that are on the market. Or why not write an article explaining what people should look for when they buy a camera. There are a lot of people out there who don't have the foggiest idea about digital cameras and they would sure be happy to get some unbiased information before buying something. 3. Do research and turn dull reports into interesting articles You can build on what you know by doing a bit of research on the web. Make a keyword search for "digital cameras" or whatever your field is, and you will find some web pages giving information. Often the information is just listed in a point-wise fashion in bulleted lists. Take this information, and blend it with your own experience to create new articles. You can quote or cite the other articles (with hyperlinks) that you find on the web if they are particularly useful. In fact this is the original idea behind Google's system of PageRank: web pages that are particularly good will earn links or "votes" from other sites. 4. Let your readers help you to create content If you are not sure what to write about then why not ask your web visitors to submit their questions. These questions will stimulate you to provide answers in the form of articles. A good example of this approach is the site askdavetaylor . Dave Taylor is a technical "geek". If you have any question about computers, software, html, Mac, linux, unix and related technical matters you can just go to his site and ask a question. Dave's answers comprise hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pages of solid information. In fact, he has 29,300 pages indexed in Google! You don't have to write hundreds or thousands of pages, but if you follow Dave's example you can certainly build up your site, and easily overcome your "writer's block." 5. Reprint the articles of experts in your field There is no sense in recreating the wheel. If someone has already written something good about your particular field, you can reprint it. You will have to provide a link back to the author, but if the article really fits in with the theme of your site, then it is worth it. You can find free reprint articles at sites such as ezinearticles and goarticles 6. Let your readers create content directly Blogs with their "comments" sections are now one of the most popular ways of allowing web visitors to add their thoughts and ideas. You can also set up a bulletin board or forum using the phpBB software (which is pre-installed with many hosting plans). If you have enough traffic and an audience that is passionately interested in the themes of your website, then your own readers will create pages and pages of interesting content. You will of course have to moderate the forums or blogs, but the reward to you in terms of useful content will be worth it. So, if your site is a bit thin on content, think about these six tips and take steps towards providing information that will make your site a place where people can come and find solutions to their problems or answers to their questions.

Understanding the world wide web

Everyday we log on and get into this strange online world called the web. Now many of us believe that the Internet and web are the same, but though they are related, they are not quite the same thing. The Internet or the Net as we all call it now, is a worldwide system of interconnected computer networks. It transmits data using the Internet protocol. The net has many networks all tied together, carrying out many functions. These functions may be as different as email or pages of information, or even online chat. The Web is a read-write information space. It has resources like text documents, images and multimedia. It is interesting to see how the web works. Anyone accessing the web will use a web browser like the Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox and the hypertext link to the page or resource is typed in. The address would read like this ‘ example/mypage. html'. This address is given by the global, distributed Internet database known as the Domain Name System or DNS. To make this sound easier, in the above example, the address of the server is ` example` and there, a request to view “mypage” is being made. HTTP or Hypertext Transfer Protocol helps in accessing the server. The DNS then turns all this into an individualized IP or Internet Protocol address. This will look like a phone number with four numbers between 0 and 255. The IP is a procedure set up by the Internet to find a server anywhere in the world. In fact once the IP address is known, the server can be located through the ISP or Internet Service Provider. Once the IP address is reached, the web site and all its content becomes available to the user. Almost immediately the html or hypertext markup language code is sent back and the text and graphics are available to the browser. This happens fairly quickly, taking just a few seconds, helping us make the most optimum use of the web. If things do not go as planned, the viewer will get an error message stating 'the page cannot be displayed'. This could mean that there is an error in the server name or the page being searched for does not exist. Sometimes the server could be busy or the page being searched has moved. It is best to follow the instructions given and continue. All this sounds very simple, but today there is high degree of sophistication in the programming and solutions offered by a web page. The credit for designing the concept of the web goes to Tim Berners-Lee, when he built the "ENQUIRE". On August 6, 1991, he posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt. hypertext newsgroup, using the concept of HTML. This was the debut of the Web as a service on the Internet. He applied the idea of links to the Internet. This meant that the web became an accumulation of pages that could be accessed by clicking on links. Today we have benefited so much from this new communication system which makes the world so much smaller than before and has linked its many peoples as no other means could have ever done.

Google paranoia or a cause for concern

Copyright 2006 Sharon Housley Anti-Google sentiment is on the rise. Web pundits have tossed around monopoly theories and privacy advocates have warned of a day of reckoning. While Google has made friends on Wallstreet, it has disappointed the technical evangelists who were once its fiercest followers. Google has grown into a big scary company and web watchers are expressing their concerns about the information Google gleans from their various services. Google Analytics is free, no one can beat the price, but what is the real cost? The cost is your data. While not terribly important when analyzed alone, when aggregated with other information Google has access to, it could be damaging. Data mining has made the collection of data meaningful. It has become easier to find patterns and trends in large volumes of data. While any of that information independent of other data, might be non-threatening or irrelevant to someone doing analysis, when combined with other data Google has access to, it can paint a very clear picture of how, not only individual companies are performing, but the aggregate data could possibly paint a picture of how entire business sectors or industries are performing. The big question is how will Google use this information? Will it affect search engine ranking? Will it influence keyword costs? Paranoia? Lauren Weinstein doesn't seem to think so, her blog post entitled "The Dark Side of Google" lauren. vortex/archive/000108.html , paints a very clear picture of the danger of a single entity possessing all of the data. According to a recent USA Today article "In just seven years, Google has emerged as one off the most influential companies of the 21st century, a multinational whose recent forays into classified ads, book publishing, video, Wi-Fi and telecom make its data empire ever more powerful." The article goes on further to quote Jeff Chester, head of the digital Center for Digital Democracy saying "Google could easily become the poster child for a national public movement to regulate data collection". Lets take a look at Google's new analytics tool. As a reporting tool, Google Analytics offers good features and functionality. Google Analytics tells publishers who their website referrers are, what pages visitors are viewing, the length of the visitor stay, what items are purchased. Google Analytics data can be used to develop new technologies, and optimize pay per term influence ranking. Google wants to make money, and like it or not, data is a commodity. Google will likely use the data from their various ventures to develop new technologies and personalize content. Conspiracy theorists believe that the Google's aggregate data will also be used to optimize the fees charged for pay-per-click, influence organic ranking or worse yet sold. Unbeknownst to many users, privacy advocates say that Google's technology give Google the ability to collect enormous amounts of data about interests and online habits of web surfers. That said, Google's growth will continue to motivate privacy advocates and those in the technology field behind the Attention Truste movement to work together, to improve how personal information and subscription information is used online. I expect we will see a lot of energy and effort in this arena. Lets face it, Google wants to make money; no, now that they are public they *need* to make money and like it or not, data is a commodity. Whether Google will use your data or not is still to be determined, but the fact remains they can if they choose to. Google's storage capacity, is as deep as its pockets, meaning that it is far ahead of competitors. All of this has motivated privacy advocates and eyes are on and will continue to be focused on Google and the type of data they are capable of collecting.