What Type of Content Should You Use on Your Website?

Content has always been important for SEO, and today more than ever the phrase “content is king” takes all its significance.

In the last year or so Google has started to give more importance to relevance, authority and social signals in its algorithm, and one of the best way to establish authority in the market is by producing content that is highly relevant to target audiences.

One of the biggest hurdles our clients face when it comes to content marketing is resources – producing quality content takes time (and skills!) and requires external help if no one is available to write in-house.
The second issue is around the type of content that should be produced – what needs to be written?

Today we’ll take a quick look at different content types that can help you make a difference in your market and increase your authority.

Product driven content

This can include product pages, product announcements, product documentation, discounts, offers, promotions or any other product related info. This should be the easiest type of content to produce since it directly relates to your core business. If you’re going to share this content via your social channels, make sure that it is not going for the “hard sale” technique but takes a more subtle approach to entice potential customers.

Industry news

Depending on which industry your operate in, you’re bound to find some news that will be of interest to your customers. if you find a good piece of news, why not comment on it and give your own opinion. If you share relevant news on a regular basis, you customers and community at large are more likely to see you as a good source of information in the future. The aim is to become the authority for your core business.

Guides and tips

Writing and publishing guides, tips and advice is another good way to get some traction out of your content. This free advice will hopefully encourage people to engage with you as you’re helping them and this is something that they’ll remember in the future. After all, everybody like something free. if you’re an estate agent for example, you could publish guides on how to find the perfect house, requirements for buying a house…this type of valuable content will also easily be shared by your community.

Blog posts / generic articles

if you have a blog on your website or a place where you can store articles, regularly publish more in depth articles or posts around a specific theme or subject. Write about the latest fashion trends if you sell clothes for example. This unique content is what can really make you stand out from the crowd and should show your audience that you’re an expert in your field, whether you work in B2C or B2B industries. Show readers and potential customers that you’re passionate about your business and give them a reason to come back to your website on a regular basis – build relationships with them.

PR

Public relations are a very wide area and cover a variety of content from research, surveys, company announcements, client wins or new partnerships (to name but a few). The aim of PR is get your content to reach the widest audience possible, via the press or other media. A good piece of PR (unique research for example) should be picked up and distributed by a large number of websites, giving your brand exposure. PR requires more expertise than the other content types but the benefits can be huge.

We do realise that not all businesses have the ability or willingness to produce content, so an alternative to consider is content curation – sharing news and relevant content that you find online. The principle is very simple: read news and blogs around your industry and pick the content that is the most relevant to share with your audience. While this may not bring you direct traffic to your website, it’ll help you keep your social channels active with minimum effort while providing your community with something of value to them.

Mahon Digital helps a lot of businesses with their content marketing strategies so do get in touch if you’d like to discuss your requirements.

About the author

Etienne is the Head of SEO here at Mahon Digital and he’s been involved in the digital & search marketing industry for nearly 11 years now, working for small family owned businesses as well as international FTSE 500 companies. He’s passionate about all things digital, but more specifically about digital & search strategy and marketing analysis.