Why content is crucial to your website and what to write by Ken McGaffin, 17 November 2009

Web content is crucial for any business that wants to succeed online. Good content will engage your customers, attract search traffic and help build your business.

Why is web content so important?

Content engages your readers

It attracts their attention and builds their interest in your company. Give people useful, interesting information that helps them solve their problems and they’ll be more likely to buy from you.

Content pulls your knowledge together and makes it accessible to your customers

Every business or website owner carries a wealth of information in their heads: but often that’s were it stays and they only share it with people they talk to. Taking your knowledge, turning it into web content and publishing it makes it tangible and available to your prospects. An article or tip that you publish on the web can be the start of a conversation with someone who will buy from your company.

Content attracts search engines

Publish regularly and you’ll ‘teach’ the search engine spiders that there’s always something new on your site. As a result, they’ll visit more often and you’ll find your rankings start to outstrip your competitors'.

Content brings you inbound links

Write something new or useful or witty or controversial and you’ll find that people start writing about you and linking to your articles. You get extra links that bring new traffic when people click, as well as boosting your search rankings.

Content creates a buzz in social media

Have a look at Twitter for example – many of the posts people make link to content they’ve found on the web. By publishing regularly, you’ll build your profile and your reputation in your industry.

Content is an investment in your site that keeps on bringing visitors month after month and year after year

It is just amazing to see content that is several years old still bring visitors to your site.

But what do you write about?

That’s a question many business owners ask. Despite the obvious benefits of good content, writing doesn’t come easily to an inexperienced writer. Often he has to force himself to write and when he finally does so, the blank screen offers no encouragement but instead triggers a torrent of reasons why ‘now’ is not the right time to write. “Best to leave it to later, after I’ve dealt with…”.

The end result is that the content never gets finished. It never makes it to the published web page, the search traffic never comes, no links arrive and the sales that could have been are never made.

It doesn’t have to be like that. Experienced writers know that writing doesn’t happen by accident. They help themselves to write by reading other people’s work and asking “could I use that idea for my customers? And they help themselves to write by listening carefully to customers and asking “if that customer has that problem many others must have the same problem?”

Wordtracker can help by giving you the keywords that people use when they search. That tells you what people are looking for. Now in "The Web Content Recipe Book" we hope to inspire you to turn those keywords into content that will really work for your business.

In this book, experienced journalist Rachelle Money gives you 21 different types of content; she gives you the essential ingredients of each as well as real examples on the web so that you can see what works.

The end result is a book which aims to inspire and ensure you’ll never be stuck for a content idea again.