Your website content is very important for your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). If you want to improve your SEO or you are responsible for adding content to your website, then this webinar is for you.
Good content helps you become more prominent in Google’s rankings so you can attract, engage and convert more visitors into customers. The session covers different ways to prepare great content for customers and for your SEO. It’s full of practical tips you can use immediately. We look at:
Richard: Hello. Good morning and welcome everybody. Welcome to this Concise Webinar. This session is on How to Boost Your SEO with Better Website Content and you’ll be all pleased to know that and thank you very much for coming. You’ll be pleased to know that today we have a special guest co-presenter. This is Terry, Terry Hailes. Terry, say hello to the nice folks.
Terry: Good morning folks. Thanks everyone for joining us. Firstly I hope everyone is healthy and safe. I just want to introduce myself. I run the content team here at Concise. I was happy to join the invitation by Richard to talk about good content and how we can all better our content SEO wise. Thanks.
Richard: Thanks Terry. Yes, Terry’s joined us instead of Gareth. Terry looks after the content team here at Concise. Terry and I work very closely together. This is the Concise Webinar. For those people who haven’t been to one of our Concise Webinars before. These are meant to be and intended to be 100% educational. We try to get to the point quickly and keep them concise. We’re not trying to sell anything. We don’t have long sales pitches and this is why we call these the concise webinars. These are about business.
They are being recorded and the recording will be available on YouTube and on the Concise website a little later. You are very welcome to ask questions as we go along but there’ll also be time for live Q and A at the end. The big question to start with when we talk about content is what do we mean by content. What do we mean by good content? Well content really is anything that’s on a website whether it’s the web page, whether it’s FAQs, whether it’s video, whether it’s audio, whether it’s images.
What do we mean by good content really? It needs to be original. It needs to be relevant and engaging. It’s got to be real. It’s got to be credible. It’s got to be trustworthy. Authentic is the word and we say and how it is to be good is that it really needs to be in a form that google is going to love. It’s one thing to write a whole bunch of stuff but if google doesn’t know that it exists then probably chances are a lot of other people won’t know that it exists either. It’s not just good enough for google to know that it exists. Google needs to be able to love it and we have run other webinars on what it means for google to love content. Part of what it means these days is really to make sure that customers love it, users love it because and it needs to be marked up effectively so that google loves it as well.
What do we mean by like what’s the opposite of that what are the mistakes that people make. Well there are lots of mistakes that people make with content. Duplicate content being one of them. People think that they can grab some words that are written on some other website and publish it on their own and that’ll be just fine. This often happens as a big mistake with product catalogues where people put together product descriptions that have already appeared on other websites or on the manufacturer’s website. Duplicate content is a big mistake. It’s not original. Google doesn’t know whose content it is and google won’t give you very much credit for it.
Errors in content, inaccurate information, proofreading, silly errors, typos just, things like that are mistakes that really don’t help anyone. Don’t help users and don’t help Google to love it. Content that’s not finished. Content that is not complete. Content that’s half prepared but people put it up there. Badly written content. Stuff that’s boring not engaging. A lot of website owners seem to think the content is not so important and they leave it to the last minute to prepare the content. Other people find that I’ve got a few other people here. People who may be logged in as presenters. I’m not quite sure why but if you can mute your microphones that would be good because there’s a little bit of noise coming through. Not quite sure how that happened.
Yes, last minute content, old content… Google doesn’t love it. Users don’t love it either. One of the big things we talk about these days is focusing on with people who are searching to focus on what the intent of the search is and understanding it’s not just about the keywords people use it’s actually what they were trying to find out in the search. We call that search intent and a big mistake is not understanding what the intent of the searches is.
What do we mean, what are the, for the types of content to really improve SEO quickly, SEO being search engine optimization. The big thing to do we say is to focus on the buyers’ journey. Understand what it is that people are looking at different stages in their dealings with you whether they are understanding, whether they’re searching and finding something in search or whether they are where they’ve come to the page, whether they’re looking at your products and trying to understand what it is that they need to get, what sort of information they need to understand about it and whether they’re going through what we know. Whatever the stage is in the journey different content can apply and people will have different questions to ask at different stages.
Some of the sort of content that you may prepare for a website and again a lot of this will be kind of obvious but at different stages in the journey there are different content that people want to interact with. They may be frequently asked questions. They may be case studies. They may be videos. They may be different sorts of information that people are looking for at the different stages.
