Website content is critical to the success of your business. The best content for your website is content that informs your audience about what your company does. It educates readers about how you can solve their problems. Most importantly, it answers the questions your audience is asking.
Creating valuable and relevant content for your website also helps you in search engine results, which increases traffic to your website. With well-written and well-structured website content, you can generate qualified leads and convert visitors into customers.
Every piece of content you create for your website must answer these questions: Who is it for? Why are you writing it? How should you create it?
Always keep in mind what a specific piece of content is for. You should know who your audience is and create your content specifically for them. If you're selling pet supplies, your audience is pet owners. If you're selling cybersecurity software, your audience is cybersecurity professionals. Answer the questions they are asking.
However, your audience isn't one homogenous category. To differentiate among various segments of your market, create buyer personas. These are fictional representations with detailed descriptions representing each of your audience segments. Gather information about:
This will help you create even more specific pieces of content, truly answering the questions your target market is asking.
You should have a clear goal for every piece of content you write. Do you want to inform your audience on a subject? Compare your services to competitors? Show your customers how to use your products? Get them to buy?
Good website content has a well-defined purpose. It's important to narrow down the focus of each piece of content you create. It helps you map your content against a specific stage of the sales funnel. This is the journey your target market goes through on the way to becoming customers. For every piece of content you create, you should define where it fits in the sales funnel.
The best website content provides value to your audience. It can be long-form content that's comprehensive or it can be punchy and persuasive short pieces. It's important that you write clear, crisp copy. Write short, simple sentences. Avoid jargon and corporate lingo. Illustrate what you mean. And optimize everything using meta titles and descriptions, header tags, and relevant keywords.
Keep in mind that there are essential elements to good website content. Follow these guidelines:
Let’s take a step back and look at the website as a whole. The basic contents of a website are both informational and relate to the layout. Here is the information you need to be sure to include:
How you decide to set this information up is your decision, but an easy-to-navigate website is essential to outperform the competition. It takes a visitor around 0.05 seconds to form a first impression of your website, and 94% of their judgment is design-related. If they see something that’s messy and confusing, and they can’t find the information they need, they will make related assumptions about what it is like to do business with your company.
So how can web design support your ability to convey the key information in a way that attracts potential customers to you and inspires their curiosity? Here are a few tips:
As you can see, there is more to website content than your blog, although, your blog is an important piece of it. There is more to website content than text. The best content for your website is a combination of text and multimedia.
Here is some text-based content you can include on your website.
You can also create or integrate different kinds of media for your website, such as:
There are different types of content writing. Website content is a major category. Others, such as email and social media posts, also play a key role in your overall marketing and communication strategy.
The three most popular and effective types of content writing are case studies, pre-produced videos, and eBooks or whitepapers that prospective users can download and read, according to a 2018 study by the Content Marketing Institute. Once you’ve created a website to be proud of, it’s time to fill it in with content of these types.
Of these most popular content types, marketers that were surveyed for the study said that eBooks/whitepapers were the most effective at driving conversions and generating new business. That is because these long-form pieces of content are located at the bottom of the marketing funnel, educating customers in-depth about the exact benefits and outcomes they will gain by choosing you over the competition. Putting these pieces behind a form is a great way to gain contact information and other insights about potential leads.
Though case studies are very popular and necessary to create, they are less effective at converting new business in and of themselves, because they are located closer to the top of the funnel. A case study is a storytelling summary of a client relationship or project where your services or product have led to success. While this content will get potential customers interested in learning more, it’s not as likely to convince them to buy all on its own.
Though videos are the most-consumed content on the Web, they don’t show up as either effective or ineffective in the study. While you might want to eventually create some videos to meet user expectations and engage different types of audiences, this may be best prioritized as an evolution of your content strategy, not its foundation.
Defining which content is best for your website requires an understanding of your audience, keyword research, and a close evaluation of your competition.
The good news is, you can gain all those insights with DemandJump. DemandJump automates content strategy, keyword research, and competitor analysis.
Simply type in the topic you want to rank for, and the platform shows you where you are losing to competitors, and a prioritized list of the exact pieces of content to create.
Our product not only helps you decide on website content ideas more easily but also rank and perform better at the end of content production. Get started writing content that ranks, today!