Content is King

The largest problem I have encountered when consulting with small and medium size businesses is their inability to produce quality content for their website. There are two main reasons for this. The first is a lack of time, and the second is they simply do not know what to write about how to go about writing or creating better content.
My suggestion for the first problem is to set aside a little bit of time every week to work on content. Ever one hour a week is better than zero hours. It is just like working out, everoyne says they dont have time, but the fact of the matter is you have 15 minutes a day to go on a run. Everyone is stretched for time, but if you make an effort, even a little bit a week you will realize that it is not as impossible to create content as you may have thought.
The second problem can be fixed through a multitude of ways.
Standard Website site architecture Hierarchy
Home => About => Services => Products => Resources/blog =>Contact Us

HOME PAGE:

To improve your home page I would suggest adding your most recent blog posts or any regularly updated information to some aspect of the home page, preferably in the footer or bottom of the home page. If you do not have something like this, then I would consider adding some information about what makes you unique, such as a why us bullet points or an accordion to beef up your home page content.
E.G: Why US?
1. Flexibility – we are a flexible company that can offer a multitude of services and products to meet your evolving business needs.
2. Effectiveness – Our solutions are rated the most effective in the Boston metro area.
3. Loyalty – We stand behind our customers, and that is why we have the highest customer loyalty in the industry!
If you have recent work that you can showcase on the site this is also a great addition to most homepages. Explaining more about what you do and making sure your message is clear on the home page is also extremely important. I cannot tell you how many times I have been to a website and spent five minutes just trying to figure out what the company actually did!
A good example of this is the kallyas theme on ThemeForest.


Here are some great things you can do to keep your website fresh and relevant:

• Add recent blog posts
• Add recent work
• Why us
• What you do bullet points or summary
• Demonstrate uniqueness of your company

ABOUT PAGES:

To improve your about pages, I would suggest adding a company history if you have more than five years under your belt. For new companies this may be a little more difficult. New companies can showcase their team and each individual’s member accomplishments. Another thing is to showcase previous work, a portfolio page, a list of clients, company mission statement, or any other elements that make the company about page or pages seem unique. A paragraph about the company is not going to separate you from the competition, and is not going to help you much for SEO. You really need to dig down and write as much as you can about your company, after all you own it, and should be able to come up with plenty of ideas to make your about pages more interesting.

• Company History
• Employee and management Team page
• Previous Work/portfolio
• Company Culture/Mission
• Affiliates or partners
• Press
• Events
• News

SERVICES/PRODUCTS PAGES:

Your services and products pages should be the most robust pages on your website. These pages tell your customers what you have to offer and why they should buy from you. You want to make sure these pages are as high quality regarding content and design as possible. I am not going to go into detail about how to improve these pages, because these pages are industry specific but here a some quick bullet points that may help.

• Display product specs
• Add each product if you have eCommerce capabilities
• Write detailed descriptions — don’t be lazy!
• Explain your services in a step by step manner
• Demonstrate the value of your service do not just list them off
• Explain why you are more valuable than your competitors
• Make it easy to access your contact page or email you from these pages
• Add a request a quote or submit form if applicable
• Have Statistics about your products and services

BLOG:

The blog and resources pages are going to be your most important pages for consistently adding content. Once you have completed your about, services, and products pages you are not that likely to be changing them every week, unless you have an eCommerce website in which you will be adding products frequently.
Blogging is the best way to get more traffic to your website plain and simple. Websites with blogs get 55% more traffic and 75% more leads according to one of the leading inbound marketing companies Hubspot. With a blog you can write articles pertaining to your industry that will help you generate links from other sites linking to these blog posts. If you post your blog posts on websites that are related to your industry, you should find that you may gain some positive comments and support about your content.
An example of this is one of our recent blog posts “internet marketing guidance” that was at one point at the top of internet marketing on BizSugar.


Types of blogs that are easy to write and will generate links:

• A VS Blog (E.G Microsoft vs Google) Microsoft vs Google Vs Apple blog post
• A top list (E.G Top business schools in the US) Top Business schools by US news
• A how to blog posts, explaining how to do something related to your industry (E.G how to make beer )How to make beer blog post
• A why this is important blog (E.G Why you have to start email marketing) Email Marketing Guide

All of these posts showed up number one for the E.G search on Google. These posts get traffic, and generate some serious back links to these websites. Yes, these are established websites that probably have more resources than you do, but it is still a good way to get started. Try finding a blog post that is related to your industry to get an idea of what makes it successful. You have to start somewhere, trust me my first blog posts were nothing to be proud of, but our most recent blog posts have gotten much more traffic as we continue to get better at blogging.

RESOURCES:

A resources page is a great way to add more outbound links on your website. In a resources section on your website you can add more detailed information about your products and services. That way you can link aspects of your products and services pages to your resources pages so that they are not overloaded with detailed information, but if someone does want that information they can find it in the resources section.

• Links to other websites that will be useful for your customers
• More detailed information about your products and services
• Guides and documents that your customers may want to download

When it comes to internet marketing, content is king! If you want your website to generate leads for your business you have to be proactive about it. Simply throwing up a website that you change once a year is not going to generate significant leads for your business. You have to be adding content as frequently as you can to bring eyeballs to your website. These are just some suggestions for improving content, but there are many more ways to improve your overall content, especially industry specific ways. Looking at what the competition has created is one of the best ways to do this, especially bigger competitors who may have more resources to create quality content than you.