Engaging content will distinguish you from your competition. Over the past decade, businesses have learned that good content gets them website visits, and if they like it, their trust as well. By creating valuable content your customers can learn from, you’re making it easier for them to make an informed decision.
Effectively, you’re empowering your readers by giving them the information they need to complete a task, while simultaneously showing them what they can expect from you.
What Is Good Content For A Website?
Professional content creators know that content writing can make or break a website. Too much fancy storytelling and you lose your customers’ interest. Too little content means you leave them uninformed and send them somewhere else.
On top of striking that balance, your website content needs to have SEO writing at the heart of it, helping search engines find your valuable content to put it in front of your prospects.
In the simplest terms, written website content is every piece of text on your website. That includes:
- The intro on your home page
- The paragraphs on your about us page
- Blog posts
- Press releases
- The call-to-action above your contact form
- Every single product or service description
- Your team member bios
- Any downloadable content
The chances are, your website is already completely stuffed with content. Well written content is useful, educational and thought-provoking. It’s written in the right tone of voice and should synergise with all of your company’s marketing goals and objectives.
Does this describe your current website content?
The most comprehensive way to find out how useful your current website content is, is by performing a web content audit.
It’s easy to think of your website as a self-sufficient being. Creating a new website can be a lengthy process, and once your site goes live it can be tempting to leave it to support itself, never having the ambition to update or add content to the pages.
further reading
Take a look at this post on conducting a web content audit and think about how you’d start looking at your website content.
Creating Captivating Content
Content creators are in the business of generating ideas and turning those ideas into something digestible.
In a previous blog post, we outlined 7 benefits of content marketing for growing businesses. Whether you’re a multinational corporation or a two-person start-up, the benefits of content marketing are plain to see.
Those ideas that content creators devise? They turn into blog posts. They become marketing campaigns. They help your sales team out of a cold lead rut. They flip your marketing department on its head, generating more business than ever before.
One of the most significant benefits of hiring a content marketing professional is their creative outlook. Where you might see a product description, they might see a press release and a product reveal. Opportunity is where you find it.
top tip
If you’re considering creating content, use our SMART marketing goals template to make sure you know what you want to achieve.
Here are some content writing solutions to consider, and how they can benefit your business.
1. Rewriting Your Website Content
After a website content audit, you might feel that your web content needs a total overhaul. If your website has been live for longer than 12 months, it’s likely that a lot has changed.
It’s not unusual for businesses to completely rewrite their website content each year and republish all of their blogs. It keeps everything fresh and up-to-date.
Don’t be pretentious about your website content. The most important information should always be retained, but amending it in clearer or more suitable language may be required over time. You’re a growing, evolving business and your content should reflect this.
2. SEO Content Writing
Your website content also needs to take search engine optimisation into account. Writing engaging content is only half of the process. The other half is making sure you’re using the words, terms, and phrases your customers are using so they can find you easily.
Example: If you sell designer trainers, are your customers searching for your company name? Or are they searching for “exclusive designer trainers” and “limited edition sports shoes”? Using these phrases in your content will make sure search engines match your pages up with the customers searching for these exact terms.
When it comes to SEO writing, professionals take great care finding the right keywords for your business. Unless you’re experienced in search engine optimisation, completing this research can be a time-consuming and complex task.
However, there are some great online resources to help you figure it out for yourself. Google’s SEO Starter Guide is the most comprehensive (but takes a little time to get through.)
An SEO content writing service will give your website the well-researched and optimised content it needs. And you won’t need to do anything at all.
3. Creating Blog Content
In a world of user-generated content, be an industry leader. Blog posts used to be a place to copy and paste your business press PRs and talk about new team hires.
Now, they’re the number one way to keep your website full of fresh, valuable content, and search engine-loving keywords.
Every business treats their blog differently. Some use it to post something new several times a week, using set topics to give them a strong foundation. For example:
- Monday: Industry headline news for the coming week
- Tuesday: An innovation within the industry
- Thursday: A promotional piece about products or services/PR piece adapted for blog
- Once a month: CEO or Director’s opinion piece
No matter how you choose to use your blog, it needs to be kept alive with regular posts. A dead blog attracts nobody. There’s nothing more off-putting to a visitor than reading part-way through an article only to find that the information is out of date, or worse, no longer relevant.
