Web Site Content Planning

Posted on 10. Feb, 2010 by Pete Hollier in Search Optimization

Web Content Development is defined by Wikipedia as "The process of researching, writing, gathering, organizing, and editing information for publication on web sites. Web site content may consist of prose, graphics, pictures, recordings, movies or other digital assets that could be distributed by a hypertext transfer protocol server, and viewed by a web browser."

The Search Engines

The recent changes to the Search Engine Algorithms has increased the emphasis of fresh web site content. The updated algorithms come in two forms, Real Time Search, and the latest Google offering Caffeine, both which put additional emphasis on the freshness of a web site’s content.

With so many varied types of content and the increasing importance of fresh content to the Search Engines, the development of a Content Development Plan becomes a necessity to all web site owners whose web sites play a significant role in their business plans and objectives.

Static Content vs Fresh Content

In most cases having static content on a web site is unavoidable, and not necessarily a bad thing. With any business web site there will be content which in most cases has very little reason to change. However, to perform well in the Search Engines fresh content is a necessity.

Although there are numerous opportunities to create additional web pages and landing pages to create additional content, I consider Blogging as one of the easiest and most beneficial methods to keep your web site fresh and relevant. Blogs enable you to add text, images, audio and video content covering a wide range of topics relevant to your business niche.

Blogging also provides you with a method to interact with your customers in a non formal way, and of course Blogs are very popular with Search Engines due to the varied and fresh content they have the potential to offer.

What types of content?

The type of content developed for your web site will be defined by business goals and objectives, and the informational needs of your web site visitors.

In most cases a variety of content types will be utilized which not only assists to engage and inform the visitors, but each additional content type developed creates an additional opportunity to create visibility for your web site in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

The Search Engines provide specific results for the following content types:

• Images
• Video
• Blogs
• General web page content (text)

Who is responsible for content development?

The quality of your content has a significant impact on many web site statistics such as bounce rate and time on site, and ultimately web site conversions. Therefore, be sure you have identified the right people with the right skills required to develop highly relevant and informative content. To ensure the content developed is consistent with business guidelines, it is imperative staff members or sub-contractors are identified as being responsible for the various web site content.

It is unlikely that one individual will have the skills or expertise to develop all the required types of content, or have the knowledge to develop content on highly specialized topics. Therefore, be prepared to outsource some of the more specialized content development such as video which requires significant expertise to provide the professional results expected by today’s savvy Internet users.

New Content Frequency

There are no definitive rules on the optimum frequency for providing additional content on your web site.

The availability of financial and human resources is likely to be the contributing factor determining how frequently you add content to your web site. Considering this it is necessary to develop a plan for future web site updates or Blogging initiatives.

Once the plan is in place be sure to stick to it, if the financial and human resources have been allocated for the project during the planning stages, careful monitoring will ensure the content development initiative will progress as planned and offer the benefits of increased Search Engine visibility.

Want to use this content on your web site?

If you would like to use this article on your web site please contact pete@seowizardry.ca for an html version. All I request is you provide Pete Hollier and Seo Wizardry with a reference to this article and provide a link back to www.seowizardry.ca