Competitive Advantages

Once again, a straightforward web concept will make it far easier to determine your killer content. For online classifieds, it is the ads themselves that are killer content. For low-cost web-driven airlines, it's cheap air travel.

Killer content is the reason why a user chooses to visit your web-site. And it explains why he or she will choose you over your competitors.

Killer content can be many things:

• Content that is unique to your web-site.
• Content which you are best at.
• Content that is easier to use on your site than on others' sites.
• Content that is most up-to-date on your site.
• Content that is easiest to find on your web-site.
• Content that is cheapest.

Content in this context can be information, but it can also be a potential transaction or a functionality (search, download, order form, online reservation, game, etc.). If you run an online store, I would assert that even your products could be considered "content".

Here are some concrete examples of killer content:

• Company information (you are hopefully the only official source)
• Rapidly updated news
• Inside information on an interesting topic
• High-quality know-how
• Largest selection of products
• Good products at low prices

Remember to ensure that your killer content is already in demand from the market, or that you can create such a demand. If you want to research this demand, one of the best ways of doing it is by performing a keyword analysis. Read this free report from Wordtracker to find out how.

You can and should spend some time determining your killer content. And remember that it is the user's opinion of killer content that applies here. It won't matter if you think that you are the best at X, if the user thinks differently.

To map out the competition and see how well you're performing in relation to them, you can make a competition matrix. You can use such a matrix to measure your web-site against other sites. It could look like this, for example:

Criteria	Your web-site	Competitor A	Competitor B
Number of products	200	100	220
Visibility on search engines	average	good	poor
Price level (product X)	$12	$14	$16
Product info.	3 pictures, price, measurements, 3 paragraphs text	Price, short description, no picture	One picture, price, measurements, short text
Time used to order one product	3' 12"	4' 21"	1' 20"

In this fashion, you can continue to measure by different criteria, whether you have an information-based or transaction-based web-site. With a matrix like this, you will often be able to pinpoint your competitors' weaknesses and your own areas for improvement.

Once you have clarified your goals, concept, audience and competitive advantages, you can start working on the actual content.