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For those of you who are not aware, Scottmanning.com generated over 20,000 unique visitors in the month of September this year. Daily, we are receiving over 200 hits from search engines like google and msn. That's pretty good for a site that does virtually no advertising and only received a total of 10,000 unique visitors for the entire year of 2001. People have been asking me how we're doing it and I've decided to give away the secrets.
Redesigning Scottmanning.com with a new focus
We launched a new version of Scottmanning.com back in January of this year. The old version of our site was your typical web studio's site: lots of Flash, music, animation, and very little content. The site was a year old and our company felt that the site did a poor job of demonstrating our capabilities.
There were several paths we could have taken. One path was to continue with the concept of making a site that attempts to demonstrate every single technical skill we are capable of by incorporating each skill into the site. If we had taken this path, we would have ended up with a 450 KB Flash site with more music, more streaming movies, dancing midgets dynamically appearing from a SQL database, and all types of features that are only useful in rare instances.
We instead took the route of quality content and easy usability with descriptions of what we're capable of. We added articles concerning various topics including client relations and reviews on books, movies, software, and hardware. As for usability, we've avoided the notorious mystery meat navigation that is found on most web studio sites and went for a very straightforward approach to navigate through the site.
So what does this all have to do with generating traffic?
The answer is simple: people love content. The web is full of millions of websites that are nothing but crap. I'm not talking just about poorly designed sites (that's another topic); I'm talking about sites lacking any decent content.
Millions of people go to sites like The Onion, Writers Digest, and PC Magazine. Although these sites use very little Flash and may not win any awards for artistic design, these sites have loads of quality, original content. These sites are also extremely easy to use. A visitor can find anything they want on the site in an efficient manner.
On the other end of the spectrum are sites that are designed using the latest technology available on the web, but having little or no content. If there were a top ten list for the coolest looking sites in the world, 2Advanced, eStudio, and Juxt Interactive would probably be at the top of this list. Although these sites are very beautiful to look at, the infatuation with them wears off quickly, because there is not much substance to the sites. Other than a portfolio addition or news posting, there are no updates to these sites.
Taking a look at Scottmanning.com's stats over the past year will give you a good visual on how the new content-over-design has affected traffic to the site:
C|Net recently reported on a study conducted by the Online Publishers Association (OPA). The study "showed that U.S. consumers spent $300 million to access Web content in the first quarter of this year. That's a 155 percent increase from the same period a year ago. During the 2002 quarter, 12.4 million U.S. consumers opened their wallets for content, up from 5.3 million last year. On a yearly basis, spending for online content in 2001 increased 92 percent to $675 million from 2000." Not only are people attracted to content, but they are willing to pay for it.
The absolute best example of content winning over flashy design tricks is The Drudge Report. Although it is merely black text on a white page, this site generates over 5 million hits a day. The site is updated throughout the day with original news stories, but mostly links to other news.
Quality content that is updated frequently will always attract more users than an artistic looking site with little or no content.
Attract visitors with your unique, genuine opinions
One of the problems many people run into when trying to produce unique content is they think they are unable to. While some people enjoy reading and writing about everything under the sun, others haven't written anything similar to an article since their 5-paragraph essay back in High School. Whether people write about everything to the point of boring most readers or they barely write at all, I believe all have the capability of writing something worth reading.
One of my first articles I posted on Scottmanning.com was my review of Temple of Doom. I've always thought this movie was better than the other two Indy movies. While I realize that I am one of the only people who think this way, I decided to spell out why I think it's the best. The title to my review is Why Temple of Doom is the best of the Indy Movies. The title grabs the reader's attention.
The review is the type of article that people either love or hate. Then those people will want to tell me what they think of my article. Then they'll want to send it to their friends to tell them how much they agree with me, how stupid I am, or in some cases, how I changed their opinion. Either way, traffic is generated.
When those people finish reading the opinionated article, they'll most likely check out what else is on the site.
Before someone gets the idea that I am suggesting we all start writing shock content with the sole purpose of generating traffic, I want to point this out: Content is usually only worth reading if if the author is actually passionate about the subject.
With that said, going into how to write is beyond the scope of this article. The point is that original, genuine content attracts readers.
Unique content ranks high in search engines
I stated earlier that Scottmanning.com is receiving over 200 hits a day from search engines. This is happening due to unique content. When there aren't too many Rambo III reviews out there, you tend to rank high on the search engines for that term.
Here are just a few terms Scottmanning.com ranks high on google:
- Temple of Doom" ranks number one.
- "Rambo" ranks number one.
- "Iacocca" ranks number two.
- "Flash Video" ranks number two.
- "WWF is fake" ranks number one.
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Final thoughts
Remember, I'm not saying that we should all start writing a bunch of overly-opinionated articles with the sole purpose of generating traffic. I am saying that good content attracts people. If you have something unique to say, write about it. Write it professionally. If you've never written before or don't feel that you're good at it, check out some of the articles below. They'll help get you started.
Helpful links on writing for the web:
Be Succinct: How to write for the Web
10 Tips on Writing the Living Web
Writing for the Web
How Users Read the Web
Effective Web Writing
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