When an SEO expert tells an ambitious fledgling business that they need a healthy supply of content on their website, the typical response is to ask why. After all, at first sight there doesn’t seem to be an obvious correlation between web content and having customers buy your products and services.
But there is a relationship between the two: content first and foremost generates traffic. Without content, traffic has to be generated through functions outside of the website, which often come with additional costs such as ad spending. Content directs the customer journey – a process so important to capitalise on that it’s the cornerstone for all those trying to generate leads.
If you have no real desire to generate any traffic to your website whatsoever and are using it for some insular hobby, or some other activity that won’t require any outside interaction whatsoever, then perhaps content isn’t overly important for your site at all. But, as you’re reading this, we suspect you’re probably looking for tips on how to generate website traffic and leads through high quality content.
Well, Pronto is here to help. So, let’s talk about website content in more detail and how it can boost your presence in search engines and ultimately lead to more leads and sales.
What is web content?
Web content is anything on your website, but it comes in several forms, ranging across text, audio, visual and even interactive content.
Here are some of the most popular content formats:
Written – Service pages are those that outline the products or services that you offer. These types of pages are key, not only for informing your customers about what you do, but they also indicate to search engines what your website is actually about. Only with carefully keyword focused pages can you have a chance of ranking for those terms that help generate leads and sales.
Blog content is a popular form of written content on websites and a good way to build brand awareness, generate interest and extend your reach to potential new customers. They are essentially short-form writing typically ranging from 500 to 1,500 words. Blogging can often be time consuming due to the amount of research required to cover a topic, and the ability to create content that engages your target audience well. There are also more informative types of writing and long form content, such as guides and case studies, which can better inform prospective customers about your service offer.
Graphics – Images are by far the most popular as far as visual content goes, whether that be created art, infographics, photographs etc. Any images that are unique will help your website stand out and will be rewarded by search engines. There are also highly productive forms of graphical content to delve into and manage, such as infographics and charts which may engage and inform better than the standard written word.
Audio & video content – There are websites where the main draw bringing people to the website is in the form of video or audio content. The best writers in the world can write some highly engaging content, but a thousand words in the form of an audio or video broadcast takes a lot less time and effort to consume than the written word. With the attention span of people generally becoming less and less, this type of quick content can be a key part of a successful content strategy.
Interactive – Interactive media that engages site visitors can boost your website and how it is viewed by potential customers, as well as the search engines. Having elements on a page that informs visitors and keeps them on site for longer is a positive that will be rewarded by search engines, as ultimately they want to see pages presented to visitors that they actually spend time viewing rather than clicking straight back to the search results pages. A good example is provided by one of our clients, Luvanto, who have a 3D modeller to enable potential customers to place things in a digital version of your own home.
All of the above types of content contribute to boosting your website in Google rankings just by existing, as Google loves fresh content, especially if it’s high quality. But that’s not the end of it there, as after all, Google needs a way to know what keywords are relevant to your site and its content, in order to determine where you should be listed in search engine rankings for specific keyword searches. This is where keyword research comes in.
Keyword Research
These two words make some people shiver in trepidation, especially if they have never undertaken keyword research before. But the fact of the matter is that identifying the relevant keywords to target is fairly straightforward.
What is the main goal of your website? Take a look at Google to understand the types of things people are searching for in regards to the main selling point of your website. Once you’ve compiled a list of potential keyword terms, it’s time to put them in a keyword tool and begin narrowing down which ones you should focus on.
Using a digital marketing SEO tool – you can search the internet for one that suits your needs – and then start adding your relevant keywords, one by one, into the tool. See how much search volume each keyword typically gets and jot them down.
Now’s the fun part. Once you have the volumes, you have to look up the competition. The level of opposition you face versus the volume the search term gets should illustrate which ones are worth pursuing and which are not.
Your own personal competitors’ rank and what you’re willing to go up against are up to you. However, in particular, you should view government and big business sites as being too competitive to realistically take on and usurp from the search engine results. Google sees them as powerful, useful assets, and they are also likely to have much more authority and budget than you.
Nonetheless, once you’ve got the keywords you want to target, you’re well on your way to creating a plan.
Planning for Google Rankings
“Googlebot” is Google’s own web crawler that crawls the web to create a searchable index for its search engine. It is from this index that your pages will be ranked and sorted from most relevant and authentic, to least relevant and authentic.
Googlebot, when crawling, will scan websites for two things – the search term, and related keywords. Having your target keywords, compiled from your independent keyword research, present on your website pages in a structured format is vital for traffic to flow into it.
Relevancy is self-explanatory, but what about authenticity? It’s a complex component of Google’s search engine. Authenticity can largely be broken down into three parts: integrity, activity and professionalism.
Integrity, in terms of having a good standing not just on your website, but on other websites, will boost your rankings. This is determined in part by Google looking at links directing traffic to a site that appears on other websites. If there are websites sharing links to your own website, Google will notice and factor that in. This act of having links on other websites is called ‘backlinking’.
Conversely, a bad reputation will also lead to you being de-ranked, or perhaps even just removed from Google’s index altogether – like sites promoting hatred or hosting illegal material.
Another facet of having a website of integrity is to have it be built with modernity in mind. Code is updating all the time, and the increased use of mobile devices shifted the main browsing experience from desktops to smartphones. As a result, an integral part of modern web development is to employ adaptive design. This means that any website that can morph or be ‘responsive’ to be used on smaller devices, not just phones, but also tablets.
Activity – Pages have to be active in order to rank highly in Google, or at least have a lot of traffic. There are currently around two hundred million websites active on the internet, each of them with several pages. Google has to index each and every single one whenever you search for things, and the older pages tend to be buried after a while. A lot of digital marketers will focus on content creation to boost SEO visibility for web pages on a certain subject, thereby pulling potential customers to them. But these same marketers also make it a point to update these pages and renew them in Google’s index.
Professionalism – The level of professionalism about written content is an important factor. Google wants to present content that has been produced professionally and by people who are known to have a specialism in a particular field.
Content that has been written using artificial intelligence (AI) software could be seen as one such instance where content fails to meet the level of professionalism required. AI-created content is often rife with sub-par English that makes it unengaging, and sometimes aggravating, to read, despite the fairly impressive level of research they’re able to do at the click of a button.
From a business standpoint, it makes a lot of sense to prioritise quality content that users enjoy. Demonstrating that a site has the required level of E-E-A-T – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness – can go a long way toward helping a site’s content rank well for its target keywords.
Final Words About SEO Content Importance
Consider this article a brief introduction to the world of SEO content. The whole package has strategies so time-consuming and varied that it requires teams to focus on all the different aspects of search engine optimisation, including creating content, technical SEO, and on-page and off-page tactics.
Take it from us at Pronto, SEO is a dragon worth slaying if you want to get the maximum return from your content and content marketing in general. With a good website content strategy and technically sound website that engages visitors, you can minimise your reliance on other methods of lead generation, such as PPC and advertising on social media platforms, and boost the ‘free’ organic traffic that you receive from search engines.
For more information, and help with creating quality content, don’t hesitate to get in contact with us.
