Written by Sharon on .
For effective SEO it’s important to have a strategy for content creation to ensure your site is valuable and relevant to search engines.
It has been said that no matter what business you are in, you are primarily in the education business. This has never been truer than it is today. Consumers are now more informed and educated than ever and are making their purchase decisions based more on content which is helpful and educational than that which is purely promotion.
This means that if you want to create relevant and valuable content, you have to be doing three things:
- Creating content that provides your customers a benefit that they consider valuable
- Creating content that educates them on the reason why they should do business with you
- Creating content that promotes your products and services
4 Step Checklist on Writing Valuable Web Content
Focus 75% of your content on adding value and educating your customer first, these are the first two principles. If you use these correctly, you can use the other 25% to promote your company, make offers and ask for the sale. This combination of education and promotion will make your content valuable, relevant and effective.
1. Findable
Can the user find the content? The following list is more of a coding checklist, but all to these points ensure your content is appealing to the 'bots' and 'crawlers' that index content. If you have a Content Management System you may have access to update your content include the following:
- An h1 tag
- At least two h2 tags
- Metadata, including title, description and keywords
- Links to other related content
- Alt tags for images
2. Readable
It is so important to write for people. Yes, it's important to add certain words to benefit SEO, but in the end it is the reader that will be compelled to invest in what you say or sell. Does your content include the following:
- An inverted pyramid writing style
- An appropriate content type (text, video, etc)
- Respect for the audience's reading level
- Bullet and numbered lists
- Following the style guide
3. Actionable
Will the user want to take action? If so, you need to offer a variety of ways in order to have a method that is comfortable for your viewer. Does your content include the following:
- A call to action
- A place to comment
- An invitation to share
- Links to related content
- A direct summary of what to do
4. Shareable
An ideal outcome for content is that people would like to share it. This could be in the form of a promotion or interesting article. If the user is likely to share the content, the following checklist is good to take into consideration. Does your content include the following:
- Something to provoke an emotional response
- A reason to share
- An ask to share
- An easy way to share
- Personalisation (add hashtags to tweets, etc)
So if you're interested in getting more value out of the content on your website, the team at Moja can help you with a content strategy for your website and marketing activities. Contact us today about our Content Strategy. We work with you to plan, implement and review on a frequent basis. Contact us to find out more about this service.