1.13 Local content at work

Local content doesn't only work for pets. News about horse cases will attract the equine community over their larger catchment area. Farmers aren't immune to the pleasures of reading about their neighbours.

Improve your reputation in the wider community
Putting local content online won't only draw your clients. It will also attract visits from the broader community you serve. This will help give your practice a good name more generally.

Self generating
Once your visitor numbers grow your clients are quite likely to request to be included on your web site. You can turn this into an advantage – get them to do some of the work. If you are producing a report about a case then ask them for a picture of the subject, for a testimonial or for their own account. If you are judging the pet show at the local fete ask the organiser to find a volunteer to photograph the winners and collect their names.

Images
Images are essential for a web site. When you are providing local content then images are, in many ways, easier to create than when you are trying to illustrate more general content. Quality is less important than content – a fuzzy image is forgiven so long as the subject remains recognisable. With modern digital cameras images are both easy and inexpensive to gather. When you take the pictures issues of copyright don't arise

The litter tray
Last weeks news may end up in the litter tray in the homes of its readership – in the papers' offices last weeks news is carefully stored in the archives. You can take the same approach on your web site. You should create a “current edition” where all the latest information is easily found and presented all together. There should also be an archive that pages move to as they go out of date.

Archive benefits
As material is moved to the archive section of your site the search engines will see a growing resource with a consistent theme. They like this. Your site ranking will gradually improve.
By adding a search facility to your archive it will become a useful resource for clients looking for snippets of advice they remember from weeks or months earlier.

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