Website content can take many different forms. From compelling written pieces to attractive visual elements to anything else that may be filling up the rest of your webpages, content consistently adds value to your site and fundamentally determines the long-term success of your business. Blogs, photos, case studies, infographics, testimonials, and even videos all play important roles in welcoming your new and old clients to your site, and your company should devote time and effort into refining and developing these elements. Here are five reasons why content, in both written and visual forms, is an essential part of your website.
1. Content connects you to your clients
As we’ve mentioned in previous blogs on SEO and website design, content is key for increasing your online traffic and ranking higher in search engine results. As you implement keywords and look for better ways to optimize your pages, your website becomes more accessible, and you build more connections with your clients. The purpose of written content on your website is always to provide information, but that information also holds an educational purpose as it teaches your clients about your products or services and extends to search engine algorithms that hope to provide the best results for search queries. Optimized content that makes strategic use of keywords amid a thoughtful design allows your business to communicate your website’s relevance to search engines, and you immediately establish a meaningful experience and accessible point of contact for your clients.
2. Content adds value and authority to your website
Written content is especially important for adding value and authority to your website since it gives your company an opportunity to showcase its expertise, previous successful projects, as well as the connections your company has built and would like to keep building with clients. There is an aspect of flexibility with written content as well since your company can use different tones depending on how you would like to address your site visitors. For example, the personal, conversational nature of a blog would complement more technically focused case studies. Together, these forms of written (and regularly updated) content would contribute to your website’s professional value and its authority in the industry, paving the way for better SEO and higher search engine rankings.
Audio-visual content also adds value to your site and helps break up the longer textual content of your company’s blogs and case studies. Videos are one of the best ways to boost organic search traffic to your website, as well as increase conversions and leads. Graphics, photos, and diagrams also contribute to the authority of your website, especially when they are used purposefully. While stock photos are helpful for header images and establishing a style for your blog, relevant graphs and infographics that visualize your written content are also picked up by search engines and drive more search traffic.
3. Content builds an internal network for all your webpages
Internal linking is another essential part of your website that is easily overlooked during the web design process. As you create and publish new content on your website, it’s a good practice to incorporate links to other relevant pages on your site as much as outside content. If you happen to briefly mention a technical practice or term in a blog post that was a primary focus in a previous case study, consider linking to it so you can lead your site visitor to additional relevant information. If your visitor sees this link and reads some of the case study, they could very well feel more inclined to contact your company given the success of your product or service elsewhere.
From the more technical SEO standpoint, search engines also favour websites that have internal links. A search engine like Google will crawl and index all the pages on your website, typically moving from one page to the next via internal links. As the search engine recognizes the information on your site and understands how all your pages function together, your website’s likelihood of appearing in search results increases. (Left image courtesy of Backlinko.com)
4. Content helps you produce other digital marketing materials
Businesses often experience a lot of pressure in producing new content for digital marketing and social media. It is important to keep up with industry trends, emerging technologies, and global events, but it can actually be a good strategy to rework your website content for marketing and social media uses, especially during slower quarters of the fiscal year. The existing written content on your site, including your blogs, case studies, and testimonials, can be condensed into graphics for Instagram and Facebook, announcements on Twitter and LinkedIn, and even videos (promotional or tutorial focused) for TikTok and YouTube. Your company can then link back to the original, long-form written content to continue providing information to your clients (and refreshing their memory), as well as for the purpose of building your internal network for better SEO.
5. Content invites your website viewers to take action
Lastly, you can use your content to invite your clients to complete a call to action (CTA) before they navigate away from your website. Wix Blog defines call-to-actions as “short phrases that prompt your online audience to take immediate action.” On websites, CTAs typically take the form of clickable elements, such as buttons, texts, or images, and they invite your visitors to perform a certain act (pictured right; courtesy of Wix.com). These acts can be as simple as downloading a file, purchasing a product, subscribing to a service, signing up for your company’s mailing list, contacting staff, or starting a free trial. CTAs are an important means of showing your clients some of the small things your website can immediately do for them, as well as lead them on to interact directly with your staff to begin the purchasing process or start a new project. CTAs thus have a significant impact on your company’s future success; persuasive but welcoming CTAs contribute to increased sales, more interactions, and wider exposure of your products and services.
While CTAs are often featured on the home pages of websites as interactive elements, they can also be integrated into written content, such as a blog, a case study, or a testimonial. Our blog here at CodeMasters Inc. often uses a CTA at the end of each entry to remind our clients how they can contact us and what kind of experts are on our team (like these links). It’s a simple addition to the existing content of your website, but it carefully reinforces your company’s authority, as well as deepens the new and existing relationships you have with your clients.