3 ways to give your content a boost
Is your site looking a little stale? Content can make all the difference when it comes to your websites appearance as well as SEO performance, so it's important to cover all the aspects of improving your website content.
What is content?
So, what actually is content I hear you ask? Content is all the visible features that are within your landing page on your website, so this is text, headings, images, links, buttons and so on. All the important areas of your site really!
Content is a very important factor of your website, it informs the user about you, your services and really comes to play with your brand identity. If you have a certain tone you like to portray to your audience then this is your area to shine through my friend.
Your humour, directness and everything about your business all fall under the content that you have on your website.
The content is not only valuable to the reader, but also to those little pesky Google bots who determine how good your SEO is (Search Engine Optimisation)
Why do we need good content for SEO?
Let's talk about SEO…(baby?)
In the magical land of SEO, content really is King. There is a thing us SEO's dislike, and that is both thin and duplicate content.
Thin content
Thin content is known as very little content on a page. This is low-quality content with minimal or no headings, very little text and not a lot of imagery used - this can really impact the performance of the site for SEO.
To avoid thin content you need to have bare minimum 500 words, for a well informative page you're looking around 750 - 1,500 words of good quality content, you can read more about good quality content here.
Duplicate content
Duplicate content is quite literally the same content copied and used throughout the site numerous times. For good SEO you want to have unique content for each page across the site.
Duplicate content is a common issue with E-commerce websites, this is because there are hundreds or sometimes even thousands of products with similar descriptions. These aren't unique and therefore end up with a lot of SEO issues in the form of duplicate content, metadata and so on.
If you think your website is facing a duplicate content issue, then you can speak to an SEO expert today.
Three ways to give your content a boost
So let's get down to the nitty gritty, what are the three most important areas to boost your content!?
Headings:
Headings don't only give a landing page a wow factor, they also contribute to SEO.
They not only communicate to the user but to the Google Bots crawling your website.
For SEO, you have three main headings you want to focus on:
H1: The H1 is the most important heading on a page. We recommend to use only one H1 on each page and this is usually the page title alongside the main keyword you want to focus on for that page.
H2: The H2 is the second most important headings used on a page. You can have multiple H2's on a page, we recommend using three to five for content around 750+ words.
Again for these headings its best to have a keyword used as well as making it punchy for the user to read, you can have either two or three words or a longtail keyword for these headings - as long as you're not using a long sentence for your headings we're all good…
H3: The H3's on landing pages are always good for bullet points or quick facts - These are still commonly used but not as important to H2's and H1's in Google's eyes - but are still good to use.
You can also use H4's, H5's and H6's. These all have the same value of a H3 but are just smaller in size and commonly used for design.
So don't just bold your headings - put some character to them and get on that H2 hype!
Imagery:
Ah, good imagery - a beautiful thing when it comes to scrolling through a website.
Imagery, again, is so important to the user and for the SEO on your site. For the user, the imagery creates the whole look and feel of your site and your business. It shows the personality and the style of your communication in plain sight.
Finding the right imagery is an important aspect of the UX of your website - if you think you need a revisit to the branding and design of your website then get in touch with one of our UX/Design experts today and we can help!
In terms of SEO, imagery is surprisingly still forgotten considering it's a big part of on-page SEO.
There are three things you need to focus on when it comes to uploading a masterpiece to your website, the file name, the Alt. Text and the size of the image.
The filename of the image makes it cleaner for Google to read which you name by separating the words with a hyphen, so your file name would be saved something like this “file-name-of-image” then once you upload this then you can copy this as the Alt. text.
Alt. Text is what Google reads as an image as the Google Bots can't physically see what the image is on the site.
In terms of what you want to be saving the file name as, this comes down to the keywords and image relevancy on the site. Tip: Don't get keyword stuffing…
When it comes to sizing an image on your website, you need to make sure you're uploading an image around the 70 kb mark - You don't want images that are over 2000 pixels by 4000 pixels on your site as this will have a big effect on your site speed.
Site speed plays a big part in SEO as it interferes with the user experience - Let's face it, we don't want to sit around for minutes waiting for a page to load… Boring.
When it comes to sizing an image on your website, you need to make sure you're uploading an image around the 70 kb mark - You don't want images that are over 2000 pixels by 4000 pixels on your site as this will have a big effect on your site speed.
Site speed plays a big part in SEO as it interferes with the user experience - Let's face it, we don't want to sit around for minutes waiting for a page to load… Boring.
Text:
Let's save the best until last… TEXT.
The written copy is the most important aspect for content across your website. You're engaging the reader, you're getting those important keywords and headers involved and you're showing what ya got for those ever-present Google Bots.
The written copy is a big player in the world of SEO. Nobody likes thin copy, and everyone loves an engaged reader.
You want to be making sure that the branding and character across your site is consistent and fruity to read. We're taking well placed and written headers, punchy informative paragraphs and FAQ sections.
You want to cover all areas possible so the user is well informed on your services
We're not asking you to write a whole thesaurus, leave that for a rainy day…
You also want to be using internal links across your copy to over landing pages within your site - this is best to be linked on relevant keywords, you can see more here about internal linking.
Summary
We hope all this content hasn't bored you - but informed you on how to boost your own marvellous content! If you think you're in need of some content help and need your website looking over for design or a general boost then get in touch with one of our experts today!