Your content strategy is the plan by which you’ll infuse your site with the right types of content at the
right times. It starts with determining how to reach your target audience. By now your target audience
should be engraved on your forehead, but how you reach that audience is something entirely
different. If your audience is teens, the language and method with which you’ll reach them will be
different than if your audience is senior adults or stay-at-home moms, or even full-time professionals.
So what words and phrases will your target audience use to find your web site? Those are some of
the keywords that you’ll be using in your content. Additional keywords may be discovered using
some of the methods that have been covered in previous chapters.
Next, determine what users will benefit from visiting your site. Visitors click through a link looking
for something. If you don’t provide some benefit, the users will click away nearly as fast as they found
you. When determining what value you have to offer, don’t think in terms of your desire to bring
users to your site, think in terms of what those users are seeking. What do they want?
Along with determining users’ reasons for coming to your site, you should also be considering why
they might want to return to your site. Do you have regular sales? Is there some form of dynamic
content, like a blog or news page, that would draw them back? What other types of media might
you include on your site, and what value would that be to your visitors (for example, using videos
or podcasting to present training materials)?
Only when you’ve figured out what you can give your site visitors should you determine what you
want from them. If you want them to sign up for a newsletter or make a purchase, include a call to
action on your site and provide the tools they’ll need to complete the task that you want them to
complete. Every page on your web site should have a purpose. You have to determine, on every
page of your site, what it is you want from visitors.
One more consideration as you’re planning your content strategy: what do you do that’s different
from your competition? You should already have a good idea of what your competition does, and
how it seems to work for them. But what can you do differently? What sets you apart from all of
the other web sites out there that come up when a user searches for widgets?
Next you need to determine what type of content you plan to include on your site to meet all the
needs that have been defined by the preceding questions. There are several different types of content,
and each type has its own implications:
Licensed Content: Licensed content is what you might buy from a content broker. For
example, if you’re looking for a quick way to populate your site with articles, you might
turn to a company like FreeSticky.com that offers many different articles you can use.
The problem with this type of content is that it’s often repeated all over the Internet. You’re
not the only one who will need to populate your site, and others will likely use some of
the same services you do. Being used often doesn’t make the content less valuable, but it’s
not going to rank as well with search engines because of the duplication.
Original Content: There are several types of original content. There’s the content you
write and share with others for free. This is a good way to get links back to your site. You
can use the content for a limited amount of time exclusively on your own site and then
allow others to use it for nothing more than a link back to your site. This incoming link
adds credibility to your site.
Another type of original content is that which is distributed freely by visitors to your
site. This original content can take the form of comments on your site or forum message
boards. This type of original content is an excellent addition to your SEO efforts, because
it tends to be focused on a specific subject.
Some original content is exclusive to your site. This is content that you create, and the
only place it appears is your web site. This is the most valuable type of content for your
site, and it’s the type search engine crawlers like the best. Think of it as giving the crawler
some variety in its diet. It gets tired of the same thing day in and day out, just like we do.
The more original and exclusive content you can provide for a crawler, the better you’ll
rank in search results. It also doesn’t hurt if that content has an appropriate number of
keywords in it.
Dynamic Content: Dynamic content can be licensed or original. Blogs are the perfect
example of dynamic content.
Once you have all these elements decided upon, you can begin to create your content. It sounds
easy enough, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. Not only does your copy need to be compelling
to people, but it also needs to be focused to help increase search engine rankings.
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