If it’s on your website, and can be digested by the human brain, it is classified as website content. But to think of content simply as fodder for website visitors is to seriously underestimate its importance and value – in truth website content is crucial to your online visibility and your broader business success.
Let’s take a deep dive into website content: what it is, how it works, and how you can improve it.
What are the goals of website content?
Website content spans all the text, imagery and media displayed on the front end of your website – the stuff that a visitor sees. But what are the goals of website content?
In the early days of the internet, website content was simply there to give the visitor the information they required. But in an online world dominated by search engines, the role of content is increasingly to sell your website as the most relevant and authoritative solution to the problems your customers type into Google. Content must be written and designed in a way that makes your website an alluring choice to search engines, a process called search engine optimisation (SEO).
Most organisations are aware of this, which makes it all the more surprising to find out that over 80% percent of website content drives little to no organic traffic.
What should you consider before writing website content?
Filling a website with content isn’t simply a matter of choosing beautiful and/or compelling words to replace that lorem ipsum text. It’s a science, and one that demands the investment of resources.
Meaningful website content is built on a solid foundation of knowledge. You need to have a deep understanding of who you’re writing for, what you’re writing about, and how to optimise this information for search engines. This is a process that is expertly navigated within the Growth Partners DigitalArchitect system®.
In the Content Development Direction and Focus stage of the DigitalArchitect, you’ll learn to create the sort of ads, landing pages, websites, blogs, white papers and ebooks that Google, your customers and your salespeople will find truly valuable.
Types of website content
Website content can be categorised in any number of ways – text vs media, passive vs interactive, content made for humans vs content made for Google bots – so there is no set definition for ‘types’ of website content.
A better way to explain website content is to simply offer up examples of it, and their reason for being:
- Blogs: The classic example of website content, blogs are particularly effective in the research and discovery phases of the sales funnel, and are great for SEO.
- Landing page: A more sales-focused form of website content, landing pages are more often used at the awareness and consideration phase, as they can lead directly to conversion.
- Case studies: These offer an in-depth look at a product, service or subject.
- Infographics: One of the most efficient ways to deliver information to your audience.
- Video: Embedded video can seriously extend time on page.
Identifying unique value proposition
What makes your organisation different to your competitors? This question gets to the heart of how to stand out in the overcrowded world of the internet, and should therefore form the foundation of your website content efforts.
The Growth Partners DigitalArchitect is built around identifying your unique value proposition and the opportunities that it offers up. The Content Development Direction and Focus stage converts this knowledge into an actionable content plan that will see you improving your search engine ranking for the most relevant queries, and giving your salespeople the material that they and their clients want.
Targeting personas to content
Good writing is about knowing your audience – you won’t see many monster trucks in a Mills and Boon novel. While getting your website in front of the right audience is about developing content that pleases Google, moving that audience down the sales funnel is about developing content that speaks directly to them.
You’ll need to get a clear idea of your target customer, including their search and purchasing behaviours, and create content based on the insights you’ve gathered – a process that forms a core part of the Growth Partners DigitalArchitect.
Mapping content to customer lifecycle
Good content serves a specific purpose. Before you put pen to paper, you should know the goal of the content, over and above filling out a webpage.
The best content is carefully mapped to specific stages of the customer lifecycle:
- Top of funnel: Blogs, videos and infographics are particularly effective during the research and discovery phases.
- Middle of funnel: During the awareness and consideration phases a customer will be looking for the deeper information that content like case studies, whitepapers and ebooks can deliver.
- Bottom of funnel: On-page content like offers, countdown timers and ‘Buy Now’ buttons can drive a customer toward conversion.
Why content needs SEO
The term ‘search engine optimisation’ is now so ubiquitous that it might start to feel meaningless. But if anything, the importance of SEO is only increasing.
The fact is that search engines, especially Google, now serve as the gatekeepers of the internet. Can you remember the last time you manually typed a URL into your browser? It’s more likely that you type in an approximation of the site you’re looking for, get redirected to a search engine results page, and click on a link.
By optimising your content for search engines, you’ll ensure that you get in front of the sort of customer who is looking for exactly what you offer, right at the moment that they need it.
What is a content strategy?
Website content is a deep and complex discipline. It’s not something that can be taken lightly, nor attacked with a slap-dash approach. It instead demands careful consideration and execution. It demands a strategy.
A content strategy directs the planning, development and management of your website content. Crafting this strategy demands a deep knowledge of your unique value proposition, audience and competitors, as well as SEO techniques. With the expert help of Growth Partners, such a strategy will be developed as part of your DigitalArchitect.
How much does a content audit cost?
A content audit is the perfect place to start for organisations looking to enhance or rebuild their website. For those looking to go down this path, you may (understandably) want to get to the brass tacks of the matter: how much does a website content audit cost?
There is an element of ‘how long is a piece of string?’ to this question. Some websites are made up of a dozen or so pages, others have thousands. The price of your content audit will be reflective of the work involved: the larger the site, the higher the price.
The Growth Partners DigitalArchitect offers an alternative. This is far more than a simple audit – it’s a complete analytic program that provides you with the building blocks for your digital strategy. It is based on the scientific analysis of hard data, and takes the guesswork out of the process. It offers a comprehensive understanding of buyer behaviour, and how to use this information to accelerate your growth. It also reveals competitor activity, the size of your online opportunity, projected revenue streams, and a content development roadmap for all your marketing activities.
The DigitalArchitect isn’t a cost, it’s an investment, and one that has the potential to offer up incredible returns. Contact us today for a consultation with Growth Partners Director Steve Bambury today.
