Making up a vital part of any successful online marketing strategy is the presence of good content, but what exactly does that entail? And how can you distinguish between a good piece of content and a bad one?

While there are some obvious signs, such as spelling and grammar, other things you must consider are; who the content is aimed at, whether it is serving a purpose and if the content has been properly optimised. There is a lot more that goes into making a good piece of content than you might realise, which is why having the ability to create something that is equally as attractive to an audience and search engines is arguably the most valuable commodity of any Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy.

Research

As with anything, research comes first. A good piece of content simply isn’t created from thin air – there has to be a certain amount of preparation that happens before even a single word is written. Just like constructing a building, you would not lay a brick without any designs in place.

Depending on the purpose of your content, your research needs to focus on what your competitors are doing and what your customers are searching for. By marrying these up, not only will you ensure that your content covers all points, but will hopefully highlight a gap that hasn’t yet been fulfilled – this should help to set your page apart, giving you an advantage in the eyes of search engines and potential customers.

Finding out what customers are asking for is the most important part of producing good content for SEO. You can have one of the most compelling and well-written articles on your website but, unless it is optimised correctly, it probably won’t rank well in the search results…at least not for what you would want it to, anyway. By finding and identifying any queries and/or keywords relevant to your content that have a good volume of searches (and, hopefully, little competition), these can and should feature (sparingly) in your content.

Planning

Once the research has been completed, the next step is to plan your piece of content. Here, you should decide on a format and, ideally, a rough word count. This will help you to ensure that the content not only fits on the page but looks good whilst doing so – this is important if you are considering adding any additional videos and/or images to provide extra value (more on this later).

Devising a plan or, in this case, a content brief will help to ensure that no key parts are missed out. Could you imagine spending all that time conducting research, only to realise that much of it was not used? That would be annoying. This is especially important if the person conducting research is not going to be the one writing it, meaning that creating a detailed brief is key.

A content brief should include:

• Title/Topic
• Word count
• Keywords
• Purpose (such as whether it is promotional, informational, or designed to drive engagement)
• Linked pages (other pages on the website you want to be linked in the post)
• Key points to cover
• Any additional information that will help the writer

If possible, the brief should also include a design layout consisting of any key features and/or buttons and where on the page that these will be. This can help to visualise how the content will look on the page, as well as helping to ensure that passages of text are not abruptly broken up which can harm user experience, which is one of Google’s key ranking factors.

Writing

So, here we are. Now that we have conducted research and created a detailed plan, we can get started on creating the content. If you are guilty of sitting down at your keyboard and starting a piece of content by typing a few words and seeing where they take you, we hope that this post has already been an eye-opener for you – and has highlighted some of the reasons why your content has not been performing well up until now.

With all the key information to include in a post, all that is left is to bring it all together in a neatly gift-wrapped article. Pretty simple because, after all, all the hard work has already been done, right? Wrong!

The work of a talented writer should never be underestimated. To be able to write a piece of content that not only informs but holds the audience’s attention is an art that is so often disregarded. You can have the best business in the world but poor content on your website will see you miss out on sales to your competitors, all of whom have websites with beautifully written content that educates and entertains, along with correct spelling and grammar in all the right places.

If you would not consider yourself to be a strong writer, you should seek out the services of someone who is. This is the part where we tell you that Siteminders have a team of fantastic writers (if you have read up until now, we have proven our point) that can transform your website’s content.

Images and Video

Just as there is more than one way to crack an egg, there is more than one type of content that will rank on Google. To accompany your eloquently written passages, the careful use of images and videos that add value to the text (as well as to break up longer pieces into smaller, more digestible chunks of text) can also help your website to climb the search rankings.

We have already mentioned that search engines such as Google consider user experience as a ranking factor, so if you are worried about retaining the attention of your audience with an extra-long article, you might want to break that up with an image or video. It is important to consider what content you choose to use, meaning that any image or video should be relevant to the rest of the page.

For example, if you are producing a how-to guide, you can utilise any images or video to bring your text to life. Remember, not every user of your website learns best by reading, so this is your opportunity to appeal to other learning styles by offering visuals such as diagrams, infographics, pictures of what something should look like and step-by-step videos.

Not only can images and videos help the page in which they are on to rank, but they can rank in their own right. Image and video searches are also hugely popular amongst users and, when associated with relevant keywords, your images and videos can act as another channel in which to bring potential customers to your business.

Don’t Be Afraid to Update Your Content

Unlike with forms of print media, where your words are forever etched in stone (or ink), uploaded web content is made so you can update and alter your content accordingly. This means that if you have a piece of content on your website that you feel is underperforming and/or could be altered to serve another purpose, you can do whatever you want with it.

This is useful in the case of any pages that could require periodic updates, such as any seasonal campaigns or offers on your website. Rather than creating a new page every time, updating the content on your page not only maintains a clean sitemap but means that you can retain the authority that the page has gained since its original publication.

When you have a page that is ranking well, you are far better updating the content rather than trying to rank a completely different page for the same keywords. If you create a new page and either delete or forget about an old page that was performing well, you risk losing the rankings and, with that, traffic of your original page and failing to replicate that with the new page.

Maintaining Content

If your website has a blog (and if it doesn’t, it should), analysing old content is something that we would recommend doing. If you find content that isn’t performing well and is, effectively, just sitting there doing nothing, there could be an opportunity to combine several posts into one.

Many websites are guilty of having old posts with short word counts that only cover a small portion of what the user is looking for. It may just be that you have several posts that, when stitched together, could form a single piece of content that will perform well in the search rankings. Some might see this as cheating, but there is no point in having pages of content that aren't doing anything when you can transform them into something that does. It’s just good housekeeping.

