Creating Content for You Craft Site
Good, original content is the most important part of your craft website. Content is the number one thing that search engines are looking for. It's not enough to just publish articles from other sites. Search engines recognize duplications and will disregard "mirror" content.
That's why content is the first thing any successful Internet entrepreneur should work on. As hard as it is to refrain from charging ahead, you need to spend some time to get at least something besides ads on your website.
Easier said than done, right? For those of you that find this task difficult, here are some suggestions...
- Take notes - any ideas you have for your website, write them down immediately. You probably won't remember them five minutes from now.
- Choose a theme - you can't put it off any longer.
- Draw up an outline - outline how the pages on your site will be linked.
- Keep it simple - short sentences, short paragraphs, bullets and easily readable.
For example, suppose your craft of choice is Birdhouses. You build birdhouses for a hobby, so you are familiar with woodworking, birdhouse design, birds, gardening (probably), etc. Now lets assume you've chosen to build a website to share your knowledge and plan to earn your income, not by selling your birdhouses, but by placing ads on your site that are related to your topic.
A basic outline for your site might be something like this:
- Main Page (introduction and description of what your site is about, include links to topic pages)
- Topic Pages
- Birdhouse Design (Basic overview of this section, include links to sub-topic pages)
- Content Pages
- History of Bird Houses
- Plans
- etc.
- Decorative Touches
- Finishing Ideas for Interior Bird Houses (paints, accents)
- Finishing Ideas for Exterior Bird Houses
- Materials
- About Birds
- Birds That Nest in Birdhouses
- Attracting Birds
- Bird Behavior
- Bird Watching
- Construction
- Wood Working Tips
- Tools
- Materials
- Safety
- Gardening
- Bird House Placement in the Garden
- Habitat
- Gallery
- Your Photos
- Viewer Sent in Photos
- Interactive
You can see that you could apply this basic overview to nearly any craft. Imagine how you could apply this concept to a website about scrap booking or knitting. The options are endless and you don't have to stop here. Your content pages can have sub-content pages and those can have sub-content pages.
