Content & Copywriting

You may have heard the phrase ‘Content is king’ – in the content development industry it’s basically the go-to mantra. Why? Well the proliferation of digital content online has turned content into a really clever tool for improving search engine rankings, increasing website traffic and boosting conversion rates. However, slapping together any old content isn’t going to cut it, it needs to be memorable. In this day and age, online visibility is crucial for any website and first class content is an integral component when it comes to achieving this. 

Content Vs Copywriting – What’s The Difference?

Think of content as a broad term which encompasses many different elements. Copywriting is one of these elements. One of the most important – in our humble opinion. Clients often come to us for our stellar website design skills, but there isn’t much point having a beautiful bespoke website if it isn’t showing up in search results.

The best way to improve your website visibility? High-quality content. It’s not just search engines that your content needs to appeal to, it must be optimised for your audience too. When it comes to content, engagement is key. Filling a page purely with keywords was once a sneaky trick to outsmart search engines, but now the search engines have evolved into much smarter entities – they can tell if your content is informative or unhelpful. Which is both terrifying and useful.

To some, copywriting may seem like a simple task, afterall when you’re an expert in your field – writing about what you know best doesn’t sound particularly challenging. But there is much more to copywriting than meets the eye. 

Take a moment and consider the amount of time it takes to execute the most informative blog, post, page or pdf, then imagine you need to write several in a short space of time. Furthermore, they need to be optimised for keywords, the tone needs to reflect your business, it also must be relevant to the subject and answer all of the questions your clientele could possibly ask. You will also need to think of appropriate meta titles and descriptions and include internal links and backlinks where possible. This is where it becomes more complex – especially if you’ve got a million other things to do. 

Great content is crucial for a successful website, which is why we provide professional copywriting services to captivate your audience and get you ranking. Luckily we have a brilliant team of copywriting experts who quite frankly, make it look easy. Our copywriters have worked with a broad scope of clients from small local Southampton based businesses, up to national brands and industry powerhouses. The clever cats in our copywriting team can alter their tone, style and prose to suit any assignment, be it technical, conversational or persuasive.

What Are The Different Types of Content?

When it comes to content there’s quite a few options to consider, these also depend on what fits your business as some may not be applicable. We’ve listed some of the leading forms of content that are very effective when it comes to enhancing your online presence:

• High quality Images
• Informative Infographics
• Case studies
• Whitepapers/ Reports
• Press releases / Company Announcements
• Reviews / Testimonials
• Video
• Animation

As you can see, content isn’t just about text. There are heaps of ways you can deliver information to your target audience without writing the equivalent of War & Peace on every landing page. Text isn’t to be ignored as this is just as important but a media rich website will really set you apart from your competitors. 

To develop the right content for your business, you need to begin with analysing your customers’ thought process – which is incredibly difficult if you’re already an expert on the product/services you offer. This is where we come in – as we learn about your business we will then form a list of questions about it, which is normally identical to the questions your customers will have. We can use these questions to create relevant and interesting content for your audience. 

Convenient Content

What do we mean by convenient content? Well in this day and age we expect answers quickly and on the most part with minimal effort. Video and visual content is a fantastic way of providing your customers with information in a format that’s quick and easy to understand. Illustrations and infographics are helpful pieces of content that take considerably less effort to read than long pieces of text. By ensuring these pieces of content are interesting and eye-catching, there’s a greater chance they’ll be shared online – thus improving your ranking further. 

We all know the phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ – images are fundamental to not just the design of your website but your audience’s understanding of what it is that you do. We recommend avoiding stock photography, mainly because there are hundreds of other websites using these exact images. We provide a commercial photography service to truly capture your brand, products and services – this allows you to really convey your business and connect with your audience on a personal level. If a potential client visits your website it’s clear that they want to know more about what you offer – showcasing this with a broad range of images will give them an accurate representation of who you are. 

Why Content Must Be High Quality

Quite often clients come to us with an idea of how they want their website to look – sleek, minimalistic and modern. Which is great because who doesn’t love a contemporary aesthetic, but this vision often overlooks one key component – content. 

The primary goal of every good content strategy is to increase brand awareness. Creating top notch content is an essential part of highlighting your values and building better relationships with existing and potential clients. 

High-quality content will set your website apart from thousands of other websites in your industry. Top content engages and conveys information to your audience seamlessly. A successful business website is ultimately determined by the quality of its content. The other elements such as visuals, design and layout provide a supporting role. 

Customer-centric content delivered with power and conviction will keep customers coming back to your website time and time again, and help you to capture the attention of your prospective audience. Content needs to be clear, concise, relevant and keyword optimised and of course let’s not forget the all important call to action. Your website should provide content that targets the right audience, engages them and convinces them to take the desired action. The best content always begins with market research. Determining what your audience wants and needs are is essential to enhancing the effectiveness of your business website. 

Creating the best content is the foundation of any website. By demonstrating your commitment to delivering answers to your audience’s questions or addressing the issues your clients are facing – tells them that you understand their needs and have something of value to offer them. Thus allowing you to establish and nurture a sense of trust, this in turn will contribute to improved conversion rates. However, keep in mind that none of this is possible if your audience can’t find you – which is why SEO is so important. Developing a strategy encapsulating the relevant keywords is the cornerstone of a successful content and SEO strategy.

Why Content Is Fundamental To A Successful SEO Strategy

What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This process involves improving and optimising your website to increase the website traffic it receives. We have included a more in-depth analysis of how SEO works here. The perfect SEO strategy works with your content strategy, it requires several key elements – research, keywords, backlinks and of course – content. 

