One of the resounding themes of this year’s PubCon was a short but profound question: What value are you adding? While it seems like an easy question, having a solid answer to the question can be the difference between success and failure for your site, and not just in the search engines.

Bloggers

As the number of blogs continues to grow, the need for bloggers to set themselves apart is becoming even more important. Whether you call it being unique, finding your voice, or differentiating yourself, it ultimately boils down to conveying to your readers the value that you’ll be providing them. Will you be breaking news stories, providing unique commentary, educating readers or simply entertaining them? No matter what topic or niche you’re blogging in, you need to answer the question of why people would read your blog, or more simply put:

What value are you adding?

Affiliates

Affiliate marketing is one of the most lucrative methods of making money online. The ability to make money selling other people’s products has attracted scores of would be marketers but the simple fact of the matter is that the majority of those trying to make money online, will fail. And yet, at the same time there are those that make millions of dollars simply telling other people what they think of a product or service.

While many affiliates do nothing more than putting a banner or ad on their site hoping readers click on it and convert, others take the time to do in depth reviews of a product that help perspective buyers make informed decisions. Readers often view ads as an annoyance while a quality review will help build your reputation and trust. Even readers that don’t convert will be more likely to listen to your recommendations and buy from you in the future.

What’s the difference? Successful affiliates add value to the offer or product that they’re promoting.

SEO

To people outside the industry, SEO (more specifically link building) can seem like some sort of black magic or even worse, spam. In reality, successful link building is answering the same types of questions. What about your site is exceptional enough that someone should link to it? What information or content are you presenting on your page that search engines should rank ahead of others? Once you have the rankings, why would a user want to click on your listing?

What value is your site adding?

While this might seem like a simple question, answering it for yourself, your readers, and the search engines will put your site in position for long term success. So once again I ask you:

What Value Are You Adding?