By now most everyone who runs a website is aware that content is king. Whether it is in the form of photos, products, blog entries or articles webmasters are obsessed with adding content to their sites. It isn't always easy to do. There is a fine balance between pleasing the search engine to get high rankings and pleasing the visitors to your site, and lets face it visitors are the priority since they are the ones with the wallet.

Lately the search engines have been giving better placement in their rankings to sites that are loaded with good informational articles, articles that are well written with no spelling or punctuation errors. Remember the search engines sole purpose is to give the most relevant results to a search query.

So to create this content you have several options, all with their advantages and disadvantages. The best method but most time consuming is to simply write the articles yourself. You can also go to a free article directory site like article city and use the articles there for free. Hiring a writer at rentacoder is a great option but the cost of getting good articles is quite high. Another option is to join a private label article site and use those articles on your site.

Let’s take a look at the 4 most common methods described above and see which is right for you. There is no question that writing articles yourself is the best method of creating great content. Content that is original and written in your own voice. However if you are like me it is far to time consuming to write 40 or 50 article a month, with the research and proof reading who has the time?

Article directories are a convenient source of free content but remember you get what you pay for. It is possible to find very well written articles on these sites but most of the time you will only find one article on each topic which makes it hard if you operate a niche web site. Since these are free articles you are required to include an author’s bio with every article that you publish. It may seem like a small price to pay but remember this; that bio is a doorway straight out of your website. So as you can see free is not always the best.

A very good way to build content for your site is to hire a writer at sites like rentacoder or elance. You can get very well written articles that are right on topic and exactly what you are looking for, after all you are hiring the writer to write them for you. This is a great way to leverage you time as well you spend a fraction of the time it takes to write the articles yourself. The only downside is the cost. You can hire a writer for as low as $5 per article all the way up to several hundred dollars per article. This can get very expensive if you need to have a lot of content written for your site. Month after month a webmaster can spend thousands of dollars. For most, this cost simply is prohibitive.

Joining a private label right (PLR) membership site is the best of both worlds. You get great content that is targeted towards niche websites at a price that is very affordable, often for less then $1 per article. Private label right membership sites produce article packages that you are free to do with as you please. You can re-write the articles cut or copy paragraphs together to create new articles and at the end you can call them your own work. PLR sites usually limit their membership to a couple hundred members to prevent the search engines from being saturated with the same content. With all the variation in the way these articles are being used it is unlikely that you will have much competition. After all people are manipulating the articles to create original content.

Having the edge when is comes to the search engine rankings can bring you tons of free traffic. It is well accepted that articles not only please the search engine but also the visitors to your website. As you can see there are many ways to get great articles some are far better then others.