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This is the follow up post from ‘How to Increase your web traffic and improve conversions‘. In this blog post we look at content creation; how to create content that targets your market and how to introduce this new content onto your website.

So what does your content have to do with getting more traffic or improving conversion rates I hear you ask? Well, it has quite a lot. You’ve no doubt heard the saying ‘Content is King’? Well, this really does illustrate just how important it is to have good content, and more importantly, relevant content, for your website and how effective it can be. Your content is what Google (and other search engines) uses to find you. It’s what connects your website to the people searching for your services.

Building websites every day means we get to see a lot of web pages, and one of the most common mistakes we see, is businesses just writing about themselves. But that’s OK right? It’s their website, and you’re there to find about them aren’t you? No, you’re not. You’re there to find out what they can do for you, so you need to write for your audience. In essence, people want to read something that answers all their questions. “Use us and solve [their problem] and get [their ideal result]!”

So, how do you know what your clients want to hear?

Let’s start with a quick exercise you can to do in order to help you generate some content ideas. Now I warn you, this takes a little time to really change how you think about your business, but I promise you, if you can do it, it will change how you approach all aspects of your marketing. You can use friends, family or even a stranger off the street (If I’m honest, that would probably work better). You’re going to create a customer persona, which is essentially a profile of the people you’re targeting in terms of who they are and problems they are likely facing in their position. For example, if you’re targeting SMEs, you’ll be after the business owners. These people tend wear many hats in their business, they are very busy and often pulled from pillar to post. So these are things you can speak to when writing your copy. Now of course these can’t be exact; you just need to be in the ballpark. As with anything this will change and develop over time the more you learn.

Next, you think about the questions someone would ask; someone who knows nothing about your business. What do you do? Why do that? Why do businesses need that? What happens if they don’t have that? This is where your family member or whoever you’ve drafted in to help you with this, comes in. Just talking about your business with someone who isn’t involved, can open your eyes to things that might be obvious to you but not to your potential customers. Answering these questions will be the meat of your content. If you can get about 10-15 questions, each one could be the subject of 1 or even dissected into 4 blog posts.

Speaking about blog posts, this is an important area where you get to introduce new content into your website, and is a very important tool in driving traffic to you. As your persona develops and new questions arise, you can address them on your blog and test them out to see just how much effect it has on traffic or conversion. The good thing about finding out what questions your customers are asking when looking for your services, is that you can answer them ahead of time, so when they ask Google, you’re already there with an answer.

Now as I’ve said, this takes a little time to really get your head around it, because you know your business inside and out. You know why people need you. For you, it’s a no-brainer. But that’s not always the case for potential clients, which is why you can really benefit from getting someone on the outside to come in and help with this exercise.

And remember, don’t talk about how you do what you do, but why people need what you do and the benefits of getting YOU to do it. At the end of the day, businesses don’t want to pay you unless they see the value of what you’re offering.

In our next blog post, we’ll look at how social media and other mediums can help drive website traffic and improve your conversion rates.