Contents
Chapter
4
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In-house or out-source, content creation with limited resource
In-house or out-source, content creation with limited resource
- What is a value proposition and why do you need one?
- What is on-page SEO and why is it important?
- What is the best-practice page layout for Search Engines to crawl?
- How do I know what keywords I should use?
In this chapter, we’ll cover the fundamental aspects of content creation for your website to aid SEO success and provide your users with an easy, informative experience that will keep them coming back for more...and convert them to paying customers.
Optimising a website can feel like an intimidating topic, acronyms everywhere, conflicting opinions and oodles of information.
But as an integrated marketing agency that has been around since 1979, specialising in website design and development since the 1990s, we like to think we’re pretty well versed in what works and what doesn’t...
What is a value proposition and why do you need one?
A value proposition is a statement of the advantage that the services and products your business offers will provide your customers.
It needs to be honest, transparent and should be on a company's website or any other consumer touchpoints.
It can be written using a simple formula developed by Steve Blank, a former Google employee who set up Lean Startup Circle.
“We help (X) do (Y) by doing (Z).”
The key takeaway when developing your value proposition is keep it simple.
Alternatively, if you don’t feel like you have the right tools or in-house capabilities to develop one, consider outsourcing.
What is on-page SEO and why is it important?
Think of SEO like water, it takes many forms. It stands for search engine optimisation and the official definition is:
“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.”
You can do this in many ways, including technical SEO, off-site SEO, local SEO, video, image etc. All are relevant for your website, but in this instance, we’ll focus on SEO from an on-page perspective.
On-page SEO is the use of keywords, title tags, descriptions, page layouts and more, to enable Google to crawl your website pages and help it make the decision on who to show it to and under what search terms.
Before you write your website content, it would be good to use platforms such as Google Keyword Planner or Semrush to conduct some research into what your customers are searching for to find your product or services, so you can ensure what type of content you’ll need on your web pages to get you in front of potential buyers.
What is the best-practice page layout for search engines to crawl?
Google rolls-out major updates several times per year, meaning your web page rankings are subject to change, depending on the update Google makes and what content it feels is most deserving. SEO is an on-going activity and really needs to be regularly assessed and updated to keep your site performing best against competitors.
But generally, the rule of thumb for best-practice webpage layouts looks like this:
- URL - Include any relevant keywords to signal to search engines the topic of the webpage.
- Alt Text - Compress your images and host in JPEG/Web P format, provide accurate, concise descriptions of the images on the page to aid accessibility.
- <H1> - The title of your post, include you main focus keyword.
- <H2> - Utilise H2's and 3's to structure content in a logical hierarchical way to ensure it's easy to crawl, try to include related keywords to your main focus keyword.
- Content - Include unique, informative high quality content, adhering to Google's EEAT principles, have a minimum of 800 characters.
- Internal links - Distribute page authority and ranking power by including links to other pages of your site.
- Meta Title - Provide clear messaging describing what the page is about, add main keywords (avoid keyword stuffing)
- Meta Description - Create a compelling description to drive website traffic
- Social sharing - Increase brand awareness, credibility and social proofing by providing social media links from your site to allow for sharing content.
Ensure your website is performing well, run lighthouse reports to check page load speeds, accessibility, SEO and best-practices are all implemented to avoid missing out on conversions.
How do I know what keywords I should use?
Keywords are important on your website because they can be used to give Google search engines the information it needs to serve your website to people looking for your specific products and services.
There are different tools you can use to look into the intent behind a search term, how many monthly searches it is getting, how difficult it would be to rank for and similar related keywords to utilise. The key is to look at highly searched terms, with low competition, and include different variations of your main keyword to avoid stuffing in your content which could result in a negative impact on your rankings.
Key takeaways
- Your website content should follow Google's EEAT principles
- On-page SEO is important but there are lots of different areas of SEO you should consider when building and maintaining your website
- You should utilise keywords in your content that customers will use to find your business
- SEO is not static and changes regularly, you must keep up to date with changes and adapt your site regularly
- What is a value proposition and why do you need one?
- What is on-page SEO and why is it important?
- What is the best-practice page layout for Search Engines to crawl?
- How do I know what keywords I should use?
In this chapter, we’ll cover the fundamental aspects of content creation for your website to aid SEO success and provide your users with an easy, informative experience that will keep them coming back for more...and convert them to paying customers.
Optimising a website can feel like an intimidating topic, acronyms everywhere, conflicting opinions and oodles of information.
But as an integrated marketing agency that has been around since 1979, specialising in website design and development since the 1990s, we like to think we’re pretty well versed in what works and what doesn’t...
What is a value proposition and why do you need one?
A value proposition is a statement of the advantage that the services and products your business offers will provide your customers.
It needs to be honest, transparent and should be on a company's website or any other consumer touchpoints.
It can be written using a simple formula developed by Steve Blank, a former Google employee who set up Lean Startup Circle.
“We help (X) do (Y) by doing (Z).”
The key takeaway when developing your value proposition is keep it simple.
Alternatively, if you don’t feel like you have the right tools or in-house capabilities to develop one, consider outsourcing.
What is on-page SEO and why is it important?
Think of SEO like water, it takes many forms. It stands for search engine optimisation and the official definition is:
“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.”
You can do this in many ways, including technical SEO, off-site SEO, local SEO, video, image etc. All are relevant for your website, but in this instance, we’ll focus on SEO from an on-page perspective.
On-page SEO is the use of keywords, title tags, descriptions, page layouts and more, to enable Google to crawl your website pages and help it make the decision on who to show it to and under what search terms.
Before you write your website content, it would be good to use platforms such as Google Keyword Planner or Semrush to conduct some research into what your customers are searching for to find your product or services, so you can ensure what type of content you’ll need on your web pages to get you in front of potential buyers.