Ok, admittedly this isn’t just for owners, because let’s face it, most owners don’t have the time to manage their own websites. But in reality we like for content managers to treat the business as if it’s their own. So for now we will refer to content managers as business owners.

Very few people are solely content managers – many of them go by other titles like marketing director, or social media manager. The one thing all of these titles have in common is the power they garnish with websites. Social media managers are often constrained by the rules and guidelines of the networks they employ; marketing directors to the third parties they advertise with. A website is the only place that a company, individual, or group is able to market their skills and services without any constraints.

Like anything else, with freedom comes great responsibility – and in this case that responsibility is to publish GOOD content. So, what is “good content”, you may ask. Well, you’re in luck, because we are going to tell you.

Publishing to Publish

Just publishing content for the sake of publishing content is a lot like progress for the sake or progress.

Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged.

Dolores Umbridge

Yeah, we just quoted Harry Potter; yeah, we are kind of nerds here at CBM Web Development, but she has a great point.

Publishing content is important – but publishing relevant content is even more important.

Getting people to your website is only the first step in creating conversions – once they are there they have to stay long enough to convert. Publishing content that is relevant to the services you provide is key in converting visitors to customers.

Monitoring customer interactions with your website can be done easily and efficiently with Google Analytics; at this point we would like to recommend taking time to explore the new Google Analytics 4 tools. The book Crawl, Walk, Run provides some great insight into how you can benefit from this new Analytics platform.

Your organic search rankings are directly impacted by the content you have on your website, so having accurate and relevant content will ensure that you are properly ranked in organic search results.

Good Content

So what is good content? How do you leverage it to increase organic SEO results?

Well, one method is go Google yourself – or at least some of the services that you provide. At the bottom of the page (at least that’s where it is right now) you’ll see a section labelled related searches. You guessed it – these are the popular topics that people are looking for that also relate to your business. I bet you can imagine a few of the topics we will be writing about in the coming weeks!

Other strategies are to do good old fashioned market research – check out what your competitors are doing, as well as your aspirants. Figure out how you can improve on what they are doing – that is, after all, how you plan on standing out, right?

Types of Content

There are two primary areas of a marketing website where regular updates are most beneficial – the primary content, and a blog.

Blogging is a great method for attracting new customers and engaging with existing customers. This also allows you to capitalize on popular search terms – in our case writing articles about digital marketing and website design would add to the organic content on our website, boosting organic search rankings; giving you the opportunity to express your unabated opinions on industry specific, relevant topics – flexing your own industry specific expertise.

Not everyone is on your website to read your blog, though. A lot of your visitors will be there looking for a specific service. Maintaining accurate and up-to-date content on your website is a powerful tool for user conversions. Content management is more than just text. Maintaining up to date, accurate content includes copywriting, images, video, and graphics.

It may sound simple, but an attractive website is just as important as an accurate website when attracting new visitors. Images that accurately reflect the text adds to a positive user experience. Video is a great method to engage visitors in a more personal way.

A few things to keep in mind when picking media for your website:

• Images should be high resolution, but not too large. Larger images take longer to load effectively slowing your page load speed.
• Images should always have alt attributes (helps boost SEO and keeps your site ADA compliant).
• Images should be relevant to your message.
• Videos should be concise, relevant, and engaging.

In Conclusion

There are a lot of considerations to be made when it comes to content management. This is only meant to be a brief overview of managing your content – every business will have a slightly different strategy. Use the tools you have access to, to help drive your strategies. Utilizing analytics, market research, and search engine research will go a long way to developing an effective content management strategy.

Be sure to contact us to receive a more concise, and business specific content management strategy.