Web Content Marketing: How to Generate Content for High-Performing Websites

Content marketing has catapulted into the spotlight over the last few years. It’s achieved the global acclaim that technology had brought on itself, and it’s steadily sinking its teeth into more facets of the business. Content marketing comes in many ways. Among content types such as video production, blogging, ebooks there is another very important content type – web content marketing. Web content is a common name given to any content you can read and interact with on the websites.

Your website should be more than just a static website. It’s also one of your most important marketing assets. But with all the websites out there, it can be really hard to have a high CTR (the percentage of people who click on your content after seeing it) and organic traffic (traffic that is earned, not paid). So, are you ready to see your content marketing improve? Here are some of the best practices to help you get started.

 

What is web content marketing?

Simply put, web content is any content you see, ready, interact with on the website. Web content includes textual, visual content that’s encountered as part of the user experience. Content marketers use different types of web content to attract and convert their target audiences. Each marketing team has its unique mixture of different types. There are various types of web content, but I would recommend sticking to these 6:

• Blogs

Happens to be one of the most popular types of web content. Blogs are a set of web pages filled with an enormous amount of information. Each business usually writes on the topics from their industry and some surrounding sphere.

With blogs, businesses stay connected with their customers. What’s more interesting, blogs happen to be the main source of traffic for many companies thanks to Search Engines and SERP of which we will talk about a little later.

 

• Landing pages

 

Landing pages are digital destinations, the webpage where users end up after clicking on a hyperlink. The goal of website conversion pages is to create a desire in visitors to connect with your organization when they visit your website. 

 

• Content assets

Content assets is a wide term that takes in content pieces like white papers, brochures, user manuals, testimonials, case studies, guides, ebooks, etc. Content assets encompass materials and resources you have put up to win referrals and ad revenue in the long term and will use them to help draw visitors in the short term.

 

• Visual content

I think the name speaks of itself. Visual content helps to add personality to your website, making it easier for users to scrawl through your content and learn about your business in a shorter time. Visual content includes images, video content, infographics, gifs and much more. It works the best when combined with other content types to produce richer content and achieve more user engagement

 

Now you know what web content is and the different aspects of it. It’s time to get into how you can make your web content shine among your competitors and present it in a positive and informative light.

 

Step 1: Know your audience like the back of your hand

There is one individual within our circle of friends, a family that we know so well that we can easily predict what they need or how their needs should be addressed. That individual should be your audience.

No matter what you do and how you do it, your main task is to solve customers’ problems with the products you offer. How will they ever understand you’re their solution if you don’t even know who they are and what kind of issues they face. So before you start building your web content full of resourceful content, get to know your audience. 

Another thing to take into consideration are funnel levels. To keep it short, a conversion funnel is a term for describing the different stages of a buyer’s journey leading up to a purchase. You should generate content according to different stages of funnels which are awareness, evaluation, purchase, and delight. The four different stages serve specific purposes in the customer journey and the content should be delivered in accordance to each stage. If you want to learn more about conversion funnels, check out this article on them.

You can use different tools, submit surveys, collaborate with users who are already dedicated to your product and would be happy to participate in your little experiments. 

To help you get closer to your target audience, here are the most popular tools that are all free and easy to use:

1. Google Analytics for tracking website activity like bounce rate, session duration, pages per session and much more.
2. Google Search Console for maintaining and monitoring your website’s presence in Google Search results. It also helps to understand which content your audience likes the best and what needs improvement.
3. Answer The Public is a keyword tool best for visualizing search questions and helps to get into the minds and searching habits of internet users.
4. Keyword Tool is a must-have tool for building strong keyword lists to help you rank better and get found by your potential users.
5. Make My Persona is a free interactive web tool that allows you to quickly and easily create professional, customisable buyer personas.

 

Step 2: Have a personalized web content strategy

Knowing the “why”, the “when” and the “how” is mandatory for success. You should always be five steps ahead of your competitors. Here is when strategies come to the rescue. The creation, delivery, and regulation of valuable, usable content are all guided by content strategy. Getting the proper content to the right audience, in the right place, at the right time is what content strategy entails. 

The content itself is a messy business when you don’t have a properly tailored plan and SMART goals. That’s why you can never, by no means, try working on your content without a proper strategy. 

I have good news for you, there is no need to break your brain in trying to start creating your content strategy from scratch, there are a few guides, templates we’ll get down into to help you get things done faster. 

 

1. The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing in 2021
2. BUILDING A TANGIBLE WEBSITE CONTENT STRATEGY: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE
3. Content Strategy Template #1
4. Content Strategy Template #2
5. Content Strategy Template #3

 

Step 3: Tell it short, but tell it with novelty.

 

One of the most important things about content writing is the ability to speak about fresh, valuable things and keep it short. Being able to bring something new to the table is always rewarded with better traffic, new users and an even higher conversion rate. 

Jullian Shapiro, a marketing beast, chose to refer to “something new to the table” as a novelty in his very resourceful webinar called ”How I write”. Jullian managed to cover everything connected to writing content that clicks with users. 

The best part of the webinar was about novelty. Jullian describes novelty as a novel idea that is new, easily intuited and significant for readers. Readers automatically become intrigued and interested when you mix non-fiction writing with analogies, and interesting stories they can relate to. 

Novelty is a great writing technique on its own but, if you manage to mix it with short and sharp writing, it could be much more effective. Readers have a short attention span, and you should condense material into little chunks while still conveying the relevant information.

You can learn more about novel writing by Jullian’s well-written guide to get a better grip on what we’re covering today.

 

Step 4: Content Design: layering is all that matters

 

Take a look at a website example below 

Would you spend 5 seconds on the website? 

 

I wouldn’t even bother to stay on the website longer than 2 seconds. Let’s see why a user like me, interested in your product, wouldn’t bother to interact with your web content even if you are all I need. Poor UI is a death sentence for your content, no matter how interesting and valuable it is. 

Content design is important by all means. Content design is a combination of writing, UI, and accessibility. In this case, content does not have to be written – it can and should be all the content assets we’ve covered earlier. 

UI, by far, is the most important part of content design. The ultimate purpose of good UI web design is to guarantee that users can readily access content by ensuring accessibility, easy-to-navigate interfaces, and intuitive website design.

To have a responsive design you might need to hire designers and developers to do the work for you, or you can do it yourself. There are many low-code and no-code tools that can take care of the layout of your websites. These tools make the building process easier with many templates, drag & drop blocks and integrations. They are your less expensive and easier option compared to code development. 

 

Step 5: SEO, SEO, SEO

 

As already mentioned, one of your main tasks is to generate content your users will love and build ways for them to find you on the web. Well, all this is done thanks to SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search Engines are the platforms you use to search for things on the web like Google or Yahoo. 

All the things we’ve talked about in the article are a part of the process of SEO. They are all equally important when it comes to creating articles that have the potential to rank high both for Search Engines and for potential users.

To create content that will help your website rank high, you must work with three primary factors: copywriting, site structure, and keyword strategy. To learn more about these SEO factors, I highly recommend checking out Yoast’s article on web content SEO.