Content Comes First: 4 Reasons to Commission Unique, Regular Content For Your Website

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your website is, if your content doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, then you’ll miss out on web traffic. And missing out on web traffic means you’ll be missing out on the chance to turn digital visitors into paying customers.

You’ve heard that content is king…but do you really believe it? Trust me, after finishing this article you will be convinced…

Recommended reading: Content Marketing, is it the Way of the Future?

Good SEO results rely on regular content

One of the biggest drivers of traffic to your website is having an all-singing and all-dancing SEO strategy.

Content is the lead singer of your SEO band, and if you want people to find you — content needs to take centerstage. Don’t believe me? Trust the stats:

• Businesses that have a blog have 126% more lead growth than those without
• Websites that have regular blog content have 434% more search engine indexed pages than websites without blogs

The more often you update your website with content, the more reasons you give search engine crawlers to visit it and enhance your rankings. Adding regular content to your website sends signals to Google and its peers that your site is a resource worth visiting. It also keeps your site looking fresh, and helps create a regular stream of happy visitors and readers.

But it’s not only that: search engines prioritize user value when they decide how important websites are. By including regular content that adds value to your users, you are telling the search engines that there is a real need for people to find your content.

Your sales funnel

Despite having been developed over 100 years ago, sales funnels remain a vital part of any successful business. And content plays a major role in any contemporary sales funnel.

In the digital age your customers will join your sales funnel at a variety of points, meaning that you could have an infinite number of sales journeys to manage. From your website to your social channels, ensure that you’ve got the right tools to track and engage with customers where they are.

The one consistent throughout every user journey is that content sells.

• Content is one of the best ways to educate your customers. It’s an easy informational channel that has been proven to be effective time and time again. It’s one of the most cost-effective ways to induct customers into why they need to buy from you

• Content can solve customer problems and engage with their pain points – your customers are never going to buy your products if they aren’t satisfied with what they see, hear, and read about them. So take ownership of the conversation by using content to answer any questions they might have (along with ramming home the benefits of your products).

Trust & credibility

Back before your mum, dad, grandfather, and grandmother were atoms Aristotle laid out his three principles for persuasion: ethos (character), pathos (emotion), and logos (logic). But what did the man himself think was the most powerful quality in persuasion?

“Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible.”

Building brand trust and credibility through powerful content is a no-brainer.

The value of brand trust to your business is staggering: a 5% increase in customer retention can increase your company profits by 95%

But brand loyalty is no longer a given, you need to earn it. Commissioning unique content that positions your business as a brand leader is a surefire way of earning your customer’s trust and loyalty for the long-term. But in order to do this your website can’t just have excellent content, it must have regular content that’s of the highest standard.

Content marketing = great ROI

While your website visitors value trust, you’re probably also pre-occupied by ROI. Running a web-based business can be expensive, and it’s important that what you’re doing is adding value and making a difference to the bottom line.

And that’s another reason why regular content is so great — it has great ROI when it comes to generating traffic, leads, and sales.

Content marketing has an exceptional ROI (you know already that it can increase your profits by 95%), and your peers are buying into its value:

• 91% of B2B marketers & 86% of B2C marketers are using it
• There is an 18% year on year increase in brands using content marketing

The facts are that regular content brings website traffic, sales, credibility — what’s not to love? – so it should be of no surprise to you that your website cannot reach its full potential without regular content.

Even if you’ve decided to build a website yourself with not much budget to-hand, leveraging content as part of your strategy could bring you great returns for not much effort. Rather than spending money on a fancy, bespoke CMS or a well-appointed logo, you will be better off investing in your content marketing.

But make sure that you don’t stick to one type of content; mix up your formats by using video, audio, visual, and advertising. Even the odd GIF might be a good idea!

There are 1.8 billion websites in the world and more are being made every second of the day. With so many options available, you need to give people a compelling reason to pick yours over your competitors. So, go away and start working on more content for your website, because while you’ve been reading this article, approximately 1341 new websites have been launched in your niche area….