Website Content Development

Winning Website Content

Winning websites have compelling, current content. Content with enough value to get people to trade contact information (and/or sell goods and services directly) and visit your site more than once. NoSpin Marketing will look at everything from your company name and tagline to your top line messaging—to your more detailed product and services descriptions and provide the content that will get you the results you need.

Content is why the huge majority of people come to the web and why people will come back to your website. It's the real substance of your website. Business folks want good information that they can access, immediately. They want high quality, compelling information—without the spin—that will help them do their jobs better and help their company perform better—and to scout out products and services to purchase. You’ve got less than fifteen seconds to get their attention before most move on to another site—or you’ve lost them for good.

The crux of content is the messages and information (words, pictures, diagrams, audio, and multi-media) that accurately and succinctly describe your business products and services, business successes, customers, partners, people, etc. Web content must appeal to multiple audiences quickly, provide immediate value to them, and offer them different levels of detail as well.

Search Engines Depend on Website Content

Good web content isn't just good marketing copy and valuable information. Making sure that people can find your site in the first place via effective search engine optimization—which in turn depends a lot on what's in the html code on your pages. You have to develop content that not only appeals to your prospects but also to search engines' computers as they crawl the web.

Good website content really starts with knowing what keywords are used to find your business and your types of products and services. Ideally, those keywords need to be part of your urls, your title tags (and secondarily, other meta tags), and the top content on your homepage and other pages as well.

Use Compelling Content = Information Value “Hooks”

In addition to providing current information about your company, products, services, clients, etc., you need a “hook” or two or more to give your initial visitors a reason to return to your website—and a reason, ideally to trade their basic contact information. It could be immediate interaction with other folks of similar interests; helpful online advice; a valuable checklist; current, topical newsletters or white papers; access to a demo; the ability to find and submit job information—or a almost anything that helps truly engage a visitor when they are on one of your pages. The commonality is information value: Make it worth their while to come again. And of course, in the case of e-commerce sites, that compelling content can also include the ability to purchase actual products or services online.

Without providing a reason to return, your site is a one-trick pony. You got them there once, but perhaps it wasn't the right time for them to be considering a purchase. Without visiting your site multiple times, the positive impression of your business is a lot less likely to sink in. And you've got an even lower chance that something they like will become viral-that it's of such interest or value that the visitor passes it (your link) on to others, who may pass it on to others.

Most Really "Cool" Looking Business Websites are Actually Very Bad Sites

Why? BAD CONTENT. These sites don't get a fraction of the traffic they could be getting and hence, do not generate much business, directly or indirectly. Websites that focus on content get substantially better results. Good websites are 80% content and effective SEO—and 20% design. Still, lots of companies over-design their website and waste their investment on the Flash and cool graphics. And they ignore, at their own peril, providing good content or following current website conventions that bring quality traffic to their respective sites.

Websites should be pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate. Interesting graphics and Flash animations can be excellent attention getters—in the right place. But certainly not as introductions to your site or to major sections of your site. Search engines use various, complicated automated algorithms to find and place sites, but it is all about the actual words in your html code—and not words embedded in FLASH or graphics. Crawler robots that continuously "spider" sites do not give any points for cool graphics. Worse, they can only "see" words in the right places of your html code. If you want to develop a "cool" site that is basically invisible on the web, start all of your pages with FLASH, and embed all of your key messages in your graphics. Voila, you're almost invisible to the global market.

Include some nice graphics to make your site more interesting and appealing to the eye. But more importantly, pay a lot of attention to the actual words on your site. On the Web, words matter a lot more—IF you want people to find you.

NoSpin Website Content Development

Winning website content is not easy—or a lot you’d see a lot higher percentage of effective websites that generate real business results. In fact it’s time consuming, hard work—and entails an ongoing commitment to your site as one of your key marketing vehicles. After evaluating your website in context of your marketing strategy, NoSpin Marketing can help you:

Reorganize your current web content via a new website plan
Edit and "prune" content for consistency and continuity and/or overhaul your content in total
Analyze your keywords (using tools like Wordtracker and Overture) and create of the appropriate title tags. and new messages that include the right keywords for search engines
Create (if necessary) new company, tagline, product and services names, and elevator messages for your product and service offerings.
Develop additional levels of content such as new and improved product/services descriptions, presentations, demonstrations, white papers, etc.

The Benefits of NoSpin Website Content

NoSpin typically starts it consulting engagements by analyzing your website marketing content, marketing and business strategies, recommending a website strategy for your business and then helping you develop new website content. Here are the benefits of the NoSpin website content approach:

You can leverage website content work for multiple marketing purposes (print brochures, direct mail, presentations, email campaigns, etc) and save a lot of money—especially print. Your top line web content needs to be your best marketing content. You need well coordinated, multiple levels of content for your various audiences—not only on the web but also across your other marketing vehicles.
You won’t waste money on expensive "web design and development" that is typically done in a strategy and content vacuum. You’ll design and develop around your content, versus retrofit content into your design. You’ll end up with a lot better website that will be developed to generate results.
More visitors will find your site. Your website will get a lot more quality search engine hits as a result of better keyword content coupled with the right search engine initiatives.
Your website will become your new marketing discipline. Once you take the plunge and take your web content seriously, you then have a laboratory—a dynamic medium—that you can easily, economically, and continually experiment with, get feedback from, and keep changing to make sure that you are communicating effectively with your customers and prospects. Marketing strategy and planning will become an ongoing—versus a once a year—process.

If you need new website—or overall marketing—content, email Tom Ranseen or call 615.473.1404.