The phrase “Content is King” in internet marketing has literally been around forever. It has always been applicable to the world of internet marketing but today more than ever before, content is incredibly important if you want to succeed and make money online.
You can have the cutest and most structured website on the internet, and you can have the most comprehensive and detailed hotel reviews available, but that is not enough anymore. The search engines, particularly Google, are practically screaming out loud that they want to rank websites that offer the best possible content for the user. In other words, content that is unique and relevant to the subject.
Where to start from?
Knowing who your audience are, is the first key to success. By knowing who they are and what they are looking for, you can provide them with what they want. Your audience are the traffic/visitors you want to target and attract to your website, the source of having a profitable website.
How do I attract the audience?
While it is not an exact science or art, there are many steps to be taken and things to consider in order to attract the desired audience. Below are some of the main categories to tackle.
Keywords: Ask yourself which markets and regions you are targeting. Perhaps concentrate on one or two before expanding into more markets.
Let’s say you are targeting “hotels in Osaka, Japan”. You should then start asking yourself, “what would someone type in to find me”, “what other variables/features (long-tail keywords) could that question include” (skiing, mountain climbing and so on, relevant to that specific region).
Perform a keyword research (plenty of free tools available online) to ensure you understand which keywords are popular and where you can fit in. By completing your keyword strategy, you then have your road-map for the future structure of your website, its content, including your future thoughts and goals.
Quality of content: 
In other words quality content is well written and always has a purpose. The content should be unique, to the point and providing value to your audience. It should address the query the audience had while at the same time educating the audience to the point that they are ready to purchase.
Presentation of content: The presentation of content is highly undervalued and is one of the easiest things to fix with obvious and immediate benefits. A big majority of affiliates don’t give enough emphasis on improving the appearance of their content and frankly this is what divides the top affiliates from the rest. Here are some easy to implement tasks that will greatly improve the appearance of the content on your website:
- Make use of Headers
- Break your content down into paragraphs
- Use Bold to highlight main parts of the article
- Use italics and underline to complement other parts of your article
- Use bullet points to highlight key points in the article
- Add links to other sections of your website
- Add icons, logos, pictures, buttons and banners
- Add videos
The most important result you will notice by improving the appearance of your content is that your conversion rates should increase which will also result in increased sales while at the same time your bounce rate will have decreased, something Google takes into consideration while ranking.
Summary:
Here are some essential guidelines on content:
- Websites that have more pages usually receive more traffic, a page can’t rank if it doesn’t exist.
- More pages = more chances of ranking for more keywords and getting more traffic.
- Websites with new pages, new posts and updated content rank better than websites that don’t update or don’t create more content.
- Avoid pages with less than 200 words, homepage included. Google doesn’t like providing rankings to websites that have no content at all.
- Avoid having duplicate content on any page. Every page should be unique and evidently if you want to rank for a keyword, that keyword should exist on the page more than once.