Know Your Content
Your written content, primarily the text but including media such as images and video, is the SEO workhorse of your website. Well written content will use the same terms and vocabulary as does your target audience. It will concentrate on what is important to them. Effective content will be the opposite of “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country”. What is important to your customer is not what you can sell them, but rather how you can make their life better and easier.
Tell them how you will solve their problem and meet their need. Provide hints in your written content and navigation that allow them to quickly evaluate how you can serve them. Your content should show them how to choose and purchase the right product or service to meet that need.
Some guidelines to keep in mind are:
- Do not over use trade names
- Use industry and consumer (user) terms to describe your products and services
- Content written appropriate for target audience
- Be aware of how your target customer searches for your product or service, use the words they use
- Employ your six honest serving men…* Tell the whole story, who, what, where, (when not as needed), why, how
- Compare the terms you use in your content to those used by your competitors
- Examine your content for dead links, outdated content, and missing information
- Use supporting detail for technical or other audiances
* Rudyard Kipling “The Elephant’s Child” opens with:
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.