It’s no surprise when we say that content is king on the Internet. And, everyone knows that optimizing your site, and your content will bring you more traffic to your pages. But how effective is your content to illicit results?
B2B marketers often build content with the sale in mind, and yet they discuss all the features of their solution, covering pages with branded names and big icons that are completely meaningless to a person who just wants you to solve their problems.
Here are a few hints to tweak your content to get those leads:
Understand your customer
I know that sounds obvious, but from many website pages, you’d never know that. You customer arrives at your site with several burning questions:
- How can you help me? (solutions)
- Can you do what I need you to do? (qualify)
- Have other people worked with you and been successful (trust)
- Why are you better than everyone else (benefits)
Avoid sales or marketing-speak
All too often websites sound like used car pitches. Speak clearly and simply about what you can do for the customer. Benefit rather than featured based language helps the visitor to identify with your site and creates a connection
Don’t write War & Peace
I’ve yet to meet someone that is outside the science or math area that actually reads every word on the page (you probably aren’t even reading this). Create content that is easy to scan, with an H1, multiple H2s and H3s, and, as much as possible, bulleted content. Allow your visitor to skim your content, and if they find something interesting, they will go back and read in further depth.
Try not to make your content an SEO “Mad Lib”
I can’t tell you how hilarious it is to read some “SEO optimized” only to feel like I am reading a mad lib. When optimizing your content for targeted phrases, err on the side of a natural tone, rather than cramming your keywords into every nook and cranny. Yes, you want the search engines to consider you an authority on certain phrases, but if you really are relevant, writing the content to include SEO Best practices should be fairly easy and natural.
Have calls to action
Don’t you hate it when you go to a website, you’ve bought into the spiel, but now you have no idea how to get in touch? Putting obvious and simple call to actions on the page, ideally in the for of call-outs aids tremendously in the conversion rate optimization of your site. And not all calls to action need to be contact us. Remember, people arrive at your site in different stages of the buying cycle. They might not be ready to contact you, but the ability to download a whitepaper to read later, that links back to your site is a great self-nurturing tool. Speaking of links…
Link to authoritative websites
In order to establish your own credibility, it is helpful to link out to other credible websites, when applicable in your content. The external links should be an extension of where your information left off. It could even reinforce your own stature with the subject matter. Be sure to set up those links so they open a new window, so when people are done reading that external link’s information, your website is still open.
If you think of your website as a sales and information tool, don’t forget: there are certain steps you can take to not just inform, but get results.
