Content: Why is it Important and How You Can Use it to Your Advantage
Alongside making improvements to your technical and off-site SEO, your on-site content is a crucial factor in terms of rankings and conversion paths. Search engine crawl the content on your site (along with many other factors) in order to determine the relevance to search terms. If your website copy is not directly relevant to what it is you are promoting, or the search term that the user has searched, your chances of ranking high are quite slim. Below we have set out five reasons why optimising your websites copy and content is important in the long run:
Search Engines Love Sites Being Updated with Fresh Content
By updating the content that is on your site, you are opening your site to a new world of ranking opportunities. Search engines, such as Google, love it when websites update their copy and upload new content. This works well for the actual content on the pages within your site, but more for your blog content. By updating your blog with new content and articles, you are creating a whole new page to be crawled by search engines, and therefore resulting in more ranking opportunities.
Utilising Keywords
Ensuring you are utilising your chosen keywords is important in relation to ranking for key terms and phrases. Google now use an algorithm called ‘Rank Brain’ which is a smart ranking system that rank websites for terms even if the site does not directly have that exact keyword on-site. By implementing and utilising keywords that you are looking to rank for, this can also help you rank for a larger range of search terms that are closely related.
New Content Opens Opportunities to Build Backlinks
In order for your site to rank higher, you have to prove trustworthiness, and in order to do that you must gain links from trusted sites. Not only will this help with your SEO health, but it will also help with the ranking numbers your site is being shown for. Backlinks are a useful way to show that your site is legit and trustworthy, especially when they are coming from high domain authority sites. Backlink strategies should always be a part of your SEO and content plans, as this will allow you to gain a high authority score, ultimately resulting in higher rankings.
Your Content is a Determining Factor on What Your Users Do Next
The first thing any potential customer will see when searching online is your site and the content. If you are not writing compelling and relevant content, there is a higher chance the customer will look elsewhere. Imagine you are looking for a new shirt, and you land on a site with very poor content which is not relevant to what you are looking for, you are most likely going to bounce back off the site. The same applies to the way you write your content; if you stay relevant and write in a manner that suits your target audience, this should help with any conversion and bounce rate issues.
On-Site Copy Updates Keep Your Site Fresh
By staying on top of your on-site copy and updating it when need be, you are ensuring the content shown to your customers is fresh. Fresh, updated content allows for an easier user experience, especially when it comes to products and services. For example, you have updated one of your services to a different price or offering, if you are not keeping on top of the content of the site it can mislead a customer and you could miss out on business.
These are just five of many reasons why content management and updates are widely important. If you are looking to improve your on-site SEO and potentially increase your chances of ranking for certain key phrases, content should be your best friend! Struggling to keep on-top of your own content? Get in contact with us today and see how we can help take your site further!