Are You Underestimating the Power of Quality Content Beyond your Written Text?
The promise of something great must be followed up by something greater in order to meet your visitor’s expectations. This is especially true of content.
When a visitor lands on your site, they may first be dazzled by the great layout and design or some catchy tag line, but ultimately, the thing that will keep them there and, more importantly, coming back, is good content.
The one thing that will always make your site stand out from the others is quality content in all areas. It is also one of the main things the search engines will look for in site ranking. If your site is lacking great information, regularly, it won’t matter how pretty it is on the outside, no one will want to stay.
Great content isn’t just in the words your write. It is apparent in every aspect of your site. True, your articles and reports must offer valuable content to the readers, but don’t forget some of the other components of your site. Here are some areas where quality content often falls short.
Headlines
In order to draw your visitors in, you need to be sure your headlines or titles are both catchy and invoke some curiosity. Don’t give away the whole story in your headlines. You want the reader to have just enough information to offer a general expectation of the content within the article, but not enough to completely answer their question.
Don’t look as the headline as an afterthought. Too many people do this. They write a great article and then give only a moments thought to the headline. Try writing your headlines first and use them as an outline for your article. This will help to keep you on topic and will give the reader exactly what they anticipated.
Images and Multi-Media
“A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.” That old adage holds true online as well as in print. A content rich site should include a good amount of pictures to capture your visitor’s attention. Be sure they are relevant and capture the topic area. Like your headlines, they need to be relevant to the written text so the visitor’s expectations are met when they read the related article. It is also very important to populate the ‘alt’ tags with relevant keywords so the search engines recognize the images when they crawl your site. Don’t forget this step.
Adding video and other multi-media components will give your visitors a more interactive experience and keep them on your site longer. Try to find video that compliments your site’s main topic or make some of your own to describe your products or services.
Categories, Keywords and Tags
Using the correct categories, keywords, and tags within your site will make it easy for your visitor’s to navigate and locate your information. Be sure to keep them relevant and as short as possible. Categories should be between one and three words which target each topic your site covers. For example, if you have a photography site you may want to use categories like EQUIPMENT, TUTORIALS, REVIEWS, etc.
Tags and Keywords are also very important and should always be in line with your main website topic. You should utilize the same tags and keywords consistently for both ease of navigation and to maximize your SEO.
You have to consider all areas of your website when thinking about quality content for your visitors. Why not take a look over your own site or blog and see if you are falling short in any of these key areas. You want to provide quality throughout your site, not just in your posts or articles.
Author: Patsy works for GO-Gulf.com, provider of web design solutions.
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