Whether your goal for your website is to increase awareness, generate more leads, or convert more leads into customers, having high-quality content is critical to getting people to not only visit your site but to return to it again. This means that website content development is essential for an effective inbound marketing strategy and will help you create the type of experience your want your website visitors to have.
Website content includes the text, images, sounds, videos, and animations that users experience on a website. Anything can be content as long as it exists on your website.
Any page on your website contains content. Most B2B websites include these types of pages:
Each blog post, or page, typically ranges between 500 and 1,000 words, focusing on a variety of topics. Some of these topics can include industry news, short bios of industry leaders, product reviews, how-to’s, and more.
A resource library is a page on your website or an offsite page linked to your website that holds your content upgrades and free offers.
Press releases from companies in your field are good to add to your blog or website. Keep in mind, though, don't copy the press release directly to avoid a duplicate content penalty from search engines. Either modify the copy or simply provide an external link to the site with the actual press release.
Landing pages are designed as the first page that a site visitor sees when they take an action. An action is usually clicking on an ad or link. It’s important to ensure your landing pages are high-quality; after all, these are likely the first pages your website visitors will see.
Calls to Action, also known as CTAs are part of a webpage, ad, or piece of content (like an email) that encourages the audience to do something. CTAs help convert a visitor or reader into a lead for your sales team.
Images and graphics help make your content more visually appealing. Optimizing your photos with alt-text and captions to your images also helps with your Google Images rankings.
Meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page’s content. The meta tags don’t appear on the page itself but on the page’s source code. Essentially, meta tags are content descriptors that help tell search engines what a web page is about.
Product and Service Descriptions are marketing copy that explains why your product and/or service is special or unique and why customers should buy it.
Using videos is a great way to add diversity to your content and add visual interest to your pages. The videos on your website could be of yourself, products, services, presentations, or testimonials.
Podcasts are continuing to increase in popularity. Podcasts could be interviews or instructional talks. They also work really well to support your other marketing efforts.
Having an eBook your readers can download or read directly on your site can easily expand your standard content with more in-depth information. Promoting an eBook is a great way to promote your company and yourself as an expert in your field.
Quizzes are used as a way to engage your reader. By having a question on one page and an answer on the next, there’s extra potential for ad revenue and click-throughs. Quizzes can also be used as a lead magnet and allow you to collect more information from your website visitors while being able to provide them with more specific information they’re looking for.
A white paper is a report that seeks to educate the reader about an issue. You can post this directly on your site or offer it as a download. Similar to eBooks, white papers help establish you and your site as leaders in your field
Infographics are a great way to provide a visual representation of data or information to your website visitors. They’re usually used to draw attention to a specific point.
Templates are examples your readers can use to create their own documents or crafts. This could be a sample resume, an eBook template, or something they can edit in Canva.
Checklists help your readers prepare for something or do something. Examples of checklists could be packing lists, cleaning schedule lists, chore lists, or documents someone needs to bring to a specific type of appointment.
Quality content helps to attract the right audience to your website, engage them, and work toward getting the user to take action on your website. If the user finds your content valuable, they are more likely to take action as well as share it with others.
In the current world we live in, marketing and content are primarily digital. Sharing engaging content can make you stand out from the crowd. Engaging content is typically informative and interesting and is an easy way to capture your audience’s attention and gain their interest in your company.
A webinar is a video workshop or lecture where you teach your audience about a specific topic. When you host a webinar, you are helping to establish yourself as a thought leader.
No, no, no - we don’t mean a Q&A article. When you host a Q&A, your audience can be involved and ask questions in real time. Usually, a Q&A happens in a live video or social media event (Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, TikTok), a webinar, chat, or an in-person event.
These are also great because they give you ideas for additional content that you can repurpose in blogs or social media posts.
Workshops are in-person or online training where you can share your experience and explain a topic more in-depth than you’d be able to in writing. Workshops have a smaller audience than webinars, which allows you to help your audience on a more personal level.
The key to running a successful workshop is to truly provide value by offering new information and points of view.
Podcasts are educational as well as entertaining. They are a great way to target, engage, and educate your audience. There are multiple outlets for your podcast, too - Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and a lot of people are recording their podcast episodes on YouTube as well.
Video content can be used on almost any channel. You can repurpose a lot of content into video format to help make it more digestible for your website visitors. Examples include Product Demo Videos, “A Day in the Life” Videos, Behind-the-Scenes Videos, Vlogs, and even Interactive 360 Videos.
Having new, informative, and interesting types of content is one of the best ways to attract website visitors and search engines to your website and social media pages. Using a variety of content types can also set your business apart from the many other web pages competing for your customer's attention. Done well, content marketing can increase your brand awareness, boost your reader engagement, and help your pages to rank higher in search results.
Anabeth McConnell