So, do you think you have all your bases covered? You have a strategic digital marketing plan in place, have incorporated paid advertising in your plan and your web designer is focused on SEO, but with all those moving parts you are still not generating leads. You ask yourself, “What’s going on?” Chances are you have fallen short of creating quality website content which moves the visitor through the sales funnel to create a lead and ultimately a customer.
Have you reviewed your website content lately? If you are not creating content around what people are actively searching for and your content is not answering the questions you are asked every day in business, then it’s time to make some changes. It’s a New Year, and what better time for a change? Tiny Giant Web Solutions wants to help you understand why quality content matters and how to create content that produces leads. We begin our blog series by helping you understand some complex technical happenings going on behind the scene as we focus on why content matters in part 1 and we offer guidance to help you generate quality content that produces leads in part 2 of our blog series.
Why Does Quality Website Content Matter to Your Small Business?
A simple answer is because it matters to your search results. Google’s search quality team has acknowledged that their primary goal is to serve users with high-quality relevant information. Why is this important to you? As a small business owner, your job is to produce expert information-rich content to your targeted audience. This is beneficial to the potential customer and improves your Google search ranking. Creating useful content directs users to your business and helps Google understand your pages when finding, indexing and ranking your website. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. You learn quickly that Google takes its guidelines seriously, and that following their guidelines can have a positive impact on your business.
Onto the more complex tech stuff going on in the background…Google is analyzing and evaluating the quality, value and rank worthiness of your website content via artificial intelligence, known as Rank Brain. Although Google’s rank algorithm is a mystery, links and content remain at the top of their ranking factors. For this blog, we are focusing on content.
What is Google looking at and what should you be looking at with regard to your content planning strategy?
Keywords
Make sure that your keywords are relevant and match up with titles, headlines, and content you are presenting to visitors on your website.
Synonyms/Intent Matching
Google is not just looking at raw exact matches. They are also looking for synonyms, word uses and intent matching.
Relatable Topics
Google looks at topic associations, related term, and phrase matches.
Visuals & Non-text Content
Whether it is audio, video, interactive elements or tools Google can look at all those features and begin to associate them with something. For instance, if you are looking for the lyrics to a particular song, Google may associate the lyrics with a music video and pull the video.
When considering the above factors, you quickly see that there is some sophisticated stuff happening in the background of your simple Google search. There are so many dynamics to consider when Google is evaluating content; therefore, it is important that you have a strategic content marketing plan that aligns with Google’s guidelines. When developing your plan avoid creating duplicate content, because it may present issues for search engines that cause you to experience lower rankings and traffic loss. Keep in mind that Google is searching for verifiable information. They are seeking accuracy, truthfulness, and validity of information in the content they are evaluating.
Although this may not be everything that Google analyzes when considering content, it does give you some insight when you ask yourself the questions, “What’s going on?” and “Why am I not ranking?” Take a moment to ponder the complex factors that Google evaluates, brainstorm about why your website might not be ranking at the top and consider what you could do in order to rank better. Tiny Giant is here to help you understand why quality content matters and to help you get noticed. Don’t forget to visit our blog again for part 2 of our series-Creating Content that Produces Leads.