One of the things that we would suggest to understand is what stage people are at and what are the questions that people are asking at the different stages. Looking at each of the different stages what are the questions, the problems, the issues that the customer may have or the buyer they’re not quite a customer just yet but the customer may have to ask what are they trying to find, what are they wanting to know and what are the questions that they’re likely to have. The part that gets the best results is when you then provide valuable, accurate and trustworthy answers to those questions and in a form at the stage that customers actually want it. Now Terry, do you have anything you want to add to that?
Terry: I was just thinking it’s you made a really good point the beginning of the journey or beginning of this whole process is to understand the customer or the buyer and I’m thinking of an example that I’m working on in the US. There’s a big uh medical supply company that we’re working on their content with and they focus on there’s a term in the US that’s really hot right now which is aging in place basically converting your home into some place where someone who’s elderly can safely live in instead of going to a retirement center.
Understanding your customer, this website had hundreds of pages and most of the content was geared towards I guess logically you could say those who would be of age to look at aging in place. They were not getting good results. When we dived into it and this is again going back to understanding your buyer. We started realizing that the demographic that we were looking at was not correct. People who are actually looking to get to that website to find more information and educate themselves on aging in place were not 65 and older which was what the website owner originally thought because more people in their 35s to 40s who were looking to do so in about 10 years.
Their content wasn’t speaking to or sending the correct message to their potential buyer or their potential customers. That’s just one example of how you can have a lot of content up there but if you don’t understand your buyer or the person who is coming to your website the content that you’re putting up there um might not resonate or might not uh be authentic to them.
Richard: Thanks Terry. I’m not sure whether anyone else is struggling with your audio but it was breaking up a little bit for me but if anyone wants to put in chat whether they are having the same challenge with Terry’s audio that would be helpful just so we know that. Oh you could hear it fine. Thanks very much Sam. Brilliant. It’s just me then in that case.
Okay so the next question or the next thing that we would like to help you to wrap your head around is this concept called style and also the tone of voice. When you prepare content from your business what is the language that is appropriate to use and what’s the style that’s appropriate to use. There’s different ways of describing style but if you sort of think about the website and think about your business and think about the words that are on your website what is the style in which the language is and what’s the style of which the tone of voice. This becomes a really important, thanks everyone for acknowledging Terry’s audio. Brilliant. Thanks very much.
The question is how do you present your style and how does your website present your style for you? Is it the sort of thing that people would consider is relevant and authentic to your brand? Is the website written in such a way that it is going to work for people who don’t know you and who are interacting with you for the first time? Is it consistent with the people who are going to be coming to your website who are your maybe long-standing customers? Do they see and feel and understand the content on your website in a voice that actually resonates with them as being authentic and relevant to how they have been experiencing the business.
It’s really important to sort of think through this idea of the writing style because it really does make a difference. It makes a difference not only to the engagement of your website, visitors with your website but it also that impacts highly on your SEO. If visitors to your website, how do they find your current style and voice. Sometimes it takes, it needs a third party to look at your look at your content and say actually you’ve got to be objective about this. That is very that’s written in a very boring style.
Think about whether it might be annoying to people, might be boring whether it’s kind of okay, acceptable, neutral or whether it’s actually written in a style that’s actually really going to be helpful for people to wrap their head around and to use when they interact with you because nothing is neutral really. In the world of SEO and content things either are positive or negative. It either damages or it builds. It either helps the people engage on your website, builds your credibility, builds your trust and through doing all of those things helps build the rankings that google gives you or it actually hurts those things.
If people engage with your pages for a longer period of time then google actually thinks that people are having a better experience with you and it ranks you more highly. If your website, if the content on your website is written well and people get the information they’re looking for then they spend longer on your website, they react for it, they react with it better and they’re more likely to link to it to recommend other people to go to it as well. All of that helps your google rankings which is really, really important. Think about the style and voice and understand that it actually really does make a difference. Boring is not good.
Next thing to think about is also the target audience who are you aiming this content at, who is your website aimed at and google has some helpful ways of assessing the target audience. Gender, male or female, google works with age groups and in google analytics you can actually see this information and you can go into your analytics and you can see the as far as google understands who the user is, what age group they belong to, what their location is, what is the device that they came in that they visited the website with and what their interests are. There’s a lot of, there’s a heap of information about that.
Where you can find that in your analytics is in this section called audience. Hopefully this is clear for you. A section called audience and then within that you can see the demographics, the interests, the geography, behavior, technology used, the mobile devices if they’re coming in on mobile. Terry, do you want to add to that?