If you republish any of your blogs, you can add a note that informs the reader it’s been updated.
The most crucial first step when creating a blog is to form a schedule.
top tip
Consider the days of the week or month when you see the most activity on your social media accounts - including LinkedIn. These are the best days to share your blog posts.
Coming up with blog topics doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but to a content creator, every subject has an explorable angle.
News headlines, interesting facts, viral adverts and even breakthrough aspects of popular culture can all be used to make your products and services appeal to your market.
4. Guest Blogs
Guest posting is slightly different. Rather than only posting articles and long-reads by your team, shaking it up with an outside voice can add a bit of flavour!
Choosing your guest blogger takes a little bit of research. Think about who the “influencers” are within your industry, and who seems to get the most feedback on their social media posts (LinkedIn is a great place to start.)
Are they a thought leader in your industry? Do they have unique qualifications? Can you see them bringing a new audience with them if they blogged on your website? All of these questions are things you should be asking yourself while you look for your next guest blogger.
Also, watch out for guest bloggers contacting you. If you have a great website/product, it’s natural that people may want to link to you or review it.
Watch out for untrustworthy link builders and people who are looking for a free gift.
Here are some ways guest posting on your company blog can help your content stand out.
Idea Generation
Working with a guest blogger means adding another brain to your creative mix. Sharing topics can lead to even more compelling ideas for content, and sometimes one idea can fragment into two, three or even a series of related blog posts.
New Readers
An experienced guest blogger will have an army of readers who trust their opinions and have a genuine interest in what they want to say. When they bring their insights to your website, their content writing will bring their readers to you. That means more clicks, more leads to warm up, and more effortless inbound marketing.
Credibility
By hosting posts by content creators other than your marketing team, you’re showing that your business listens to influential outside voices. It’s much easier to gain trust from your readers if you share information from a range of sources.
The credibility your chosen influencer has built within their industry will also lend itself to your blog, raising your content from business blog to industry leading media outlet.
Link Building
When you ask another professional content creator to start writing content for your website, you’re gaining another location to place your link out there. Share their link on your website and share yours on theirs - or even better, return their favour with a guest blog of your own - and you’ll get brownie points from Google.
remember
Link building gained itself a bad reputation thanks to companies loading up their websites with links to irrelevant sites in exchange for payment. These days, search engines prefer it if your website links to a number of relevant, quality websites.
5. Social Media Content Writing
In the world of professional content creation, social media is an exciting area to explore. And yet its full potential is still being ignored by thousands of businesses.
Why? Because they don’t want to do it. So many businesses seem to be annoyed by social media content rather than excited by it. Raise your hand if you’ve said any of the following statements before.
- I don’t have time to spend on social media.
- I don’t know what to put out there on social media.
- Nobody pays any attention to social media anyway.
- I’d rather do something productive with my time.
- I don’t know how social media works.
The truth is, millions of potential customers are using social media every single day. Instagram has 500 million active monthly users. Can you afford to ignore a fraction of that audience?
You might not think your business is relevant to the types of people using social media platforms, but that’s where you’re wrong. Data in the table below from eMarketer shows that users of all ages are using Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. A percentage of those people will cross over into your ideal target market, whether that’s now or in ten years.
Social media is where your content gets creative. Brands are finding ever more innovative ways to bring customers in from Twitter, Instagram and even Reddit, generating leads from social media and finding new ways to build brand awareness.
You were right to think that this can be a time-consuming endeavour. This is precisely why so many businesses of all sizes are using content experts to create their social media content, so they can keep on top of the conversation while still generating leads. Social media marketing is effective if you do it right.
Where Do I Start?
Good content for a website comes in all shapes and guises, but as highlighted in this article, what’s more important is the quality. Make sure your published website content is valuable and up-to-date, then start working on new content.
Are you ready to start using all these tips to transform your business’s website content? Read our article about how to create amazing content!
