One of the most important elements of your business‘ website is content for a large number of different reasons. For starters, sites with regularly updated content are favored in search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo for SEO purposes. Secondly, high quality content isn’t just what attracts visitors – it’s what keeps them coming back again and again. Content marketing is one of the keys to success in a digital age, but one quick look at a few small business websites will show you that not everyone has a handle on it just yet. If you want to create content that speaks to visitors, you’ll always have to keep a few key things in mind.
In order to understand whether or not your website content is speaking to visitors, you need to first understand a little more about content marketing in general. Content marketing involves keeping a website, blog or other digital channel constantly updated with relevant, engaging content that will attract the attention of your target audience. Does the user have a question about a particular product or service that you sell? Your website needs to be the absolute best place to find that answer, bar none.
There are two main types of content that you should always concern yourself – smart content and visual content. Smart content is engaging and can encompass a large number of different things, like instructional pieces that help a user solve a problem. Visual content is stimulating in a completely different way and can involve things like Infographics, videos, animations and more.
There are three main things that your content needs to be in order to speak to visitors. Above all else it needs to be valuable, for example. A 2013 study found that in-house marketers who were personalizing their web experiences (and who were able to quantify that improvement at the same time) saw a 19% uplift in sales. According to another study, a full 74% of online users reported that they get incredibly frustrated with websites when the content has nothing to do with their interests.
Your content also needs to be unique for a few different reasons. First, your target audience shouldn’t be able to go anywhere other than your website to find the information they’re looking for. Additionally, content that isn’t unique ranks poorly in search engines like Google.
Finally, your content needs to be user friendly at the same time. The answer to a user’s question shouldn’t be buried within pages and pages of additional information that they have to wade through. It needs to be front and center, easy to access and even easier to consume to be effective.
Getting visitors to your site is one thing. Keeping them around and convincing them that it is worth the time and effort to come back is something else entirely. In order to accomplish that in the 21st century, you need to focus on creating valuable, unique and user friendly content that speaks to visitors of all types.
