Planning Your Website Content Strategy

Planning Your Website Content

Desperate to get their website online as quickly as possible, business owners end up rushing through the most important part– the content. Your website content, when done properly, is what connects your potential customers to your story and your brand values. Your content should answers questions and inspire action. Here are some guidelines to help you create great content for your website that will help both you and your potential customers succeed.


Know Your Customer

You might be thinking, I do know my customer. But in reality, a lot of business owners only look at their potential customers or their target market from a very high level. You need to go deeper in order to understand how to communicate with them. What problems and fears do they have, what questions are they seeking answers for? What are their objections and limitations? What keywords are they using to search for a business such as yours? The more you know about your ideal customer’s goals, the better you can target your content towards them and show them how you can solve their problems.


Identify Your Business Goals

Are you trying to build your brand presence, gain more customers, generate more leads, build your list? Are you going to position yourself as an expert? Before you build a website, get clear on why you need a website and how it will work for you.


Use Clarity and Action For Your Navigation

You always want to use customer-focused, simple phrases, and avoid trying to be funny or unique. What seems cute or unique to you is confusing to other people. And if you confuse people, you lose people. So avoid niche terms that people might not understand and keep your navigation categories clear and conventional. Using an active and direct voice like shop now, and let’s get started is clear and will drive action. 


Tell Your Authentic Story

Talking about your struggles, and acknowledging problems or frustrations you share with your audience helps create connections and humanizes your brand.


Overcome Potential Customer Objections

People want to feel like they’ve done their due diligence. They want to know how you can help them solve their problems; how you can help them boost profits, save time or cut costs; or how you help them become more productive, healthier, or happier. Address objections on your sales page or refer people to a page with frequently asked questions. Ensure you overcome all potential objections to optimize conversions.


Create Succinct Chunks of content

You want to be succinct delivering your message with small snippets of content that include targeted keywords

Using descriptive labels for your content chunks will help users quickly understand and scan your content, and is another opportunity to incorporate some of your targeted keywords to boost SEO.

Additionally using imagery and white space to break up content improves legibility, reduces reader fatigue, and makes reading your content more enjoyable. 

Create a Blog and SEO Strategy
The topic of SEO is obviously a lengthy one, however, there are a few best practices to keep in mind when planning your website content. First, you want to research a list of keywords that you will use consistently. Neil Patel has a great resource called Uber Suggest where you can type in the domain name of a competitor and research the keywords that bring the most traffic to their website. I also use the plugin Keywords Everywhere with Chrome which will show you the most popular related keywords ideas when you do a google search. Keep your list of the top 50-100 keywords and sprinkle them in your titles, image file names, and content. First and foremost we need to create a good user experience so make sure any keywords you are using are relevant and make sense to use in every context.


Provide a FAQ PAGE

These pages rank high in search engines because they provide so much value to potential customers by answering questions. An FAQ page will also help your website work for you by deflecting calls and emails from users who may otherwise have contacted you directly.

 


Create a Valuable Opt-in offer

An opt-in offer or lead magnet is a valuable, relevant freebie that you offer your website visitors in exchange for their contact information. This is a tool you can use to build your email list to position you as an expert with your subscribers and keep your business top of mind. Your freebie should help potential customers specific problems, learn something new, or even gain a new skill. You want to genuinely help your new subscriber move closer to accomplishing her goals.

Take time with your content, prepare it with thoughtfulness and authenticity, be clear on how you are serving your customers and your business will thrive! 

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