SEO Content
How small business can compete over large business
Building Good Quality Content - How It Helps You Beat Competition
When it comes to taking your business online, building good quality content is key. This is what helps even the smallest of businesses to compete effectively with the large corporations. Small businesses that want to have an edge in the market will often redefine themselves by taking advantage of an online presence. This can help give them the same standing as the larger, better known companies and to compete at their level. The internet provides a level playing field for all businesses, regardless of size. To gain an edge, all you have to do is create content that is relevant to your target audience.
The need for quality content
To compete effectively, you need to have a lot of content on your website. This content also needs to be easy to read, informative and entertaining. It should keep your website visitors engaged and wanting more. Good quality content will increase the amount of time your potential customers spend on your website. As a result, search engine robots will notice this, and index your site better. They assume relevance and authority for your website. However, if people stay for just seconds on your website, the search engines will deem you irrelevant and penalize you with poor rankings.
The content of your website should also be enough for all of your keywords to be covered and to also give all necessary details to your potential customers. This content can be in the form of articles, audio and videos. Your site users should have all their questions answered, and should not have to do lengthy searches around your site to find what they are looking for. It is important to remember that people now come online to search for information. They have questions they want to be answered and if you can answer these questions satisfactorily, through your online content, then they will keep coming back to your website. It is also true that if you help answer a visitors question effectively, they are more likely to take you up on your recommendations. This is because you have already gained their trust by providing information. This relationship with your online users can easily increase your sales or enquiry figures.
The more content pages you have on your website, the more pages the search engines will have for indexing. As a result, the more of a presence you will create online, so people will be able to find your website easier. As there have been multiple pages indexed, more of your webpages will start showing up in search engine results. Each of these pages should address a specific question or topic that your target market would be interested in. Addressing various questions and topics on different pages of content within your site allows you to be seen more often by different users; therefore increasing the traffic to your site. Again, since the different pages will be related in a way because they all talk of the same overall theme, you will be viewed as an authority. For instance, if your website is on motorbike repairs, the different pages of your website will address the different aspects of this. One page may talk about what types of motorbikes you specialise in. Another one can talk about common issues with motorbikes and the types of repairs you do. A different one talks about important owner maintenance to increase the life of the bike parts, and so on. A person brought to your website when they searched for motorbike repairs will get their answers. On top of this, they will see that you also have experience, and are going an extra step to help them increase the life of their bike parts. This makes them to trust you as an authority. The result is longer periods of time on your site, regular visits, and word of mouth referrals to their friends and family. Search engines, noticing this traffic will also rank you highly as an authority website for your chosen keywords.
When writing your website content, it important that you are writing to presell and not to sell. Preselling simply means that you should describe the benefits of a product or service to your potential customer in simple, easy to understand language, avoiding technical jargon wherever possible. You then recommend your product or service, while avoiding the over the top sales pitch that is used all too often. This gentler, more engaging approach helps your website visitors to gain confidence in your brand so they can start to trust your company. This consumer confidence puts you in positive position to covert these individual interactions into sales.
Always remember to structure your website well so that it is easy to navigate. When a user comes to your site through a certain page of content, they need to be able to easily move around your website so they are able to find out any necessary information and have a positive interaction with your brand. All of your website pages should have obvious links to them, and the main navigation of the site should remain consistent throughout the entire site.
Building Good Quality Content - The Content Structure
When planning your website content, there are a few things you need to know. To start with, you should know what keywords actually are, and how they help with the indexing of your content by the search engines. In a very simply definition, a keyword is that word or phrase that a prospective customer will type into the search engines to find your site or content. This keyword is the reference point of your market. For instance, using the same motorbike repair example as above, a person can go to Google search engine and search for "motorbike repair Melbourne". This forms a keyword. If you are writing content on this, then you should have one page dedicated to the keyword "motorbike repair Melbourne”.
It is advised that thorough keyword research should be done to find out how competitive the chosen keywords are, how many people search for them, and whether they can bring you sales or enquiries. Some keywords are also easier to rank on search engines than others. So, go for the long tail keywords that are easier to rank. For example, going for "motorbike" as a keyword will frustrate you. It is a very general and very competitive keyword to rank for. Instead, a keyword like "Suzuki motorbike repairs Melbourne" is easier to rank for, with lower competition.
As with all content, make sure that your online content has a good introduction, an engaging body, and a strong conclusion. It also obviously needs to have a good flow and be written in a style that will allow for effective communication with your target market. When reading online content, users are more likely to skim read than they would otherwise, so it is important to write shorter sentences, make sure of bullet points and to include plenty of white space in your pages. The content should also offer something fresh and real, in an entertaining, attractive and informative way. Remember, building good quality content, and lots of it for better indexing and visibility, can help to take your small business to the next level.