Terry: Yes, I’m just thinking of an interesting case that we sort of discovered last week. One of our largest partners and customers we were looking at these numbers for them and trying to figure out how to maximize the content and make it effective enough to up the numbers when it comes to sales. What we found just going through these numbers is that predominantly most of the buyers coming to the site were male and interesting enough we saw that a huge percentage I think 80% plus of them were using iPhones which is a cool fact and sort of maybe people would chuckle and move on but we dove a little deeper and I guess the term that we threw around the office is oh these are these are hipsters.
It’s something that we took, took that information and started changing our content to that audience so the audience that has a little bit of spending income, likes their gadgets. We geared a lot of our content to make sure that it’s mobile friendly and it was authentic and it resonated with them. That’s just one example of many that I can think of that we’re using these google analytics numbers. Again going back to knowing your buyer, knowing why they’re there, the journey they took to get to your site. All very important when you’re deciding what type of content and how you’re going to communicate that content to your buyer.
Richard: Thanks Terry and the other point about that is also to understand the devices upon which people are accessing content to then understand what it is that they are going to be preferring to, wanting to accept in the sort of the form of the content at the time at that stage in their buyer cycle. With the hipsters you would then write in a style that’s authentic for the business but targeted to the hipsters.
Another thing to think about and that is that we like to work with business well most businesses have expertise and knowledge about what it is they do and what it is they sell. A lot of people have find it difficult to turn that into content for their website. We’ve developed this approach. It’s really a process that we use with in interviewing but where you can do this yourself. This can become a sort of become a DIY thing as well to research and plan and when you find a topic that you want work on a particular part of the buyer’s journey type topic to interview yourself or get some help to interview either you or someone else in the organization who can help you with extracting this kind of information.
We call it wisdom. Turn that wisdom into content and it can become great content. Sort of the questions to ask yourself in the interview or if we’re working with you then we would ask in the interview what are the problems, what are the points of pain that the customers are experiencing around this particular topic, what are the questions that they generally ask on these questions on this topic. We sort of say so what are the top five, what are the top two, three, four, five questions that people ask and then you can start drilling down into the sort of things that genuine customers at this stage in the buying cycle actually ask. Can then drill down and get to these questions, what are the features, the advantages and the benefits that the product offers.
The more specific you are the better it’s going to be. What are the myths? Are there some sort of misunderstandings about your product or your business in this particular area? What are the things that people think about it that actually aren’t true and then when you can identify those and include that that sort of information in the article or in the blog post or in the FAQs or in the case study whatever it is you’re writing about you can then really boost it up and make sure to make it super relevant and engaging because people like to read these sort of things. Oh that’s what I thought but it turns out it’s not true.
Another thing that is really important is to sort of think what are the questions that you wish people did ask or which people would ask if they only knew enough to ask a question on that particular topic. We call those the unasked questions rather than the questions people do ask you. What are the questions you really wish they would ask you and then address those questions as well? This helps you really make the content more fulfilling for people who are learning about your product and your service. Then there’s technical information what are the things that could be added into it.
There you go. We’ve had a quick whip through about how to prepare content for better SEO. The key points really in this are that badly written content just doesn’t work anymore. I don’t think it ever did but certainly these days it doesn’t. The bar has been raised so high that people expect to get information that is really going to help them. They like to develop relationships or my experience is they like to develop relationships with people who help them the most and so that’s part of that.
The more you know your audience and you know their journeys and the questions they have the better. Think through those. Give the best answer you can in exactly the format that users want whether that’s a quick question and answer, whether it’s a 2000 word article on a topic so that they can have a buyer’s guide to really understand what it is on that particular point. What are the things that google wants.
We’ve covered some of the things that google wants in content in other webinars and they’re available on the Concise website. We didn’t want to drill into that today we can do that again in future and there’s some already that have been done so that’s really what we’re looking at, the key points. Focus on style and voice, make it authentic and understand that if you give people what they want they’re going to likely at the right stage in the right format then they can enjoy dealing with you.
We’re up now to Q and A, live Q and A. If you’ve got any questions please pop them into the chat and we’ll cover those as we as we can if anyone’s got any questions. Terry, is anything else you want to add. We’ve had a quick whip through here in our concise webinar?
