by Elle Ray | Mar 15, 2015 | Website Content
It’s the One Purpose for Blogs and Websites
Business blogs and websites have a specific purpose, but it’s not to sell your product or service. At least, not entirely. Your website needs to develop trust with your visitors. Your blog needs to attract those curious visitors to your site. And there is no better way to accomplish both those goals than to answer questions people have about your business, industry or town.
No matter what your business, no matter what product or service you provide, people will have questions about it:
- What will it do for me?
- Why is yours the better product/service?
- How much will it cost me or save me?
- How can I best use it?
The list goes on and on. You need to answer these questions. Only then will your visitors be open to buy.
Answering Questions in Your Blog
A business blog is a marketing tool. With it, you can reach out, using keywords and topics not directly related to your business, to attract more visitors to your site. Answering questions, both about your industry and about other topics, is a great way to attract readers.
For example, let say you’re a plumber. You can cover the obvious in your blog, such as “How to fix a leaky faucet” and “5 things to ask a plumber before he makes a house call.” But you can also answer related questions, such as “5 steps to winterize your home” and “Handling difficult clients.” These aren’t necessarily topics you’d expect from a plumber, but they fit right in and may attract readers you normally wouldn’t.
Answering Questions on Your Website
Your website absolutely has to answer as many of the obvious questions about your business as possible:
- Where are you located?
- What do you do, exactly?
- Why do people need your product/service?
- How are you different from anyone else?
- How do I get in touch with you?
These are the easy ones, but if your business generates more obvious questions, answer those, too. In the process, you’re generating trust. You’re sharing information about your business and industry. If it’s unique enough, you’ll get noticed. If it’s truthful enough, you’ll become trusted. If your website is clear enough and friendly enough, you’ll earn the respect of those who visit.
And that’s where the magic happens. If people trust your company, they will like it. If you provide valuable information about your business or industry or even your location, people will remember you. They may not be ready to buy your product or service right then, but when the need arises, they’ll remember you and they’ll return. Because people like doing business with people or businesses they like.
Your Business Website
Yes, the ultimate purpose of a business website is to sell your product or service. But you don’t do that by talking sales and guarantees and price points and all that for page after page after page. You do it by building trust. You do it by sharing value on your site. If a visitor learns something new on your website, that’s gold; that’s more valuable than 10 commercials.
People get online to look for answers to questions. Your website’s job is to answer as many relevant questions as possible. That’s how you attract an audience. That’s the value of content marketing. And it’s not always as simple as it sounds. It takes work. But it’s exactly what we do at Ray Access. Let us help you reach more people with well-crafted website content and a targeted blog.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Feb 7, 2015 | Website Content
How Can Anyone Tell If Your Copy’s Any Good?
Everyone with a keyboard thinks she’s a writer.
The problem with being a writer or a painter is that anyone can do it. All it takes is a few strokes of the pen or brush (manually or digitally), and you’ve got something. So how can you tell if it’s any good? Given the state of art and literature today, you could realistically assume that “quality” is a totally subjective assessment.
Maybe that’s even true, but when it comes to writing online, for businesses, there are ways to determine whether the content on your website or in your blog reaches the heights reserved for the label “quality content.” Ultimately, it comes down to the objective question: Does it work?
Does It Work?
A website for a business is supposed to generate leads and convert visitors into customers. A business blog is supposed to attract people to your website, share insights into your industry, and tout you as a trusted professional. The goal of online content is to get your company noticed.
If it’s not working, you can tell. Traffic to your website is down. The people who do visit aren’t buying. If you have these problems, it could be that you don’t have the right content on your website. It’s possible that good content — content that’s useful to people doing searches, content that’s directed at your target market — can solve these problems.
How Does It Work?
Quality content attracts two distinct audiences: people and search engines. This order is important. Good content is written for people first (not for search engines). If people can’t read it and understand it, then search engines won’t like it either.
Web searches have to provide answers.
People are searching online for answers to questions (e.g., “How do I fix a leaking faucet?”), for specific information (e.g.,”Where can I buy a new faucet?”) and to find businesses (e.g., “Who’s the best plumber in town?”). If you’re a plumbing service, your website should answer all three questions. And more. By making your website useful to people, they’ll find you and remember you.
That in itself makes a website rank higher on a search engine results page. That in itself will help direct more traffic to your website and increase your business awareness and profits (both goals of quality online content). Remember, search engines have competition, too. They want to deliver the best websites to their customers.
More Tips for Creating Quality Content
The more search engines change how they work, the more important quality content has become. The cheap SEO tricks don’t work anymore. Now, it’s all about delivering useful content. That’s all people — and search engines — care about. Here are a few other tips for creating quality content:
- Make your content readable. If the audience for your website is composed of nuclear engineers, by all means indulge in the esoteric math and computations of the industry. But if your audience is the general public, you will lose them the minute you start talking about half-lives. Make it simple. Keep it clear.
