Simplifying the generation of web content

| by Jon Bergan | November 04, 2007
Whether you currently own a website or are thinking about having one designed for you, at some stage you're going to have to review what content is available on your site. This process can take quite some time and the unfortunate truth is that often people get it wrong. It's not just about looking at a bunch of your competitor's sites and plagiarising their ideas or jotting down whatever sounds appropriate and hoping for the best. There's a lot more to it than that. Your website is actually one of your primary marketing tools and as such it should be taken quite seriously.

First and foremost, the content on your site should be concise and to the point. Readers, especially the ones online, have little patience and want to find out what they need to know as soon as possible. They dislike wading through loads and loads of useless information unless it's absolutely relevant. Try and use as many points as possible and place headings above any large amounts of text so users know whether that content is applicable to them or not. Keep it simple. That's the first tip.

Secondly, it's important to focus on what content is relevant for your business and how you can mould that content into motivating the reader to call you. At the end of the day, all of this text, graphics and links should come through as a phone call to your business and ultimately hit your bottom line. If you cannot see any benefit from your website, then you're doing something wrong. As a portal to over 6.5 billion online users, your website should be structured in such a way that captivates and motivates any user from any country to call you.

Thirdly, your content should be search engine friendly. Over 90% of users use Google, Yahoo and other search engines to find products and services online and as such it is critical that you have a good page ranking on those sites. What all this means is that your website needs to be ranked in the top ten results for the specific keywords that relate to your business. You can start to achieve this by ensuring that the text on your site focuses on these same specific keywords that people will be searching for. Having a search engine optimised site won't get you to the top of these lists but it'll definitely help.

Last but not least, your website should contain a base set of required content that users will expect to find on just about any company website. Information that provides the specifics about your company and how one should go about contacting you are a must. In total, your site should include the following sections at a minimum:

- About the Company
- Contact Details
- Recruitment
- Company History
- Mission & Vision Statements
- Products & Services
- Testimonials
- News and other Dynamic Content

By combining these suggestions and sculpting them into the various pages defined above, you can rest assured that you're on the right track. Remember, it's important to motivate, persuade and inform the reader while remaining professional, unique and memorable. Don't forget about your business branding either. Contextual writing styles play a big part in branding your business and should be incorporated into your copy with the rest of these elements. Take things slow, think thoroughly and plan carefully and before you know it you'll have a website full of useful content that will be driving people to your door before you know it!

Article Source: http://www.articleset.com



About the Author

Jon Bergan is the owner of Bergan Blue, an Australian based creative design studio focused on bridging the gap between the online world of the Internet with the offline world of Marketing. Please visit http://www.berganblue.com.au/ for more information. » Read more articles by Jon Bergan
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