The Complete Guide to Website Content Creation

In web marketing, it is critical to have a well-thought-out content marketing strategy and provide useful, user-centric content on your website. When businesses struggle with low web traffic or few conversions, they may be lacking in quality content. With that said, it may be time to reflect and improve upon your current web content.

 

 

 

To increase your web traffic, you have to prepare great content that users will want to come to your site to see. Just as users visit news sites to get the latest updates on current events, and video sites to watch their favorite artists’ content, they access different websites with different purposes. If your content does not include any helpful or relevant information for the user, they will have no reason to visit your site, and similarly, if you lack a fair amount of content, then it’s unlikely the user will visit again.

 

 

On Creating Quality Content

 

Google Search Central on creating interesting content:

 

 

What exactly does Google consider “quality” content? In this section, we’re going to explore what makes a piece of content high quality, according to Google’s standards.

 

Providing content the reader wants

Content that responds to users’ needs and matches with what they actively search for will rank higher on google and be clicked on more frequently. With this in mind, you should also select a few keywords that are high in demand (but not overly competitive) and use them several times throughout your content - in both headings and text.

To inquire into the needs of your audience, I recommend using Google Keyword Planner to research the search volume of each keyword.

 

◆ Optimize your website for easy reading and navigation.

Of course, you’ll want to choose a plain, legible font and a legible font size. Next, bold or highlight key pieces of information or express them in a few concise bullet points, so that the reader can skim through and get the gist of your article immediately.

 

◆ Organize your topics with headings.

Add headings and subheadings to make it possible to quickly tell where the beginning and end are of each topic. Your web visitors aren’t going to leisurely read through every single paragraph, and if they cannot find the information they’re looking for in a matter of seconds, they will likely return to Google and try a different site.

Make sure to also set h1 and h2 headings in the HTML code, so that Google can better understand the structure of your article easier, thereby improving SEO.

 

◆ Make the audience your primary focus.

Though SEO should be considered to some extent, ultimately you will do better in the long run creating content for the viewers' benefit. Setting irrelevant keywords on your site or using hidden text are violations of Google’s policies, and in general, content that prioritizes SEO will lose the trust of visitors. The goal should always be to provide useful actionable info, or in any case, to create genuinely user-centric content.

 

Making your content credible

 

◆ Use real statistics and research.

By basing your content around actual data and previous studies, not only does it give off the impression of being well-researched, but now this content isn’t just the rambling opinion of some random person on the internet.

 

Pro tip: try to keep the data from within a year so it doesn’t become outdated too fast.

 

◆ Cite outside sources.

When quoting an outside source, you need to be crystal clear about where it is from and give the original creator credit. The best practice is to clearly state the source website, the author, and provide a link to the source. By linking the original article, you can increase the source’s web visitors so that they too benefit by being referenced.

 

◆ Make it non-promotional.

Especially for content designed for early-stage buyers, like blogs, you don’t want to sneak a sales pitch into an unrelated article. In a 2017 survey by the Content Marketing Institute and SmartBrief, B2B businesses were asked about what sort of content shapes their buying decisions. The third most important factor was that the content is “more educational than promotional in nature.

 

 

Common Types of Content

 

Stock-type content

Stock type refers to content that is continuously in demand by users. One example is the encyclopedia-like site, Wikipedia, which is characterized by its value that does not deteriorate over time. The popularity of these topics doesn’t ever really falter, so if you can consistently create and post stock-type content, you can expect a stable influx of visitors. However, note that if you’ve just recently launched your new website, there won’t be many short term surges of website traffic - to improve your SEO rankings, first, you’ll need to build up the amount of content on your site so Google regards you as an authoritative source in your field.

 

Flow-type content

On the other hand, flow-type content refers to trending topics that are in high demand for a brief period, such as breaking news. The advantage of posting flow-type content is that they are more likely to gain exposure, get shared by readers, and can potentially cause an explosive boost in web traffic. The goal here is to provide the newest updates in the shortest amount of time. In other words, speed tends to trump quality (though you should never sacrifice accuracy!)

 

Whitepapers

A whitepaper in marketing terms is a thoroughly researched piece of long-form content. Whitepapers must be comprehensive and cover a topic that is relevant to your target audience. Then, you can set forms on your website, and ask users to fill in their personal information in exchange for getting to download your whitepaper as a PDF. Like a ‘Contact Us’ form, include the basic fields of name, company, email, phone number, website, and so on. This is an easy way to acquire new lead information, and by passing this info on to your sales team, they can easily make a sales approach.

