Is Your Content Worth A Read ?

How to Improve your Site Content

Ever since Google started clamping down on bad linking practices, site owners, webmasters and SEO’s have all been rushing to add more and more content to their websites, albeit in many cases, completely forgetting the ultimate aim of doing so, to make a sale or get an enquiry. It never fails to amaze me how many websites I visit which have blog posts, sometimes frequent, although often not, which are poorly written, include numerous spelling mistakes and the post itself has no real aim.  If a post or page does not offer quality information about the implied topic, why would anyone bother to read it, or click through to another page on your site?

This posts aim is to help people to focus on what their blog needs to achieve. I’m using blog posts as the main example here, but the same (in most cases) applies to page content too.

So forgetting about SEO for the moment, here are a few pointers to help improve your site content:

1. Title Tags are the first thing people see when they do a search in Google (other search engines are available 🙂 ) so that description must fit with the content, it’s usually the first thing which is written when blogging, so always come back to it again before publishing and make sure it’s a good, concise description of what the page is about.

2. The first paragraph is about the only part of the page which you can be fairly sure everyone will read skim through. So next check that it elaborates on the tile or answers a question people would be keying in when they found your page. As an example, let’s say the page in question is there to draw in traffic which you ultimately want to send to a couple of your main sales pages, I’m going to use a relevant example here of Swindon SEO, seeing as that’s what I do. So I have my Swindon SEO sales page on the main site targeting people who are searching for a local SEO company. I write my blog post about a case study of a company in Swindon, write the title to attract the appropriate audience to click through, say “Swindon SEO Company helps Travel Company increase Sales” then the first paragraph explains how it was done, what the objectives were and what was achieved.

3. Whilst most people won’t read the whole page, the few that do are most likely your hot prospects, so make doubly sure that everything on the page is relevant, well written and builds trust. Trust can be gained by either giving examples, facts and figures, or as this post does, explain a concept which you understand, but the target audience doesn’t, but keep the terminology to a level which is understood by that target audience. In my case I avoid using SEO terms like “latent semantic indexing”, “keyword cannibalisation” or “supplemental index”, instead opting for brief descriptions of the terms instead. It’s a fine balance between creating trust and baffling them with jargon, so consider who your audience are every time you are about to use a technical term.

4. Make it easy for the reader to go to the next step. Use a call to action at the end of the post and part way through, if appropriate, but avoid everything you write being a complete sales pitch. Yes you are selling, but not like an 80’s car salesman, more like the consultative sale. I know that you don’t know what their exact problems are, but if you have structured your page well, know your industry and your target market, you can make some pretty accurate assumptions. (and yes I know what they say about assumptions, depending if you have done a course on sales or watched the film Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

So, link through to other pages, particularly those which you want people to read, but also to other reference pages, there’s no harm in doing that because all your content is great right? and it all gives the site visitor the opportunity to get back to those main sales pages right?

5. Have an overall objective for the post and make it easy for the visitor to reach that objective. Oh, did I just make that point in number 4? Well it is important and needs emphasising, so make sure you lead them in the direction you want, whilst giving them opportunities to find the information and reference materials they want. If you do this well, they should still end up calling you or finding your contact form.

If you need some ideas to get your creative juices flowing, see my recent post about ideas for business blogging topics

If you don’t already have a blog on your site we can install and configure WordPress  for you and help you get started with your content, or in some cases write it for you, if you have any questions please contact us for more details.