The relationship between these two important components is integral to boosting your website traffic. Which is ultimately what every business wants – more visitors to their website and to appear higher on search rankings. Content is a fundamental component of a strong SEO strategy, creating the very best content will help you secure stronger organic rankings and boost your visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). 

We use content to inform search engines about what your website does. You can provide this information by detailing the products and or services you offer through informative posts and landing pages. Once the search engines understand what your business is all about, it will know what search terms are relevant to your website and display your pages in the search results with queries that pertain to your products/ services. This is why it’s paramount that your content is clear and concise. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean basic – it still needs to be engaging to keep users on your site and boost conversions. 

Using the right keywords is essential to developing an exceptional content strategy. These are the terms that best describe your products/ services. Depending on the size of your business you may want to throw in some local keywords like ‘Southampton’ or if you’re a national firm you could use broader terms for instance Counties such as Hampshire. 

Your keyword research should be optimised for each landing page on your website. The copy on these pages is the perfect place to include these keywords in a natural way that’s relevant to your customer. By including these keywords you are informing the search engines about what you do and indicating the search terms you’re trying to rank for. 

Internal links are a smart way of linking with other relevant pages on your website. Not only do they help the visitor find the information they need, this will encourage them to stay on your website longer. How many times have you read an article on a website and immediately underneath it seen another you’d like to read – 4 hours later and you’re still reading article after article and it’s highly likely that you’ll revisit the site.

Search engines love to see internal links connecting various pages throughout a website, they often use internal links when crawling and indexing the site – these links help them move from one page to the next. Providing more internal links will make the indexing process quicker whilst helping the search engines understand your website better. 

No website is complete without a call to action, what is it that you want your visitors to do? Contact you, add an item to cart, request a quote? – the list is endless. It’s all about defining what you want your website to do for you and making it easy for your customer to complete this action. You can use content to invite your visitors to complete this action – a clever way of potentially increasing your conversions. 

How To Make High-Quality Content

Now we’re not about to give away all of our sacred content development and copywriting secrets, but we’ll provide an overview on the key factors we consider when creating it. 

Research is of the utmost importance before you embark on your content development journey, without research and a strong strategy it won’t be as effective. When you think about the content you want for your website, consider these elements: what will make the visitor stay on your website longer, what questions will they have and how can you make the topic more interesting for them. Perhaps there is a particular trend that involves your products or services – developing a blog or creating a helpful video will certainly push more traffic to your website and encourage visitors to share it with other individuals with the same interests.

When we think of statistics, most of us prepare to stifle the impending yawn that’s sure to follow. How can you make statistics – well, less boring? Simple, develop an eye catching and informative infographic to convey key pieces of information to your audience. This simple technique can work wonders – you’re making the information digestible for your visitors instead of throwing lots of numbers, percentages and long winded text at them. 

Thinking about audience perception will help you to provide the right type of content for them, which subsequently will be more engaging and relevant to their search terms – this will also make the search engines happy. Happy search engines – better domain ranking. 

Landing page content is equally as important, remember it’s the first thing your visitors will see when visiting your website and can largely affect their perception of your brand. The content housed on these pages needs to be compelling and encourage the visitor to remain on your site. Three important features are – a strong headline, concise copy, and a clear call-to-action. Landing pages can be further optimised by adding video content, HD images and infographics. 

Sadly many businesses churn out content that doesn’t have any impact on their conversion rates because they haven’t taken the time to determine what their audience wants to see or learn about. Relevant content is essential if you want your audience to find your website useful and share it far and wide. High-quality content is a powerful tool that all businesses should be utilising. Whether you’re a small business looking for copywriting in Southampton, or a national brand looking for the best content developers in the industry – Geek Unique can help. 

How Your Website Will Benefit From Great Content

We’ve covered some of the benefits already – happy search engines, more traffic and increased conversions. But what other benefits are there of high-quality content? Well, if your content can be found easily you will rank higher, the overall user experience will improve and most importantly you’ll be reaching the right target audience. You can have the best content in the world but if it isn’t reaching the right audience – it’s a waste of time. 

By posting relevant and useful content on your website, you are indicating to potential customers that you are the leading expert in your field. You’re building trust and credibility. Prospective clients are therefore more likely to want to buy your products or use your services. Great content is the best way to tell your audience that you not only understand their needs and wants but you can also fulfill them. 

We build close relationships with all of our clients to ensure we completely understand their brand, values and long-term goals. This enables us to curate the best copy and content which is completely tailored to them. At Geek Unique we pride ourselves on being a tight knit micro agency, our employee retention is high. How does this benefit you? Well, our copywriters will have a comprehensive understanding of the tone, personality and message you want to convey with your content – giving you comfort that your brand is in the right hands. 

Harnessing The Power of Social Media

Social media – we all use it, some of us with delight and others dismay. Whatever your feelings are on social media – we can all agree it’s a great way for sharing content. Actually, it’s one of the best ways to promote your content and push more traffic to your website. Using social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even LinkedIn are clever methods of getting your content noticed. Utilising social media to its fullest potential will enable potential clients to find and share your content – and of course keep those search engines happy. 

Many of our clients generate high-quality leads by sharing the captivating content we create for them on social media. To really stand out on social platforms you really do need professionally developed content – accompanied by strong visuals and enticing titles to draw potential customers in. 

By utilising social media analytics we can gain key insights into the forms of content which garner the most successful results. We can analyse key metrics to discover which demographic works best for you and which days and times provide the best engagement. The devil is in the detail and these insightful statistics will give us the means to develop a powerful social media strategy that will get your business noticed. 

At Geek Unique we are passionate about curating first-class content. Our copywriters have boundless knowledge and experience in developing engaging and informative content across a plethora of industries. If you’re looking for copywriters in Southampton or quite frankly anywhere in the world – why not try our unparalleled content development services.