High quality content is crucial to the success of any website in order to retain visitors and have a high ranking on search engines. Of course the design of the website is essential in making a good first impression on your visitors, but the content of the website is what will keep them coming back.
Leading search engines like Google are very particular when it comes to the content of a website. If your website does not have enough quality content then it simply will not rank highly within search results. Google doesn’t see how your website ‘looks’ to visitors, so all it cares about is content, content, and content.
It’s important to remember that internet users need a reason to keep visiting your site. Everyone has a limited amount of time to spend on-line and you need to offer your visitors something that will tempt them away from Facebook for 10 minutes, to see what your site has to offer.
It’s important therefore not just to have original content, but also to vary the content regularly in order to entice visitors to return to your site again and again. The question of how often content should be added to a site is one we are asked a lot. The answer of course is as often as possible!
In truth the answer depends on the type of site concerned. Obviously a news / information site needs new content on almost a daily basis in order to remain relevant and attract a regular flow of visitors. For other sites perhaps adding just a couple of new pages a month is sufficient to keep the site looking active.
Google will penalise sites which simply do not change their content at all for months on end, so whatever kind of site you have you must try to add some new content on a regular basis.
In the past websites have tended to rely on using page titles and meta data such as the common keyword and description tags to encourage Google to rank their sites highly for certain keywords or phrases. To some extent search engines relied on the content within these special tags because it was much quicker and easier for them to process pages this way.
However with improvements in computing power search engines now have algorithms to properly analyse the entire content of a page, and most therefore ignore meta tags entirely when it comes to page ranking. The exception is the title tag of a page which is still considered an important indicator of the page contents.
Keywords are the king of the SEO world, and if you want to have a higher ranking on the search engines you need to understand what keywords your potential customers are searching on. Search engines look for keywords within your website content to determine what a page is about.
Using the right keywords on a site can push it up the search engine rankings, but be careful! If you overuse a keyword search engines can penalise your site, this is known as ‘keyword stuffing’ and is a common problem with older sites and content.
This all leaves one important question. How do I get content for my site? Clearly one option is to write the content yourself, and if this is something you feel comfortable doing then it’s also the cheapest option.
On the other hand many business owners simply do not have enough time to spend on developing high quality and original content for their website. In these situations a professional copywriter may be your best option. A good copywriter will take a brief which outlines the main themes to be discussed, and produce a high quality, well written article covering this theme and incorporating any necessary keywords. At Webfuel we can create a blog post of 500 words on a topic of your choosing from as little as £35+vat.
Finally, it’s important to remember that any content on your site is primarily there for one reason; to generate revenue for you and your business. Content generation is a form of marketing and like any form of marketing you get out what you put in. A website should be a living breathing document that grows with time and reflects the dynamic nature of your business…. so get writing.
