When it comes to creating the content for your website, you are probably going to be overwhelmed with all the information that bombards you.
What do you believe, what do you ignore? How do you know what is the right way to build a successful website?
Well, the first thing you need to know is that your content needs to focus on the humans that will visit your site not the search engines.
In the past, there was a period of time when the entire focus was on keywords stuffing to attract the search engines and help you to rank better.
But not only does that not work for the search engines anymore, it’s a terrible platform to build your business on and can actually hurt you.
Just like a brick and mortar store, if you have something of value to offer, the customers will come. Make sure the content you are providing offers potential customers something of value and they will come. It’s is helpful to keep your content fresh by adding new content to it.
This is good for the “humans” so they will have a reason to return to your site, and search engines favor sites with dynamic content.
It’s a good idea to focus on a traffic building strategy that will not be so vulnerable to changes in technology. You don’t always want to be at the mercy of what Google decides to do.
There seems to be a flavor of the month with Google, which keeps too many web masters chasing to keep up with the latest demands.
Focus on writing content that readers want to read. Then you will have traffic driven to your site, and that in turn will help you rank better in the search engines, which in turn will bring more targeted traffic.
By providing content that has value, that is interesting, and engaging, you make the human component of your website happy, and the search engines too. It’s a win-win for your website.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pay attention to SEO – you should! Keywords will always be important and relevant. Read: “Why and How to Select Keywords and Where to Use Them” for help with selecting the correct keywords for your target market.
So when it comes to creating your first website just remember these three words – Content is King!
As a Visual Digital Marketing Specialist for New Horizons 123, Julie works to grow small businesses, increasing their online visibility by leveraging the latest in internet and video technologies. She specializes in creative camera-less animated video production, custom images, content writing, and SlideShare presentations. Julie also manages content, blog management, email marketing, marketing automation, and social media for her clients.
Even when people value SEO above all else, it doesn’t make any sense to take the time to promote mediocre content people don’t want to read. The most obvious examples are when people use the keywords too many times, but there is also a lot of very poor quality content around.
If it is worth promoting and you hope to get links people have to write unique content worth reading and use visual media like you do in your posts.
Videos, SlideShares and Infographics can encourage sharing even when the writing isn’t terrific.
Thanks Gail. In the end we are writing for humans and if the content is not valuable enough for people to WANT to read it, what’s the point?
The search engines definitely can’t create demand!
Thanks for reminding us, that job # one is to first please our audiences.
And the absolute best way to accomplish that is by consistently producing quality content that (either) helps solves their major issues and or addresses them in some major way!
Thanks Mark, search engines also don’t purchase products and services, right? Best to focus our content on those who do. Notice I say “focus” – we can’t ignore the search engines completely. Will always need to keep up with what’s hot – like social media, and our keywords will always be relevant.