As you can see, there is a lot more that goes into making good content than simply sitting at the computer for an hour and bashing out a chunk of text. It takes time and effort to produce content that serves its purpose of ranking in the search engines and answering the queries of the user. If you are not willing to go to these lengths, we can assure you that your competition is – and that is where your potential customers are going, as well as existing customers if you don’t act quickly.

One of the common questions that we get asked by business owners is why should they take their business online? While the obvious answer is that we are living in the 21st century and almost everyone is online, some still take a little bit more convincing.

In the present day, it is crazy to think that there are still some businesses operating without even a morsel of an online presence. No website, no social media and barely even a directory listing. In a world where the days of actively window shopping has made way for scouring the latest deals online, operating solely on print advertising and word of mouth is a dangerous game to be playing. Quite simply, unless you act soon, your business’ days are numbered if you lack any online presence.

No Website, No Trust

A study in 2017 found that 30% of consumers will not consider buying from a business that lacks a dedicated website. Straight away, that’s almost a third of your potential customers gone. It's this group who are ready to buy and looking for an online retailer offering the product or service they need, often with next-day delivery in the case of a physical product.

In the eyes of the modern consumer, if your business does not have a website then that is cause for immediate alarm bells. Questions about the legitimacy of your business are raised –  is there is an issue with the product you are selling? How can they be sure that your business won’t have suddenly left town? Having a dedicated website gives your customers peace of mind, as well as providing them with a means in which to contact you with any queries either before or after purchase.

Effectively, without a website, your business is no more trusted than a seller at a car boot sale, regardless of the quality of your products and/or service.

But What About the Costs?

Yes, building and hosting a website does cost money but when compared to the sales that your business is losing by not having a dedicated website, it barely charts. With Content Management Systems (CMSs) such as WordPress, designed to offer a quick and easy platform, it doesn’t have to cost much time or money to take your business online.

For businesses looking to sell online, you might be concerned that you don’t have the manpower or the technical capability to manage an online store. Once again, WordPress is your friend, with the open platform offering a range of plugins that can be easily integrated into your website. One such plugin is WooCommerce, which installs everything you need to create an online shop on your website with easy to manage admin area and product creation.

Hopefully, once you take your business online, you will see such a surge in sales that you might need some help taking care of things from a website perspective. This is something that we are happy to offer as part of our digital marketing packages, leaving you with ample time to fulfil those orders.

Do I Need Social Media?

Yes! Even with a dedicated website, having a presence on social media is still a must. When you consider that 78% of consumers in America discovered new retail products on Facebook, having a strong social presence is arguably even more important than the website itself (they are both important).

Consumers find businesses via social media, directly and indirectly, whether they are actively searching for them or someone on their feed shares a post relating to a business or product in some way. The opportunities presented by social media are a business’ dream when it comes to selling not only its products and/or services but also its image and vision.

Social media users want to engage with brands that they can connect with, that share the same values as they do. The more they engage with your business on social media, the more likely they are to convert from a sales perspective, which is the ultimate goal of any social media marketing campaign.

If you are not overly familiar with social media, there are three main platforms that you should at least be aware of. The platforms are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which boast an impressive 44.84 million, 24.46 million and 17.75 million users respectively in the United Kingdom. If your business cannot be found on any of these three social media platforms, you can guarantee that your competitors can and that they are engaging with your potential customers.

Getting Found Online

While you may have heard the famous saying ‘if you build it, they will come’, that isn’t strictly true when online. Actually, that isn’t true at all. Not even slightly.

You can have the greatest website in the world, but if no one can find it then what is the point? Think of it as having a shop with fantastic décor, well-organised shelves and all the latest products for your customers ready to buy, only that the shop is hidden away in a dark side alley which no one goes down. That is pretty much the equivalent of building a website but doing no work in the way of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to it.

Rather than being down a dark alley with no traffic apart from the odd person who has taken a wrong turn along the way, SEO puts your business right on the busy high street for hundreds and thousands of consumers to find. Ranking on page one of Google is the equivalent of having your shop right in the busiest part of town, only that all those people outside of the store are looking for exactly what you have to offer.

How does that happen? When your website is optimised to target keywords that are relevant to your business, products and, most importantly, your customers, your website’s search rankings will begin to improve. If and when your website appears on page one, this will often spark an upturn in traffic as more and more people can find you – an audience that, without a website at all, you may never have reached.

For more information on how Siteminders can help take your business online, opening a new door of opportunity to appeal to new potential customers, please get in contact with our team today.

What is SEO? 

Search engine optimisation is all about improving the visibility of your website within Google search results. Whilst other search engines are available, Google is the biggest and their guidelines dictate a lot of what happens in online marketing. 

Doing SEO for your website is often referred to as organic, as the work is done has an indirect impact on your overall visibility on Google. Technical improvements, the addition of optimised content, link acquisition and building your authority and industry relevance are the fundamentals of organic SEO, but that’s not to say that this can be complemented by paid exposure through PPC, too.

In order to succeed with SEO, it’s vital you have a strategy that is tailored to your specific needs. There is no one size fits all solution so it’s important to get this right, whether you do it yourself or outsource to an expert. 

What is PPC? 

Pay per click is one of the most common methods of paid advertising in online marketing. Both SEO and PPC are highly effective at getting traffic to your site and boosting conversions – and subsequently enquiries or revenue – but when it comes to PPC, the difference is that you pay for the traffic you receive. 

The success of your PPC campaign will largely be dependent on the keywords that you target, the level of competition for these phrases and your budget. 

Over to you...

With knowledge comes power; the more you know about the world of online marketing, the easier it is to decide which route is best for you. This might be SEO on its own to help build your authority and organic search results, PPC to complement your existing organic results, or a combination of both to really give your business the push it needs.

If you’re ready to take the next step in figuring out what is right for your business and how to go about achieving your goals, then get in touch with our team to get started!