Why your small business needs a website and why your website needs good content

Dec 30, 2009 Comments

Your small business needs a website because people are ditching their phone directories and local print publications in favor of online sources? The reality is, quickly opening a browser and conducting a search is so much easier than finding a directory and flipping through it’s voluminous pages. Almost all major search engines are pushing their local search features and if you are a small business serving your local market, then you are missing big time, as this article rightly puts, by not having a website for your business.

The advantages of a website are:

• It is always there, 24×7 and if you have enabled ecommerce features then people can shop on your website round-the-clock.
• All of a sudden you expand your market.
• There is no limit to what you want to say; you have all the space in the world.
• You can update your website whenever you feel like.
• You don’t have to maintain a physical inventory.
• …this list goes on and on.

The importance of website content

One of the greatest strengths of your website is of course, your content: what you say to your visitors. When it comes to your website, communication is of supreme importance. There are two primary reasons why most websites fail to generate business — they don’t have a well-defined business strategy and they don’t have good content.

Being a content writer/provider and an online copywriter this is the first thing I notice when I visit a new website — how well the inherent message is conveyed. You may decide to disagree, but your content can really make or break your business, because it’s the only way of communicating with your visitors. Although I may sound like saying this from writing point of view, content basically means anything you publish on your website: text, images, videos and audios. The written text may act as a primary communication tool, or a secondary communication tool. Many graphic designers and web designers for instance simply post visuals and don’t care much about textual information and it works for those who have already created a brand presence using their own contacts or social networking tools. But if you want to draw traffic from search engines then you must give serious thought to some well-crafted, targeted content.

SEO guidelines for content writers

Dec 18, 2009 Comments

Online content writers often have to write “seo content” that can help their clients achieve higher search engine rankings. Is there really some difference between regular content and SEO content? It depends on how you want to define your writing, and what you need to attain as a professional online copywriter or content writer. Almost every (almost every seems contradictory though) website owner wants higher search engine rankings to increase their visibility and get more targeted search engine traffic and they know their content can help them achieve that. So when they approach a content writer they want to know whether they can get SEO content that can help them improve their search engine rankings. You can write “normal” content and you can write seo content based on the kind of competition the website faces on search engines. If there isn’t much competition even regular content can bring your website to the first page of major search engines (I may quickly add that merely adding SEO content doesn’t get you lots of traffic — it depends on many external factors too). More competition means you really have to highlight your message. This is where SEO content writing guidelines become important. Here are a few.

Cover focused topics

Don’t try to cover everything under the sun on a single page. Search engines prefer focused pages, especially talking about a particular topic or phrase. So if you are creating a page on “social media services” then stick to the topic and let it be known to the search engines that you’re really talking on this subject. Similarly, if you are talking about SEO copywriting then deal with only this subject. It also satisfies people crazy about keyword density. When you talk about a topic you use its associated phrases and terms on your own without making an extra effort.

Page title, yes, again

One of the most important parts of your page is the title, the main heading. It must present to the search engines the most compelling reason to crawl and index that page (or blog post). Preferably, use the entire phrase you are targeting, in the title. You don’t have to use the words in the same order, but try to use them. No need to sound esoteric, no need to use puns. Take for example the title of this blog post. It says: SEO guidelines for content writers. It can also be written as “how to improve your search engine writing” or something else, but I want to talk to content writers who are looking for SEO guidelines.

Organize your content using the right tags

The search engines specifically look for the right words at particular locations. They check for you keywords in heading, sub-heading, bullet-ed lists and anchor texts (text that exists as a hyper link). This is because many people simply go through the headings and bullets to get a gist of your page. Keywords in hypertext are a good accessibility policy.

Of course this is not an SEO tips blog post so I’m not going to talk about the changes in the source code; my main focus here is the text — how you can organize the text in order to SEOmize it.

And what about the keyword density?

There is no magical formula actually. Use the keywords wherever they seem appropriate, and wherever their appearance seems unnatural, don’t use them. If you are really hung up on using some sort of percentage, just use your phrase in the first paragraph, in one or two headings, in the bullet list at least once, and if you can manage, as a hyper text. Then use it in the last sentence but it’s not necessary.

Engaging your visitors with good content

Dec 17, 2009 Comments

Just came across this blog post titled Five Ways To Better Engage Readers on Your Blog and being a professional content writer I totally realize the importance of engaging visitors with well-written content. Not only your blog, you also need to engage visitors/readers on your website too because

Engagement => Attention => Greater chance of business happening

The competition is tough on the Internet due to fair and unfair reasons. There are some websites that have excellent content, and there are some that are merely content farms aggregating inferior content from various sources. Unfortunately, the search engines do little to discriminate and this is why it is very important that you’re able to convey your visitors that you are here to interact and set up a relationship with them, and you’re really serious about what you are communicating. So how do you engage your visitors?

• Give them what they are looking for
• Empathize with them
• Offer something really useful (it can be information)
• Encourage them to have a dialog with you
• Convey to them that you are one of them and not some unknown entity

We like to do business with people we’re familiar with and when you engage your readers they get familiar with you.

A good way of engaging visitors, especially on your blog, is by encouraging them to leave comments on your blog. Darren has listed 13 Types of Posts that Always Get Lots of Comments.

Good content establishes your authority

Dec 15, 2009 Comments

Why so much hype about publishing good content on your website or blog on a regular basis? On the basic level there are two reasons: search engines prefer websites and blogs that have fresh content, and social networking guys and girls always have something to promote or retweet. So your content constantly generates new traffic and keeps the buzz going.

On a more advanced level, people begin to respect you (not as an elder but as a person who knows things and shares them confidently), and when they respect you they don’t fear doing business with you. When you constantly publish content people can derive knowledge from, they begin to see you as an authority. Interestingly, I’ve observed this on the Internet and also in my day-to-day life, given a chance people like to listen to those with authority and they like to read what they’ve written. But does only publishing good content make you an authority?

Not necessarily. Good content must be followed by regularity and relationships. Occasional sparks don’t bind people to your ideas. They have a low attention span on the Internet because so much is happening here. Written a great blog post? Cool! How are you going to make people read it if you haven’t created an audience for yourself? An audience is often created a few persons at a time. You create valuable content on a regular basis, you start interacting on other blogs, online forums and social networking websites and people start visiting your website or blog. If they see something remarkable there, they make an effort to return and check out what new you have published. Even after 15 days if they don’t find new content they assume you publish occasionally, and soon they lose interest, and you start all over again, and the loop goes on and on.

On the other hand if you publish valuable content regularly, they become used to visiting your website; they may even subscribe to your RSS feeds or newsletter, and start following you on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with what you have to say. Sometimes they may also link to you from their websites and blog posts, or promote your links on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon etc. This creates a cascading effect. More and more people become aware of your thoughts and ideas and they want to interact with you. When they interact with you you get a platform to share more of your knowledge. This is how you establish your authority.