You hear it over and over from your search marketing agency. “Your Website needs more content.” “Add informative content to your Website.” and “Without content your organic search results will continue to lag.” As search marketing professionals, we’re not trying to sound like a broken record. Content truly is one of the top factors in obtaining organic search positions.
Content provides a plethora of benefits to your Website besides better search visibility. It provides your readers the information they are looking for (as well as keeps them on your Website longer.) Content gives the search engines something to grab onto when trying to determine what phrases are important to your Website. And yes, content does provide value regarding link building. Informative content can earn links in a multitude of ways from other sites linking to your content, visitors sharing it and bloggers writing about it.
With content offering major advantages to the user experience and to search visibility, why do so many Websites come up short? One word: Resources. More often than not, companies do not have the resources to continually create new content for their Websites. However this resource limitation severely hinders their success on the Web. So, how can companies take advantage of content without hurting other areas of their business?
1) Budget time and funds for content creation. From the beginning, budget resources for content whether in the form of an in-house writer or outside source. Set goals to develop one new page a month or to write 4 blog posts per month. And stick to it!
2) Mine content you already have. Blog posts do not have to be an in depth analysis. Divide a White Paper up into 3 – 4 blog posts. Re-purposing content will minimize time your organization may not have at this point.
3) Instead of developing blog posts or articles from scratch, provide insight or commentary on current news within your industry. If something controversial is being discussed within your industry, write about your thoughts on the topic. Give your point of view.
4) Spread the responsibility. Assign various departments one article or blog post per month. Not only does this minimize the amount of time a single person has to write, but also will provide varying perspectives and insight into the various areas of your organization.
5) Take advantage of local universities and colleges. Communication and Journalism majors love to write and typically are pretty good at it. For significant cost savings, provide an intern the resources to develop strong, valuable content for your market.
