09 November 2011
Everyone knows that great content is an essential ingredient for the success of any website. Visitors tend to spend longer on sites with well written and informative content. Quality content also helps to establish visitor trust and to enhance the reputation of the publisher. Trust and reputation in turn can be helpful for winning new clients and making more sales.
Search engines too rely on high quality content in order to serve the best possible results for each keyword query. Websites which frequently add new content are seen as more authoritative in the eyes of the search engines. Adding new content and updating existing content also increases the chances of a website being found for a wider range of keywords.
It follows, that ongoing content development should be treated as a key strategy for successful search engine optimisation. But while businesses may see this as a good idea in principle, when it comes to the crunch content development is too often neglected in favour of other business priorities.
Formulating a Content Development Strategy
Like many other areas in business, creating and following a plan can be vital to achieve the desired results. With that in mind, here are some things to consider when formulating your content development strategy.
1. Focus on Keywords
Having a detailed overview of the keywords you wish to target is an essential first step. Identifying a list of keywords will help you to focus more clearly on the sort of subject matter you need to create. Here are some useful guidelines:
- Identify the main keyword or keywords you wish to target. These will be the top-level keywords most relevant to your business - for example: promotional gifts.
- Sort your keywords into themes such as: promotional mugs, promotional pens, promotional umbrellas.
- Identify long tail keyword phrases such as: cheap promotional mugs, parker promotional pens, promotional golf umbrellas.
- Expand your keyword list as far as possible to get a broad picture of the keyword landscape within your industry.
- Use your keyword research to develop a list of titles for the subject matter you wish to create. For example: Cost effective advertising with cheap promotional mugs; Impress your corporate clients with Parker promotional pens; Stand out from the crowd with promotional golf umbrellas.
2. Content Types
What sort of content is most appropriate for your business? And what will you use it for? For many businesses, written content may be the easiest to produce. But it's also worth considering the benefits of multi-media content such as photos, videos and audio.
3. Written Content
Any website can be made more interesting by adding different types of written content such as articles, news, reports, white papers and case studies. Each business needs to decide what's appropriate and reach a balance depending on their own resources and objectives. Obviously, a small company with a limited range of services operating within a specific geographical area will have less material to work with than a large company offering a wide range of products and services throughout the UK and Europe. Nevertheless, even for small businesses there are plenty of opportunities.
Let's take just one example of relevance to the small company mentioned above. The company manufactures mobile phone covers in Leeds and already rank for that phrase. However, they also wish to rank for the phrase mobile phone covers Birmingham. They have a deal with a number of retailers in Birmingham who are selling their products but they are unable to rank for the phrase in the search engines. The company decide to write a detailed case study about their activities in Birmingham with information about their products, their local partners and how customers in Birmingham can purchase their mobile phone covers. The company publish the case study on their website and make sure the page is well optimised for their keyword. Assuming that the content is well written and properly optimised, the company now stand a good chance of ranking for their newly targeted term.
This is a good example of the sort of process involved when considering a content development strategy: First, identify the keyword phrase to be targeted. Next, decide on the most appropriate subject matter and format. Then, create and publish your new content. Ideally, each piece of content should have a specific purpose - in this case, making potential customers in Birmingham aware of the company's mobile phone covers and ranking in the search engines for their specific keyword phrase.
If you intend to publish many articles on a regular basis, consider adding a blog to your website. A blog can provide a highly flexible addition to your website giving you the opportunity to publish on a variety of diverse topics and promote different aspects of your business. A professional blogging platform such as Wordpress makes the publishing process easy to accomplish and maintain.
Blogs can be a good way of engaging with your visitors and creating a community of users interested in your business. Blogs which allow commenting can provide a forum for dialogue and discussion which can make your content more appealing. User generated content can also be indexed by the search engines and may be taken as a positive sign that people are interested in your site.
4. Draw up a Publishing Schedule
A publishing schedule can really help you to forge ahead with your content development efforts. If you've already created your keyword list as outlined above, the next step is to draw up a schedule so you can stay organised and keep on top of things. You don't need any special skills or software in order to do this. Keeping things simple can work just as well.
- Take the list of article topics you drew up as part of your keyword research and add these to a spreadsheet.
- Decide how often you are going to create new content. Be realistic about what you can achieve and remember you will need to allocate resources in order to meet your objectives.
- Add a list of dates next to each of your topics - these are your publishing deadlines.
- Break up your list into different months so you can see what you need to achieve within a specific timeframe.
- Print out your schedule if you think this will help you to focus your efforts.
Now, all you need to do is put aside some time each week to create your content. If you prefer, you can allocate the work to a member of staff or outsource to a professional writer. Make sure you review and update your schedule on a regular basis, and take the time to brainstorm new content ideas periodically.
If you would like to devise a content development strategy for your business but don't know where to begin contact us today and we'll be happy to help. For more information call: 024 7655 1111 or email: info@currant.it
