Building Blocks for Compelling Content

Content! Content! Content!

Great content boosts and helps to maintain readership.  So, where do you start?  There are several Building Blocks for creating quality content and today I’m just going to focus on one.  I wanted to illustrate my point for this post with a food analogy (as I tend to do with so many other things).

So here goes nothing …

When you go to a restaurant and your meal is placed in front of you, what is the first thing you notice? 

Let’s jump to the answer here: how it looks!

Would you rather be served a questionable looking bowl of soup with 80 different ingredients all mixed together or a perfectly cooked filet mignon with a side of roasted vegetables and maybe some garlic mashed potatoes (sorry vegetarians)?!

I’m going to go with the latter on this one.  We can apply this concept to your website and content as well.  The aesthetics, design, and presentation of your site do matter!

For example …

As important as the amount and quality of content on your site is, so is the way in which you display that content to your readers.  If they visit your site and are bombarded with advertisements, there’s a good chance they’re not even going to be able to find “the good stuff”.  All those blog posts you’ve put so much effort into can get lost if your site has ads overwhelming every open space and side bar.

A readers eye is going to dart around to whatever captures their attention first.  This is likely going to be the flashiest and most colorful snippet on your site.

You want to deliver information to them in the most effective way possible.  This means giving them a site they want to look at, interact with, and come back to over and over again.  Put your content first and integrate your affiliate links into that content.

Grab their attention with an image or catchy title and use your affiliate links to support the content in your posts.

To further explain …

The above is an example of two pages from my personal blog project (obviously about food).

I wanted to draw readers in with mouthwatering photos of food and give them a reason to click through the site.

A cleaner look on your blog gives the content nowhere to hide.  This will force readers to focus in on the posts you’ve so carefully crafted.  Once you have them reading your posts, you can weave your affiliate links in to make that content even stronger.

The Merchant and product search options in an affiliate account can become your best friend to find links to support your content.

I recently posted a taco recipe on my blog and one of the main pieces of equipment I used was a mandoline slicer.  This handy dandy slicer makes slicing veggies paper thin a breeze.  So, what better way to integrate my affiliate links than to find the product I actually used and put that in my post?!

Look at all those options!

But, the main focus of this post is to illustrate that the design and layout of your site can be used as a Building Block for the overall success of your content.  The ads on your site can go anywhere but that does not mean they have to go everywhere.  Create a site that you’d want to interact with yourself.  Make your content the main focus because that’s really what it’s all about, right?  You can use your affiliate links and Merchant advertisements (text links, banners, product links) to boost the quality of your (already awesome) content! 

You wouldn’t eat a questionable looking bowl of soup with 80 ingredients over a perfectly grilled steak.  So, don’t let your readers question what’s in front of them either and give them the steak on a silver platter from the start!