When we talk about valuable content, we're talking about the heart and soul of your website and company as a whole. This isn't just about filling a bunch of service pages with text, it's about being extremely valuable to your audience.

Your content is the magnet that draws visitors and gets them to convert into customers. It also makes you much more likely to be recommended by a website search engine like Google or Bing.

So how do you make sure your content conveys value? It starts with key principle:

Understand What Your Audience Values

It's critical to understand your audience and their problems when writing any content that you want to bring more customers to your business.

Think about the customers that you've served in the past and the customers want to serve in the future - then think about their pain points, desires, and questions surrounding your industry.

These could be:

• Why do I need this service?
• What can I expect?
• What does the process look like?
• How much does it cost?
• What sets this (your) company apart from others?

Give your audience the information they need to communicate to them that you understand their problem. Only then can you communicate and convey how your company is the best to solve it with them.

If you're interested in how to find some of the best keywords to write about to rank on page one of Google, we talked about this in our other article: How to Find Low Hanging Fruit Keywords

Illustrative Content: Boosting Engagement Through Visuals

If you're looking to get more customers online, there's one thing you should know about them:

They consume content and a lot of it...

Visual content is not just a preference anymore, customers expect it. According to Oberlo, consumers are spending up to 17 hours per week consuming online video, while spending 454 minutes per day consuming digital media in general.

Great visual content communicates, explains, and even persuades customers in a way that text alone cannot, allowing brands to communicate in the most effective way by showing, not just telling.

When writing content for your website, the key things you should capture in your visuals include:

• Your team
• Your services and products
• Your outcomes / results
• Your location / building
• Your office space
• Your guarantee
• Your culture

Nothing Beats Video Content

Video content for your business is the most powerful type of content you can produce today. In as little as 30 seconds, a video lets your prospective customers meet you, meet your team, visually see what you do and how you do it, and understand your company's value in a highly engaging way.

As stated above, it's no secret that video is just the preferred way people consume content online. Roughly 96% of people turn to videos to learn more about a product or service, and that's not going to change anytime soon.

Search-Optimized Content: Gaining Maximum Visibility

To not end up in the 90% of websites that get no traffic, you not only have to produce great content, but make sure it is properly formatted for search engines like Google.

Search engines like content that is structured and easy for them to read and understand. However, this doesn't mean that you should write content purely for a search engine. You always need to write for the customer...always.

Now this may be a bit technical, but getting this right is the difference between ranking in a search engine and remaining mostly invisible.

The Building Blocks of SEO Content

When writing an online piece of content, you may be using a website platform such as Wordpress, Squarespace, Wix, Duda, Godaddy, etc.

The content editor on these and other popular website platforms contain the following elements:

• Headings (H1 - H6)
• Paragraph Text
• Images / Video
• Alt Text
• Lists
• Links

Here is how you should use each one to ensure that the search engines can properly read them.

Headings

There are six types of headings. H1 through H6.

An H1 demonstrates the main idea of your topic. This is likely the title of your content and should feature the keyword you're looking to get traffic for. You should try to have an H1 on each page of your website you're looking to rank, but only one instance of it per page.

Having multiple H1s on a page could confuse a search engine as to what the main idea of your page could be. Having only one is a best practice.

Next, there are H2s, of which you can have multiple of on a page. Each H2 should demonstrate customer questions or sub-topics of your main idea.

H3s and beyond aren't always necessary, but they should be sub-ideas of the H2 they are placed under. This repeats for H4s, H5s and H6 headings. Using headings are all about topical hierarchy. H1 is your main idea, H2 is a sub idea of that main idea, H3s are sub ideas of the H2...so on and so fourth.

Paragraph Text

This is just normal text on your website where you actually write about the details. Nothing much to say about this and how it needs to be used other than making sure what your write about matches the heading it goes under.

Images / Video

Feature relevant videos and images throughout the page. The number of pictures or videos you use isn't as important as how they are used to push your point across.

Alt Text

Since search engines don't have eyes, they can't see what images you actually placed on your page. To understand them, you describe what the images place in your content are with "alt text".

Many website builders give you the ability to set alt text for images. Don't think too hard about this text, you just need to describe the picture as if someone were explaining it to you if you couldn't see it.

Lists

Lists are just bulleted or numbered lists of information that you can use to break up content. This article has done it a few times now. This tactic may not have a major SEO impact, but that it helps readers more easily consume your textual content.

Definitely use lists whenever you need to draw attention and break up the large walls of text in your content.

