The Web Clinic Blog

Content is king.

How many times have you heard or read this? If you are familiar with website design and search engine optimisation (SEO), hundreds or thousands of times, right? Why do you think this is so often repeated? No doubt, there is some reason behind it. A reason that is validated by the number of websites that come in the front pages of search engines due to the rich, original content in them.

That’s right. Content is one factor in a web page that can bring a website to the front page or take it back to the 1000th or 10,000th page. So let’s come to the main point. Why is content so important to a website? Why is it the king? Here are some pointers.

Consider an instance. You pass by a restaurant named Chinese Corner. You like Chinese food. You enter the restaurant with the colourful and tempting pictures of Schezwan noodles and chop suey in your mind. But in the menu all you find is some boring soups and beverages. What would be your next reaction? Run from the place, of course! Now let’s analyse the scene. What made you leave the place as soon as you saw the menu in the restaurant? You expected to find something that you wanted and you didn’t find it. In other words, the restaurant promised you Chinese food with its name and ambience, however it failed to provide what it promised.

This is what happens when you create a website for your product with a lot of colours and an inviting title and domain name but alas! without adequate and quality content. Now you might ask what content qualifies as adequate and quality? The right content for a website is that which understands the requirements of the clients and meets the objective of the website. Such content would certainly attract visitors and increase the sales pitch not to mention the external links it would invite. So what are the factors you need to pay attention to while creating content so that it is user friendly and search engine friendly at the same time?

• Familiarise yourself with the topic so that you can sound authoritative of it
• Create fresh and informative content
• Make the content meet the objective of the website
• Think from the perspective of the reader than the author
• Foresee the questions that users might have about your product and answer them
• Find out the main keywords through a thorough keyword research
• Ensure that the content contains enough keywords
• Have the keywords in the titles, meta descriptions and headings
• Be convincing and clear about what you say
• Make sure to follow the rules and guidelines of the search engines
• Include the reasons why a user should buy from you
• Have consistency in the tone and language of the content
• Avoid stuffing of keywords
• Avoid content duplication

Now we come to the question who should be writing your content. Most often you might think that you can do it yourself. It’s not a bad idea as long as you have time enough to come up with really good content. After all, who can talk about your product better than you? But sometime you might not have the time or the knack to create good content. In such cases it is much better to entrust it with a good professional copy writer. So, who is a good copy writer? A good copy writer is one who should:

• Be comfortable with both creative as well as technical content
• Be capable of writing content for an international audience, that is, from a global perspective
• Combine interesting, quality content with adequate number of keywords
• Create convincing and effective content appealing to human visitors and search engines
• Make the content match the needs of the website and the customers
• Keep the writing original and avoid duplication of content

Just like flashy animations and lots of colours are not enough for a good website, text alone also would not suffice. It would make the pages boring and turn the visitors off. The magic here is to bring together both in such a way that bright colours don’t distract the readers from reading a meaningful content and at the same time the content alone don’t make the page colourless and dull. A good copywriter can definitely come up with such a content to make your website a beautiful and informative source of interested visitors and increased sales.

Return on Investment (ROI) doesn’t have a big mystery behind it; it is, in fact, exactly what it sounds – the returns you get when you make an investment. In financial terms, it is the money that an investor gains in relation with the money that he/she has invested. It is normally measured in percentage. To take a simple example, if you invest a £100 in a company and you get a return of £5, you could say your ROI is 5%.

Known in some circles as “Rate of Return” (ROR) or just “Return”, ROI is not always measured in terms of money. There are many other ways of investment other than investing in a company. Also, you need to keep in mind that a return on investment is not always monetary. For example, if you are investing on a vehicle, its quality and trouble-free performance is the ROI you get.

ROI need not always be profitable. If a company has a loss of, say, £20 a day, your ROI would be -20%. Whether your return on investment is more or less depends on the company you have chosen to invest in. Therefore, it becomes important that you invest in company that’s reliable.

Another important factor regarding the ROI is term of investment. At any rate, investing a small amount for a longer period of time could be much safer than investing a larger amount for a shorter period. The advantage here is that the amount of investment would not be a heavy bulk and you would get the additional interest of the money you invest. Also, there might be companies that offer you a higher rate of interest but might not be trustworthy. It is always safer to go for an average company that offers lesser return in 20 years than a new hot company that offers higher return in 2 years.

It is natural that you might feel alarmed by all these details. However, these are no big reasons for fear. Any plan of investment is better followed by expert ROI analysts who would provide you suggestions on any kind of investment plans you have. With professional and expert advice you could be lucky to see your money getting multiplied again and again.