Applications can be a big part of a website’s content: I’m not talking about sites whose sole purpose is providing software as a service online. Instead, I’m talking about websites meant to promote a business or sell a product. Just like well written content, a useful application can provide content to help interest a reader.

An application doesn’t need to be complicated to keep a reader interested. A good example are the many different financial calculators offered by Bankrate. Bankrate offers an incredible level of written content on personal finance topics — but what keeps me coming back and earns plenty of backlinks is the wide variety of calculators that readers can use on the site. All those simple applications do is spit out numbers, but they happen to spit out very useful numbers.

Crafting the right content — especially online — requires great written material. But an application can really make a site pop.