Good websites provide value to the visitor - the content syndication trick!

Often times, customers ask me how they can make their website more compelling to a web visitor. Among my top answers is "Content is King!" What do I mean? Read on...

How many websites have you visited that have absolutely NO useful information in them? Or how many times have you access a business website to find out "old" articles, an old address or even NO contact information? Trust me, it happens often. Here's the catch: consumers are getting more and more web savvy! For instance, I will rarely deal with a business unless I've visited their website first, read about them and perhaps educated myself about them (and their competition).

However, as the person in charge of maintenance of many-a-websites, I know the problem of "content" versus "time". Who has time to go edit their website every day or every week? Worse yet, if your website was not built using a content management system, you may actually need to know a little HTML (the language of the WEB) in order to make changes. This is a skill you may not have.

Well, not all is lost! There are MANY sources of information content, regardless of the topic of your website. For instance:

• http://www.iHealthSpot.com - offers physicians a complete Medical Library of content for their patients covering hundreds of conditions, their treatment, etc. (full disclosure: I am a partner in this company).
  
• http://www.inman.com/ - offers Real Estate related news and articles.
• http://www.thenewsroom.com/ - offers local and national news from many local channels, the AP and other national news sources.
  
• http://www.mochila.com/ - offers articles of various topics of your choosing.
  

The services above can ALL be included on your site (and your web visitor may never need to know that the content is a feed), although some may require subscription or certain fees from the website operator - but some of these services are actually FREE.

If the above don't do it for you, don't despair. Just Google "news syndication" or "content syndication" and you'll get many, many sources of great content for your websites.

So, there is no reason to have a website with no content, or worse, old content. Place a feed on your website and start giving your website visitors a reason to come back and even share your website address with others!