Building quality content on and for a Web site can be a daunting task, but is absolutely essential for optimization and getting your Web site ranked within search engine results. Not only do you need to have quality content on your site, but you should also be building content through social media sites, blogs, press releases, articles, and other Internet content sources.
What Does Quality Content Include?
Content for a Web site includes everything on a Web page - the words, images, videos, and everything in between. It also includes content developed about your business that drives visitors back to your site including social media, press releases, and email marketing, among others. It is the information provided to your visitors or potential visitors that lets them know who you are, what you do, and what you can offer them.
Why Is Quality Content Important?
If a Web site doesn’t have much content, there is very little for a search engine to use to determine what key terms it should rank the Web site on within its search results. The words on a particular page are the catalyst for helping a search engine discover what your company is about and where your Web site should found.
Content created for other Web sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc., help to tell the story of your business and support the content that is on your main Web site. The content you produce for use on other Web sites re-enforces the content that is on you primary Web site, further strengthening your position as an authority on that particular topic.
Why Is Fresh, Quality Content Even More Important?
Creating content for a Web site once and then not updating it or adding to it is not going to help your site much in the long run. Old news and promotions make your site look outdated to the visitor as well as to the search engines. Search engines look to see if your Web site is offering fresh content and if the site does so on a regular basis, it will encourage the search engine to visit your site pages more often.
What Does Quality Content Look Like?
Quality content tells the complete story of your business and beyond. Quality content is NOT copied. In fact, if you copy content from another Web site source, your site could very well be penalized by the search engines for duplicate content. Quality content is original information about your business and services and how you can help your potential customer.
One of Google’s major algorithm updates, Panda, worked specifically to address site quality from a content perspective, giving lesser ranking to sites with little content. How do you avoid this? Be detailed in your site content about what you do and look at it from a “user’s perspective.” In addition, use multiple media sources to support your statements including images, videos, and outside references to other sources.
How Should You Approach Content Development?
With a plan.
Take a look at your current Web site content and other online content initiatives to determine first if it meets your focus and if not, find your focus – what is your unique value proposition. Next, review your current content based on this focus and find out what is lacking. From there, prioritize on what content to develop first based on what is more important to you as a business. For example, if you sell Widgets and your “Super Widget” is your primary sales focus because it is a unique product not many others offer, focus on developing content that supports the “Super Widget” first.
Rand Fishkin, a leader in the SEO industry recently did an interview with Marketing Land to discuss what makes a content marketing strategy successful. The primary piece of advice I took from this interview was that content marketing does not produce instant results and in many cases it can act as more of a brand builder than an immediate conversion creator.
Content should be seen as a great opportunity to tell your story. Find your focus/unique value and develop content that supports that.
Need Ideas for Content?
Search Engine Land has a great article with several ideas for developing new content. In addition to these, here are few other ideas:
- Industry pages – What industries does your product or service support? Develop pages that speak to each of these audiences and what you can do for them.
- Enhanced product descriptions – Whether selling online or through a contact form/request for quote, it’s important to have detailed product descriptions. If a potential customer calling you regarding a particular product they were interested in, you most likely wouldn’t only say, “it’s this wide and this long”, you would try to sell that product by describing its benefits and what it can do.
- Testimonials – Support your claims with customer’s experiences.
Who’s going to Write All This Content?
If you have an in-house marketer or writer, they may be able to help with developing some quality content for the Web site. Many times someone like this may not be available in the organization. If so, we are always available to help with this initiative.
Find the author on social media:
+Elissa Mitchell
@ezmitchell