There’s a great line in the film The Krays, when a Drill Sergeant is trying to get the young Ronnie and Reggie Kray under control, to no avail: “You’ve got nothing to say and you’re saying it too loudly…” I’m not trying to compare companies website to two scary gangsters, but the sentiment of that quote resonates across all forms of creativity. But if you have something genuinely interesting or exciting to say, shout it from the rooftops… Figuratively speaking, of course.
In the case of businesses that have an online presence, that usually comes in the form of category pages or a well written blog. These are great and definitely put a strong foot forward in regards to your credibility to potential customers and sends all the right signals to those pesky Search Engines. But you can highlight how awesome your content is by creating a resource page on your website.
Your One-Stop Shop for Genre Defining Content
So what is a resource page? It’s a home for your very best content on a particular topic. That’s what sets it apart from a category page. A category page includes ALL articles written on the topic. You may have a couple of duds in there; maybe you decided to rant about something and now the dust has settled you don’t feel the same way about it; or some of the information on the topic may now be outdated. The category pages will take care of these articles.
A resource page is where you put all the very best articles on a subject together on one page, formatted so that the articles become a step-by-step guide, a how-to or a definitive history on a subject. To be able to do this, you’re really going to have to put in the hours. If you don’t have encyclopaedic knowledge on the subject, you’re providing your own undoing by suggesting that you have a definitive take on a topic.
Reap the Rewards of Hard Graft
Content is key to a successful site. People want to visit a site and be entertained, surprised, sometimes challenged by what they come across. They don’t want to be bored and they definitely don’t want to be patronised. In order to achieve the following, you’re going to have to return to the attitude of your schooldays (not mine, which were spent drawing pictures and gazing out of windows) and put some serious time in the books. The more research you have collected and have at your disposal, the more likely you are to have something pretty comprehensive at the end of it.
You want to be proud of your work, and by creating a resource, you are effectively saying: “We have a definitive take on this subject. Click here and be educated!” (Please don’t ever say or write that in real life). The best way to put your resource together is to get those articles ready, then create a great introductory landing page with images, an opening salvo and then the links to the articles.
If Something’s Worth Doing…
A shining example of a resource that has been built to inform and educate is the SEOMoz Google Algorithm Change History. It’s essentially a timeline of all Google’s updates with a short explanation of what the update was and who it will affect, with links leading to articles on the subject quality industry websites such as Search Engine Land and Seroundtable.
When you have the resources page looking as polished as possible, then you can start using it to try and obtain great quality links to your site. You should see a significant increase in your engagement stats and search engine rankings before too long. But again – only if what you have in your resource is 100% quality content!
If you don’t know your stuff and put your very best content forward, you’ll see no benefit whatsoever, and you’ll end up getting a reaction like how The Krays react to the Drill Instructor.
See what I did there? It’s called a ‘Set up and pay off’… I should create a resource on that.
