Good Website Content Is Essential For Results

Rule #1 of Website Creation: The written words on your website pages are more important than design or graphics.

Why? Content is scanned by the search engines, and if your website content meets their quality requirements, the search engines will help drive traffic to your site. Equally important, consumers are looking for information to help them solve a problem or decide on a purchase. Well-written content that addresses those needs will gain a reader’s trust, hold his interest, and often result in a sale.

The business owner knows her products and how her business works: she can tell the copywriter what she wants to sell. By all means, share your USP with your copywriter! Let the writer know what products or services you most want to promote.

Then turn her loose to present the business and its offerings in the best way possible. Writing for both the search engines and for the humans who will visit the site can be tricky. Providing interesting and informative copy filled with the right search keywords and phrases, as well as topic-based content, takes a particular set of skills.

Writing Marketing Copy For the Internet

In the old days of advertising, marketers liked to talk about “selling the sizzle, not the steak.”  And that’s often what they did.

Today’s internet shoppers are more savvy than that. Certainly they can be influenced by sales copy that appeals to their emotions and senses. But ultimately, they want real information about your products when they choose to visit your site. They want an overview of the topic on hand that answers their questions.

Clearly,  that means that weak, generic, or vague copy that relies on grand statements with no factual backing won’t cut it for the modern internet shopper. They are online to educate themselves about particulars. Your products need to be accurately described. Quality content writing will include:

• Short, clear sentences
• An emotional appeal based on customers’ needs and wants
• A warm and personal tone of voice
• A simple explanation of how the product benefits the customer, or solves the problem that has brought them to your site
• Sufficient information about your products to show you are an industry expert
• Call outs and easy links for contacting you

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is Key to Good Website Content – And SEO is Changing

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because you have some informative writing and good photos  your site will be swarming with traffic. Effective content writing is married to good SEO. And SEO is changing.

Think about how  consumers search the web. They input descriptions of what they are seeking. You know: “Best salon near me.” “Tractors for sale.” “Low cost lawn maintenance.” These are keywords.

In the beginning, SEO used to be based on the simple keywords searchers were using, but now there is greater emphasis on the long phrases generated by users in search. (Consider: Best Denver Restaurants vs Best Restaurants Near Me.  These two phrases will yield very different results.) Moreover, Google is  looking at what is being called “user intent”, so sites that answer the most questions on the topic, and do so in depth, will see more engagement from searches.

Go deeper: Are Keywords Still Important?

This means we first research the keywords for your products and services across the web. We work to understand what the user is actually seeking. Local SEO is very well served by this new way of looking at things.

Go deeper: Why Local SEO Matters

We still  insert the best keywords and phrases in headlines and in the paragraphs of the page content, but we also make sure the content is a solid overview of the topic.

Human eyes, of course, find these terms on your pages, and the search engines will find them there, too. They are part of your good content. Without good content–and lots of it–with carefully researched and implemented keywords and phrases, you’ve wasted your marketing money on a site that won’t produce.

Always keep in mind that web readers tend to scan pages rapidly for what they are seeking. Using keywords in headlines and first sentences of paragraphs tells the reader you are aware of his needs, and are trying to help him quickly find the information he wants.

And do remember this: Google is looking for something to rank when it looks at your site. Poor content and lack of keywords gives Google nothing to work with.
Ready to redesign your website with excellent content and professional local SEO? Contact Site Guy.

Additional reading: some excellent discussions of the value of web content can be found at Yoast and at Kissmetrics.