Steps to Building Content

I saw a question on the live chat today and thought some of the newer members might have the same questions about building out content. This is a little more fleshed-out version of the answer I gave there. Bear in mind that I'm not an "expert" and that these steps aren't meant to take the place of the WA training. The training always comes first.

I'm assuming your goal is to build a site that gives value to your readers and that your primary goal is to serve them and build trust. Then you can naturally offer products that will meet their needs or fulfill a specific desire.

Let's say your niche is baby products, a fairly popular niche. That's broad enough that you could write a lot of useful content but narrow enough that you have a specific target audience--parents of infants. If you have a different niche, like weight loss or (like mine) books and educational materials for children, you would just substitute your categories for what I have here.

1. Create your about page, privacy page, and three category pages, per the "Get Started" lessons. For the sake of this article, we'll say Baby Basics, Baby Toys, and Baby Clothes. Each of these category pages has general but engaging information about that category. Maybe your baby basics page has a list of general things you need: a layette, diapers, a carrier, nursery furniture, etc.

2. Pick one of your categories and write a post related to it. Make it very informative. If you want to make it product-related, that's fine, but it's also good to just lay the groundwork. For instance, if your first basic is going to be carriers,you might start with a list of things parents should look for in a carrier. If it's going to be diapers, you might write a post about the pros and cons of cloth and disposable diapers. Make sure to create categories and tags for the post (if you have questions about those, feel free to ask me, or type it into the search bar). I would make one of the categories my page name (e.g, baby basics) so readers can immediately make the connection between the two. Use the keyword tool to help you slant your post.

3. Pick the second category and do the same thing for it.

4. Pick the third category and do the same thing for it. Now you have a solid anchor post for each category.

5. Start building out one of your categories with additional posts. In this case, I think baby basics would be the best bet, because those are the things parents of infants need most. Add at least a post a week. More is better. The more QUALITY content you add, the more trusted your site will become, and the more traffic you'll get.

6. Link to SOME of those posts from the related page. For example, if you have a sentence on your Baby Basics page that says you need a carrier, link to your best carrier article from there. (You can always change the articles you link to as your get more content. What you want is to have some interconnection between your pages and your posts, but to avoid a page that's all links. You don't want it to look too sales-y; what you're doing is making it easier for your visitors to find the information they need,)

6. Just keep repeating the process until you've built out all your categories. You'll end up with a well-developed site that meets a real need and encourages the trust of your audience.