 

Video content

First of all, video content can do wonders for SEO, because (1) google suggests videos when they respond to keywords at the top of the search results, and (2) SEO rankings depend on how long users typically stay on a page, and by including embedding video in your blogs, you can make the average visit longer and Google will consider your site more important. In addition, video is a highly shareable and engaging form of content, across both social media and email. The more your video content gets shared, the broader your brand awareness and the more exposure you have with new potential customers.

As for what kind of videos to make, you could do demos or unboxings of your products, animated explanations, case studies or customer testimonials, interviews with experts, or share your company culture.

 

Basic Steps for Creating Content

 

Outline your persona

A buyer persona is created by visualizing your ideal target customer. Imagine this fictitious customer in great detail, outlining their age, gender, occupation, hobbies, aspirations in life, and so on. Next, identify the main challenges they’re facing and what sort of information they would want to know. In this process, you will gain a deeper understanding of the interests of your audience.

 

Create a customer journey map

A customer journey map is a visual depiction of all the steps your customers go through when engaging with your brand. Drawing out a customer journey map allows you to understand the buying process from the customer’s perspective. You can determine which important pieces of information are missing from your site, and other roadblocks in the decision-making process that can be fixed with the creation of new content.

 

Design a content map

A content map is like a blueprint for how your content will be organized throughout your website. By creating a content map, you can confirm whether there are multiple, clear pathways to conversion and if you have any missing or lacking material.

 

 

Website Content Ideas

 

Seminar or Conference Slides

Remember to include a call-to-action (CTA) slide towards the end, like encouraging the audience to fill out a survey form on your website. Another strategy we use is to offer a one-time-only offer to the seminar attendees, like to set up a free marketing consulting session to get an expert to review your marketing systems.

*Seminar slides can often be repurposed as whitepapers for your customers to download and refer to - definitely make full use of these materials!

 

Guide to Industry Terms

If your area of business is very niche or specialized, your customers may have a hard time deciphering the industry jargon. Try putting together a mini-encyclopedia explaining all of these in simple terms. Keep this available for download on your website and make use of it in sales meetings when mentioning the more confusing concepts.

 

Self-Published Books

If your company has published any books in the past, even if they didn’t sell back then, you can re-utilize them as web content.

 

Sales Proposal Slides

A corporate site is sometimes called “a salesman that will work for you 24/7.” Take all of the material you currently use in sales calls and post them online as digital content. You can then approach the users who download this sales-y content. Even better if you can separate this content by product/service so that your sales team will know their area of interest and can more effectively approach prospects.

 

 

The Four Reasons Your Prospect Says “No”

There are generally four main reasons why a prospect rejects an offer or is not yet ready to buy, which we have summed up below. You can prepare specific content that cancels out these concerns and helps your web visitors proceed through the buying process.

 

Not Credible

This is the psychological factor of whether the customer feels they can trust your company. To help your prospects regard you as a legit, credible business, you need them to understand exactly what kind of company you are.

Content-wise, you can accomplish this with a corporate profile and a compilation of your achievements up until now. In addition, you can convince the audience of your expertise by regularly posting articles on topics of interest in your field.

 

Not Essential

This is the question of whether or not they need your product/service. To communicate the necessity of your product/service, you need to make it obvious what problems it solves. To show your prospects that what your offering is relevant to them, you should include case studies on customers from a wide range of industries and backgrounds and (with their permission) share the feedback of some of your successful customers.

 

Not a Good Fit

At this stage, the prospect may be interested in the kind of products you sell, but they are not sure if you fully match their unique business’s needs. For these prospects, you have to clarify your target - who are your products/services designed for, who can benefit most from them. You can do this by expressing your business concept and strengths in your content. As an example, our marketing automation BowNow is perfect for B2B companies and is so simply designed so that even a salesman can operate it.

 

Not Urgent

This is typically the last question in the buying process: do I need this product right now? The prospect is thinking, “Sure, I should probably start using this service, but maybe not right now…,” and if you give them a little push, you can likely close the sale. One strategy to convince them to take action now is to offer a limited-time-only campaign, like offering a 15% discount only in July. You could also create a schedule outlining how long it takes to finalize a contract, install your product, and start seeing results. You could add a note saying, “Get started early because integration can take up to 6 months!”

 

 

In Conclusion

In recent years, with the spread of smartphones and SNS, the buyer behavior model has changed to a style where consumers actively seek out information on the internet and social media that shape their final decisions.

 

By consistently providing valuable information to users via web content, you can attract more prospects, increase your credibility as a company, and promote sales of products/services. Further, if you can create unique, truly quality content, users will naturally want to share it and your brand will be able to reach a wider audience.

 

Take this opportunity to reevaluate your current web content, and start creating even better resources to provide your customers with a positive online experience