Method a involves creating a site that has its emphasis on looks.  It looks good, has some interesting features such as pages that open up slowly with lively graphics, and all the latest features that the web can take.

Method b focuses on text.  Lots of text in lots of articles, dealing with the key issues that relate to the topic.  The benefit of this approach is that it tends to get more hits (because there is more text for people to find) and tends to get to a higher position on Google and other search engines much more readily because of the text.

This occurs because if the articles are related to topics that readers will be interested in, then they are more like to be found in any sort of complex web search - especially one in which an exact phrase is searched for using inverted commas.

So if you have a product that is ideal for Citizenship teachers at key stage 3, and which deals with politics, you might have an article in which you begin, "One of the big problems with teaching Citizenship at key stage 3" then you will pick up anyone who types in "politics citizenship at key stage 3" - in fact you will probably come out near the top of the list.  If you then later in the article use the phrase "key stage 3 citizenship" you will be picked up there.  And so on.  

The more you write, the more phrases you are likely to hit that will be the exact phrases that the teachers will be interested in.

This approach is a specialism of Hamilton House Mailings - and indeed the various websites that we have produced under the MIE banner (see the about us if you did not notice it before) not only provide a lot of information for people who are interested in direct mail (and thus a lot of goodwill for HHM) they also pull in new possible customers.  Indeed a significant number of our clients now are people who first contacted us saying, "I have just been reading your website and I must say it is great to read a site that is full of information rather than advertising".

If you would like to talk about the production of information-rich web sites, do call us on 01536 399 000.  You might also be interested in two of our websites for teachers: 

The Top 5 of Everything www.top5.org.uk

The Schools Directory web site www.schools.co.uk