Why Great Website Content is Important

Your website is often your first, and perhaps only, chance to market your company’s products and services to online customers, so make the most of this opportunity by ensuring your website’s content is top-notch.

Not only does it give viewers an instant impression of the quality of your company (glaring spelling and grammar errors do not bode well!), but high-quality content can also help you rank higher in search engine results.

Content needs to be fresh – it’s important to regularly update the written text on your site. Make sure it engages with your target audience and is interesting enough to encourage people to return.

To help people find your site via search engines, include important keywords in your written content but only in context and where it is appropriate to do so. Definitely do not over-use keywords – this practice is known as keyword stuffing and not only will your content not read well, it can cause a webpage to be penalised as search engines will think it is spam. An example of this would be such a paragraph:

Are you looking for cheap gym equipment? We have cheap gym equipment for sale. Our website is the best for cheap gym equipment. Check out our cheap gym equipment now.

It’s important to create content that fulfils the needs of the people looking for the information. Most people start their online search for a product or service with an information-based query. At this early stage, they don’t want to be bombarded with sales pitches, so subtle sales messages are key here. Ensure that, above anything else, your content is useful.

Homebase’s website is a great example of this. The “help and advice” section on the site provides people with a range of “how-to guides” for jobs such as laying laminate flooring, fitting locks and planting trees. Each guide is information-rich and details everything you need to know in easy-to-follow steps. Some of the guides feature videos too.

Sales promotion is included in the form of a green button which reads “Choose from a range of flooring”. This button directs users to the retail part of the site, but it is a discrete, inoffensive effort that is not too “salesy”.