One of the best ways to attract more business to your retail website is to make your website a valuable resource for your buyers. The more information your site contains, the more helpful and indispensable you become to your clientele, and the higher your search engine ratings will become.

Content that attracts business

What do your buyers need to know?

  • If you are selling digital cameras, you may want to include articles with photography tips or instructions on using photo editing software or even reviews of available software. You can add information on how to use photos in greeting cards, scrap booking, advertising and so on.

  • If you are selling vintage clothing, you can provide information on the fashion of the time the clothing represents or a discussion of the way button styles or hem lengths or colors have varied over time.

  • If you are selling beauty products, write articles on the research behind the ingredients, other ways to improve appearance such as nutrition and exercise, methods of application for day and evening wear, application based on skin type or facial shape.

Now comes the part where you upload your content to your website. Before you do this, you should decide on a coherent, keyword rich and relevant categories structure for your articles. Then ask your programmer to create a form in your administration area to easily list and categorise your articles. Finally, ask that your live articles pages display your product offers most relevant to each article's topic.

Once your articles are uploaded, it's time to actively place information in locations that lead back to your site.

Content placement that boosts sales

Your goal is to take advantage of the already established audiences on other websites to extend your reach.

  • Place your articles in article directories such as www.ezinearticles.com (or search article submission in google), including with each article a footer with a link back to your site. By doing so, you can take advantage of EzineArticles' extensive marketing capability to bring potential clients to you.

  • Write a longer article that you can call a report and sell the report on eBay or, give it away for free through pay per click by directing users to your site. Be sure to require that anyone looking who wants to download your article provide their name and email address first so you can build a database of people who may be interested in your products – people you can then target in an email campaign. Make sure your signup process indicates that the user receiving the free report will be automatically subscribed to a newsletter, yet clearly state your privacy policy.

  • Place a portion of your article on a blog or discussion board with a link to your site to obtain the rest of the article.

  • Place your articles on www.clickbank.com where you can sell them and also create a link back to your website and to websites you are affiliated with and possibly earn a commission from.
  • Consider placing your article with potential partner sites, a jewelry site that complements your vintage clothing or beauty products, for example, with a link back to your site.

  • You can also use your articles as revenue producers by selling them on sites such as www.constant-content.com, an article broker that supplies fresh content to websites and essentially markets you and your products at the same time.

How to produce content for your articles

If you simply aren't a good article writer but you think that adding content can improve sales, look for a writer on www.elance.com who can do the writing work for you. Writer quality varies as well as cost per article, ranging from $5-$100 per article, depending on complexity, quality, etc.

Extend your reach with useful information and watch your revenue grow.