To be an authority in your niche you need some content. We take a look at what content creation you need to do to get better rankings.
This is part 4 of a 6-part series on increasing sales through your website by improving its look and feel.
1 Vital Aspect Of Content Creation YOU Need To Know About
I’ve realised that there is a VITAL aspect of online marketing that I haven’t covered with you yet and so I need to cover it today!
It’s all about content creation and becoming an authority.
Let me tell you a quick story.
A man wakes up one day and vividly remembers that he had the strangest dream. It all seemed so real and familiar, yet it was totally foreign.
He wondered why he’d had that dream. What caused that dream? What are dreams all about?
Being inquisitive and slightly old-fashioned, he gets his morning cup of coffee and hurriedly walks to the grand library in search of the answers to his questions.
He walks through the ornate library doors and is awed. The library is massive. In fact it’s size is almost immeasurable.
The knowledge of history and of 6 billion people is stored here. Where to even start? He asks the librarian, an old wise lady who’s almost as old as time itself, and she takes him to the section about dreams.
There are thousands if not tens of thousands of books. How will she know which book to pick for him to give him the answers to his burning questions?
She scans the titles and looks at the thickness of the books, she looks if any have been used more than the others. It seems like good criteria.
She sees three books next to each other.
The first is old, very old, covered in dust and it hasn’t been looked at in years. It is quite thick though so she’s tempted to pick it up.
The second is new. It has a shiny cover so it stands out, but she can see it’s only 5 pages thick. It looks like some kind of flyer, pamphlet or brochure.
The third looks like it’s been used quite often, it looks like it was published recently and it’s moderately thick, maybe a few hundred pages.
3 Books To Choose From – Which One Will Be Chosen?
The man is looking at the three books to find the answer to his question.
Which book will the librarian choose to give him?
- The old, thick, dusty, and unused book
- The new, shiny, and very thin book.
- The slightly worn, well-used book that is moderately thick.
I’m going to suggest it’s number 3. The slightly worn book that is moderately thick.
Why?
Firstly, it’s moderately used. It’s not a relic so it may contain up-to-date information.
Others have looked at it before him, taken it home, read it from cover to cover, and returned it.
She can even see how long the average person kept the book for before returning it to the library.
Secondly, it’s thick enough to contain all the information he needs. She can also see it’s been regularly updated by the author.
Thirdly, it has a catchy title that sounds authoritative.
Which Book Would You Choose?
I want to point out that the library in the story refers to the internet, the librarian refers to the search engine and the man who’s looking for the answer refers to you or your customers.
Of course, the books are now the websites!
Which website would the librarian choose?
The search engine is looking at hundreds of factors but some factors are CRITICAL to even be included in the options.
We’ve already covered the title and ensuring that your website has a great title and description to capture a user’s attention.
We’ve covered the design, look and feel to ensure that the cover is engaging.
What we HAVE NOT covered is, how thick is your website?
Is it a 1-page flyer, a 5-page pamphlet, a 10-page brochure, or 1000 page encyclopedia? Or something in between?
How much content creation have you done?
3 Big Benefits Of Being An Authority In Your Niche
There are some SERIOUS advantages to content creation and being the authority in your niche.
Three Major Benefits Of a Content-Rich Website
- Search engines will take you more seriously.
- Users will take you more seriously.
- More people will SHARE your content and recommend it, bringing in more traffic.
4 Massive Advantages Of Being An Authority Online
We’ve looked at the MAJOR advantages of being an authority in your niche, which you can only achieve through content creation.
Major Advantages Of Content Creation Include:
- Greater authority with search engines.
- Greater authority with users.
- Greater sharing among users.
- Improved user engagement on site.
We also mentioned that most sites are around 5 pages:
- Home Page
- Contact Page
- About Us Page
- Services Page
- FAQ Page
If you would like to be seen as an authority, you need to be more than a 5-page flyer.
We also mentioned that an old website that has had the same content for years is likely to be seen as outdated by both users and search engines.
We recommend a website of AT LEAST 100 PAGES, but ideally 300 pages.
You’re probably thinking that’s a lot, but you should have a content creation rate of at least 1 new article of 1000 words per week on your site.
How To Tell How Many Pages Of Your Website The Search Engines See?
There are 2 major way.
The first and most comprehensive to get the information directly from the search engines themselves!
They will tell you how many pages they have indexed of your website.
To discover how to do this please look at part 4 in our website tools series: Get Search Engine Love – Get These Basics Right
The second way of doing a quick check is to type ‘site:YourWebsite.com’ (replace YourWebsite.com with your actual website URL!) into Google.com and see how many results come back.
You’ll quickly see how many pages Google finds on your website!
2 Important Questions You Need To Answer
I want to briefly explain the differences in the packages.
Remember that we said that you will have more authority as a 150-page website compared to a 5-page flyer?
Are you receiving all the social media benefits? Make sure you do this by reading our detailed article!
Since most companies want more authority on the web, the question is how long do they want this to take?
If your competitor has been pushing out 1 article per month for 5 years, they will have 60 articles. (1 x 12 x 5 = 60).
Two Important Questions I Need You To Answer
- Do you want to have more authority than your competitors?
- How long do you want this to take?
In my example above, if you only push out 1 article per month, you will never catch them up. If you push out 2 articles per month, in
- Year 1 – you will have 24 articles, your competitor 72.
- Year 2 – you will have 48 articles, your competitor 84.
- Year 3 – you will have 72 articles, your competitor 96.
- Year 4 – you will have 96 articles, your competitor 108.
- Year 5 – you will catch up.
Thus it will take you 5 years to match their authority. Do you see why you need to decide how long you want to take?
Get started immediately with content creation. It will help your site’s authority and ranking.
Your Next Step
If you find your website is a little ‘skinny’ you need some more content creation. To get some help with this, why not let our expert writers do this for you in our,
Content Marketing App
We’ve given our customers two choices:
- WE WILL provide ALL content and manage this all for you. You just sit back relax and let us take care of it.
- YOU provide ALL content and we’ll do the technical stuff and place it on your website for you.
If you have any questions about this important topic please get in touch!
If you’re behind you need to decide if you want to catch up and secondly, how long you want to take to catch up.
Remember that you can either let us manage it all or if you want we’re very happy if you provide the content and we’ll place it on your site in a professional format.
What’s Next?
Read our next article in the website optimization series:
