What Is Content and Why Does It Matter?
Whenever you start a website, whether it’s an e-commerce business or an informational site, it’s important to know the tips for success. While you may have a modicum of success without a tailored plan, it’s very unlikely anyone will find you amid the 2 billion websites on the internet without a content strategy in place.
What Is Content?
Simply put, content is all of the text and images that appear on your site. It can include articles, product or service descriptions, blogs and your website copy (the homepage among others). Content is very important because it’s what leads visitors to your site. It needs to be optimized properly and actually offer some benefit to the reader, in order for search engines to include you in their results. We’ll dive a little deeper later in this article.
How Do You Get Started With Content?
Getting started creating content isn’t a difficult task, but it does require a plan. It’s important to know what you’re going to put on your website before you begin. Otherwise, you’re wasting valuable time and resources. So take the time to plan out your content strategy before you start, whether you’re doing it yourself or outsourcing.
Importance of Good Content
When creating content, you have two choices. You can do it in house, or you can outsource it. If you plan to do it in-house, whether it’s you or one of your partners or employees doing the writing, you’ll want to ensure they have the proper copywriting skills. It’s not enough to create content and put it on the site, it needs to be good content. Written well, properly optimized and few, if any, grammar and spelling mistakes. Less is more when it comes to content. Make it powerful, state your message, but don’t ramble. Low-quality content can break a website — i.e. get you blacklisted from Google — and it happens all the time.
In-House vs. Outsourcing
So, what does it mean to have in-house writers vs. outsourcing? In-house means you do all of the content yourself or someone associated with your company does it. This is often a cheaper way to fill out your website. Sometimes, however, there’s just too much to do and it becomes necessary to outsource.
How do you outsource? There are a few different ways. You can hire someone you know to do contractual work or you can use a freelance site to find talent if you don’t know anyone personally. Just be aware that many freelance sites charge additional fees over what you and the contractor agree on. These typically benefit the site and keep it running.
Also, do your research and make sure you hire someone who has the capability. There are varying levels of talent and not every copywriter will be able to meet your vision. It’s perfectly acceptable to do a trial run before hiring someone for the entire project. Just make sure you pay the writer for their efforts, even if you don’t end up using the work.
SEO and Why You Need It
All of your content needs to be search-engine optimized. This is known as SEO, for short. This means your content should have strategically placed keywords and phrases throughout. They’re designed to rank on Google and other search programs so that when someone searches for a specific keyword your site will show up in the results. The better your content and SEO, the more chances you have of landing on the front page and getting more visitors.
Beware, though. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. You might be tempted to stuff the sentences and paragraphs with keywords and phrases thinking that more is better. However, this can get you flagged and cause search engines to omit you from the results — and that’s not beneficial at all. Rather, use your keywords smartly, place them where they make sense or what the pros refer to as organically. The more natural they appear, the better results you’ll see.
Content is the backbone of your website. It’s what propels you into the search results and leads visitors to your pages. It doesn’t matter whether you offer products or services, or merely provide information and use AdSense to make money that way. The more viewers you have, the higher your chances of success, and it all starts with content, so it’s important to place a high priority on this aspect of getting up and running. You can always tweak it in the future, but aiming high in the beginning will yield you much better results.