content strategy for the web

Content Strategy for the web: An extensive marketing guide to getting it right

What is a content strategy for the web?

  1. Content strategy is the plan for creating, sharing, measuring and improving the performance of text, video, sound and image content on your website and on social platforms

  2. Content strategy includes various techniques like content writing, SEO, social media sharing and promotion. Content strategy has an important role in inbound marketing and list-building

  3. Content strategy provides a detailed guide of goal-driven choices about the content you need to create to achieve your business goals on the web

Why is a content strategy important for your website?

Content provides information that your future clients are looking for on the internet. Often this information is educational sometimes it’s entertaining too. The content on your website communicates with your audience and also search engines to give them a picture of what you and your business are about. When planning your website content, make sure that you create a clear picture that is true to life and appeals to your target audience.

One more thing before you embark on creating a content strategy for the web.  You need to make sure that the platform where your content strategy will be published is fit for purpose.

You need to understand the two factors that can make of break a website.

Coaches and online entrepreneurs who have their online presence all worked out, understand two simple things:

A. Your website is not a destination it’s a journey

It’s a myth that a website project takes x budget and x time to complete. A website is a reflection of your business, and your business is always in transition.

Moving forward or pivoting.

Businesses that succeed change often.

This helps them weather the inevitable changes brought on by their industry and technology.

B. The way you organise your content will affect your ability to create (free) organic traffic

The way you organise your website pages and blog categories will help you rank faster or defeat your chances of success.

Google will rank your blog post or page based on how well it fits a particular query, however, there are a number of factors that will stop Google (and other search engines) from listing your page in their results.

If Google doesn’t understand what you’re really about and who you are serving, it will not serve your content. So it’s important that your site and your blog structure are built in a way that clarifies what you do.

Spells it out really simply.

This may mean that you need to focus on your ideal client more and even leave out some products or services that are not directly applicable to your niche. You can still sell that stuff but maybe through email or other forms of marketing.

So…

How can you create a web content strategy?
(One that works!)

1. Know your ideal client to start planning your web content strategy

The first step is to know who you want to be found by. Go as narrow and as deep as possible. For example, don’t pick an audience that is too generic like ‘people who want to reduce stress ’go deeper pick an audience like ‘women in tech that have a highly stressful job and kids’ – this will do two things for you:

– it will help you create high-quality content that is on-point for your ideal client
– it will allow you to clearly inform search engines about who your target market is and how you help them because you’ve narrowed it down.


Know your ideal client to start planning your web content strategy

 

2. Know your content strategy keywords

Before you even begin looking at your website structure and content strategy you need to know your keywords. What is your audience already looking for. What problems are they turning to Google for?

Answer these two questions effectively and you’re on your way to a strong content strategy.

 

Know your content strategy keywords

 

3. Know where your audience engages

If you don’t know where they are, you cannot engage with them. You need to understand which social media platforms and websites your customers visit. Do they love Facebook Groups? – Which ones? Are they listening to podcasts? Do they spend little time of Social because they’re too busy? Do they love to read? Or do they prefer to watch a 5-minute video?

Know where your audience engages

 

4. What are they engaging with

What is your audience engaging with? How are they doing this? Look at your audience and understand what content they’re attracted to and are already engaging with. You need to produce more of that.

5. Understand the buying journey

The buyer journey is the step by step evolution from having a problem to learning about solutions and making a purchase. The journey every potential client takes to becoming your client.

Here are some questions to ask yourself that will help you understan your buyer’s journey


How do your ideal clients decide to buy?
What information do they need to get to a buying decision?
What kind of contact do they need from you to take that decision?
Is it a service demo, is it a proposal, a one-to-one call or meeting?

Base your web strategy on this and you will be successful.

 

6. SEO Your Content

Every page on your website needs to be optimised for search engines. This means that you need to not only weave in the right keyword/s in the right place but also use the right keywords in the right places such as your meta tags, images etc.

 

7. Have the right call to actions.

In order to make the most of the traffic on your website, you need to close the circle in your content strategy. You can do this by making sure that every post or page has the right call to action that matches the content on that page. You also need to keep an eye on the click-through rate of titles, call to action etc so that you improve this as you go along.

 

8. Nurture and Grow

You need to keep things in perspective and understand that the chances of someone buying from your the first time they hit your page is practically zero. Therefore, you need to create a content strategy that brings people to your website repeatedly.

A strategy that informs them about who you are, why they should trust you and what you sell. You can do this by integrating your content strategy across your website, social media and your email list. If you integrate all 3 in a coherent manner you will start getting quality leads to turn into clients and grow your business effortlessly with organic Google traffic.

Would you like to talk about how you could do this for your business?

Book your 30-Minute discovery call here