Why Your Website Needs Content (and how to get it)

As a web design company (among other things), we understand the importance of websites. But they are totally useless without quality content. You could spend tens of thousands of dollars with the best web design agency in the world, but it won’t help your business without equally good content to back it up.

That’s all just a way of restating a common marketing slogan: Content is King. Content can make or break a website. Content can be the difference between a lost lead and a closed sale. But for too many businesses, website content is an afterthought.

Quality content will help you build rapport with customers and will improve your SEO – making an investment in content an obvious choice. Especially because so many local businesses are still ignoring its vital importance. Today, we’ll look at why your website’s content absolutely needs to be top notch.

Content Writing for Your Customers

The first priority in content writing should always be to connect with your customers. There are plenty of marketers who want to talk about SEO-focused writing, but real people should always come first.

The focus of your content should be to express your brand’s personality in a way that resonates with customers. Making a connection with real people is the way your business will grow – no matter what you sell or provide. Depending on where your content will appear, you should look to attract, engage, or sell with your content writing.

The time spent writing your content isn’t just about your main text block. You should write customer-centric content all across your page – from your calls-to-action to the about us page. Keep your ideal customer in mind the whole time and write in a way that speaks their language.

Content Writing for SEO

Once you have written for your customers, you should also tweak your content for search engine optimization. SEO is, by necessity, built on the power of words. Search engine bots (at least for now) understand words better than any other medium of communication – so make sure you are using the right words to power your SEO efforts.

The basis of this optimization should be keyword research. A full exploration of keyword research is well beyond the scope of this article, but I will say a few things about keyword research and content optimization. You need to find out what your potential customers are searching for – what they are actually searching for, not what you think they are searching for.

Once you know their search terms, you can work back through your content and make sure you are using that same language. This isn’t an excuse for keyword stuffing, just a chance to work targeted keywords into your (already written) organic content.

Tips for Content Writing

I’ve laid out the basic ideas behind why you need high-quality content on your site, but that doesn’t help you actually get good content. Just like any task, writing content is a skill that can take years to master; but there are a few tips that will help you get started.

  • Research Others: I’m not saying you should steal, just get an idea of what is working in your industry. Try searching in a major city in another part of the country and researching the top three or four results. This can help get your creativity flowing and give some direction to your content.
  • Write for Your Audience: During the entire process, keep your target audience in mind. Every word should be crafted to resonate with their needs and wants. That is easier said than done, but it is a good goal to shoot for.
  • Work with Your Site in Mind: Website content is more than just an extended blog post. It needs to fit around the structure of your site – you should write with an idea of what you want your finished website to look like.
  • Edit and Revise: Content with spelling and grammatical errors can seriously harm your brand’s reputation. Once you’ve written the first draft, run it through a spell checker (I use Grammerly), re-read it out loud, and have a friend or co-worker go over it as well.

Content is King

Crafting quality content is absolutely essential to the success of your website. Investing in a website is a big deal for your business, don’t sabotage it from the beginning with bad content. Instead, get the most out of your investment with content that is well written, directed at your target audience, and optimized for search engines.

A lot of businesses choose to write their own content, and that’s great if you have the time and skill. But if you don’t want to invest the time necessary to craft high-quality content, you should consider hiring a content writer. At Fusion Group USA, we have highly skilled writers on staff that can help you clean up your existing content or write totally new material for your website.

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