Giving Your Content an Edge

Think of your homepage as your brick and mortar shop. You have to put it out there, visible amongst many other competitors and when you draw in the potential customers and patrons, you need to keep them engaged. That is easier said than done in the digital world, where information needs to be detailed, attractive and also crafted keeping in mind short attention spans. This is why how you create content is very important. Here are a few things that you should always keep in mind when drafting the prose and descriptions for your website.

Research your Keywords

Creating content is done to make a connection with the site visitor and those who are looking for the product on different platforms. Search engines provide the largest conduit of traffic to most websites and blogs – so using language that a search engine would understand is the first important step in making content that works.

Keywords are essentially the synapse across which your painstakingly drafted content connects with search engine users on the internet. What are the keywords that are related to your brand and service? Are you incorporating them in your content in a natural, conversational manner? How are you researching these keywords?

There are many tools available that will help you identify your keywords. Keywords can imply three different user profiles – those with a transactional nature, those that seek information and navigational keywords.

Keeping it Natural

There is a lot of bad content on the internet and search engines are actively evolving to combat such content from popping up as search results. Stuffing keywords into a paragraph without a natural flow is detrimental to your SEO. From a user experience perspective, nobody likes to read over-descriptive content that stuffs in buzzwords and keywords. Make sure that your keywords are part of the content in a correct grammatical manner and part of a larger context – they should not take center stage.  

Homepage – The Gateway to your Site

Nice-reading content alone is not going to bring the spotlight on your brand. You need to keep up with the latest search engine parameters and related techniques. According to this article from SEOJet, your homepage should be as well optimized as the rest of your website. Site owners tend to go easy on homepage SEO – allowing it to include more niche content that is difficult to backlink and tag. Finding a right balance between SEO and unique content is the better way forward to achieve an impactful homepage.

Content that Reflects Your Demographics

Whether you are selling products for middle-aged women or teenage students, you need to use content that reflects the demographics. People are generally more informed about their choices and look for brands and products that speak like them. Describing a rock band’s merchandise would require a more casual tone while a massage service advertisement would probably work better with friendly, expert language. Prose that comes across as archaic is a big turn-off for most readers. Using more gender-neutral terms is recommended for content creators.

Stay away from passive writing as much as possible. Make the content a journey through your brand, your history, and your philosophy. Even if you are describing the smallest product or service, try to insert an active tone. For example – ‘Discount Available’ does not have the same zing as ‘We Slashed Our Prices’.

To sum it up, an active content style keeps readers engaged and reminds them of a real-life interaction. Pretentious writing can also push site visitors away – use simple descriptions and most importantly, keep content crisp. Most people may not spend more than a few seconds scanning through a page – so the main message should be at the beginning of your paragraph/sentence/ad.

Links and More Links

Interlinking and backlinking strategies are a crucial part of putting your brand out there. There are many ways to earn backlinks – the first one is to start linking to other websites yourself. Start by updating your social profiles constantly and adding links to the website there. This is an especially useful tool for bloggers and individual-run businesses.

Content does not only refer to publishing on your own website. Platforms like Quora are also a good place to drop some links of your website. They provide a chance for you to give someone a resolution as an expert and also suggest links. That is a golden opportunity to gain a site visitor.

You also need to create a web of connected content in your own domain. Blogs are an important part of a website because they offer more detailed information and can be linked to each other. As your blogs accumulate, you are building a repository of useful information – throw in relevant hyperlinks so readers can discover your older content too. Don’t just link and forget – keep updating newer links and editing older hyperlinks to keep the content fresh and relevant.

Monitor your Content

Data is beautiful indeed. Sometimes the solution to your low traffic problem is already on your website. Look at the stats and study your most visited posts and links. What is it about them that attracted more visitors? The more data you go through, the more trends you will observe.

Sometimes you can use older posts by updating them. Do not just create content and forget about it. When it comes to the increasingly important social media content, identify a narrowed-down social demographic and address accordingly. General posts might get more high-level visibility but a customized approach has more impact and can lead to more clicks and conversions.

Staying competitive is the goal for all online businesses. Because the technologies involved are so dynamic, continuously evolving and at times, contradictory, SEO experts and content creators need to constantly learn new things. Adaptability and knowledge of human buying norms are just some of the key factors that help websites and brands stay relevant.

One advertising fundamental stands tall in this fluid landscape. Your content should emotionally connect with your site visitor. Your content has to be a conversation.