Before we can talk about website content, we need to define "Internet Marketing." I think of it in terms of the strategies, tools and tactics we implement in order to make our websites more visible to our target market. Let's face it; the Internet is a medium that is quite clearly becoming more focused on non-intrusive forms of getting connected. We use Internet Search Engines to find things WE are interested in looking up. We respond to stimulus that is relevant and compelling - to OUR needs. We hate being bombarded by Spam and Pop-ups that interrupt us and make us hit the delete key or the close window button.
Today, more and more businesses are developing Internet Marketing strategies recognizing we've moved to a market driven more by consumers than the push of interruption marketers. To become more visible and attractive to their target audience, business websites are becoming more interactive. They are blogging, producing videos and podcasts; they are engaging their audience with web widget and social media marketing. They're offering webinars via email marketing to interested subscribers, and they're writing articles, white papers and eBooks and making them available for FREE on their websites! Plus, they're writing compelling and interesting content!
Of all the strategies and things we can do to become attractive and more visible to our prospects, the holy grail of Internet marketing is to optimize your website's content. If you don't get your website content right you can forget about being found on the Internet. Gillian Meier of Blue Magnet, an Internet Marketing and Training company in South Africa writes, "an essential variable applied by Search Engines in the way in which they rank websites is based on the relevancy of the content that the search engine is indexing."
Optimizing our website's content means:
- Having text on our web pages that is relevant to our audience's interests
- Minimizing or eliminating the use of flash and other technologies that Search Engines can't index, and that irritate us humans to no end! (audio or video that automatically plays when a page loads)
- Incorporating relevant keywords in our headings, anchor text and content
- Writing for both the human reader and the Search Engines
- Pages with easy navigation for visitors and that Search Engines can index
- Information architecture that is clean and uncluttered with plenty of white space with the important information above the fold
- Writing robot friendly text: H1 and H2 Tags, Title Tags, Meta Tags, Alt Optimization
- Investing in professionally written website content - by a web content copywriter
Optimizing website content is also referred to as "Offline Optimization." It involves all the things you can do within your website itself to get noticed by the Search Engines and engaged with your site visitors. Online Optimization is all of the things you can do outside of your website to draw attention or to drive traffic to your site. It includes such activities as submitting your site to general and industry related directories, getting inbound links from other quality sites and making sure you are being indexed by all leading Search Engines.
I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, don't neglect the impact of optimized content to the success of your Internet marketing efforts. "The number one reason a website fails is because of poorly written content" (Michelle Howe, "Turn Browsers into Buyers").
