How to Stay Relevant in the World of Google – An Agency Must!

If you were an agency owner who owned several websites, would you think that it’s more important to keep your website visitors interested in what you have to say, or would the content not matter as long as you attracted them in the first place? That’s the million dollar question. Attracting new visitors is very important if you want to gain an audience. However, if you want to grow an internet audience, you also need to keep them interested. In fact, if you look at your Google Analytics (which is a free tool) and notice that your unique visitors are dropping off, your bounce rate is high (or increasing), or that sales haven’t increased recently, then it could be due to your website’s content. Content… What Is It? My question to you is “Why do people use the internet?” One of the main reasons most people use the internet is to find or research information that interests them. As my grandfather always said, knowledge is power, and that is what the internet is all about. People will go where they can to find what they are looking for, and hopefully that will include people going towards your agency’s website. The purpose of your agency’s website is to attract prospects and to turn them into clients. Content is necessary to your products, your services, and to your readers, and if your content lags it will stall the latest developments in your niche marketing. For instance, if you are a swimming pool company, articles related to common installation, maintenance and care, as well as what to do when things go wrong might prove to be of interest to your audience. Your choice of content can actually make the difference between having a successful business that people choose to buy from, and a business that gets little attention. But what is content? What is visual content? How important is it to your agency’s website? “Content” is anything that you publish on your agency’s website – blog posts, product pages, and white papers are all examples of content. This is the information that draws prospects in, and when your readers put certain words into search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing, it is your content or tagged images (visual) that pop up on the search results. How important is the visual content? I personally feel it is second only to your agency’s search engine optimization, also called SEO. Your agency’s SEO and content strategies help prospects find your agency’s website. Your content needs to be original and engaging so try to stay away from stock images and poorly written posts.

The Four Ways Your Content Could Be Driving Prospects Away From Your Agency Website So, the question is, “Is it enough to just have content of some sort on your agency website?” In a one-word answer: No. It could be detrimental to you and your agency if not done properly; let me explain why.

Stagnant Content is a Killer When a prospect visits your agency website for the first time, everything they see is fresh and new to them, only because they have never been to your site before. However, if exactly the same content is presented to them the second and third time they visit your website, they will soon find somewhere new to go that consistently publishes fresh content. Avoiding this is easy: your agency needs to blog and post engaging content routinely, and I would also implore you to update your website’s visuals at least three or four times a year.

Content that is Poorly Presented When posting or publishing anything, preview it first and check to see that the formatting of the content is the best it can be. The way your content looks on your site is key, because it needs to be visually stimulating. If it is hard to read because words are going in every which direction, they will give up right away and move on to the next choice on the list of search results, and now you’ve lost them for good. Try to make your content scannable, as if people were reading it by scanning a page until they find something of interest, and never capitalize a whole sentence or lengthy title, as this makes it harder for people to scan and it throws them off. Your website layout matters, so make sure you hire a professional to take care of it for you.

Poor Quality/Fluff Content It is true that the eye will often gloss over some misspellings while reading because the brain instinctively knows what the words are trying to say. The world is on content overload, and an article or blog that is riddled with poor grammar and/or misspellings takes longer to decipher, and is often not worth the effort of the reader. Let’s talk fluff! Have you ever read an article or blog post that used a whole lot of words without really saying anything at all? Your content needs to be informative, and leave your readers feeling more knowledgeable than before they had read your work. The titles of your work also matter to your readers, so make sure they’re accurate. If a title boasts information that is not found in the actual article, then your agency’s audience goes away unsatisfied, and is left with a less than favorable impression of your business. If you take the time to write a blog or article, say something that will engage your audience, and never be afraid of sharing your opinion, because even if people don’t agree with you, you will have captured their interest and attention by having a standpoint. In today’s world, prospects want to understand what you and your agency stand for, so take the stand!

Unreliable Content Kills The purpose of your agency’s content is to inform and educate your readers. If your blog lists last year’s statistics, then your readers and audience will eventually find a website that contains more up-todate information, and that will cause you and your agency to lose some followers. This also presents you and your agency with an opportunity; now is the time to show them that your agency is educated and with the times, and one step ahead of your competitors.