We talk all the time about creating content for your website. Search engines love content. It helps them understand what it is you do, what your website is about and how much of an authority you have in your space. That is why we encourage updating content on your site regularly and blogging.

As you know, there is more to adding content to your site than just throwing it on there. I wanted to take a couple minutes to share a few things to keep in mind when you are creating content for your website.

• Reporting content – We see reporting style content frequently in website copy and press releases. Reporting content is strictly facts, fair to every side and is lacking in personality. This can be good for being found for specific search terms but it may not be as helpful for encouraging people to link to your site.
• Vanilla content – As we create content for our websites, many times the content comes out so politically correct and full of ‘gobbledegook‘ that the message in the text is lost. Don’t be afraid to speak the way you do in your regular life, on your website. Use the same tone and vocabulary you use when you are talking to your best customers.
• Have an opinion – What makes your business different from your competitors is your staff and your opinions. By leaving your opinion out of your website and blog copy you are hiding who your business really is and what you stand for. Don’t be afraid of inserting your opinion. You will never make everyone happy or have everyone as a customer so don’t waste your efforts by being vanilla. Instead, attract the people who want to do business with the real you.
• Thought leadership takes opinions – Establishing yourself as a thought leader in your industry is going to take some personality, some original thought and opinions. Thought leadership lends to your content being shared more among the internet and the more shared the content, the more points you get in the search engine’s algorithm.

That is it. Just a few thoughts on creating content for your website. Don’t be afraid to inject a little personality and retrain yourself to not write like you are reporting but like you are educating customers about what it is you do.

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Do you remember the scene in A Christmas Story when Ralphie gets a homemade gift from his Aunt Clara? He is completely humiliated by the pink bunny suit and will probably never wear it another day in his life. His Aunt Clara obviously spent a lot of time making that costume, but did she actually think he would want to wear something like that? In the words of Kevin McCallister (via Home Alone), “You can get beat up for wearing something like that.”

Photo Credit: abbey*christine

Ahh, the joys of gift giving… Tomorrow is Christmas Eve day and I have to admit that I am not done with my Christmas shopping yet. There are a few more items on my list and I always save the stocking stuffers for last minute (it never fails). As I’ve mentioned before, giving gifts is one of my favorite things during the holiday season. Part of what makes it special is giving a present to someone that you know they will really like, something that will surprise them, or something that they need.

This is a great practice to follow when creating content for your website. You don’t want to spend hours and hours creating content that people aren’t interested in. Use the same intention when creating content for your website as you do when you give gifts.

Listen to your customers.
I consider myself a pretty good listener and I pay attention to the needs of others. (Mom, if you’re reading this, stop now, spoiler alert!) Last spring, during Maine’s “mud season,”  my mom was telling me about how dirty her boots were getting when she took the dogs out for a walk. I took note of that and when it came time for me to write my Christmas “Give” List, rainboots were one of the first items that I knew I would purchase for her.

Lesson: Listen to your customers pain points and create content that will be helpful to them.

Know what they like.
One year I got my younger brother a gift card to Bull Moose Music for Christmas. After he had used the gift card he told me what he purchased and how much he enjoyed that gift. He mentioned it a few times after that as well. When it came time to purchase for him the next year I got him another gift card to Bull Moose Music because I knew how much he had appreciated that gift. He was so happy that I had gotten it for him again and now getting him that gift card is part of a holiday tradition.

Lesson: Pay attention to what people like by reviewing the Top Content in your Google Analytics
and by measuring how much the content you create gets shared
(for example re-tweets on Twitter and likes/comments on Facebook).

When in doubt, ask!
My dad is always the hardest person to shop for and he doesn’t “need” anything. So this year I called him up and asked him when he would like for a Christmas gift. He gave me a few great ideas and I am sure he’ll be pleased Christmas morning.

Lesson: As you communicate with your clients ask for feedback. Ask them
what types of content they’d like to see on your website.

Here’s the video that I referred to above. I’ve never gotten a gift this bad, but I’m not opposed to re-gifting if it isn’t something I like that much.

