As overly-motivated parents of a soon-to-be four year old, my wife and I recently started investigating school options in the city where we live. Like everything you want to know about now-a-days, my wife’s search began online in Google. She pulled up websites for the local school district as well as several private schools. She wanted to get a feel to see if these organizations are up to the task of educating our brilliant and advanced youngster.
While she was doing this research, I began to think to myself, “What if these schools (especially the expensive private ones) had not given much thought to their web presence? What if they had delegated their core messaging and only first impression to a local graphics firm or to an IT person? What if the content did not accurately reflect how great the school was? Could it be that a potential student could write off the school based on the web content?
The fact is that the content on these sites and your dealership website is critical. The first reason is the obvious one: your website is often the main impression your potential clients get of your company’s credibility. The second is less obvious: your website is the way search engines like Google determine if you are worth a high rank listing. Let’s explore both:
1. Your Credibility With Prospective Clients
When it comes to copiers, chances are your market knows and respects your dealership as a great place to get a copier. However, you may not enjoy that same level of trust when it comes to newer business intiatives like print management, document solutions and even color. The client that trusts you for copiers may be skeptical about your ability to deliver these advanced solutions.
If you could quantify the lost (or “no decision”) solution sales due to poor web content, the number would be staggering. Here’s what happens. A rep talks to the client about document management. They have a good meeting and the client is interested. After the rep leaves, the client hits your website. After browsing through several sections they finally find a small page with two paragraphs on on document management and a link to a brochure. The rest of the site is about copiers. They get a sick feeling in their stomach. They don’t return the sales reps phone call because they are nervous about your ability to deliver.
So how do you build that credibility? One practical strategy: provide content on your website that makes you an expert. Go deep with the information. Will the client read all of it? Most of them probably won’t. But they will see that you have something to say on the subject. Those that do read the content will learn that you know what you’re talking about. Either way, you build your credibility.
2. Search Engine Rankings
The most common readers of your website are the major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN. Every time you change the content on your site, they have to “crawl” through your pages to index all of the information.
When people in your local market search for information on a topic like copiers or document management, the search engine wants to return good results. They reason that the sites that have been updated most recently and most often probably have the best information.
Search engines tend to return search results for sites that are regularly updated. So, if you haven’t touched your site in three years and your competitor refreshes their content every week, you are going to end up lower in the free search results. (You can also get priority in the sponsored search results. See last month’s article, “The New Yellow Pages” for more information on Pay-Per-Click Advertising.)
So, are you saying that we should update our website every month? No, I’m saying that you should put new content on your website at least once a week, if not once a day. Each time you do this, the search engines have to index your site.
How do you put new content on the site? This is where blogging comes in. A blog (weblog) is an informal way to add content to your site.
When my sister started doing a blog about the funny stories of raising her kids a few years ago, I found it hard to see the business application. However, when my wife’s best friend told me that 16,000 people read her blog about creating craft projects at home, she had my attention. Finally, when our Chief Web Architect showed me how his website was getting better search engine placement than eBay and Amazon, he had my attention.
You see, it doesn’t matter if anyone reads your blog, even though you’ll be surprised at the IT people who do. The most important readers of your blog are the search engines.
In the next segment we will explore strategies to create good content for your site.
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