Twenty years ago, if you opened a local business it was near impossible to compete with the big players in your industry who were well established in your community, but things have changed. Google changed everything! If you want a cheese burger, new business sign, office furniture, lawn care specialist, etc.… all you need to do is ask Google. Search engines have leveled the playing field and a small company can now have a fighting chance against the big-boys. However, just because your small or medium sized business has a website, doesn’t mean that the fight stops there; adding new and original content is your main weapon.
It is common for local businesses to update their website with new content once a year at most. If you want the search engines to find you when someone types in “Office furniture in St. Louis”, you need to be consistently adding new content to you website that include the key words “office furniture”, “St. Louis”, “Office furniture sales”, and “St. Louis furniture”. It is not enough to be making small edits once or twice a year, a website needs to be constantly fresh and relevant to the readers in order to rank well on the major search engines. If you are frustrated that you are not able to find your website on Google, then you need to develop a fresh content strategy.
A content strategy is quite simple when you break it down:
- Ask yourself “is every page, paragraph, and sentence still relevant on my website”, if it is not then it needs to go. Replace the old with new and original content that will grab your visitors.
- Create an easy space on your website to add new content. This can be a blog, monthly newsletter, testimonial page, or frequently asked questions page.
- Discuss with your team what you want to sell more of and what you sell the most of. Knowing these two things will help you in developing and framing the new content.
- Write and keep writing! Someone needs to be in charge of consistently checking and writing new content. This should be the number 1 priority when having a website.
New content for the website is normally the last thing on the mind of a business owner, but if you are going to have a website you should put in the work. Upright Communications takes pride in the fact that we have been helping local businesses manage their content and websites for 20 years, so if you need a helping hand, please do not hesitate to call.