Read the rest of the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar

• Dec. 22 – We Are Santa’s Elves
• Dec. 21 – Holiday CMS Shopping
• Dec. 20 – Top Searches in 2010 – Plus Facebook Statuses and Twitter Trends
• Dec. 19 – Get Your Website Prepared for Holiday Events Early
• Dec. 18 – Use Foursquare to Get Discounts on Holiday Gifts
• Dec. 17 – Manage Your Website Like a Holiday Party
• Dec. 16 – Tips For A Happy Holiday And A Successful PPC Year
• Dec. 15 – Track Santa’s elves with Google Analytics E-Commerce tracking
• Dec. 14 – Keep Your Christmas Tree and Website Alive!
• Dec. 13 – Be Sure to Meet Your Website Visitors’ Expectations
• Dec. 12 – Segmenting your email – I mean – holiday card lists
• Dec. 11 – One Link Goes Out, They All Go Out
• Dec. 10 – Addressing Pain Points Means More Than Broad Smarty Pants Slogans
• Dec. 9 – Sneaking a Peek at Qwiki
• Dec. 8 – Fix Up Your “Charlie Brown” Website
• Dec. 7 – Don’t be a Scrooge with Your Content
• Dec. 6 – ‘Tis The Season for Generosity
• Dec. 5 – Have you been naughty or nice? Now we have online proof.
• Dec. 4 – Online Holiday Shopping
• Dec. 3 – Make a List and Check it Twice
• Dec. 2 – Unclutter Your Website for the Holidays
• Dec. 1 – Walking in a Winter Wonderland of Unique Content

It’s that time of the day (or week) that you’ve set aside in your busy schedule to compose your next blog post.  After exhausting all possible excuses and finding other things to do, the time to write has come.  You’ve racked your brain.  You’ve been keeping up with other blogs and news articles in your industry.  But alas, you are utterly stumped and don’t know what to write about.

Enter WordTracker’s Keyword Questions tool.

Get Some Ideas for Your Post

I have to say, I love using this tool because it is so easy!  All you have to do is pop in a word (try some different words related to your business) and it gives you a list of questions that have been searched for involving that word.  I used the word “SEO” (I know, go figure!):

Now I have a whole list of questions that people have typed into search engines to find an answer.  My next blog post could be “How Does SEO Work?”, since this is something that people clearly want to know about and I can provide an answer (most likely ad nauseam).

You can apply this same strategy to your own blog, whether your business is crm software, wedding dresses, jewelry, PR…you get the point.  When you know which topics people are looking for related to what you do, you can provide a well-written answer and further position yourself as an expert in your field.

Get Some SEO Benefit

You already know that a blog can help your SEO efforts by consistently adding fresh content to your site (which search engines like), as well as reinforce your website’s keyword targets if you include them in your posts.  Since you’re tapping into questions that were typed into search engines, having a blog post title with that question can boost your ability to be found in a search when that question is typed in.

A search for “What does a search engine see?“, a post I wrote last month, puts me on the first page of Google:

Don’t Forget the Search Engine Suggest Feature

I’ve spoken in the past about getting ideas from what the search engine box suggests to you when typing in a search.  These suggestions are based on queries that have already been typed in, so these can also be valuable content ideas.  I stumbled across this great tool called Soovle, which aggregates all of the search box suggestions from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon, and Answers.com in one place, using one single search box.  I highly recommend using this tool as a topic-generator as well.

Do you have any surefire methods to cure the I-Don’t-Know-What-To-Write-About Blues?  I’d love to hear them!

Your website is your online attempt of explaining to the world what you do, why you are good at it and why people should do business with you. Websites have graduated from boring brochureware to dynamic, living content that gives visitors more information and opportunities to interact with that content. A well designed website might impress visitors but it is the content that determines when and where you are going to be found by search engines, sales prospects and visitors of all types.

Adding content to your website is great for SEO

Search engines love crawling new information on your website. Search engines algorithms are private, but we do know that the number of pages you have indexed on them is a plus. The more pages you have indexed, the more of an expert you appear to search engines. Adding fresh content to your site also keeps search engine spiders interested in your website and they keep coming back. The benefit of keeping the spiders interested is when you do add new content it will show up in a matter of days (or less) and not take weeks.

How many pages do you have indexed in Google? See the figure below to do a quick search to find out.

Create content to be found

You can’t just toss up mumbo jumbo every day, you need to add quality, helpful content to your website. With tools like SEO and Social Media people are finding our websites in more ways than ever. Give them something good so they continue to return. Think of this as a very unique opportunity. We used to prepare our marketing messages as TV/Radio commercials, direct mail pieces, billboards etc. and we were constantly interrupting people during their daily activities so they would pay us some attention, notice our logo or purchase our products. Now we have this amazing and unique opportunity to BE FOUND by people when they are looking for information on products, services and companies!

When you are creating new content for your website, remember to create content for the people who found your site when they were looking for something. Answer the questions they may have, give them places to download more resources, contact you for more information, etc. Create content to be found the exact moment someone is looking for it.

