Creating & Maintaining Great Website Content
A website is made up of three essential components: URL/Hosting, graphics/design, and written content. Many website creators are preoccupied with aesthetics and have a keen eye for design, but not nearly as much concern and dedication is invested in the content.
While design is quite important, as it sets the tone and highlights the professionalism of your brand, it is paramount that your content gets at least an equal amount of attention.
Written content reigns supreme when it comes to your brand. It is the most difficult aspect of your website to flesh out, and can sometimes be an overwhelming undertaking. Here are some ways in which content makes the biggest difference.
Attract the Search Engines
The most impressive design on your website will never suffice in convincing Google that you have outdone the competition if you do not actually say anything. Above all else, search engines are driven by written content. When they crawl your page, they scan your text, searching it for quality, probing for links and relevant articles.
Search engines crave information that is pertinent to search terms, which is why keywords are the hallmark of your content. Having a lot of content, and ensuring it is rife with relevant information, is vital in achieving the organic rank necessary to drive the most traffic to your website.
Tell Your Story
There is no need to become over-involved in SEO jargon and lingo. What matters more than anything is that your content is written in a way that your guests, clients, and prospects find useful and helpful.
When you are writing the About Us page, do just do that. What is your business about? Offer your goals – past, present, and future. Insert images to divide large segments of text. Provide information in your content that will help answer questions your visitors might have.
Remember, your real target is an actual human being and not a search engine. That is why providing information that is both relevant and helpful is conducive to keeping your visitors from leaving your website to find one that can give them the information they are searching for. Be a human who writes like a human, for humans. There is nothing more sterile and inauthentic than a page so overwrought with key words that it becomes unintelligible.
Get to the Point
Successfully written content means understanding what your target audience wants. If you are a restaurant owner, then you probably want to provide your business hours, a downloadable menu, images of menu items and food, as well as photos of your restaurant’s interior.
A page about your catering service or accommodating large reservations is tremendously beneficial. Conversely, it would not make sense to have staff directories with bios on every employee; that would make more sense for a financial institution or a university.
Mix It up a Little
Blogs are a great way for touching on broader topics with more detail. It offers new content for your website on a regular basis, thereby attracting new visitors and, most importantly, garners new links. When visitors read your blog and want to share it with others, it gets passed on via link format, thus drawing in more traffic from sources you may not have had access to otherwise.
Content does not always have to be words on a page. Depending on what service or product you offer, consider other avenues, such as a vlog (video blog), a podcast for download, or a fascinating infographic.
