Why content is important for websites

Have you ever considered why content is important for websites? It is the building block to develop reputation and trust. So often I see small business websites with an image on the home page and nothing further. The site may look great, but the user is likely to bounce straight off as there is nothing to help them. They have come there with a need. The job of the web content-creator is to understand their customers' intent and provide the content to resolve that need.

Grab this excellent opportunity to share your knowledge and expertise and provide a solution for your users. Engage and educate your prospective customers with valuable content marketing. Below I've put together seven reasons why content is important for websites. Hopefully, this will help you build a better site and a more robust business.

1. Valuable Content Influences Conversion

Great content is important for websites as it helps influence conversion. According to Intechnic, 57% of marketers have acquired new customers from their blog. That is to say, by setting yourself apart from your competitors and by showcasing your subject matter expertise, you can bring peace of mind to your consumers.

Your web users are searching using keywords to find the business that will solve their problem. There is an opportunity not only to solve their problem but to go above and beyond. Provide better quality information and images with thoroughness, and you will win over your prospects with the value.

2. Content is Important for Websites to Generate Leads

If you can solve a consumer need by showcasing professional and concise content on your website, you are ahead of the game. By answering their problem with great content, your website user is more likely to remember your brand. When your brand is on the mind of your consumers, you stand out above your competition. If your content is showing up all over the internet, you increase your chances for more sales. When your prospects need your product or service, they will remember the company with excellent user experience and content.

3. SEO Value of Content

The SEO value of content is undeniable today as the leading Search Engine—Google, rates websites based on the quality, relevance, and uniqueness of website content. Search is carried out via typing keywords in a search engine. By creating more articles, video and imagery, you provide more opportunities for different keywords to be used and found.

Besides these reasons adding fresh content is in itself a ranking factor. Another ranking factor is Backlinks or links from a highly rated site to your site. If you create a significant and unique content piece, others might find it valuable enough to link to on your web page. Consequently, this can help to increase your domain rank and ability to be found in search.

4. Writing Evergreen Content for Business Websites

Evergreen content is the type that never grows old. If you have a few pieces of evergreen content, you can extend the lifespan of your articles. Consequently, this can allow more customers to find you. Bringing users continually back to your site increases the likelihood of backlinks to your pages and indeed business.

5. Shareable Content

Fresh content can be shared widely from one interested person to an exponential number of people via social media. As this type of marketing is free (except for the time and expertise to create the content), it is an invaluable and cost-effective way to generate leads. Certain types of content are more popular than others. In particular, Infographics, How-to's and Checklists are some of the most sought-after pieces of content you can create if well researched.

6. Accessibility

Accessibility of your website means that people can shop or compare products on the internet 24/7. Website owners need to ensure there are no barriers that prevent interaction on their site. Barriers can include content functionality such as non-working contact forms or shopping carts, broken links and menus. It could also include a lack of correct information such as opening hours. Also have you considered the needs of those who are sight-impaired or have other disabilities? With valuable and up-to-date, accessible content, you are in effect, having a permanent window on the street to your services. Accessibility extends the ability of your business to attract leads and customers even while you are sleeping.

7. Differentiate your Product or Service

Content on your website enables you and your brand to showcase your expertise concerning your products or service. If you set yourself apart from your competition, you allow yourself to have an edge. There are many ways to differentiate yourself. You can choose a different tone of voice or look and feel. Perhaps more extensive types of content will be the way forward. Consider including whitepapers, eBooks and case studies and a blog to build a show-stopping business content strategy. By analysing your competition, you can see what their offerings are and do a more thorough job.

Conclusion

As you plan your content marketing, think about the information gaps. Perhaps also consider the platform types available for your budget and product offerings. If you know your users' intent, you then can match the correct variety of content to meet that intent. For example, an eBay shopper wants to know all about the product they are searching. By inserting the competitive keywords into the copy with instructions on how to use the product, you can come up a winner.
Here is a non-exhaustible list of types of content to consider. Let us know how we can help you with your content creation and marketing.

