When you buy a website with a bit of history, it's important to investigate it thoroughly. Recently I bought a website with over 300 pages of content on static html. I'm in the process of transferring the content to Joomla!, which is a long and laborious process.

So far, my exploration of the site has consisted of:

• using Google Webmaster Tools to identify 404s that I needed to repair.
• using Google Analytics to determine which pages received the most traffic - these would be transferred to Joomla! first.
• analysing the search phrases that brought visitors to my site. Using that information, I could find stuff to seel to 'em!

I thought that that was enough. However, today I stumbled on a goldmine.

100 Pages Of Free Content

One of the pages I was copying and pasting into a new Joomla! article included a substantial number of links to .txt files. There were over 100 of them. These .txt files held "archived" content. Why the previous owner of this site had used .txt file is beyond me. "Why is this a goldmine?", I hear you chorus. Because it's a free ticket to over 100 pages of content - absolutely free.

"Why don't you just leave the content in the .txt files?", again you chorus (you have beautiful singing voices). After all, .txt files can rank in the search engines (yes, it's true that they can). There are several reasons why it's beneficial to transfer the contents of these .txt files into a html page:

• Markup - content in .txt files can't take advantage of the markup available in html. In html you can assign headings to give structural meaning to your text, and also assign emphasis using tags like <strong> and <em> - all important for search engine rankings.
• Links - you can't insert links in .txt files, whereas you can in a html page. Links are good. Ask any search engine. Even if I don't introduce any cross linking in the content itself, the nature of the Joomla! content management system means that each of those extra 100 pages will have a link back to the homepage. Happy homepage!
• Content Manipulation - In addition to copying the .txt files to the Joomla! articles, I'm restructuring it slightly by adding appropriate headings. Previously the content was a simple stream of words, broken up only by paragraphs. By identifying each section and labelling it with a heading, I'm increasing the chances of that page ranking for the words in the headings. All I'm doing is improving readability by breaking the content into manageable chunks and adding headings to those chunks. Good for user, good for search engines. Win win.
• Web Traffic Analysis - I'm using Google Analytics to track my traffic statistics for this site, but, of course, there is no GA code on those .txt files. This means that my GA stats are missing details of over 100 URLs. This is important information I don't currently have access to. Because I've added my Google Analytics code to the template used in my Joomla! installation, each of those 100 .txt files will automatically get the code inserted when I paste their contents into a new Joomla! article. I don't have to add the code manually. I'm expecting my traffic stats to balloon.
• Adsense - you can't put Adsense (or any other kind of advertising) in a .txt file. Once in Joomla!, however, it's a whole different ball game, and I can go Adsense mad. Find out how to add Adsense to Joomla! I will have 100 more pages that can display Adsense. Are you ready for some dodgy calculations? Let's work out how much those extra pages are worth. This site currently gets 13,826 pageviews each month on a total of 409 URLs. That makes an average of 33.8 pageviews per page per month. Those extra 100 pages have the potential to receive a total of 3380 pageviews per month. Let's pretend my eCPM is $7, for whatever advertising programme you're using. Don't ask me why I picked that figure. Those 100 pages are worth 3.38 x 7 = $23.66 per month. It's not a lot, but it's $283 / year extra that you wouldn't otherwise have. Don't forget, this is a numbers game.