For many companies, just getting regular new content on to their websites is an achievement. There might not be the time (or money), or the website might be run by a head office which makes things difficult. We see these sorts of situation with many of our clients, so don’t think you’re alone if your website has had nothing added to it in 2014 except a couple of press releases.
One way to do it is to come up with a planned schedule of new content. This can cut through internal administrative hurdles, and it can encourage whoever’s responsibility it is to actually get something done. But what do you need?
I’d suggest starting your planning by considering the different classes of content. Firstly, there are the essential product descriptions. If your main page about blue widgets has just a line of text on it, you’re not going to get Google to take it seriously. So a schedule of updating your product pages, with a few paragraphs of good, “search term rich” content on each, is the place to start.
This should help you get found for the product searches. Now we need to think about the technological searches. If blue widgets are used in flange-mangling, then we need pages to draw in people looking for something to meet their flange-mangling needs. This is where the “how do I…?” articles come in.
Similarly, we need to address alternative technologies. If there’s a competitive solution (red widgets), we need content examining the advantages of blue versus red widgets.
Next, we need content to keep visitors coming back, perhaps through email distribution. Depending on the way your company likes to portray itself, this can be relatively lightweight chat, or it can be technical, issue-related stuff. Either way, you need content to keep your name in front of people who you’re already connected to. And one way or another, it’s got to be interesting.
Finally, there’s very general content, designed to spread further than just your immediate prospect base. This is the sort of content which gets you links, and which gets people talking about you. It’s always a struggle for companies in technical sectors; I heard one say: “Are we supposed to make a pop video or something?” (Well, you could…). But it’s a lot easier than that. Glossaries, calculators and information tables are just some of the resources which work well. People appreciate them, and people quote them.
Look at the classes of content above, work out how important (or necessary) each is to you. Once you start to break things down, it becomes a lot easier to build a schedule. Then all you’ve got to work out is how to get the content produced.