“Either write something worth reading about or do something worth writing about.”
Ben Franklin quote from Inbound Marketing

Generates inbound links

The more content you have on your site, the more opportunity you are giving people to link to your website. Links from other people to your website are called Inbound Links. The more Inbound Links to your website, the more search engines again determine that you are an expert in your industry, giving you higher search rankings.

Content Marketing isn’t a sprint, it is a marathon

Creating more content for your website doesn’t mean sitting down and writing 100 new pages. Create a content strategy or at the least, just an open mind to continue to add pages and content to your website. Below is a Slideshare presentation: TrendsSpotting’s 2010 Social Media Influencers – Trend Predictions in 140 Characters. One of the quotes in it was “content marketing isn’t a sprint, it is a marathon”, and I have to agree. By creating a content strategy and setting goals for when you will add new content and what you are going to add, you will add more value than if you just put 50 new pages on your website next week.

Adding content to your website is imperative so that your site is current, found by new visitors regularly and to boost your search rankings. Websites can always be added to later or in phases; make sure your site isn’t static for months at a time.

Photo credit: Portland Ballet

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves Kasi and Amanda will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

I recently had a very interesting conversation with my mother-in-law about social networking. She is the creative director for Portland Ballet, who is probably best known locally for their traditional Victorian Nutcracker performance each year. She is feeling the pressure to be more active on social networking sites but she has a major dilemma she is working through – almost all of their ‘content’ is protected under creative content licensing. The music, images, how a ballerina points her toe a certain way is all protected. She cannot run the risk of a guest at one of her shows shooting video with their Flip cam and uploading it to YouTube or photos to Flickr etc. I am fortunate to not have the same legal concerns she does but it got me to thinking about how we decide whether or not to protect our content online.

Protecting Your Content

We in the B2B world love to hide our content, behind long forms to capture data, through opt-in only lists, password protected sites etc. Why do we do that? If your content is hidden behind a form yes, you will get the reader’s information for them to download but you lose a lot of people at that form as well. Would you rather the 3 forms filled out or your content to be free and seen by hundreds of eyes? That is a choice you and your organization have to make.

Spread your information

Seth Godin recently wrote a post How to protect your ideas in the digital age where he talked about this same topic. Seth’s take is to spread your good ideas. Let people know what a resource you are and then they will come to you when they are ready to start a business relationship. What is your take on protecting your online content?

Read the rest of the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar

• Dec. 9 – Don’t Forget the Milk & Cookies (Good Content)
• Dec. 8 – Google Makes it (Even More) Personal
• Dec. 7 – Customer Service and Marketing
• Dec. 6 – Social Media Didn’t Invent Criticism
• Dec. 5 – Email is the frosting to your gingerbread house
• Dec. 4 – Is Google Caffeine on Your Holiday Wish List?
• Dec. 3 – Don’t Forget to Make Your Title Tags and Check ‘Em Twice
• Dec. 2 – Your Mobile Website
• Dec. 1 – Your Holiday Card List (Your Network)

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves Kasi and Amanda will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

You can rank #1 for all your keywords by having a well-optimized site, but what’s the point if the content on your site, well…stinks? It’s not enough just to have a lot of traffic. You need to leave your visitors some milk and cookies (read: good content) in order to encourage them to stick around (and keep coming back).

It’s Not About You

It’s natural to want to go into great detail about your company on your website. If you’re not telling people how your product/service is going solve their problem/fulfill their need, however, you will practically be able to hear your bounce rate go up (boing!). What I’m trying to say is that it’s not all about you. Your content needs to be written in a way that is focused specifically on how you are going to help the person who is visiting your site. Make it all about your target market.

Keep it Up-to-Date

Quality content is key, but if it’s old, it loses its effectiveness. When I visit a site that has information about sales that have expired, sign-ups for trainings that have already passed, or a blog that hasn’t had an entry in 4 months, I figure that the company is not interested in investing time in their site.  So why should I?  Your website, much like my sweet little shar pei, needs constant love and attention.  Be sure to keep current on your offerings, look over and freshen up your web copy every so often, and make regular blog posts a must (if you can’t commit to the blog, you might as well ditch it).

Want more?  Check out this post about how important content is for B2B sites.

