If you were to analyze the most profitable and often-visited websites on the internet, you would find that all of them have one thing in common and that is the fact that they have a plethora of rich content in them. This is a fundamental technique that any website owner or developer needs to understand. If you want a website that is successful both in the long and short term, then you need to make sure that your website has some great content. This will also ensure the sustainability of the site. Let us take a closer look at why this is so important.
Why good content?
• Visitors are attracted to it: The visitors to a website are like the footfall a commercial area receives. If there are two shops, one of which sees a lot of people while the other remains more or less empty, then it doesn't take rocket science to figure out that the first shop is enjoying more sales. In the real world, people are attracted to shops with fancy displays and a lot of options in the product they are looking for. If a person is out shopping for jeans, they will choose an outlet that affords them the opportunity to check out a wide array of jeans. In the same way, an online business cannot be one dimensional. There should be high-quality content that visitors will find useful covering a vast array of topics in a given niche. This means that the next time they need some information in the same niche, they will give your website the preference which in turn will also increase its reputation. Word of mouth will also increase and lead to higher traffic.
• Good content is necessary for good leads and potential customers: Think of it this way. If all a website has is a description of different products, people will rarely be interested in the website. To make this point even more explicit, let us say your website sells tire chains. If all you have on the website are some tire chain descriptions and their prices, people will rarely be directed to your site. Unless someone searches explicitly for a particular product, chances are very low for your website to be found. If on the other hand, you have multiple high-quality articles detailing various tire and car maintenance for winter and then use these articles to plug your products, then this method will prove more useful. It is a more natural progression of how people shop online. They come in with a problem, search for its causes and then look for a remedy. If your website can provide both the causes and the solution, then people will be all the more interested in buying the products you have on offer.
• Good content automatically takes care of SEO and rankings: While the online world is abuzz with SEO and various complicated tips and tricks associated with it, the simple matter of the fact is that if you have good content over a wide range of topics pertaining to your niche then it will automatically have a good SEO score. This will consequently improve its rankings as well. As the saying goes "The cream will always rise to the top", you can gain quite the edge in the highly competitive world of websites just with good content. Modern SEO algorithms are very intelligent and can sniff out things like keyword stuffing very easily. These algorithms are continually evolving as well which means that some tricks that work today might not work tomorrow. With good content, however, you do not have to worry as it is something that will stand the test of time. It is like a good book or a good song.
• Keywords become more meaningful: An excellent online presence is all about keywords. Search engines for all their complexity are still very unintuitive when it comes to understanding subtext. Everything has to be made obvious to them, and the best way to do that is by using keywords. In the past, people look unfair advantage of this by using the keywords far too often in their content. This temporarily gave them a good SEO score, but once search engines became privy to this technique, the same contents were rendered useless. This is now known as keyword stuffing. A great workaround to this is, again, great content. If you use the same word ten times in a two hundred word article, it will sound unnatural to the reader and search engines will flag it as useless. However, if the same word is used 20 times in a thousand word article, the search engines will give it a high score while the content is still appealing to a human visitor. The whole point of website content is to get people interested in what you have to say, and that is not going to happen if the content has no depth and keeps mentioning a particular word or set of words again and again.
• PPC gets a massive boost: PPC or pay-per-click is what ultimately decides the worth of your website. Just like a hoarding in Times Square costs many times more than one in some remote corner of the world just because of the sheer number of different eyes that can catch the hoarding, the PPC value of your website is determined by the number of unique visitors it gets. Unique visitors will only come if there is excellent content available. If your website is about car rentals and has various tips about going on a long journey or suggestions on places to visit, people will gravitate more to your website. This will not only grow your business but will also make your website into another revenue stream. Brands would love to be associated with your website, and soon you will end up making more money from the website itself. All you have to do is put in the effort to ensure your website is full of informative and helpful content that would appeal to a wide range of people.
• The website's value will increase many folds: There are so many websites that was started by an individual and through sheer persistence and careful curating have turned them to be worth millions. There is no scam involved or any funny business. If you check these websites, you will find that they have articles covering pretty much everything in their domain. This means that people who visit these websites once get hooked and keep coming back for more. This continuous stream of traffic means that the ranking of the website will be very high and its revenue potential becomes even higher, and the website becomes so valuable that you could easily retire off it. It seems ludicrous to think something that doesn't even exist in a physical form can achieve all of this, but that is the magic of the online world.
• It makes your website more social-media friendly: What we mean by this is that we humans love to help others and if we find a remedy to a persistent problem or if we find something that is very interesting, the chances are high that we will share that on our social media account. This is a fantastic thing as you get, quite literally, free advertisement. Each person is often connected to hundreds of others through their social media accounts and anything shared by them has a potential to be seen by a lot more people and being reshared again. The power of social media cannot be ignored as it has helped launch significant movements and cause major changes. It can do wonders for your website as well, and all you need to do is to increase the scope of the articles present on your website and make each article and post as meaningful and relevant as possible. Remove the junk and ensure that every word on your website has meaning.
How to get good content?
In the initial stages of a website, you can do the writing yourself. Just ensure that it is plagiarism free and based on the truth. Do not use any click baiting techniques as they rarely work and even if they do it only lasts a short while. You have to be ready for the long haul. There will come the point however when you need other writers. There are excellent avenues online where you can hire writers for yourself, such as fiverr.com. This way you will increase the diversity of your website.
You will, however, have to curate anything that gets posted on your website very carefully. The online world is very volatile and unforgiving, and one slip-up can lead to massive drops in rankings and consequently will reduce the earning potential of your website by a considerable margin. The frequency of new content is also fundamental. Do not overdo it but it should be often enough that regular visitors always find something new and exciting to check out. The content also has to be simple as online viewers have a very short attention span. Make sure that any content in your website avoids unnecessary jargon, and if any is used, makes sure it is explained nicely. At the end of the day, every visitor to your website should feel like they are talking to a friend.
