How to Improve Your Website Results, Step 2
Add more content.
There — I said it. The dirty little not-so-secret of the website industry is that you have to have content your users want. What kind of content do they want? It depends on your business. How do you find out? Go back to step 1 and look at the stats.
Before I go on, I should say that if you already have a large sales team and you want them to continue to do all the heavy sales lifting, you don’t necessarily need to do this. But, if you don’t have a dedicated sales staff, or you want to supplement the staff you have, then there’s no getting around it. You need to add more content. OK–Back to stats.
The stats are going to tell you a lot about your website and why people visit. Start by looking at the query strings, then look at what pages are most popular within a session. Is it exactly what you thought it would be? Maybe, but maybe not. The first content you should add should be built around what you’re users are already visiting.
That’s the easy part. Now it gets harder. You have to use your imagination. Based on the stats, and based on your knowledge of the customer, what is it that people want from you? That’s what you have to start creating content around. Make no mistake–this is work and it’s difficult, a process of trial and error. But it’s definitely what your visitors want. Visitors go to the web to find information. You must give them something to find.
Now it gets harder still. You have to create this content that people want, with a minimum of sales messages, and you have to give it away. That’s right–no registration required, no fee, not even a lot of hype about your product. Just solid information that you, as the expert on your product or service, can use to help them.
Does this strategy work? Well, yes and, unfortunately, I didn’t come up with it. See this little sales book I’ve been reading?
It’s all that guy. The thing is, you have to treat your website like your best, most knowledgable sales rep. People talk to it all the time–it needs to have something useful to say back. And “useful” is defined by the customer. Provide value to them first, and you’re more likely to get a meaningful response. That’s what creating this useful content is all about.
If you’re lost most small business websites, you won’t do this. It is a lot of work. But if you do it, I promise it will pay off. People will stay on your page longer, they’ll visit more pages and they’ll take action more regularly.
There’s another bonus that goes with this: more content means there’s more good stuff for search engines to find. But that’s another step.
Come back for more.