As we discussed in the last blog post, organic traffic is one of the most important sources of new customers for a business’s website. The technical aspects of SEO are still important, and can’t be ignored, but now more than ever, CONTENT and USER EXPERIENCE are instrumental for a good-performing site. The content must not only be present on the site, but must present value to the consumer.

Content can come in many forms on a website. This includes, but is not limited to, static or evergreen content that remains on the site indefinitely, blogs that provide fresh, current, and engaging information, landing pages for specific topics, and useful online tools for the site visitor. The more engaged your site visitors are with this content, the better your site will typically perform from a search engine ranking standpoint. The algorithms within Google, Bing, and other search engines are ever improving at determining whether a person that searches for keywords, clicks on a search result, and engages with the content of a website actually found what they are looking for, or not.

For a small business in particular, it can be very difficult to keep your site loaded with fresh and valuable content. This is where a marketing consultant, ad agency, or blog writer can offer great value. A quality local consultant will make sure they understand your business, customers, goals, and strategy; they will use this information to create content that serves the dual purposes of engaging your customers and improving the value of your site in the “eyes” of the search engines. Pricing for content writers and blog authors can vary widely, but consider these folks are representing you and your business and the cost of having bad representation.

An important part of strategy development will be providing input to your consultant on a regular basis. What is happening within your business? What changes are occurring in your market? What makes you different from your competition? All of these questions should spark regular conversations to ensure that the content they provide is relevant to what you are trying to accomplish. Choose a consultant that not only agrees to such an arrangement, but seeks it out.