Web Design

When most businesses start to think about having a website designed they often turn to their peers for a source of inspiration. The problem with this approach is that this means that businesses looking to revamp or start a new web project are in fact looking at old sites for inspiration. The net effect of this is that every site in a niche starts to look the same, the content is dry and uninspiring and no one business stands out from the crowd. The same can be said of SEO too.

In the SEO industry, many SEO professionals first look to competitor backlink profiles as a way of filling each month’s link quota. In a similar fashion to the above, this means that all the SEO is doing is building links form the same sources, following the market leaders. This type of technique ensures that your website will never exceed that of those you are following and is a strategy that rarely succeeds.

So where should your SEO team be focusing their efforts?

In a Content Strategy.

You can fix both of the above issues by re-working your website’s design and content, replacing the dry, uninspiring corporate sales pitches with impartial guides, and documentation that offers  solutions and answers questions. By becoming a ‘thought leader’ in your industry, not only will your business attract more custom, it will also reduce your lead times, improve media exposure an develop links organically and may even get you some links from your competitors websites which are the best links to have.

It’s all good and well me telling you to do this and you may even think it’s a good idea but how do you start?

Whether you are a retailer or service provider my solution would be to think like a magazine. Magazines traditionally get hundreds if not thousands more hits per day than standard commercial websites. They do this by delivering high quality, impartial and thought provoking content on a daily basis. What’s more, this content is rarely unique in its subject, as most magazines run similar stories as others in  their niches.

Getting new topics to talk about is simple. By using Google Alerts, you can receive daily updates on topics in your industry. Once you’ve identified appropriate article titles then you can simply announce the news and add your opinion on the subject. It’s as simple as that. Maintaining your website should only take a few hours a day and can be spread out across your team. Your SEO company can also help by improving the targeting of your content to ensure it attracts the maximum amount of visitors across keywords that your customers are using.

Retailers can add in product recommendations, discuss trends and include related celebrity news. Service industries can promote industry news, trends, display analysis and write FAQ’s amongst a host of other content.

Your next question is probably “But Mark, this sounds like a lot of effort. How will it make me money?”

By being the clear expert in your field, answering your customers’ questions and genuinely providing impartial, non-sales content you will not only attract significantly more hits to your website, but also improve the number and quality of your enquiries. All you have to do is add a small panel to the top right of the page that states something along the lines of “For free help and advice call 0800 xxx xxxx or email you@yourbusiness.com”.