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So you have your nice new website set live and your products or services are there for all to see. But how do you keep the interest for your website there? How do you keep the users returning to the website? How do you ensure that the website is ranking well and users can find it? One word: content. Content is king in the World Wide Web and anyone wanting to be successful online must create quality content. A good rule to observe when creating content is; if you’re not engaged while creating it, the user won’t be engaged consuming it.
But how do you know the blogs, vlogs, articles or any piece of content you’re creating is high quality? Here are the six key points to creating your content…
Informative
The first may seem a bit obvious but it is a necessity and as someone who reads more than their fair share of blogs and online content; it’s something that is sometimes overlooked. The content should be answering a question or fitting a hole of information you perceive in the industry. It’s the perfect opportunity to draw more traffic to your website if people are searching for answers online but nobody is providing a sufficient answer. This may be difficult in the age of information but there is always an opportunity to provide information that hasn’t been presented before, even if it’s a different perspective on the subject.
When a website has high quality content that is informative for users, it has an added bonus of improving the websites ranking with search engine. Both the heads of Google and Bing have acknowledged that ‘content is king’; reinforcing the fact that there is a direct link between content and ranking as well as domain authority.
Previously content was targeted at search engines and created not for the user; therefore packed with keywords and links to irrelevant websites. Search engines have developed over the past few years however so content should be aimed at the user with the intent of being an enjoyable read and certainly informative.
Relevant
With the idea of ‘answering a question’ in mind, the content you’re creating needs to be relevant to your business and what you want to achieve with the website. Before creating a piece ask the question “what do I want to achieve with this” – because a quality piece of content can generate leads and enquiries. The content, regardless of the type, needs to be relevant to the website or the industry. Industry news, changes to the business and an announcement of a product, service or development are great places to start.
Much like keeping the content informative; relevant content helps with a websites ranking and domain authority. Fresh and relevant content will not only keep users coming back for more but will keep a website ranking well and maintain a strong domain authority. If the information in the content is out of date it won’t be valuable and therefore not worth the time to create it.
Free of Errors
Another point that seems obvious but it is an important point to keep in mind. Having spelling mistakes and grammatical errors will not only put readers off but search engines consider them to be a negative ranking factor when crawling a website. Re-read what has been written, get someone else to double check it and give it some time to read it again at a later date. Being error free is particularly important if the content is video being recorded or an infographic being created and not easily fixed. A blog can be easily fixed if there are errors but once a video is uploaded it will have to be removed and a new video has to be put in its place.
Quickly Loading
On average people will wait two seconds for a page to load before they get fed up and navigate away from it. This is known as pogo sticking because they arrives and quickly jump away. If the website is already running slowly then a quickly loaded blog post or video will be hard to create. However, if the website runs well and already has a good speed then there are a few things to keep in mind to not damage that load speed.
While it is important to have relevant images that supports the content, having too many will slow the page load speed and push it over that two seconds of tolerance. For videos, if the websites load speed is poor it would probably be best to avoid them altogether. That being said; keep in mind the file size of the video and the cost of rendering and play it for the consumer. Having 4k definition may be great but if it takes several weeks to load the video, it’s never going to be watched.
Well Optimised Titles and Headers
Like chapters in a book, the headers give the reader an idea of what to expect in the article. In addition to having good headers the article will need optimised; title tag, meta description and tags throughout.
Let’s start at the top; the title tag and meta description. Before users and search engines reach the content the title tag and meta description can be found in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) and need to describe what the article is about and why they should consume it. It’s the first impression and needs to be enticing and information; it can’t be misleading to avoid pogo sticking. Once the first impression is made the article needs to be displayed in a way that’s easiest to digest for the reader. Headings are the key here; if there’s a specific part the user wants to read then they’ll scan through checking the headers for the relevant content. Search engines will also check all the headers to determine the structure and order of importance of the content.
Finally all images, videos and other references need to have the correct tags attached to them. When a search engine finds the content the tags on images will help it know what it’s looking and whether the images are relevant. Additionally any software that assists users with disabilities may need to read what the images are to describe it to the user.
Internal and External Links
The concluding topic you need to consider when creating content is how well connected it is. Having links internally and externally work for content the same way that knowing people in high places will get you in a better standing in life. After all; it’s know what you know but who you know. The same can be said when it comes to content on the internet; if popular and respectable websites link to the content your website has then it’s telling everyone that the content is trustworthy and of a high quality.
Going Forward
Now that you’re armed with this checklist, you’ll be able to make sure the content you’re uploading is providing users with the information they’re looking for, improving the rankings of the website and developing trust with users and search engines.
If there’s anything you think I’ve missed or if you’d like to know more, get in touch with us and we can talk about your websites content and where the future of content is going.