Website Content Creation

Starting a website is difficult or even to come up with content for it. At 3plains we struggle to help customers that don't have no content and want their website to rank well. Remember search engines read text, so if your text is weak on your website, typically you won't rank well, unless of course you have a big name and thousands and thousands of people are linking to you.

If we are creationg your content...

Easiest way to get us your content

Text: All of the text for your site on a Word Document organized by pages. Example pages include: Homepage, About Us, History , Contact Us, Main Product Page, Individual Product Pages, etc.
Photos: Please do not include photos in a Word Document. Please reference file names with pages (ex. Homepage IMG_3039.JPG, IMG_3044.JPG).
Mail or email photos/documents.
Mail DVD. DVD’s are big. You will need to mail us this.

If you are creating your content...

Where do I begin? Think of your website as a hierarchy and structure it as such.

Brainstorming for Content & Pages

How do we come up with a website with more than just: Homepage, About Us, Products/Services, and Contact Us pages? Brainstorm on ideas such as ways to sell your product or service. A few ideas:

Segment out your products and services. If you have a service based business, write a detailed page on each service. Provide photos, graphs, numbers, etc since people are visual. Just text get's boring.
Write a page about your product over your competition about why they should buy your product vs. this "other product".
What about a "How-To" page? Categorize the how to page into sections and have several related documents.
How about a articles page? Categorize the articles into categories and write individual articles.
Support section with a lot of industry articles so when people do searches, they will find the support page you wrote and you may draw business from it.
Be creative. Content writing is a creative thing and can be very profitable.
What makes your product the best or what are it's advantages. Promote it and write a article.
FAQ
Testimonials
Glossary
Technical Docs
Downloads
Free Stuff
Industry Links
Videos - Text NEEDS to go with videos.
Start a blog, industry news or something else.
Use social networking as a tool.

Note: The only thing I will say bad about blogging, news, Twitter or any other news media on your website is... if you don't update it on a regimented schedule, don't do it! There is nothing worse on the internet than a blog that is 6 months old. It's like your going out of business and it's embarrassing to your professional image. If you don't have time, don't do it.

I just read a blog the other day that said "Summer 2009 update as the head article and it's getting close to February 2010. Not a good idea.

Search Engines Consideration

Search Engines considerations are a must with website these days.

How do you tailor your content towards the search engines? View this document to explain how to think about search engine keywords and importance.
1-3 keyword and phrases per page. NO MORE THAN THAT or you won't rank well. To win a war, you win 1 battle at a time. Search engines are no different.
Writing a spammy article that is geared just for search engines will not work. Nothing worse than content no one will read.
The search engines are smart, don't try and trick them.
The more great pages you create on your website, the bigger the lead funnel.

Conclusion

Starting a website and writing good content is not easy. The goal is to write good content and promote your website well. Finding a top notch Search Engine Marketing company like 3plains is a must in the marketplace. Search Engine companies that are good won't come cheap, but your sales will flurish if you do it correctly.