Social Media
Email Marketing
Blog
Listicle
EBook
How to
Case Studies
Webinar
Logo design
Graphics
video
Photography
White papers
Infographics

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Which web host should I choose?

I want to explain web hosting before getting into hosting services. A website needs to be placed on a Web Server to be available on the Internet (or the world wide web). Web hosts are companies that lease Server space and accompanying technology to make your website accessible on the Internet. Choosing a web host need not be difficult, but it does require a little research. As a beginner, price is a factor for choosing web hosting, so we need to consider this in the search for the right provider. But the three main factors to take into count after the price are website security, website speed and hosting support.

Website Speed

Website speed is one of the criteria for a great website. We all know that if a site doesn’t load within a couple of seconds, the majority of users will move on. Your site and business will lose trust. To maintain prominent search engine ranking also requires that a website load fast. So how do you achieve this?

The web hosting company where your website “lives” is responsible for making your website load more quickly. If your site is not performing as you expect, contact your web host company and ask them if there is something that can be changed to improve the website speed. The factors to research when considering a top-notch web hosting company and to assure you get excellent website speed are, firstly, the quality of the server, secondly the cache setup, and thirdly perhaps the size of the disc space.

Website Security

Website security includes a bunch of features such as an SSL certificate, backup and scanning. You can tell if your site has an SSL certificate by looking at the beginning of your domain name. Here it should have a small lock icon and an “s” on the end of the http (e.g. https://www.examplewebsite.com.au). When you hover on the lock icon, you will see it says “verified by such and such company”. Hence that company verifies the domain as a legitimate site. The other security features mentioned above help against hackers and malware that can break your website. Check that the web hosting company you are considering offers these critical features in their hosting package.

Hosting Support

One of the reasons for hosting support is to aid you if your website goes down for any length of time. If your web host company offers 24/7 support, you know you can call them in the middle of the night when you noticed your site is down. Or perhaps you are updating your content yourself, and you added a feature such as a plugin and everything crashed.

There are, of course, different types of support. Some hosting companies only offer support to experienced developers. In contrast, others are happy to make the changes you require if you don’t understand what is wrong. It’s a good idea to check this detail before signing. Having the support and daily backups factored into the cost of your hosting gives you peace of mind.

Conclusion

To sum up, compare web hosting companies in your budget that include a quality server, cache setup, SSL certificate, backup, scanning and 24/7 hosting support. Also, you might consider a product-specific host, such as WordPress hosting. In other words, hosting that understands the ins-and-outs of your site coding. If you are unsure about any of this or want it set up right for you, we would be happy to assist. Ask us about hosting.

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5 Basic SEO steps to start your website

In my role as a digital marketer and web developer over the last ten years, I would start to discuss SEO, and be asked, “What is SEO?” So here I will shed some light on the mystique of SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. There are five basic SEO steps that all small business website owners should implement to make sure they get the best website rank in search results. It is not enough to create a website and add the address to your business card. By addressing some basic SEO steps, you can improve your chances of ranking on page one of Google search engine. Hence, your website can become a valuable source of new leads.

1. Keywords and SEO

“If nobody is searching for what you’re writing about,

you won’t get traffic from Google—no matter how hard you try.” Ahrefs

Before looking for keywords, you firstly need to know what your customers want to know. It is essential to research who your customers are and then what needs they have that correspond to your products or service.

Customers have different intents. Some customers want to find a specific website, while others wish to find informational content on a particular topic. Still, others are looking for transactional content to purchase a particular product. It is critical that you understand the users intent to find the keywords that match this intent. By looking at your Google Analytics data, in particular, the queries your uses are making you can get some ideas. Once you obtain this information, you are ready to investigate the keywords that your potential customers are using to see you.

There are many tools to achieve this. One easy tool is Google auto-complete. As you start to type your keywords into the search box, you will see further suggested words to type that real users have already searched. You can go through the alphabet with each keyword and get new ideas.

Other free tools you can use to find keyword suggestions include: Answer the public, Google Trends, Reddit, Content Explorer, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Podcasts, and even the content section of related books. There are professional tools to aid you in this research and to pinpoint the searched volume of each keyword or phrase.

