Sales Literature and Sell Sheets
The
Web – It's ALL About Content
Jim Schakenbach
Managing Partner, SCT Group Inc.
www.sctgrp.com
Here’s a shocker: Talk to any dozen corporate executives about what
makes a good web site and more often than not you’ll hear about eye-catching
graphics, sexy animation, sophisticated page layouts, easy navigation.
You’ll hear about everything except what’s really important:
words.
That’s right. What makes the World Wide Web spin? Content. Not video.
Not audio. Not vaguely futuristic, edgy graphics. Words make the web go
round. So how come no one really talks about the text that goes into every
web site? Because it’s not sexy. Conventional wisdom says words are
dull and hard to come by. Text is a grind to write and no ones wants to
think about it, much less do it. But guess what? Words are what give your
site value, searchability, stickiness and everything else that is good
and noble. If you want to edge out your competition, gain the coveted
higher ground in search engines, and generally boost the relevance of
your site, I’m going to let you in on few secrets:
Add pages.
Have you ever noticed those sites with interminable scrolling pages? Miles
of text unrolling in an endless scroll. It seems like page after page
of solid data. But guess what? It’s just ONE page, and that make
a mighty small target for search engines. The smart thing is to break
up those big scrolls into individual pages along logical lines –
separate out, say, products from customer service, company backgrounder
from news, and so on. Just this simple fix will fatten your site from
one page to perhaps a dozen without adding any new content.
Pay attention to headlines.
Here’s another mistake you see all the time: a lame, nebulous headline
such as “tomorrow’s technology today”. Let’s say your
company makes oscillators for wireless communications; a much better headline
would be “Oscillators for tomorrow’s wireless applications”.
Now, that may not be the most creative headline, but here’s the magic
– you just went from a headline that’s worthless in a search
to one that will generate solid leads from viewers looking for oscillators
or anything about wireless applications. Headlines featuring keywords
hold the greatest value because search engines figure that if a key word
or phrase is in a headline, that page is going to have the most content
for that term.
Supercharge your text.
Now, go a step further and make sure your text – called the body
copy – contains as many of the important words and phrases as possible
without making it sound weird. Again, the more key words that pop up in
context on a page, the more valuable it is – and the higher it ranks
– compared to a page of similar content, but with fewer key words
in the copy.Work your keywords.
Remember the pages you added earlier? That now enables you to spread the
wealth of key words around. Instead of just one, long page, you now have
a number of pages, each ready to receive pertinent key words that will
work in conjunction with the page contents to achieve better searchability.
Lazy people just copy one set of keywords and plop it onto every page.
That is a costly mistake. The fewer and less varied the key words on your
site, the worse your site will do in searches. Make sure your key words
are pertinent to the page they’re on – search engines value
pages with relevant keywords and content more than pages with words that
are seemingly unrelated.
Archive, archive, archive.
Does your webmaster like to take down documents when they’re “old”?
If so, run down the hall and stop them right now. Just because that white
paper, PowerPoint presentation, or technical article is months old doesn’t
mean it’s lost its value. People search the web for information,
and if the presentation you gave last month at the annual industry conference
contained interesting, relevant information but is now longer appropriate
for the immediacy of home page prominence, move it into an archive section
or resources page. Key word it, make it searchable, and you’ll be
surprised how many people actually click on it. The more content on your
site the better.
Beware of designers.
While that is certainly not meant to be a blanket indictment of web designers
in general, it is intended to be a word of caution concerning designers
bent on design for design’s sake. Those who have an over-fondness
for things graphical, like fancy phototype that’s rendered as a graphic
image. To the casual viewer it may look like words, but to a search engine
it’s just another image and not searchable. Web designers will often
choose flash and sex appeal over solid content – after all, they’re
designers, not copywriters. As we know, words aren’t sexy. But like
the slow, solid draft horse out in the field, they’re what get the
job done.
Be strong in the face of animation and large photos that take up inordinate
amounts of space on a web page – they are the enemy of search engines
and, like cotton candy, may taste great, but offer little nutritional
value. If you want to build a strong, healthy site, you need to bulk up
on real content, and that’s words. That’s not to say your site
shouldn’t be sophisticated and attractive – it should. Just
be sure you balance an eye-catching, visually-creative site with solid,
valuable content to attract more viewers, more often.
Make it easy to refresh.
Once you have your site filled with great content, make sure it’s
easy to refresh without having to get your site designer to rebuild your
pages. Then update your content as often as possible so it stays relevant
and valuable. The more often you do it, the less of a chore it is. Post
those press releases and product announcements. Promote your new hires
and business wins. A little goes a long way. Pay attention to the words,
not just the graphics or how the site navigates. Remember, content is
king. Ignore it at your own peril.
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©2007 SCT Group, Inc.
sctgrp.com
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