Adding Content Pages

Your level three content pages are what will produce the results for your website, both through sales and traffic. People generally search the internet for information, so if you can provide the information that they are looking for, you will get the traffic.

The idea behind adding content pages to your website is that it gives search engines more chances to find your website. If you have individual pages which focus on very specific topics that relate to your website theme, you should be able to rank well for different search terms. By having a lot of pages that relate to your theme, search engines will conclude that you are an authoritative source for your topic and will place your listings higher.

Adding Content Pages That Focus on One Topic

Therefore, the best strategy for your website is to write a series of focused content pages. Each of these pages should target a specific topic and keyword phrase, which fits the general theme of your website. What you include in these content pages depends on what you want to achieve with your website, but here are some ideas:

Product reviews - This can be used for either your own products or those of merchants for whom you are an affiliate. These pages can be used to pre-sell the product to your visitors so that they are more inclined to purchase the product.
Articles - These can be used to provide information on a specific topic to your visitors. Articles are a good way to bring in traffic to your site and promote your products or affiliate links.
Company information - You can include information such as location, contact information, your privacy policy, customer support, and any other related items. This can help establish trust in your company.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS) - You can have individual pages in which you answer frequently asked questions from your visitors about your products or your industry in general. This helps reduce the amount of time that you spend replying to customer service emails.

By adding pages to a website which focus on very specific keyword phrases, each individual page stands a chance of bringing in visitors to your website. The more content pages that your website has, the more chances it has of being found in the search engine results.

Decide what your page will be about

So how do you go about adding content pages to a website? First, you need to determine what each page will be about. Each page should contain content that is about one of your most profitable keywords (review our lesson on choosing keywords). Your content should deliver valuable information to your visitors, help solve their problems, or highlight the products they are looking for.

You need to link to these content pages directly from your level two subdirectories, preferably by a text link that includes the specific keyword phrase that you will be targeting for that page. You can also link to this page from your site map.

Choose a good file name

Next, you need to determine what the file name will be for each specific page. Usually it is best to use the specific keyword that the page will be focusing on. This makes it easy to remember what your page is about just by looking at the file name.

Your file name will also determine the URL for this particular page. If you are targeting a keyword phrase, you can join the words with dashes, underscores, or just run them together (just be sure that there are no spaces between the words and that you don't use any other special characters).

For example, if we were going to build a page about Purina cat food, the file name could be one of the following: purina-cat-food, purina_cat_food, or purinacatfood. The possible URLs for this specific page could then be:

http://www.thecatsupplystore.com/purina-cat-food.html
http://www.thecatsupplystore.com/purina_cat_food.html
http://www.thecatsupplystore.com/purinacatfood.html

It is best to choose one method for naming your files. You can then use the same file naming system for all of your pages.

Include the proper tags for your content pages

You want to include the proper tags in the HEAD section of your HTML. This includes the meta tags and the title tag. You can review this information in our discussion on meta tags optimization.

Use good headlines

What is a headline? A headline is the first written text on a web page, below the logo and top navigation system (if there is one). Generally, headlines are in a larger, bold text so that they stand out from the rest of the page. A good headline should tell the reader what the page is about, and entice them to keep reading. It also tells the search engines what your page is about. With this in mind, you want to carefully consider how to craft your headline.

A good headline will determine whether your page is read or passed over. For example, think about how most people read a newspaper. Generally they scan the headlines to determine whether or not to read the rest of the article. When writing your page headline, it helps to use descriptive nouns to pull the reader further down your page. You also want to include your specific keyword phrase, preferably towards the beginning.

To insert a headline into your web page, you should use <h1> tags in the html section of your web page instead of just making the text bold. This is because search engines give more weight to words contained within <h> tags than they do to the keywords in your regular text. By including your main keyword phrase in your headline, it will be more likely to be found by the search engines. To see what a h-tag looks like, you can go to http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/PERL/node259.html for an example.

For example, if your page was specifically about Purina cat food, you might include the following headline in the html of your web page: (<H1>Purina Cat Food - For Every Stage in Your Cat's Life</H1>)

You can also break up the text on your page by using subheads. This makes your page easier to read on a computer monitor, plus it allows you to target your keyword again. Your main headline will be designated by the <h1>, while subheads are progressively designated by<h2>, <h3>, <h4>, etc. Be sure to close each subhead with a </h> tag.

The importance of your first paragraph

You want to start the text on your content pages with a paragraph that draws your reader further down the page. This is where you establish what the main benefits of this page are by addressing your visitors problems or letting them know that they have found what they are looking for. Keep it short and let your visitors know what information they will find below.

Your keyword phrase is best placed near the beginning of your first sentence, to reinforce to the search engines that this page is relevant to the topic.

Adding your page content

For the rest of your text, you will want to scatter your keyword phrase throughout, but don't use it too much. You want to include the keyword phrase more at the top and bottom, using it a little less in the middle (somewhat like an hourglass).

Most people scan web pages and read the sub-headlines to find the information they need. To make your content pages easier to read, your paragraphs should have no more than three to five sentences each, with a white space between paragraphs. Keeping your paragraphs short will break up you text so that visitors don't get tired of reading.

Include links to the next logical page

You want to include links to where you want your visitor to go after they finish reading your page. This might be to purchase the product, read the next article in a series, or go on to another section of your website. You don't want to leave your visitor with nowhere else to go but back to the search engine. Give them an option to stay.

By adding content pages to a website that offer quality information, you not only please your visitors, but you also can increase the traffic to your website. Writing this content can be a challenge because people read text differently on the internet than they do in print.

In our next lesson, we will discuss how to write copy for the internet.

Next: Writing Content For the Web
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