It is necessary to choose long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are phrases containing three or four words or maybe more. These are easier to rank for than just a simple keyword and can hone in on your niche. Once the keywords are discovered—that have ease of ranking and volume of search queries—they need to be assigned to the relevant pages of your website in such a way that the words flow naturally. After this, it’s essential to test your ranking regularly. All site changes will make a difference to the SEO value.

2. Content SEO

The imperative focus of the content on your website is to meet the needs of your consumers. Ensure that your content is updated regularly and provides value to your potential customers. Identify common user problems and focus on genuinely solving these needs. As mentioned above, by looking at your site search data (on Google Analytics), you can see the type of queries and issues your potential customers make. Create content to serve these queries.

Your content must load fast. Consequently, when you add a graphic or image, it must be optimised, so it doesn’t slow down your website. Tinyjpg is an excellent tool for optimising your pictures quickly.

Videos are another content type that can slow down your website if not handled correctly. Videos loaded onto third party sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia will perform better than videos directly uploaded to your website.

There are other technical aspects of your website that also need to be optimised to assure your site loads fast. You can do a speed test here to check that your site is loading preferably in less than two seconds. If your website is slow the next place to look would be your hosting to find out if they can optimise your site for speed.

3. Titles Tags & Meta Descriptions

Titles are the first thing you see when you search on a Search Engine such as Google. They also appear on the top tab of your browser when you open a new page. The Title tag is one of the most important of the basic SEO steps. It is crucial that the title includes your keywords and that the description below compliments this with similar keywords. Make sure your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions are all unique for each page. A Title should have fewer than 60 characters. In comparison, a Meta Description should be fewer than 160 characters to ensure they are not cut-off (truncated) at the end.

The primary purpose of a Meta description is to be descriptive and engaging to entice the reader to click through to your page. Once they click through to your site, they should also find that the description matches the content on your webpage.

4. Image Filenames and ALT Tags

Image file names and ALT tags are basic SEO steps that are often overlooked by website owners. Add images to your website that relate to your product or service. The photos will make the site more enjoyable, but the image file names will create opportunities for you to add keywords that will help your site SEO. The process involves naming these beneficial images with meaningful and descriptive keywords. For example, if you are a chiropractor, you might have a photo of a spine to accompany your article on disc bulge. You could title the image “spine-disc-bulge.jpg”. By separating the keywords with dashes as shown you are making the image readable by robots and hence adding value to your SEO.

ALT tags are another area where you can improve your small business SEO. An ALT tag is an alternate text description applied to the image to provide meaning for search engines and also for screen-reader software. It is necessary to describe the picture, so sight-impaired people can understand what they are looking at on your website. If you are selling a product, the product images and ALT text provide further valuable SEO benefit for your small business.

5. Local SEO

Local SEO is vital for your small business if you operate the type of business that needs local traffic, such as a Pizza Store. The first step for local SEO is to register with Google My Business and utilise all the resources that they offer. Make sure to include your contact details, opening times, reviews, images, and web address. It’s also important to ensure your main details – Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) are consistent across all your marketing. This is a way of building trust with your audience and improving your SEO.

How many times have you used your mobile phone to find a restaurant open near you only to find the listing details are inaccurate! This has unquestionably frustrated me. Make sure you keep your details up-to-date. Because most of us seek local businesses via our mobile phone, it is also essential to have a mobile-friendly website. You can test your site here to make sure it is mobile-ready.

Another way to be more readily found in your community is to submit your website to local and reputable business directories. The more neighbourhood guides you have, the more backlinks you will have to your website. Backlinks are undoubtedly crucial elements that are used by Search Engines to determine your authority on the internet.

Conclusion

This article is just the beginning of the SEO journey. Still, I have certainly covered off the five basic SEO steps that are critical when you start a new website. To look at more technical aspects of your SEO for your small business, contact us. We can address issues such as, minifying your code and caching to speed up your site, optimising the structure of your site and links, toxic backlinks, schema, and more. Get a free audit to discover what you need to get the best website rank in search results. For more information on SEO, check out our SEO page.

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