Whether you are building your Web presence through WordPress, or a similar website, or will be independently hosting your site, it is necessary to pay close attention to the ever-increasing need for high-quality content as a marketing strategy.
In other words, if your current site places a major emphasis on images but is very light on written content, you may wish to rethink this design. Although images are part of an aesthetically pleasing website and are helpful for SEO if properly implemented, they will not drive traffic in the same way that a well-thought out blog can.
What Type of Design Is Best for Content?
You have probably seen hundreds of different designs used on WordPress alone, and each of them has pros and cons. However, if you truly want toyour content to shine, it is best to have a simple sidebar. Focus should be on your content.
From a mobile perspective, it is highly advised to choose responsive design. This offers a nice blend of images and written content, and it can be viewed without any issues from most desktops, laptops and mobile devices. Some people might believe that this design is unfriendly for a blog format, but the reality is that many major news sites have already made the switch.
For example, the Daily Beast allows people to scroll through multiple articles on one page. In fact, offering written content in this format most likely reduces bounce rates by encouraging people to continue reading after they complete the initial article that caught their attention.
What Type of Content Is Important?
Written content is often touted as king, and it is critical to properly take advantage of this format. However, there are numerous other types of content that your website or blog can offer, and you need to keep this in mind while building a design. YouTube is one of the top five most visited websites in the world, so adding videos to your site is definitely a good idea.
Additionally, you can help attract visitors and increase your odds of collecting contact information if you offer relevant and useful content such as a white paper or e-book. Again, carefully choosing a website design will make it easier to showcase this type of content.
Develop a Content Strategy before Choosing a Website Design
Most businesses design their website first and their content marketing strategy second. This can be problematic as it can paint you into a corner. Your content strategy could be limited if your website is not video, image, or blog friendly.
Due to this, it would be wise to develop a content marketing strategy before you begin designing, or redesigning, your site. This is especially important if you are planning to have a fixed background that could interfere with the proper viewing of images. When in doubt, offer a simple, streamlined design that gives you room to grow and renders properly on mobile devices.
Getting the Most out of Your Content
If you have a website design in place that gives you enough room to properly share images, videos, and in-depth blog posts, it is now time to put it to good use! Carefully constructed content can be a major inbound marketing resource, but you need to ensure that you place enough emphasis on following Google’s algorithm rules. This means never posting a fluffy, keyword stuffed article that contains misspelling and grammatical errors. Instead, your blog posts and all of the other written content on your site need to be thoughtful, well-written and contain factual information.
Be aware that strategies for getting the most out of website content change on a regular basis, and this is mostly because of Google. Therefore, take the time to familiarize yourself with current content marketing optimization techniques to help naturally improve your SEO. For 2015, this includes putting your readers ahead of algorithms and taking steps to build authority in your niche.
Ultimately, the best way to create a successful website design and marketing strategy is by always remaining cognizant of the fact that your content needs to flow properly within the layout that you choose. Aside from this, you also need to offer relevant content that is high quality and worth sharing. Fortunately, you can gain assistance from professional content writers and website designers if you do not have the necessary time or skillsets to do everything in-house.