Does Your Content Sell?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 28 of February , 2008 at 1:28 pm

Content is a huge part of website development and Search Engine Optimization, but what is it? Lest you think I’ve gone and flipped my lid, let’s be honest: The definition and nature of content has changed since 1999. To hear some people talk about it, you’d think content was nothing more than words on a web page. But there’s more to it than that.

Essentially, content is anything that contributes to the essence of your website. By essence I mean its meta-qualities - not meta as in metatags, though it does include your tags - but meta as in over and above merely what you see on the page. There are three types of content within this definition:

• On-page content
• Off-page content
• “Behind the curtain” content

Your on-page content is anything that is visible to the human eye on each web page of your website. That includes text, photos, videos, graphics, your template or website design, etc. Those are your visible elements. Off-page content refers to anything off site that contributes to the essence of your website. That includes inbound links, blog content on off site blogs that you own and link back to your site, articles, social networking content, wiki entries, directory submissions, etc. I include these elements in my working definition of content because that’s what they are - in a word, they are content and they work for you.

“Behind the curtain” content is a little bit more mystical. It includes meta tags, of course, but it’s more than just meta tags. It also includes link attributes, site navigation paradigms, XML pages for your RSS feeds, sitemaps, and anything that contributes to user value but cannot be construed as either on-page or off-page content. In other words, your “behind the curtain” elements are primarily content fed to search engine spiders, but that also provide your users with some benefit. It is essentially, code.

Now what is your content supposed to do? Ultimately, your content - all of your content - has one job: To lead your site visitor to implement some action. That action could be a sale, a newsletter sign up, post a comment, something. Whatever it is, there needs to be a call to action. But not every piece of content requires a call to action. Some content - called pre-sell content - should actually be used to channel your site visitor to the place where you want them to respond to your call to action. You are actually canalizing them into responding to you.

So when you develop your content - whether it be off site link building content, visible on site web page elements like graphics and page text, or meta-content - each piece must contribute to the whole. Every piece of content must do its job or be cut from the team. The bottom line is, content teamwork is the most important thing. Every individual piece must work for the good of the team either by closing the sale, delivering traffic, or contributing to your Search Engine Optimization. If every piece of your content is working for the good of all then your content is selling. If not, then you need to rethink your content.

Category: Content Development

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