Recycling Old Web Site Content
Produced by: Red Rock Partners. All Rights Reserved. Copyright ©2000.

As your web site matures, the amount of data that is published on your web site increases. Think about it for a moment: assume that your monthly on-line newsletter has on average eight web pages of information. If your site has been around for twenty-four months, this equates to 192 pages of published information! Likewise, suppose that your club posts scores, text and pictures from league and club tournaments. A typical club will have approximately forty official golf events per year. This means that, over a two-year period, there are eighty pages of tournament results, text, and pictures. So… what are you doing with this old data? Deleting it off of your web server? This article will touch on two ways to use old data to keep your web site fresh.

Old newsletter articles. As time passes, and your web site grows, the number of newsletter articles, and other old pages, increases. Are these "old" pages of any value? To understand the answer to this question, we have to reflect on the characteristics of a successful web site. In the web maintenance business empirical data is hard to come by. Some philosophies that were standard industry practices five years ago are now considered to be bad business ideas. But one philosophy has remained a constant - a good web site is all about content. Fresh content. The web site that does not find ways to present new content to its viewers will soon lose those viewers. But what exactly is fresh content? A humorous article published in last year's newsletter is old news to the person who read the article. Conversely, the same article is fresh news to a person who never read the article in the first place. Work with your web designer to find ways to present the old newsletters to your membership. Also consider implementing a site-wide search engine to your site. This will assist your membership in quickly finding old articles of interest. The combination of archiving newsletters and implementing a search engine will give your web site a more robust and active feel.

Tournament results from previous years. In order to drive your membership into your web site, you should take advantage of the fact that most of the membership golfs. Posting the standings, pictures, and commentary for each tournament or golf event will give your membership one more reason to take advantage of the web site. But what do you do with the previous season's information once the new season starts? You reuse it. Imagine how much more informative a web page about your club tournament would be if you could display results, pictures, and text from tournaments of years past. Your membership can reminisce about previous winners, enjoy the old pictures, and get excited about the upcoming tournament.

Wrapping it all up. Always remember that your web site is not like a book or magazine regarding costs. Once you have created, formatted, and published a web page, it can be used over and over again to provide relevant, new content to your site. In the beginning stages of your web site, finding good content can be a daunting task. As the site matures, content is often found in unexpected places. Imagine, for example, those Outside Tournaments that many clubs will host. How much more attractive would the outside events section of your web site be if you had pictures, results, and text from three years worth of tournaments? Make a commitment this year to begin reusing old content. And if you don't have any old content to reuse, work with your web site designer to develop a plan for reusing content in the future.

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