When it comes to site content, think quality, not quantity. So says Chris Garrett in his very readable e-book, Killer Flagship Content.Written in a conversational, thoughtful tone, Chris spells out the importance of creating unique and valuable content for your particular niche. Do this and you’ll attract and build traffic to your site, becoming the go-to source that’s synonymous with your distinct area of focus.

“It could be a single post, a series of posts, an over-arching ‘message’… It is an effective way of creating a powerful blog property using a core of content that you build around.” And, importantly, readers can find it easily all in one place. Daily Blog Tips calls this “pillar content.”

What are some examples? Here’s the one spot where the 14-page PDF comes up a bit short. I was expecting to see some examples from other sites at this point, but Chris simply instructs us to think of our favorite blogs. His intention may have been to avoid limiting the scope of the concept by hemming it in with a few particular examples. A few samples, though, could clarify the point and would support one of his later points about linking out freely. In that spirit, here are some sites that illustrate flagship content:

• Online Marketing Blog by Lee Odden for press release optimization and the handy search engine marketing blogs list (which Stuntdubl further flagshipped into an SEO search engine)
• SEOmoz’s page strength tool
• Searchengineland.com’s daily recaps of search engine news
• Copyblogger’s copywriting 101
• Edward Tufte’s discussion board for information design
• The Juice Analytics spreadsheet for effective graphical display in Excel
• Waxy.org for a smile and a look at something cool
• Ice Cream Ireland for, well, ice cream and Ireland. Two niches in one!

The ebook next turns to traffic and conversion, which will make you eager to come up with your own flagship content. How? Chris provides lots of ideas here with plenty of context—not one of these quickie general lists we see often dashed off on other blogs. Check it out for yourself.

Promotion is covered from there and it’s something that Christ isn’t shy about. He’s certainly got the traffic numbers to prove he’s right. Heck, he even got me to write this review. The point is once you have that flagship in place, work hard to spread the word.

Killer Flagship Content is inspiring and motivating. Read it now. I’m eager to dive into a few blog projects I’ve been putting off now that I can see the flagship potential in them.

In another post, we’ll review flagship content ideas for church websites. Get that conversation going by adding your comments.

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