First of all, whatever you do, don't use Thank You page that your autoresponder company so kindly provides for you. Why do you think they provide this? Certainly, it is a service to their customers. Normally it gives a polite (if generic) thank you and contains a few reassurances about spam along with brief details of opt-out procedure. However, when you look at it closely, it is a full page advert for autoresponder provider isn't it? A full page advert which you have provided for them.

As an absolute minimum, if you can't be bothered to spend a few minutes to generate your own custom Thank you page, redirect your new signup to one of other pages on your website, or to home page of one of your other sites if you have more than one. However, it's much better to take time and produce your own full page advert. Some of items you might want to consider including are listed below:

1. A polite thank you (mandatory). 2. A brief statement that you only send emails with permission, that they may unsubscribe at any time and that you will never pass their contact details to a third party (also mandatory). 3. A link to another website that you own or promote. 4. An advert for another opportunity that you are involved in. 5. A "Tell A Friend" form or link. 6. Adverts from Google Adsense or some other source.

Items 1 & 2 are only common courtesy. Items 3 - 6 could give your performance a real boost. Remember, this is a page that your viewer will automatically click away from. They are "ready-to-click" so at least give them option of making a click that will benefit you rather than just clicking on their "favourites" or home page buttons. Not all of them will click - but some of them will and you need every advantage you can get!

* User-contributed content: A website that handles support issues may have a lot of use for a user forum. A professional services firm would probably be better off without a forum, with all user-contributed content in form of testimonials.

* Original written content, exclusive and for distribution: Any website can benefit from original content since it draws search engine traffic and puts your best foot forward with visitors. The broader your potential audience and greater competition from other sites, more content you need.

Scheduling Content Updates

Search engines, especially Google, seem to give pride of place to sites that regularly update their content. Regular content updates also give visitors a reason to return.

In short, if you have thirty web pages worth of content this month, it's better to post one page each day rather than put them up all at once. To make sure you do this, schedule an hour each day for updating your site's content.

One way to get regular content updates for your site is to start a blog, a "web log" in which you write your thoughts and post news. The one disadvantage is that many web users are getting tired of blogs, which are often not well written and contain more opinion than information. Search engines, too, seem to be featuring blogs in their results less often.

Identifying a Content Provider

Ever wonder how Bill Gates keeps MSN and Microsoft sites so content-rich? Doesn't he get RSI from writing a thousand or more pages a day?

You guessed it: Bill Gates does not write content for any of Microsoft websites. Nor should you write all your own content. All successful website owners have someone else write a large part of their content. This person or company is often called a "web content provider" or "website copywriter."

You need to select a web content provider with proven experience writing content for web, rather than just writing for print. Ask to see writing samples. You might even ask if you can commission just a single page to start with, for evaluation purposes. Also make sure that you are buying all rights to content.

After all, most important part of your website content strategy should be quality.