Develop a Taste for Good Content. Your Website and Business Will Thrive!
Content is the single most important element when it comes to websites. This simple yet powerful fact needs to be a guiding light when you are ready to consider investing and reinvesting in your site.
Here is a restaurant analogy that I hope will emphasize how good content can make or break a website.
Restaurant = your website
Food = the content on your website
Restaurant critics = search engines
Restaurant fans = social media
The Restaurant
You can have the glitziest restaurant with the most expensive silver, fancy décor and welcoming ambiance. But ultimately, good food is what will keep you in business. Similarly, a flashy, star-studded website can only build your business if you provide the visitors with delectable content. Content that satisfies their hunger for knowledge turns your visitors into return visitors and your browsers into buyers.
The Food
Serving up cheap food in an expensive restaurant is sure to tank its reputation. It’s interesting to note that people often make a beeline for the plainest looking restaurant. The simple reason people trek across the city to a hole in the wall is for the food. Same is true for websites: even if your website is not particularly fancy and or flashy, people will still flock to it for informational content. Going cheap with content is like picking cheap ingredients for your restaurant menu. It is sure to leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.
Restaurant Critics
These guys can make or break a restaurant. A good review can flood you with people willing to try your restaurant. Search engines can have a similar effect on your website traffic. Good website content delivered to the search engines by the right programming and structure is bound to increase your overall rankings. Top rankings in return deliver more visitors to your website, as the search engines are the ultimate content critics.
Restaurant Fans
Some people will love your restaurant because they just plain like what you have. They may like your location, ambiance, staff, celebrity…anything that makes you unique. Your food still has to be good, but your real-life fans can share all the different things they enjoy about their restaurant experience with the people they know.
For a website, social media traffic is a direct fan base. This is word of mouth so powerful that it often holds more weight than the word of the critics. Social media, when handled correctly, is a way into people’s hearts and wallets if you have something special to offer. Social media works for a website just as well as word of mouth does for a restaurant. And I couldn’t tell you how many times I have gone to a restaurant just because one of my friends told me “I just have to try it.”
Bottom Line
What I’m trying to say is that it’s great to develop a website experience for your visitors: design, color, flash, usability, etc. It all matters. But none of it matters enough if you neglect the website’s meat and potatoes: CONTENT. Make sure you leave aside some budget for professionally written content that provides the information your prospective buyers are looking for. Optimize it for the search engines. Spell everything correctly. And keep it updated.
Bon appetit!
