In my last post I laid out the basics on telling you how to create your own website content. It provided everything a business owner would need to write far-more compelling website content. In the spirit of the post I want to revisit a point that was made, where that post stated:
Content is King
“If you just tell someone ‘I recognize your problem, and here’s the solution. You should buy it.’ the average consumer will ask (either directly or in their minds) ‘why?’. Clearly stating the benefits of your idea, product or service shows the visitor exactly how they’ll gain or the benefits they get from choosing your solution.”
This is in regards to stating the benefits. As I thought about the post I made, I wondered how many business owners might read the great how to on writing website content and ask the same question: “why?”
Why Do I Need Compelling Website Content?
It’s a fair question to ask, and if you ever wondered why one might need to improve their website content then you’re thinking in the right direction. It all boils down to something simple – the golden rule of SEO is that content is king. Well written website content is important for a number of reasons.
Quality website content
- Engages your Target Audience
- Increases search engine rank and relevant traffic
- Promotes the possibility of gaining quality links
There are far too many companies who depend on their brand visibility in order to drive traffic. Brand power and popularity contests used to do it for local competitors but not anymore. When you have competing brands on the web, the one with better quality content that provides real value to consumers and clients is almost always going to win out both in visibility and conversions.
Keep in mind as I go through these 3 benefits of quality website content that there are also other benefits, such as branding, that I won’t cover. These 3 however are important because these three are the foundation of a strong web presence based on your website content.
Website Content – Engaging your Target Audience
There’s a regular war between copywriters and SEO companies, because those who provide quality content for marketing believe that the emphasis on keyword placement within text sacrifices too much and ruins opportunities for engagement. Ultimately, the goal of your content should be to engage the user with your website content as you attempt to entertain, inform and seduce the reader.
With that said, a delicate balance is also necessary when it comes to SEO because visibility is just as important. You can’t lean too heavily in one direction or another because without SEO you site is never visible in organic search (at least not for relevant terms) and all the top search engine rankings in the world won’t make up for having hideous website content that sends customers in the opposite direction.
When you write with engagement in mind, you form a solid connection with your audience that keeps them around. Not only will they feel like you understand them but they’re more likely to be open to your suggestions and marketing persuasion within the copy. That leads to higher conversion rates and ultimately a bigger payout for business owners.
Website Content – Increasing Search Engine Rank and Relevant Traffic
The quality of your content and how well you research greatly increase your odds of being found for specific search terms. Quality, optimized content is absolutely critical for achieving top rankings – especially for competitive search terms. Pictures, flash and other graphics won’t get a business website to the top of the ranks and without those top listings you’ll never see the traffic.
Think of it this way – every search engine is programmed to crawl a site in a manner that is similar to how people click through links. Information on those sites is indexed and stored as more or less important based on what people are most likely to consider important. Search engines reward those pages where the content and SEO practices match the overall theme.
You’ll get less than stellar results with so-so content that lacks optimization, if you get any results at all.
Website Content – Promoting the Possibility of Gaining Quality Links
Quality links are one of the most influential factors in determining your rank in the search results. Search engines are programmed to recognize your site as an authority when other authority sites are linking to you. Quality website content greatly boosts the likelihood that others will link to your content as a point of reference or to share it.
You can greatly improve your chance for external links by following the steps of successful marketers. Those with the foresight to create regular blogs, articles, press releases and even videos are seeing the benefits in the form of inbound links as others share their insight.
