Invest in good content to boost online results

Content… it’s what everyone on the web is searching for.

Content is what’s compelling you to read this blog post right now. Content is the fuel that drives the web. Content is what adds value for your site visitors, and ultimately what will determine the success (or otherwise) of your online business.

And yet so many businesses neglect to invest properly in this most important element of their website.

It’s not all about design

Businesses happily pay thousands to designers and developers to create attractive aesthetics for their new site, but leave the content as practically an afterthought.

While design is important, and the look and feel of your site does a lot to make the visitor experience more attractive and compelling, remember it’s your content that does 90% of the work on your website.

• It’s your content that will get your pages ranked with major search engines like Google and Bing
• It’s your content that will attract incoming links that will drive more traffic, boost visibility and enhance your reputation and authority
• It’s your content that will deliver value once your visitors arrive, enticing them to stay for longer and convincing them that you’re a company they want to do business with.

Set aside some of your budget to invest in content

How much of your online budget have you dedicated to producing great web content?

While solid figures on this are hard to come by, anecdotal evidence and a quick look at small business websites across the web suggest that it’s a frighteningly small percentage.

Given how critical good content is to creating a successful website it’s reasonable to suggest that businesses would be well served by investing at least as much on their content as they do on their web design.

Make content an integral part of your website right from the start

Your content should be front-and-centre in your web development strategy right from the start. It should be an intrinsic part of the design process – informing decisions about the site architecture, the navigation structure, the overall look-and-feel… and visa versa.

It’s important to plan your content carefully from the very start… to know what your customers and prospects are looking for online, how your content can best deliver what they need, and how your site design can best accommodate that content.

Your web design and web content aren’t mutually exclusive elements of the web development process – they should work together to create a unified and engaging experience for your visitors.