SEO Basics: Why Content Matters

Content plays an integral role in the success of your website online. But why is it so important to SEO? We answer that question in our latest episode of our SEO Basics video series!

Transcript

My name is Trevin Shirey I’m director of business development here at WebFX, and today I’m going to talk to you about why content is so important as a part of your overall marketing strategy.

So, I review countless websites as part of my job, I talk to lots of people about what they’re doing with their websites — whether it’s revamping a current site, launching a whole new site, maybe it’s part of a new product launch they’re doing — and one mistake that I’ve seen over and over again is a lack of informational, top-of-funnel content on their site. And what I mean by that is it’s kind of common sense at this point for people to have a clean design, have a site that’s responsive and mobile friendly, a site that is built with SEO in mind from the ground up — the code is clean, it’s readable by Google. But one thing that a lot of people forget to do once they’re all tied up in these technical and creative sides of things is making sure that they have content in a decent amount of quantity that really speaks to potential customers.

So this could be things like an article section that’s updated frequently, maybe a live FAQ section that gets updated a couple times a month with common questions and concerns, and then kind of the classic example would be having a blog section on your site that’s regularly updated. Having content like this is helpful for three key reasons. The first one is that it really helps make your business unique.

It allows you to communicate to people visiting your site what is interesting or unique about your organization. That could be maybe awards that you’ve won, maybe some customer testimonials, you could go into some qualifications that your team has that others don’t — just highlight those key selling points that you use in the sales process to differentiate your organization from competitors. The second thing that it does is it allows you the chance to really tell your story and showcase your expertise.

One recent example that I’ve had personally is I was searching for a chimney sweep for my home online. Starting from square one, I had no idea if I even needed one, and I ended up finding a local company through searching around for some information in Google that had an awesome FAQ page that talked about when you need a chimney sweep, what the process for that is, and they even walked through what to expect whenever a chimney sweep would arrive for an appointment. For me the consumer, that was really valuable information, kind of made me feel at ease, and allowed me to trust that company.

And I actually ended up hiring them then to stop by my house and go through the whole process. So being able to showcase what was unique about them and kind of tell their story about how qualified they are and the experience that they have was really important for me. And then the last thing that is really important with content is that it is able to attract new visitors who don’t already know or recognize your brand out there in the online world.

This ties into SEO and how Google is looking at your site, but by having even several dozen articles and resources on your site, Google is going to start ranking those pages for more what we call long tail or top of funnel keywords. So that could be things like “do I need a chimney sweep,” “what to expect whenever a chimney sweep is coming to your house,” “why is my chimney making these strange noises.” Those types of things are very helpful for searchers who are looking for informational content. Then, ideally, the hope is that those people land on your site, check out your content, and it ends up converting them into customers.

So those are a few high-level things that content does. It’s a wonderfully powerful tool and one that I hate seeing businesses underutilize. So make sure that you’re thinking about a content strategy and implementing that across your site for 2024 and beyond.