As mentioned in previous posts (and in the newsletters), your content is the most important part of your Website. Pulling the content together for the initial project is one of the most daunting tasks for a lot of people. When pulling your content together the first thing you need to know is what each page is supposed to do, and you need to have a pretty good idea of what new and/or additional content needs to be created.
As an example, if you’re selling products on your site, make sure your product descriptions are consistent. In other words, don’t make one page a vague paragraph while another page has a full page of text with supporting graphics and feature comparisons. However you decide to write your product descriptions, be sure to say what, exactly, a particular item is and why customers should buy your product.
Once you know what content you want on your site, design a “content template,” which will come in handy on a moving forward basis. Let’s use a product page as an example for your content template. You know that you need to tell visitors who the product is for, what it is/does, and why they should buy it—why it’s better than the alternatives. In the content template, go through each of those points, spelling out exactly what information should go on the page, and approximately what format it should be in. As an example:
Page Title: (This is especially important in regards to SEO so be sure to include your main keywords.)
Product Description — Answers the question, “What is it?”
Product Name: Short Description (two sentences):
Tips: The product description should answer the questions “What is it?” “Who is it for?” and “What does it do?” The description must include at least one real, actual noun besides the name of the product.
Example short description: Child’s Memory Foam Mattress Topper is a 4-inch topper with Contour Pillows. This mattress is ideal for safe bunk bed use with appropriate height and virtually no bounce. (Note: Always provide actual, final copy for each chunk of content to avoid confusion and added time — which will add to the cost.)
Sales contact information.
Tips: For the products you can buy immediately, this is just a link to the first step of the purchasing process.
Product Benefits — Answers the question, “Why should I buy it?”
Benefit/feature pairs:
- Benefit/feature
- Benefit/feature
Tips: Benefits are about the customer and answer the question, “What will this do for me?” Features are about the product and answer the question, “How does the product work?” Benefits should be very specific. Use concrete terms whenever you can.
Formatting: Here, you can use either a simple list of three to five bullets or a set of headings (each of which describes a single benefit) followed by three to five bulleted features that explain how the benefit is attained. Whichever format you choose, keep these as concise as you can.
Full Product Details — Answer questions like “What’s included?” and “How does it work?” “Who is the product for?” “What does the product do for its target user?” and “Why is the product better than the available alternatives?”
Using content templates won’t solve all of your content problems, but it will make the entire process of getting the information to go from rough idea to final copy much easier and faster, with a lot less stress. It’s also more likely to make your content considered as relevant by the search engines, which in turn helps with your rankings. By the way, it’s a lot easier for the person placing the content on the site when it only needs to be placed once.
All of the above are guidelines to help you get started with your content. Content that is educational, informational, or just entertaining should always be written for the reader, not for the search engines. Properly place your keywords in your content, with the most important ones within the first couple of paragraphs and the title, and be sure to include them in your meta tag description.