- Formatting matters. No one will read a website featuring solid blocks of type. Every web page should have imagery that helps convey your message. The best images are original photos or graphics that aren’t on any other site, but even if you use stock photos, make sure they are relevant and add to the page.
- Long-form content is more useful. The trend for quality content is to be thorough. The best websites average almost 1,000 words per page. So don’t just cover a single topic; delve into it. Explain how it fits into the Big Picture. Your website and blog should provide value to the people reading at home or at work. Make sure you use subheadings to make the content easy to scan.
- Choose the right keywords. Yes, keywords are still important, but it’s no longer useful to stuff a web page full of the same keyword over and over. Choose a primary keyword phrase and supplement it with related secondary keyword phrases. For example: “Quality content” might be the primary phrase; “useful information” and “web searches” might be relevant secondary phrases.
- Limit your advertising. Some demographics have accepted online advertising as a necessary evil. Search engines aren’t necessarily part of that crowd. When you’re building your website, focus on your audience and not on your pocketbook. It’s anti-intuitive, but it works. Your goal should be to provide value, not a platform for ad space. It will pay off in the end.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Jan 23, 2014 | Content Provider
Are You Recognized for Expertise in Your Field?
If you’re an expert in your field, but no one knows it yet, it’s a problem. Make a plan (or a resolution) to tell the world about your experience. Believe it or not, people want to know. A professional willing to share expertise in an open-source manner, free of charge to anyone who needs the information, is a valuable and respected commodity.
Share Your Expertise
The best way to set yourself apart from your competition is to write informative articles about your industry. Share the latest research polls published by your industry association. Let others know about trends affecting your market. Write down your experiences in a way that inspires and motivates people.
In other words, become the expert you want to be. You easily can accomplish this goal through a regular blog posted on your website. But make it worth readers’ time. Give readers a take-away, whether it’s a useful tip or a juicy piece of information they can pass on to friends and coworkers.
Remember that old commercial that said: “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen?” Your goal is to tweak that message by placing your name in that sentence.
Don’t Withhold Your Knowledge
You can do accomplish this feat if you continually give away useful information in a clear, jargon-free, easy-to-digest way that people can use. Too many professionals write for themselves and forget that it’s the readers (your potential customers) they need to please.
Craft blog posts and articles for your site and to publish in trade and local magazines that answer burning questions, make life a little easier and provide useful material. Write about one subject at a time and don’t try to fill a blog with too much information. It’s not that difficult when you have the desire to rise above the field and make a name for yourself.
The Value of a Consistently Good Blog
Eventually, you’ll be seen as the expert in your field, if only because you’ve been so helpful. Eventually, clients will seek you out because you’ve developed a reputation for being straightforward and forthcoming about the ins and outs of your industry. Your readers will flip for it. It’s all possible when you let your expertise shine through your writing.
If you have trouble stringing sentences into a clear narrative, however, let us make you sound like the knowledgeable expert you are. Ray Access can write for you to provide access to the readers looking for the latest and greatest. Whether you want to tell the world about your business or your products and services have a narrow target, we can craft articles for publication in magazines and blogs that are insightful, organized and informational. And we’ll even put your name on top as the author. After all, you are the expert, we’re just the writers.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Jan 12, 2014 | Content Marketing
Website Trends to Watch in the Coming Year
Like we’ve always said: it’s no longer enough to have a website. Everyone and her brother have websites. To gain a competitive advantage, you now need an active website. If your website isn’t offering useful information to your clients and potential clients, it’s not reaching them.
Your website should be doing marketing work for you, attracting readers who turn into customers. If your website isn’t part of your marketing budget, with a constant investment, then you’ve wasted the money you’ve already spent on the site. It has to stay active to be effective.
Adding Content Isn’t Enough
In the past, we’ve said time and again that you need to keep adding to your website — such as with regular blog posts — to keep attracting readers to your business. The newest trend, however, suggests that simply adding content isn’t enough. You have to add useful content.
Useful content means answers to your clients’ questions. It means tips that can help your customers make better, more informed decisions. Your website content, as well as your blog post topics, should focus less on you and your company and more on your customers. Delivering useful content will help you stand out from your competition and pique the interest of search engines.
“Content Marketing” Is the New Buzzword Phrase
Search engines are refining how they rank pages. If you can deliver quality content, your site will be recognized, both by human readers and robotic search engines. Quality in 2014 will trump quantity.
Keywords will remain important, but if they are forced into the text unnaturally, Google and other search engines may penalize you. Instead, deliver clear, readable English that assists the people who are seeking solutions. Help these people, and they may become loyal customers.
Building Your Reputation, One Page at a Time
As you add useful information to your website, you are building value. That value will gain an audience, which will simultaneously build your company’s online reputation. If you are offering content that’s interesting, provocative, timely, and — most importantly — useful, then you are building value into your website.
Value, over the long haul, increases your online presence and your website page rank. Useful content delivered consistently over time ultimately translates into authority. So if you want to be seen as the authority in your field, your active website is the perfect vehicle to achieve that goal.
