One of the basic mistakes a company or business makes is placing far too much focus on their front page – the landing page of their website. Certainly, it is very important to have a short and clean URL for your site, and a good, creative and unique description, along with great keyword optimization, but the rest of the website is just as important, if not more so. The landing page is simply the gateway to the rest of your content; it’s the polite and well dressed doorman that invites people into your establishment.
For example, if you’re in the business of selling boilers, it’s not enough to create content specifically for promoting your products. It’s much more efficient to write informative content about the topic, providing relevant information and answering questions in order to attract readers and potential customers. Then, if they like what they see, if they consider you articles engaging, entertaining and enlightening, then you can be certain that they will consider buying your products – more so than any sales pitch could ever convince them.
A great tip is to analyze what the competition is doing. Try and read everything your major competitors are doing and think of ways to top them. What niche can you find and exploit that no one else has? What unique content and insight can you provide that no one else does? Do this often, and do it all year round. Make sure that you follow both you competition and your readers closely. Their preference may vary according to many factors, including the time of the year – be sure to adapt quickly or risk losing them to another website.
Often times, sacrificing short-term gains for long-term exposure pays off. You need to make sure that the people who read your content share it with others, and thus provide you with more coverage and presence on the internet. For this you need two things: useful, relevant content (people don’t share sales ads), and a website that streamlines for this, making it easy for people to participate, share and comment on your work. Increase your exposure and create your content strategy – it will surely pay off in the future.