Terry: No I liked it. I love it. Just running the content team I can’t focus enough on I guess it was number two there is to really know your customer. Most of the errors I see when people ask us to go in and take a look at their content and fix it is that people just put something up there and they were assuming that was the correct information and compelling information when in reality it wasn’t really speaking to who would actually be going to visit that site. If not intimidating we hear good content. Content is king all over the place or we see it but just realize the basics is understanding who your target audience, who the potential buyer/customer is and then put something up there that speaks to them. That might be oversimplifying but that’s a big step that a lot of people miss.
Richard: Yes, brilliant. Okay thanks Terry. Looks like we if you’ve got any questions please feel free to ask or contact us later.
Terry: There is one Richard in the moderated chat. There’s a question.
Richard: Oh okay, thank you very much. Is the frequency that you okay I’ll just. Thanks. Thanks Alyssa. Is the frequency that you update change the content on your website important for SEO? Yes it is and this way this goes to old and boring content like stale content that if you allow your website to be old then google won’t and google recognizes that it’s not updated very often then it won’t come and visit it very often. You can build these sorts of things into your in site map, your XML sitemap to say these pages have been updated and these are updated on this particular frequency but it absolutely is important to your SEO.
The so the more that you update your website and the more that you add fresh content to your website the more that firstly that visitors will be able to interact with this new bit of content but also google will take it more seriously that you update your content more regularly and it will come visit you more frequently. Google loves fresh, original content and that is relevant and that it addresses questions and answers that it can process and so yes it absolutely does make a difference. Having said that it is also able to trick google. It is possible and we don’t advise trying to trick google because it always bites you on the bum later but it is possible to update a headline, update a small part of an article without updating the whole thing and google can and then you can say to google that’s been updated. Google can then give that a slightly higher ranking. There are lots of little things and trips and tips and traps but yes, short answer updating website more often is far better than not.
Sam is asking if you get a lot of traffic, if you’re getting a lot of traffic to a page through Google AdWords offering time-lapse camera services but not many leads what would be your first step to get more leads. If you’re getting a lot of traffic but not a lot of leads we’d be looking at the analytics to try to understand how many like how many people are staying on the page, what is the bounce rate, how long are they staying on the page. I would then be re looking at the content to see what are the calls to action in there to get people to turn themselves from being a visitor to being a lead.
If they’re a lead then what have they had to do to qualify as a lead? Have they clicked a button to make a phone call? Have they filled in a form? Have they responded to some eBook offering where you are providing some benefit or some bonus incentive for them to give you their details? I’d look at the conversion process. I’d look at the calls to action that you’ve got in there. I would be looking through to make sure that the content is actually engaging and is giving people the information that they want.
A lot of traffic that you’re paying for through AdWords and not generating a lot of leads could also mean that you’re getting the wrong type of traffic. The ad may be misleading people and they’re coming to the site and not getting what they thought they were going to get and then they’re just leaving so there’s a few issues there Sam. It’s worthwhile taking a look at all of those like looking at the ad and looking at the landing page people are going to.
Then looking at the bounce rate on the landing page, looking at the duration of time that people spend on that page, what they do next and also and just as importantly, looking at the calls to action that you’ve got built into the page or on the page to see what it is that they should be or could be responding to become a lead and then understanding how those things can be optimized. There’s a conversion rate optimization process. There’s a kind of review of the content and also I’d be looking at the ads to make sure you bring in the right sort of traffic as well. Hopefully that’s potentially a bit helpful. That’s yes, happy to talk further if you’d like to do that.
Are there any other questions? Happy to take to take them now or later. Thanks Sam. Sam said that was very helpful. Good. Happy to take, happy to help with questions now or later. The next webinar is in a fortnight’s time. Gareth is actually going to be running that one on google shopping. There’s some new things that have just come out with google shopping that a lot of people don’t know about. We have just learned about them a week or a few days ago and thought gosh, we need to be programming a webinar on that topic. That’s in two weeks’ time. Terry, big thanks to you mate for joining in on this session and sharing some of your thoughts.
Terry: My pleasure.
Richard: Terry helps manage the team of content writers that we have at Concise. If you want any more help on any of this stuff just please let us know. Happy to share. This webinar as I say hopefully has been recorded. It’ll be up for viewing again. If you want any more details of any of the stuff that’s been in here including the interview questions please let us know we can just email those to you. Thanks everybody. Hope you’ve had a good time and good session and despite our bandwidth challenges. Thank you very much. Terry, do you want to add anything just to wrap up?
Terry: Nope. I just want to thank everyone and again we love interaction. That’s a huge word with us so any questions, any feedback please let us know.
Richard: Great. Thanks a lot. Thanks everybody. All the best. Have a good day. See you.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