Quality Content Equals Good Marketing
To get ahead in 2014, think of your website as a marketing tool. Budget accordingly. If you don’t have the personnel to devote to this effort, outsource it. Ray Access specializes in content marketing. Let us turn your website into a marketing engine. You could say your company’s reputation depends on it.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Nov 29, 2013 | Content Marketing
And Is Content Still the Way to SEO Results?
Back in February, on Mark’s birthday no less, we published a blog post pronouncing that Content Is King. Here we are, some 10 months later, and we have to ask the question: Is content still king (or queen) when it comes to SEO and best practices for your website?
Our initial response is: Yes, of course content still rules the roost. After all, it’s content that draws readers to your website. It’s content that delivers SEO keywords. It’s content — useful, valuable information — that makes any site worthwhile.
We’ve always said that quality content is what will win the SEO wars, that Google and other search engines will eventually figure out how to recognize useful information from keyword-loaded crap. That’s still in the future, apparently.
Content Is Evolving
The definition of content is changing. Infographics are the current rage. Video is getting a lot of attention these days. Where does this leave the lonely word?
Words will never disappear. They are the foundation of language, even online. Infographics need words. Videos need scripts. And how often do you look for the pop-up “tooltips” that explain exactly what that little button or icon means?
The concept of content may change, but the goal has always been the same: to provide useful information people will want to read or watch and then share. If your content doesn’t reach that goal, then I don’t care how much SEO you’re buying, your website isn’t working.
Rethinking SEO
We came across an interesting article from CopyPress.com that talks about this idea. Basically, the article says:
To be good at SEO, you need to stop thinking about SEO.
In other words, the goal of SEO is to get beyond it. A local SEO expert told me once his idea of SEO was “creating community.” Not much about keywords in that sentence.
So, when you’re ready to treat SEO as a means to an end instead of as an end unto itself, contact us.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Elle Ray | Oct 28, 2013 | Website Content
Web Developers Should Offer Writing Services
Consider this. If you’re a website developer, this blog post is for you specifically. But even if you don’t develop or design websites for a living, you can still learn something valuable here. Keep reading.
Web Developers Are Pros, Right?
Web developers can implement stunning designs, rotating photographs, exploding menus and search engine optimization (SEO), all while creating slick, interlinked pages under a killer domain name. It’s detail-oriented work and it takes time, maybe months to get everything approved and built.
As a web professional, you launch the site after all this hard work. The last thing you expect is the first response you get from your client: that the name is misspelled or the information on the About Us page is unintelligible. They’re mad. You’re mad. And it’s totally avoidable.
Who’s Responsible for the Content?
Website developers usually tell the client that they just use whatever content was provided. The client often expects the content to look different on the new site or somehow magically transform into marketable prose. But when no one claims responsibility, the site suffers.
Web developers are not responsible for “fixing” a site’s content. It’s not your expertise. Yet how do you think the client feels after paying thousands of dollars for a brand new website — and the first time they see it, it’s disappointing because of the content? Probably underwhelmed. Maybe even embarrassed, even if they did provide the incorrect information in the first place.
The Quick Path to a Good First Impression
It’s easy to fix that problem, however, making you and your clients look better. More importantly, it’s easy to look like the pros you are to your clients. What’s the trick?
First, never allow a client’s site to go live without a professional edit from a writing service. Friends don’t let friends go out naked, so why should you let your clients go live without the protection of good review? Avoid a site that’s full of mistakes and erroneous information, even if that’s what the client gave you. You look like a hero if you catch their mistakes.
Offer Up All the Goods
Web developers who spend significant amounts of money marketing their services and landing new business often lose referrals because they can’t give customers everything they need. Small business owners don’t want to shop around for specialists to do each piece of their website. They want one-stop shopping. Maybe that’s even why they came to you in the first place.
Why do you think super duper box stores are sprouting up across America faster than a pasture of kudzu? It’s simple: Why drive all over town when you can get groceries, a new pair of jeans, tires for the car and a new toaster all in one place?
Now we’re not advocating a Walmart-type operation, just taking the finer points of the giant’s marketing techniques that work. Clients who don’t use professional writers and editors for their website content risk wasting every penny on a losing proposition. We can’t imagine you want that kind of reputation, even if you did nothing to deserve it. We stress “did nothing.”
Provide Added Value & They’ll Remember You
In our conversations around Asheville with web developers and marketing professionals, we’re astounded that everyone doesn’t offer a writing services as an integral part of their virtual agency. There’s no better way to provide your clients with added value while boosting your own credibility than by having your own editing and writing services team working on every site before it goes live.
You can do all the analytics in the world and produce the best videos in town, but if the name of the owner if spelled wrong on the roll-out — look out. What do you want to be remembered for: the brilliant design and implementation … or the misspelling in the heading? You can either point fingers, waste more time on a project that should have been right the first time, or you can get to know us to do it right the next time. It’s up to you.
Save money, boost your credibility, satisfy your customers. Let us help you delight your clients.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
