For instance, I wrote half a dozen different short stories as introductions to a Scotch whisky distillery site. You can read them by going to www.edradour.com and refreshing the front page a few times. I also spiced up the main body of the site with some facts and anecdotes about whisky in general.
But there are plenty of other ways to liven up a site. Like Do’s and Don’ts. Or Top 10 lists. They’re just little where to buy pappy van winkle, but they don’t need to be frivolous. A financial services site could list the most common mistakes or misconceptions of new investors in the UK market. An IT services company could list the top most common viruses to watch out for in your email. A travel company could list the most popular destinations for a weekend break in London, or the essential items to pack when visiting a hot (or cold) climate. And so on.
Creativity breeds traffic.
To keep your website up the rankings nowadays, it can’t just stay as it is. Content truly is king. Adding lists, anecdotes and so on is a good way of generating extra content. (If appropriate, you can even optimise them with a few keywords while you’re at it.) You’ll soon find that the search engines appreciate it as much as your visitors.
Even better, if the extra content is good enough and sufficiently original, you can turn it into articles. You can then submit these articles to some of the many free article sites around the web. Once published, you start to build up a reputation as a source of expertise. You also generate more links back to your site, not just from the article sites, but from other sites which find and reprint your articles. And the more links you have, the higher the search engines are likely to rank your site.
So next time you’re considering revising your website (and if you really want to stay in favour with the search engines you need to do it often), why not consider adding a little creative copywriting around the edges?