Make Your Website Content Count
Every website needs to have great content. Content is the key to improving your search engine ranking, and even more importantly, increasing the number of visitors and return business. Not only does the copy need to be great, but digital deliverables, such as images, videos, white papers, as well as internal links show that your company is knowledgeable within its industry.
These diverse yet effective forms of content provide real insight and value to visitors. Your website needs to show that your brand is the solution people need and should make them want to keep coming back for more.
Do Your Homework: Market Research
Research is the first step to understanding your target audience and market. Brand analysis and market research help us understand your target audience’s needs and influence them to take action.
However, you’re not simply looking for an action such as buying a product, but for your visitors to stay on the site looking for more information and interacting. The more you understand your customers, the more you can speak their language and pique their interest.
One of the best ways to know your target audience is to know your competition and how they’re addressing their audience. Then, craft content based on market research, competitor analysis, and keyword research. Social media also plays a large part in crafting your content. Find where your target audience frequents via LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
Reading reviews, especially bad reviews, will help you understand a problem. Then, craft content addressing the problem and how to solve it. The next step is enhancing your content through digital deliverables.
Digital Deliverables Create Valuable Content
The main goal of content is to show knowledge and value. People are interested in videos or things they can download at a later time. Visitors are also searching for proof that the brand they’re looking into is really the solution they need. Your site needs to not only have compelling graphics and words, but really great content that you can give for free to the visitors. This would include knowledge, in the form of videos and white paper (a long PDF or doc that expands on your expertise or research once a month).
All of this contributes to improving the user experience. You need to be sure that what the visitor sees compels them to come back, because they gained something informational, inspirational, or solved a problem they had after viewing your videos or other digital deliverables.
Internal Links Are Key
Not only is quality content the way to boost your search engine (let’s face it, Google) rankings, but internal links are what search engines are looking for to improve those rankings. Content and links work hand-in-hand. Internal links strengthen your content by keeping visitors on your site longer and keeping them engaged. Utilize internal linking by speaking in a conversational manner with long-tail keywords, then linking to pages that continuously add value to the reader.
On the other hand, using external links can help your pages or posts perform better. However, using too many external links on one page takes visitors off your site, and could negatively affect page rank. More importantly, if you’re linking to a site that is not as relevant to your brand or acts like spam, you could lose page rank. 2-3 internal links for longer content, and 2 external links are recommended.
External links can be helpful, but be cautious about the amount you use and where they take your visitors. Providing long-form content with numerous digital deliverables and multiple internal links is the best way to rank well, engage visitors, and increase return business.
Whether its downloading a helpful resource or taking a journey through your website, content and links matter in 2017. Creative MMS is well versed in conducting brand analysis and market research to better understand your audience.
Contact Us to discuss your next project and be amazed at how much more effectively your audience interacts with your business.