Home/SEO 3 of 7: Content – Web pages that sell more for you!
Your content is as they say “King” in actual fact as John Reese says it’s “Kong”, because it’s actually bigger than king. Your customers will view and read your website content and the search engines will rank your website based on analysing and reading your content. Web site content, in particular the placing of text and labels of media like images and videos, is one of, if not, the most effective areas where you can greatly enhance your websites optimisation efforts.
Remember each page of your website, home page and your sub pages, are all potential landing pages for search engines and your customers. With this in mind you should then be thinking of your strategy to optimise the content of all pages that will enhance your rankings with Search Engines, but also bring in your customers and increase your chances of converting more web browsers into customers through call to action content and giving them more reason to buy from you rather than your competitor, in essence add more value!
It is good practice to focus on one topic per page to keep your content less diluted.
Keep your content unique, do not duplicate content from other pages of your web site or from another web site! But by all means use other websites for research.
Aim to have between 250-300 words per page. Your page word count should outweigh your web page template word count (E.g. menu items and other text around your main content). There is no harm in having more words but beyond 1000 words may be you should start to think of writing a book? No but in all seriousness your customers may get bored beyond that point, so keep it punchy.
Include your key phrases in your content where possible, but do not stuff your web pages with keywords, E.g. repetitive use of key words, as this can have a negative effect, with search engines deciding to black list and remove your web site from their database instead of listing your web site.
Keep your content engaging, don’t write it from your point of view unless it is content for your blog, write based on your customers point of view, and what they would expect to read, entice them and use language that creates and invokes emotion, whether that emotion is to get them to buy or to come back for a second, third, forth or multiple visits to your web page.
Keep your content fresh, update your web site with new pages regularly. Try adding a News section or a Blog, web users are accustom to these sections on other websites and expect regular content. May be your thinking but there’s not a lot we can put into a news section? Try brainstorming for 10 minutes the latest technology trends, changes in your industry in the past year, or successes you or your customers have had with your service or products, and I’m sure you will start to create some content.
It’s all very well driving lots of traffic to your website, but is your website geared up to engage and urge your customers into buying from you? Having read through your content, you should be guiding your potential customer in how to buy from you offering them the next steps to take, whether you sell a service or an actual product (digital or physical). People hate being sold to, but like to buy, so your content should be value adding so that potential customers want to buy from you.
Display a join our mailing list box to collect a customers name and email address, which you can use to market to.
Display your telephone number with the words call now.
Forms on your web pages, don’t ask your customers to fill in a form. Who likes filling in forms? Why not suggest they kindly fill in their details and you will take care of the rest.
Add video as a free value tool in exchange for a name and email address.
FREE £5 shopping voucher when you spend £50 – This one Argos use a lot.
The page intro – Start off how you plan to go on, capture your reader with highlights of your article.
Sub heading – Break up your text and make it easy to read by using useful and informative sub headings.
The main body – Offer a story, some facts, some benefits, the results and then conclude.
Call to action – The article should guide your customer into buying, joining or subscribing to you or you company in some way. This is the result you should be aiming for.
Now that you’ve created your web page content and included your key words you are starting to build a solid foundation for your website to grow from. Not only will this help with your online marketing on Search Engines and Social media sites, but I’ve even found that good content online helps with your offline marketing material and vice versa, enabling you to ensure one important rule that I have found – Keeping your marketing message the same whether online or offline giving your customers consistency when interacting with your business, like the old saying “everyone singing from the same hymn sheet”.
Read the follow up to this blog: SEO 4 of 7: Your Web Page Structure.