I wanted to give an example of how to use government data to develop your domains. This will not apply to every type of domain but with a little thought, this free information can be woven into your domain development plan.
To remind you, by law, Title 17 U.S.C., Section 105, copyright protection is not available for any work of the United States Government. Thus, the Government is precluded from copyrighting its publications.
BoneThinning.com website development
OK, I am going to use a side project as an example. I have a website that I have mentioned previously called BoneThinning.com. I have been developing this slowly when I have time. Topics for this website include osteoporosis, osteopenia, calcium supplements, exercise, hormone replacement and so on.
Search Census data
To follow on from my previous post, I went to Census.gov and searched for “osteoporosis”. A health and nutrition publication which was the second hit on the search included a table about osteoporosis as seen below.
I think you will agree that this is pretty ugly. So I extracted just the following data into Excel
| DEGREE OF BONE LOSS | 50 to 59 | 60 to 69 | 70 to 79 | 80 and older |
| Osteoporosis | 4 | 19 | 31 | 50 |
Now I used the quick graph function in Excel to generate the following graph:
Now I have a nice simple easily readable graph that enhances the text on osteoporosis.
Using the CDC as a source of information for domain development
Now I hopped over to the CDC to do a search there. Searching again for “osteoporosis”, I find the following page Calcium and Bone Health. This can form the basis of text about calcium (think calcium supplements adverts). Note though that the photos of bone on the page are reprinted with permission and those should not be copied for to your website without permission.
Further the last link on the page links to a report “Bone Health and Osteoporosis: A Report of the Surgeon General (2004)”. This is packed with information on the subject.
National Institute on Aging
I also found within the CDC’ National Institute on Aging, an article entitled “Osteoporosis: The Bone Thief“. This is filled with great information and each paragraph on the page could help start separate pages.
Finally I also found “Growing Stronger - Strength Training for Older Adults” on the CDC search. Load bearing exercises help combat osteoporosis and so this can help spark an article or two.
Free content for websites
I hope I have shown you how you can obtain plenty of free information for domain development from government sources. The amount of information available will be dependent on your topic and be imaginative to find related topics. For example strength training is a related topic to osteoporosis.
There are actually more sources for free content and I will post on those at later dates. I hope this was useful to you.
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Thanks for the informative article. Opened up a new line of thinking, useful especially when staring at the wall looking for new ideas or content.
Definitely useful and will be back for more…
There is a wealth of free infomaiton that can be utilised. Also change a few words here and there so that it does not get penalised by the search engines. Good article.
I think this plays right into the model of giving to get. By collecting and making scattered information easily accessible, provides a services that creates value, good info.
Cedrick, You hit the nail on the head. There is always great value to collecting scattered information though copyright can hinder that. Thats why i focused on copyright free information.
Liverpoolian, I recommend rewriting altogether if possible especially if the text is coming from several sources. It gives your article a “voice” which is consistent and unique to your visitors and of course helps with the search engines.
Jeff, Thanks. It often helps me jump-start development and can even inspire you to buy some other related domains as you do your research.