Read the rest of the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar

• Dec. 8 – Google Makes it (Even More) Personal
• Dec. 7 – Customer Service and Marketing
• Dec. 6 – Social Media Didn’t Invent Criticism
• Dec. 5 – Email is the frosting to your gingerbread house
• Dec. 4 – Is Google Caffeine on Your Holiday Wish List?
• Dec. 3 – Don’t Forget to Make Your Title Tags and Check ‘Em Twice
• Dec. 2 – Your Mobile Website
• Dec. 1 – Your Holiday Card List (Your Network)

In the wild and crazy world of the web, you may have heard various adages like “content is king” or “write for people, not for search engines”.   For an SEO like me, my stance is that you must have text on your website – end of story.  So for any of you Curious Georges out there that are asking “why?”, get yourselves cozy and read on, my friends!

It’s Good for SEO

I really enjoy learning about clients’ businesses and coming up with an organic search marketing campaign for their websites.  During the keyword research phase when I’m gathering information about words and phrases that my clients value, I’ll perform my normal keyword testing but I also need to check on the content available for these keywords.  If there is little-to-no content regarding these keywords, I’m quick to advise that we need to get that content in place.  There are various on-page SEO practices that can be implemented to emphasize keywords, but if there isn’t any content to support them- fuhgeddaboudit! 

Search engines check the titles and h1 tags but they also index the text on the page.  Keywords aren’t relevant if they’re not in a page’s content. This also goes for websites that are image-heavy and text-light.  These websites might look pretty, but they’re not going to perform well from a search perspective.  This does not mean that all you have to do is write your keywords repeatedly on your page.  The text needs to make sense to the humans who will be reading it and the keywords should be used only where they sound natural in the passage.

Search engines also like it when your site has inbound links from other quality websites.  As an added bonus, if you’ve got good content that is interesting and informational, other site owners will be more likely to accept your link requests during your link building campaign.

It’s Good for Conversion

There should always be a goal for your website.  Are you an online retailer?  Then your goal is to get people to put your products in the shopping cart and buy them.  Do you provide a service?  Then you want to be able to collect quality leads from people who are interested in what you do.  Unfortunately, if you’re not telling people how your product and service is going solve their problem or fulfill their need, you will probably be able to hear the sound of the bounces from the people leaving your site.  You can’t accomplish this without words.  Let’s not forget , however, that not just any ‘ole type of ad copy will do.  Your content needs to be written in a way that is focused specifically on how you are going to help the person who is visiting your site. Make it all about your target market, not you.

It’s Good for Your Grandma

Pew Internet & American Life Project’s Generations Online in 2009 report found that “older generations use the internet less for socializing and entertainment and more as a tool for information searches, emailing, and buying products.”  Take a look at your website.  Do you have a bunch of flash animation, videos, and other various widgets?  It’s not wrong if you do, as all of these things can have their place on a website.  Just remember that the goal is to make sure that you’re balancing it out with clear and concise content to make it easy for people to understand what your business is about and how to get what they are looking for.  People over the age of 55 are becoming even more active on the Internet, but according to Pew, the percentage of them that download videos is less than half.  Make sure you’ve got your information available in content form as well.

Do It!

Now that I’ve convinced you just how important content is for your site, what are you waiting for?  Go beef up those product descriptions, write those blog posts, and tweak that website copy!  Please don’t make me send my Grandma after you.

photo credit: Listener42

In addition to my life here at Hall as internet marketer, I’m an avid fan of audiobooks and a creative writer.  This weekend I was listening to an interview with a writer who was asked the question that all published writers must get really sick of answering — “What is your advice for beginning writers?” This guy, without missing a beat and with candor, said, “Get your butt in the chair and write.”

That answer summarizes a whole philosophy about work ethic and creativity that I think bears repeating.  Too often, we (myself included!) come up with excuses for not being able to write.  If we just stopped saying the excuses and spent that time writing, we would probably be a lot further along than we are.  No writer has it easy.  You never have so much time that you just can’t find anything else to do but write.

You need to make time to write.  Make it a priority.

Is writing a priority for you?  I hope it is.  Whether it’s a blog, an article, ideas for a new ebook, or a way of revisioning your company’s “about us” page, every business needs more content on the web.  And even if you don’t think of yourself as a very good writer, your ideas are good and original, and with a little bit of feedback and editing, your writing will work on the web.  It certainly will be authentic.

Of course, this philosophy applies to numerous other things you should be doing for your business that you might be putting off.  Do you have a sticky note reminding you that you still need to learn a bit about SEO?  That you still haven’t made a solid step towards your website redesign?  That your viral video idea is still sitting there on a scratchpad but yet to be produced?

Make time, because no one else will make it for you.  Get writing!

For some time saving/time management ideas, see Amanda’s post on social media time management, and for tips on creating good content, see my webinar at 2PM EST today.