Take a quick look at your website now and see whether you have been neglecting your updates – what is the most recent date in your news section, or the last article you posted? If it is older than 2 months, then you need to update sooner rather than later.

If you want to put news on your site, make sure that you have the resources to keep it up to date and fresh. Many small businesses have websites which are difficult to update in-house, especially where there is a lack of IT knowledge or web wise employees. However, help is at hand for easy updates with the likes of Blogger and similar tools that allow you to type in content and be immediately visible to your visitors. This saves paying a website designer each time you want to add a snippet of information.

If you are contemplating a new website, it is always worth considering how you will keep it updated and ensuring you have an easy to use content management system so that you are in charge of all updates. Even within a very small micro business, it is worth making the time to update your site yourself and save yourself the costs of using an ‘expert’ to make the changes for you. It can take as long to explain to them what you need doing as just doing it yourself, and once you are accustomed to the content management system, site updates can become part of your daily or weekly task list.

You can also add content automatically by including RSS feeds from other sites who do have the resources to update regularly. These could include news sources and industry sites who cover stories which may be of interest to your target audience, and are nearly always free to include in your website.

The content on your website will help to shape the opinions of potential customers, and ensure you stand out from your competitors. You should not just regurgitate the same old content others have, nor copy it from elsewhere. Your content should be yours and unique.

In order to create valuable content, you need to get to know your potential customers and site visitors, and envisage what they want to read about, or are interested in. You can find this out with a poll asking what people would like to know more about, or by asking visitors what they came to the site for, or what they expected to find. This feedback can be invaluable in not only creating the right content, but also in understanding your site visitors and your target audience, as well as engaging with them.

Content should include keywords, be easy to read (even if highly technical), unique to your site, and regularly checked to ensure that what it says is still accurate. It should also be easy to link to for others who have found it valuable, so where it is an article or news item, add easy ways to bookmark it, including delicious, stumbleupon etc for social bookmarking sites.

About Author

Phil Robinson is an experienced online marketing consultant and Founder of ClickThrough Marketing – an international
Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing agency.

ClickThrough specialise in Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click Marketing, Online PR, Social Marketing & Website Conversion Strategies.

We have a huge range of free internet marketing resources including ebooks, industry news and research reports - available here
http://www.clickthrough-marketing.com/resources.php

Source: ArticleTrader.com

I’ll admit, I had tried article submission at one point, but
after I finally found a few article dircetories to submit my articles to,
and then after manually copying and pasting my information into the required
textboxes on each submission site, I quickly realized that my time could be
better spent doing something else.

Then I came across a free program created by Brad Callen and
Bryxen Software, Inc. that allows you to automatically submit your articles
to hundreds of article directories with a few mouse clicks. Basically all
I had to do was input my article criteria into the software, ONCE! Then, the
program would automatically fill in all of the required data at each of the
submission websites. Pretty incredible if you ask me.

The only part I didn’t understand was why the program is free…
but I can’t argue with that I suppose.

The software currently contains around 700 article directories,
all free to submit your articles to. It is the most straightforward program
that we’ve come across, in that all you need to do is:

1. Input your article details (i.e. title, article body, bio,
etc.) into the software

2.
Click on the directory you want to submit
to

And then the program will automatically fill in your article
details. Then, you simply click the submit button and your article is instantly
submitted to the directory. Then, you can move to the next directory, go through
the list, and by the time you’re finished you’ll have roughly 700 one way
links pointing to your website.

I can’t think of an easier way to get links. Of course, if
you’re going to get links this quickly, it’s important to submit different
variations of your articles, to make things look more natural to the search
engines.

You can do this very easily via Article
Submitter when you create your project in the beginning.

The
software is constantly being updated and
their is an incredible community of users
established that all work together to
make the software better and better, so
you know you’re getting great value for
the money.

To
check out the software, go here:
Article
Submitter