theCMSblog

I find myself writing a lot these days and it isn’t anything I ever thought I would be good at or anything I ever wanted to do. I always thought of myself as creative but in a graphical way never with words. It seems that more and more I am using Microsoft Word over Adobe Photoshop to communicate my visions and thoughts.

I build multiple web sites per week, some times I start from scratch, other times I have an existing site with few to many hundred pages. Most of the time I ask the customer what are the plans for the content. “Can we copy it from another web site and modify it with some of our information? or just copy what we have and we will update it.”

Content is the single most important part of your web site. It is what separates you from your competitor. Copying content from your competitor does not make you stand out. It blends your web site in with the rest. Flashy graphics will only do so much and they don’t entice a user to give you their information.

Updating your old content is fine as long as you really update it and then optimize it. Revising a few words and adding a couple paragraphs won’t cut it. You need to think about how your organization has changed, what is new, what separates you from the competition, and then optimize that content for the search engines. Starting from scratch also has its advantages.

Unless you have a large marketing budget, television commercials, radio spots, news paper and magazines advertising your company’s web site and products, the only way users will find you, other than by word of mouth, is the net. Where does every one start? A search engine. Google.

When you are writing content for your web site you should always consider who that content is targeted to and what keywords will they use to find your page of content. Those keywords or groups of words, keyword phrases, must be embedded within the paragraphs of the targeted page. The number of times those keywords appear is referred to as keyword density.

Keyword density is related to a pages ranking within the search engine and can be combined with formatting techniques to increase ranking even further, bolding, italics, headline, linking, bulleted lists and underline can all be used to emphasize your keywords.

Does any of this make sense? Sounds more scientific than creative and it is. I would have to say at least it makes more sense thinking of the page as a mathematical equation but to a point. This content must be legible to a person yet optimized for the search engine. This is where the art comes back in and the use of a trained professional, or copy writer can really make a difference.

Writing content for your web site is no joke. It can be extremely complicated to make yourself visible and it can be even harder to have a ranked page which will convert a user. Don’t overlook the content or the need for a copy writer when revamping your web site. Consider the targeted keywords and each pages keyword density. Consider also the time it takes to prepare the content properly and do you have that time. Once you realize content is King you will start finding higher rankings for your pages, increased traffic and more conversions.