Creating Great Website Content

Having a well designed, user friendly website is just the first step towards building a good online reputation. Businesses should view their website as a foundation. The challenge now is to keep the content fresh, relevant and engaging.

Fresh content will also encourage visitors to come back time and again, and will drive new traffic to the website, growing your organisation online. This is Eyekiller’s five step guide to managing and making the most of your website’s content.

1. Be organised

Begin by planning your content strategy. The most effective online content strategy will integrate fully with the overall strategy for the business. How often you update and add new content will depend on your specific business. Setting up a spreadsheet which schedules the content updates for the next three months is a good way to define a plan and keep you on track.

When creating effective online content it’s important to keep the audience in the forefront of your mind and write in a style that will appeal to them. All content should have a purpose – there’s no point in adding content for the sake of it. Think carefully about what you want to say and what you hope to achieve by saying it.

Sometimes it can be difficult to know how to create content, especially if you are committed to keeping a rolling programme of new content at regular intervals. Looking at key industry events relevant to your business is a good way of structuring and creating a schedule of content for the website. Case studies, product reviews, blogs, news stories and trend updates are all excellent sources of new content.

2. Be in the know

We’re big fans of Google Alerts at Eyekiller. It’s a simple and highly effective way of tracking specific content on the internet and it’s free. Google Alerts is a research tool that enables businesses or individuals to receive hourly, daily or weekly updates on their chosen topics or keywords.

There are numerous ways to use Google Alerts in your business, for example to follow what people are saying online or to track brand or company mentions. We all know that knowledge is power in business and Google Alerts can supply infinite amounts of up-to-the-minute information. This is not only valuable information for marketing purposes but also a source of interesting ideas which you can use to refresh your website content via blog posts or social media posts. It’s also a great way to keep up to date with what’s happening in your industry and to build your reputation as a key player in your sector.

3. Be creative

It’s not all about words. There are many types of content that can enhance your website and communicate your message, including images, social media, games, interactive tools and of course embedded video. Video is a hugely popular medium with today’s online audiences and adding video content to your website is often an effective way of reducing bounce rates, increasing dwell time, boosting conversion rates and improving search engine rankings. Setting up a YouTube or Vimeo channel to share your video content is free, and embedding this within your website is very straightforward.

There are all sorts of subjects that lend themselves really well to video content.

Product demos
“How to” guides
Top Tips
Customer interviews
Event footage

As with all content, remember to keep the visitor at the forefront of your mind when creating video. Your video content should be useable, engaging, good quality and relevant. It’s advisable to look at how your video content is tagged and linked to ensure it can be indexed by search engines.

4. Be social

There’s no doubt that social media has become a “must” for the majority of businesses. The great thing about social media is that it’s an almost instantaneous channel of communication to a mass audience, it is low cost, user generated and it allows for a two-way interaction with your audiences. Understanding the target audience and creating content for social media sites which these individuals will find relevant and interesting is key.

An effective social media strategy will integrate fully into the overall online marketing and PR strategy for the business. All your social media channels should be directly linked to your website. Traditional Marketing channels should still be used alongside social media as these are often an impactful and efficient way to get your message into the public arena.

Another great idea is to encourage your visitors to submit their own user generated content (UGC) which can feature on your website. Incorporating a regular blog, for example, will encourage content submissions from loyal visitors. These could be anything from product reviews, user experiences, user tips, video content or images.

5. Share

Make the most of your content by encouraging your website visitors to share content with their colleagues, friends and communities. This will help grow your online networks too. The more your content is shared and commented on, the more your SEO rankings will improve the more online authority your business will achieve. There are numerous tools that can be used to encourage your audiences to share content with others and spread awareness online. Use social media buttons and links (Facebook Like, Tweet This, Google+) on your website content such as blogs, videos, photos and promotions to make it easy for users to share the information across their own social networks.

Have you any tips on keeping your content fresh and engaging? If so, we’d love to hear from you.