What is website content?
Content Marketing
Key takeaways
What’s the first thing you think about when someone says the word “content” to you? How would you describe it?
What is website content… and what is it not?
Perhaps “something that is contained inside something else” …like the content of a jam jar is the jam? It would logically follow then that website content would be what that website “contains”. All the words, images and videos that make up what you see, hear…consume on a website, are classed as content.
That might seem self-explanatory but it’s important to distinguish not just what content is but also what it isn’t.
In our jam jar analogy, for instance, you as the consumer are not privy to (nor would you wish to be) certain information about your jar of jam. Which factory has it come from, and in which part of the country? You don’t know which lorry it was transported on or who exactly placed it on the supermarket shelf for sale. You don’t know how the glass was manufactured. Nor are you acquainted with how the Jam is made. You might be able to read the list of ingredients if you check the label, but the full recipe isn’t there.
Website content follows a similar theme. It is about what you actually see, hear and use. It’s not about the technology or tools that sit behind it. People visit a website for the content, they don’t care whether you have used WordPress or another CMS, or what your pixel ratio is.
The tech is important because it supports the content and makes it easy to consume…but it’s the content itself that really matters, it’s the meat…er, I mean…jam. You don’t care about the jam jar (beyond perhaps an initial impression of liking the shape and confirming that it’s re-cycled glass), you only care that it successfully contains and protects the jam that you want to eat….mmmm…yummy!
So now that we know what website content is, how can we understand what really good website content is and how to go about creating it? I mean, how hard can it really be? You know your own product. Who could write about it better than you?
However, the process of creating content for your website can be more difficult than you might think. People tend to either overthink it or underthink it. In today’s digitally dominated world though, getting website content right is key for any business. This is somewhere you really want an experienced SEO company to help you out.
Examples of website content
Content on a website can take many forms:
- text
- images
- videos
- infographics
- blog posts
- podcasts
- ebooks
- FAQ’s
- reviews
- case studies
- how-to guides
In other words: website content is any information, communicated in any form across your website or designed to lead people to it. It can be broadly split into two categories: text and media and it can be static or dynamic.
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The purpose of content
There is a saying in the digital marketing world, and I mention it a lot. Content is King!!!
This little phrase is very true, but why? After all, it’s your product or service that’s the important thing, right?
Well, because your website content is absolutely critical for persuading your website users to buy your product or service, you need to make sure that you’re are creating content that works to turn users into leads.
All of the content on your website should be goal-directed. Now that doesn’t mean that every piece of copy on your website should be a sales pitch. Sometimes people just want to window shop in peace, and will be incredibly put off by being harassed as if they had just set foot in a car showroom (seriously, why will those guys not leave you alone for a minute)? But every bit of content must have a purpose.
On a website that is built as an integral part of a company’s sales funnel (i.e. a website that is built to generate leads), a piece of content’s purpose must align with one of the stages of the customer journey.
Jams, journeys?! My, this digital marketing is full of metaphors.
What is a customer journey?
Put simply, a customer journey is a process by which a person moves from being aware they have a problem, to spend their well-earned cash. So, a basic customer journey for a prospective cleaning company client might be:
- The office manager sees that their office is dirty.
- They search for “what to do if your office is dirty?” and a helpful blog pops up in the results, written by a cleaning company, explaining you need a commercial cleaning company to come in a do a deep clean.
- The blog was helpful, so the office manager checks on the rest of the company’s site to see if they do office cleaning – they do.
- The office manager checks out the case studies and Google ratings for the company. It all looks good.
- The office manager clicks complete a contact form on the website and hits “submit”.
Each of these actions falls within a different stage of a customer journey.
1. Awareness
Step 1 is the Awareness stage. The office manager (your decision maker and target audience) becomes aware of their problem and searches for a possible solution. They see and click on the blog.
2. Interest
Step 2 & 3 is the Interest stage. The blog (a piece of content) provides them with that solution. So, they continue along their journey. The blog was well written and the office manager checks out the rest of the site as they’ve become intrigued by the company and want to see if it can solve their problem. The service pages explain with text and images (basically – with content), that the company provide the service that they need.
3. Desire
Step 4 is the Desire stage of the customer journey. The company has a potential solution, and the office manager is desirous to take them up on their offer. But they need additional reassurance that they are making a wise decision, so check out forms of social proof. Some people argue that the interest and desire phases are so closely linked that they are hard to decern.
But, the main thing to understand is that there is a process of evaluation that goes on within the mind of the customer. The content – reviews, case studies and testimonials – are the types of social proof that they need.
4. Action
Step 5 is the Decision stage of the journey. Happy with all the content that they have seen, the office manager takes that step into the unknown and fills in a form, clicking “submit”. Believe it or not, the submit button is another type of content – it’s called a CTA (Call To Action), and tells the user what to do next. The words you use in CTAs can really transform how effectively people use your website.
How does website content move customers along their journey?
I hope you can see how instrumental content has been throughout this process for the office manager. At each stage, a different type of content moved them on to the next stage of the process. From the blog to the service page, case studies to CTAs – the content that made up that cleaning company’s website functioned together to generate a lead for that company.
That my friends is the power of content.
If you want a bit more detail about this, we have another blog that might interest you: Why is copywriting important for generating leads? Check it out.
Does all of this sound a bit complicated? Well, in some ways it is. Knowing what content is needed, where it needs to sit within your sales funnel and what it needs to say are all skills that a digital marketing and SEO company would bring to the table. A specialist SEO agency services package will cover all of this for you and make sure all your content aligns with a comprehensive content marketing and SEO strategy.
Interested? Find out more about our content marketing.
Really interested? Let’s talk.
Website content: not an optional extra
So many people think that they can throw up a one-page website and be done with it. I’m afraid that just is not the case, my friends. Content is key to generating leads through your website. Without it, you cannot nurture leads, you cannot move them along their customer journey towards making that all-important enquiry. Content is the foundation stone of any good digital marketing strategy, and just like that tasty jar of jam, will be consumed by your user whether you like it or not. Just what they’ll make of it will be down to you… will it draw them in, or will it leave a nasty taste in their mouth?