Often we hear webmasters of popular sites tell us that content is king and how it's important in generating traffic.  But rarely will they explain in detail as to why and how that is.  I will cover that subject in this article but as to how it relates to the concept of what I like to call "accumulating content."  What I mean by accumulating content is content that accumulates on your site over an extended period of time.  Now I realize that I wouldn't be able to fully discuss all of the advantages of accumulating content in one single article but I have 7 points I hope to drive home.  So without further ado, I'll get right to the 7 points:

An old retailer's trick is to take existing merchandise that is on a half empty shelf and move it to the front to make the shelf look fuller.  Why do they do this?  Because empty shelves create the impression that the retailer does not have much of a selection of merchandise.  Empty shelves obviously create a negative impression.  So why shouldn't a website be any different in that respect?  Think of how many websites you've been on that looked aesthetically pleasing but had practically nothing for content.  Empty shelves people, just empty shelves.

If I set out to build a brick house, would it make sense to smash every other one with a hammer immediately after it was laid?  You would probably say no and think that it's a ridiculous question to ask.  Obviously the house would take forever to build.  Well, a site would take forever to build too if the content is dated and has to be replaced with content that is more up to date.  This obviously would mean that you're doing a lot of work to create content that will not be there for an extended period of time.  What you need to do is concentrate more on content that will still be relevant over an extended period of time in order to maximize the effectiveness of your efforts.

If I go to a website and I am able to read all of its content in a single visit, what is my incentive to return?  Return traffic is much more important than having visitors who only visit once; especially since return visitors are much more likely to make a purchase.  So the ideal situation would be to have so much content that not all of it could be viewed in a single visit.  They would be more likely to bookmark the site and return at a later time to view more.  Also, the advertising done within your site would be more effective since it will have been seen on more than one occasion.  Any ad executive will tell you that advertising works best with repetition.

With every sentence that you add to your site's content, the more potential search strings you will have that will generate hits to your site.  Let's say that you had an article about brown shoes.  Somebody types brown shoes on Google and your site comes up in the results.  However, if that's your only topic or article, search engine hits will be few and far between.  But what if we talked about black shoes, tennis shoes or running shoes?  We should then increase our potential for hits.  We also hear a lot about link popularity and how that increases your hit potential.  Well, I hate to have to tell you this but the positive effects of link popularity will be minimized by a lack of content and potential search strings for which your site will come up.

Another point to remember is that some search strings are more popular than others.  You may stumble on to something that will create a search string for which there is very little competition and you may be higher in the search results than you usually are.  This is important since most people won't go to page 10 on their search results.  Think about it, how often do you go to page 10?

Perhaps you've seen those free JavaScript tools that make it easier for a visitor to recommend your site to a friend by sending them a link to it.  Having more content makes it more likely that they will use that neat little tool.  After all, you might have content on your site that might be of very little interest to the visitor himself but he may know some people who would have more of an interest in it and decide to send them the link.  It's obvious too that they won't be sending a link to a site with no content.  What would be the point?

I have a number of sites of various types and cover a variety of subjects.  Occasionally I check my stats to see who my top referrers are and check out what page they are linking to.  I find a musician's site linking to the site where I have guitar chords and scales.  That makes perfect sense right?  So obviously the information he chose to link to was of some use to him and by linking to it he increased my link popularity.  This is something only content will do since I never even asked the guy to link to my site.  He somehow stumbled onto it and thought that the content was worth linking to.  The page he was linking to was not the main page, so it was the content within the site not the site itself that he was really linking to.

The content you choose to accumulate may add to the sites uniqueness.  After all, every person in this world is unique in a number of ways, so the choices that you make regarding the content you accumulate may be enough to allow your site to stand out above your competitor's site.  It also helps if you create a lot of your own content, rather than just modeling it after everyone else's.