An ongoing challenge for webmasters today is to provide fresh content that gives visitors a reason to return to their site. Unless you have a full-time staff dedicated to creating regular content,
time involved can be crippling. Wouldn't it be great if someone else would write timely, relevant content for you? Sure, but what are odds of that happening? Well, many webmasters are already enjoying this phenomenon, and I'm happy to count myself among them.
Set it up. Whether your site has a catalog of products or a collection of articles, you can design your pages to allow visitors to post reviews of whatever is featured on page. They can share their experiences with items they've bought or post comments on information in your site. Don't confuse this powerful tool with a discussion forum. You create topic of each page, and encourage visitors to post updates with latest information in this area.
The more information you provide on your site, better service you are providing to your visitors; but they aren't only ones who benefit from including reviews. It's also a boon to you as a webmaster. Even if you never wrote another line of new copy, your pages will continue to grow with relevant content. Granted you still have to spend a little time reading reviews and moderating what appears on your site, but time required is much less than you would spend writing original content.
Why someone else will create content for you. While advantages to webmaster and reader may be obvious, you are probably wondering what incentives exist for reviewer. A few lucky souls have enough free time to share their opinions online for mere satisfaction of seeing their own words, but most will need something more tangible before they invest time to write a useful review. The onus is on you, webmaster, to create an appropriate incentive. The importance of link popularity in search engine rankings provides a powerful clue. At AffiliateScreen.com, I allow my visitors to post reviews of their experiences with online affiliate programs. At bottom of their review, they have option of including a link to another page that supports what they've written (or they can simply include their affiliate link for program). AffiliateScreen.com gives them additional credibility of their expertise appearing on a third-party site.
Look at this from reviewer's perspective. Here's a unique opportunity to gain an external link pointing to reviewer's website, but this is far more valuable than a random reciprocal link. Search engines are determining link popularity by examining both quantity and relevance of links. The page with their link is loaded with keywords related to product or service, and reviewer can include additional relevant keywords in their post. The reviewer actually has a hand in creating page that will link to their site. This is extremely powerful! Can you begin to see how anyone looking to increase traffic to their site would jump at opportunity to create content for your website?