Links

Your content can be more helpful and valuable to your readers if you provide links to additional resources for them to view. This could be links to another page on your website, or links to other websites with content your readers may find helpful. This also includes any sources to cite information you feature.

Links are a very important part of ranking your content in search engines, and we will likely dive into the reasons why in a separate article.

Best Practices for Formatting SEO Content

Here's an example of how you can structure your content to increase your chances of ranking in Google:

• [HEADING 1] - Roofing Repair Services in Atlanta, GA
• [PARAGRAPH TEXT] - Introductory paragraph.
• [IMAGE WITH ALT TEXT] - A nice picture of a roof with alt text describing it.
• [HEADING 2] - Common Symptoms of a Damaged Roof
• [PARAGRAPH TEXT] - Text to explain.
• [HEADING 2] - How Much Should Roof Repairs Cost?
• [PARAGRAPH TEXT] - Text to explain with a link to a 3rd party website talking about the costs.
• [HEADING 3] - What Impacts The Cost of Roof Repairs?
• [PARAGRAPH TEXT] - Brief one sentence explanation.
• [LIST] - Listing out the things that impact roof repair costs.
• [HEADING 2] - Trust Your Roof Repair Experts in Georgia
• [PARAGRAPH TEXT] - Text to explain with a link back to the home page and additional service pages.
• [IMAGE WITH ALT TEXT] - A nice picture of your team.

A piece of content structured similar to the above example will ensure your content is ready to be seen and understood by the Google search engine.

Innovative Content: Set Yourself Apart

You're not the first person to create content in your industry. Whatever you want to write about has likely already been written or is being generated by ChatGPT as you read this.

Every second, new content is being written and placed on the internet, it wouldn't be farfetched to say that it's happening in your industry too.

So how can you compare and stand out in the sea of content?

Why do people continue to purchase new business books even when many of the general ideas and concepts have remained the same for decades? It's all about your unique perspective.

We all know that most roofing companies offer roof repair and have a page on their website talking about it. However, how many actually share their own perspective on what roof repair means to their company? Only the top 10%, that's who.

You may think you have nothing new to say, but you do. According to an interesting article by Lightspire, you can find some unique perspectives by trying some of the following:

• Start venting
• Talk to a friend
• Think about the status quo
• Add a personal touch
• Answer non-obvious questions

There's a Stigma for Every Industry

Every industry has a stigma and it's your job to beat it. We love the third point above because it presents exactly what you need to do to not only have a unique perspective on writing your content, but also in how to position your company.

When thinking of a plumber, the idea of a 35 - 55 year old heavier set man with a toolbag under the sink is probably one of the first thoughts that pops into most consumer's heads. If you were a plumber, what would you say to a person like this to set yourself apart?

While this is a pretty basic example, you can get a good sense of the stigmas in your industry by listening to customers past and present, or reading online reviews from your competitors.

Your unique perspective comes from how you understand and overcome the stigma within your company.

Trustworthy Content: Seeing Is Believing

Perhaps the most important piece of the content puzzle is building trust with your potential customers. Many of the items we mentioned above will all lend themselves towards building trust in your company.

To summarize, we'll recap:

• Offer value to your customer and audience by giving them the answers they actually want to know about your products and services
• Be sure to reference other useful pages or websites by using links in your content where necessary
• Make your content more digestible to a wider audience by using images, video and other graphics where necessary
• Structure your content is a way that makes sense to the reader, which will in turn make sense to the search engines
• Present your unique opinion and point of view on your subject and defeat the common stigma in your industry

Outside of referrals, these are the expectations for what consumers expect when considering who to hire for their next project.

If you put together a solid piece of content that employs everything mentioned above, you will naturally build trust with your audience by putting so much care into their potentially first experience with your brand.

At the end of the day, Google wants to serve customers what they expect. This is why Google is the #1 search engine on the planet. If your content doesn't meet the standards of what people want, Google won't recommend it because that would make Google look bad.

The main reason your website is in the 90% that receives no traffic from search engines is because your website is not giving your audience what they want to see, learn and understand.

This year and the next, invest a lot of time into understand your buyer and position your website to deliver this to them in the most digestible way. You'll be surprised how quickly you'll being to see the fruits of your investment.

Need Help With V.I.S.I.T. Worthy Content?

Need help getting into the 10%? We help companies fix their digital foundation, find their marketing formula, and use these to propel them into the future.

Find out what's holding your business back from its online growth potential by requesting a strategy call with one of our experts today.

Thanks for reading!