Sit down with an online marketer at the moment and it will likely not be long before they are talking ‘content marketing’.  So what is it and how can you as a business owner plan and benefit from having a content strategy?

The benefits

What sort of websites do you keep on visiting? The answer will probably be those that are posting regular content – it gives you a reason to go back and more chance of repeated exposure to a brand.  For this reason getting regular content on your site can drive repeat visitors and increase exposure with your products and services.

The benefits don’t stop there – you’ll also be extending your search engine reach.  The more pages and subjects around your area that you publish the more you will rank for those specific key phrases.  This is known as developing a long search tail – essentially ranking for a greater number of search terms.  Search engines are big fans of WordPress blogs and if you are posting regularly to a blog like this you’ll be on to a winner.

Regular content can also place you as having knowledge on the subject area – have you ever felt more confident having read that someone specifically understands what you are looking for or require?

The key to great content is relevance

The good news is that having great content on your website and placed on others websites is nothing new.  The key to great content is, like the majority of business, about identifying what it is your customers want and delivering it.  Work out what it is that they want to read or know about – whether it is information about your services or some features of a product they may not be aware of.

Ensure that you are using your analytics to discover what is popular on your site and build on your successes to date.  Another tip is to use the Google Adwords keyword tool, where you’ll be able to put in terms that you think people may be searching for in your area and see how many monthly searches they get.

Make sure it is regular and set time aside

It can often be difficult to set aside time in a busy day to update the company website with new information, keep it fresh with new imagery or write a blog post.  The key is planning – for smaller businesses your content doesn’t need to be going on to your site every single day.  Work out what is feasible for you – is it a weekly update or perhaps one every two weeks?  Once you have found what works dedicate perhaps an hour to getting it done.

For information on how we can help build and distribute content for your website and improve your rankings in search engines please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk