How to Get Your content found
Why should someone find your website?
I’ve built it, where are they?
Do you remember that film “Field of Dreams”? You know the one, where Kevin Costner builds a baseball diamond in the middle of nowhere, because the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson told him that if he builds it they’ll come. Well, it seems the phrase I find that I use most often when trying to explain the value of original content creation is “just because you’ve built it doesn’t mean they’ll come”. Building a website is only the first step for your business; you have a long road ahead of you.
The problem is there are a huge number of websites out there on the internet; all of them jostling to get themselves up the rankings and get on the first page of search results because, let’s face it, it isn’t often we venture too far past the first page or two! When I say huge amount, I do actually mean huuuuuuge! Now that everybody and their grandma are online, in just about every corner of the world, can you imagine the amount of activity that takes place on the internet every minute of every day? 41,000 Facebook posts every second, 1.8 million ‘likes’ every minute, 278,000 tweets every minute, 20,000,000 photo views on Flickr every minute, 204,000,000 emails sent every minute, 2,000,000 Google searches every minute and, most importantly to you,
571 NEW WEBSITES CREATED EVERY SIXTY SECONDS!
That is what you are competing against. When you unveil your company’s website, there are another 570 appearing at the same time.
How do I get noticed?
There was a time when you could use somewhat underhand or “black hat” techniques to get ahead. You could employ a firm who would promise to get you on the front page of every search engine by using these techniques. They’d use keyword stuffing to the extent where your content was barely coherent, they’d use unrelated metatags, they’d include links to thousands of unrelated websites that have nothing whatsoever to do with your product or service, and they’d even use a white font on a white background so the totally unrelated information written there was invisible to visitors.
There was a time when you could use somewhat underhand or “black hat” techniques to get ahead. You could employ a firm who would promise to get you on the front page of every search engine by using these techniques. They’d use keyword stuffing to the extent where your content was barely coherent, they’d use unrelated metatags, they’d include links to thousands of unrelated websites that have nothing whatsoever to do with your product or service, and they’d even use a white font on a white background so the totally unrelated information written there was invisible to visitors.
The problem with that was the people who work at Google are not stupid. They tend to notice when people are cheating. (I use Google as an example because they are by far the biggest of the search engines.) Google want their search results to be the most relevant that they can be for their users; they want to get the correct information to you first time every time. That is the key word here: RELEVANCE. Yes, the use of keywords is important, yes the correct use of metatags is important, but most important of all is the use of fresh, original content that visitors to your site will find relevant to their search.
How do I keep it fresh?
Properly constructed, informative and relevant content on your site is vital. It is what greets the visitor as they find your landing page; it intrigues them and keeps them from quickly bouncing off to another site. What, though, keeps them coming back? I recommend the implementation of a blog page, whether as a separate entity linked to your site or, preferably, as a section of the site itself. The use of a blog or news page on your site means that your content is constantly being updated, keeping your site relevant and your visitors informed.
Properly constructed, informative and relevant content on your site is vital. It is what greets the visitor as they find your landing page; it intrigues them and keeps them from quickly bouncing off to another site. What, though, keeps them coming back? I recommend the implementation of a blog page, whether as a separate entity linked to your site or, preferably, as a section of the site itself. The use of a blog or news page on your site means that your content is constantly being updated, keeping your site relevant and your visitors informed.
What should I include?
The regular posting of informed, industry relevant articles shows you have specialist subject knowledge. It shows that you are at the very cutting edge of your industry and visitors will keep coming back to see what other pearls of wisdom you have to share. You can comment on, and link to, articles about your industry that others have written, or have featured on the mainstream news. You can do individual featurettes on your various products or aspects of the service you provide, showing why your product/service is the one that stands out from the crowd. You can include staff profiles or anything that happens in the day to day running of your company. Obviously you can showcase any new product or service that you have added to your portfolio.
The regular posting of informed, industry relevant articles shows you have specialist subject knowledge. It shows that you are at the very cutting edge of your industry and visitors will keep coming back to see what other pearls of wisdom you have to share. You can comment on, and link to, articles about your industry that others have written, or have featured on the mainstream news. You can do individual featurettes on your various products or aspects of the service you provide, showing why your product/service is the one that stands out from the crowd. You can include staff profiles or anything that happens in the day to day running of your company. Obviously you can showcase any new product or service that you have added to your portfolio.
All of this effort is not going to be wasted as it will help attain a higher search engine ranking, which will in turn:
- give you greater visibility
- have people wanting to return to your site
- promote your business
- give you a higher market share
- increase sales
- give you a greater ROI
Where will I find the time?
What will be the cost of all this content creation? I work hard, I don’t have time to sit down and write an article or blog post, and time is money. The question you should be asking yourself is what is the cost if I don’t? Business owners are realising that the most important aspect of their marketing strategy is that of content marketing. Robert Rose, Chief Strategy Officer of the Content Marketing Institute wrote:
“We mostly rationalize the value of content against the priorities of individual functions of the business rather than its entirety. In other words, we look at content as a feature of the business, not as an ultimate strategic value of the business … Content created and managed well, repeatedly, defines a business. That’s why it’s so important.”
The question is how can you get your voice heard in the world’s biggest choir? The answer comes from the company that built your website for you. Zero-One Design features a copywriting department with several years of experience of ghost-writing blogs for a wide variety of industries.
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