The internet is a beautiful thing. It gives us useful information, a way to connect with our friends, and most importantly, videos of baby elephants. But the sheer volume of content online can be overwhelming. That’s where you come in!

If you can design a great content curation site, you can showcase the best content for your readers, providing them with a unique and useful experience. But how do you make the perfect site?

Overview

• Picking the Perfect Topic
• Choosing the Best Layout
• Defining Your Feature Set
  

Picking the Perfect Topic

The first decision you have to make is the most important one: what is your site going to be about?  If it’s a personal site, it can obviously be about anything you want. But if you are interested in gaining significant traffic and followers, you should aim to be as specific as possible.

This is particularly important when it comes to SEO. SEO (search engine optimization) is a marketing discipline that focuses on growing visibility in search engine results. SEO isn’t just about finding specific keywords and phrases that will give you the most hits. It is also about creating websites that search engines can read. When it comes to SEO, specificity is key.

So let’s get specific! If you are unsure where to begin, start by making a list of each of your interests. Then answer these questions for each topic:

1. Is there a community interested in that topic?
2. Is there a lot of content available about this topic?
3. Is the content that is currently available hard to find?
4. Can I offer an original perspective on this content?
   

Consider each of these questions and figure out which interest gave you the best answers.  Remember, you can have as many blogs as you want. But each blog should be as specific as possible, to better optimize your shareability. By using specific keywords and phrases, you will rank higher in search engines.

Choosing the Best Layout

Now you have picked your topic, it’s time to figure out which layout you should use. No matter how great your content is, nobody will want to read it if it doesn’t impress them visually. Take a look at some of the ways you can wow your audience.

• The Grid: The grid is the best choice to use when your blog is going to be heavy in imagery. This layout is used by websites such as Pinterest. This layout increases onsite engagement and results in longer browsing time. You should only use this if sequencing does not matter.

• The List: The List is a better choice if you are more interested in promoting your textual content and preserving some sort of hierarchy or sequence. This format is used by many websites, with the most obvious example being Google. This is a great way to encourage fast decisions by your readers (like on a search result page) and to explore topics on a deeper level.  Just make sure your writing game is strong, as text will be your main focus.
  

No matter what format you choose, you always want to make sure that each item has a name and a link. Depending on what you want your readers to get from your site, you might also want to add an image and description. The more fields you add, the more likely you are to rank higher in search engine results.

Defining Your Feature Set

So you now know what you will say and how you will say it. But what about your audience?  What do you want from them? While you may want to answer “their eternal praise and servitude” let’s go beyond that.

If you just want to educate your readers, that’s great. If you are willing to put in a little bit more effort, you will most likely be rewarded with more traffic and followers. You could allow them to:

• Vote:
• Write reviews
• Add comments

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Your readers will likely be more engaged depending on how much they are allowed to interact with your site.

Get Started!

Now that you have the tools you need, you are ready to create your curation site. As a curator, you now have the power to present the very best content that the internet has to offer. Enjoy sharing your passions and your readers will be grateful!