Last month, we touched on the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) and website content. Now, let’s dig even deeper into content and take a closer look at blog posts, keywords, word count, and testimonials.

When it comes to your content, it should ultimately be a reflection of your brand. 

Many clients ask if your tone should be formal — and honestly, it’s up to you! Some people want their content to be more serious to really hone in on their expertise. Some industries are also more formal in nature, like a doctor’s office. As you determine the correct tone for your writing, you want to think about your audience, your industry, and, of course, yourself.

As an example, for Carlisle & Co., we try to keep our content sophisticated in terms of topics and knowledge but also playful in tone. This approach is fairly common in the digital marketing space. We want our posts to truly help our readers understand the focus of our business but in an easy and digestible way. 

The use of keywords is another big component of website content.

There are two type of keywords: Short-tail keywords include one or two words and are generally vague, while long-tail keywords are three to five words and more specific. Focusing on long-tail keywords is a great SEO tactic. Because they are more specific, they tend to get less search traffic, which allows for a higher conversation value. They also help highly motivated audience members (i.e. those consumers ready to make a purchase!) find you. And lastly, they help you optimize your website as a whole, allowing you to focus on various pieces of your general theme. 

For instance, as a digital marketing company, we often focus our blog posts on digital marketing content. However, we can’t use the same keyword over and over again. Instead, we can use the following keywords: digital marketing strategies, digital marketing services, digital marketing content, how digital marketing works, digital marketing success stories, and so on.

A final note about keywords: It’s best to use your primary keyword as early on in both your title and your text as possible. This practice helps Google immediately identify your blog post’s topic and thus mark it as more relevant.

As we mentioned earlier, you don’t want to use the same keyword over and over again on your website. Instead, use a head keyword for cornerstone content. At Carlisle & Co., we may optimize our About page with digital marketing. Then, for our blog posts, we can use some of the long-tail keyword examples mentioned earlier. On these blog posts, we can include an internal link to the page with the head keyword. This strategy helps Google understand your site as a whole as well as its structure and what pages are most important. 

Now, let’s talk about word count.

If you prefer writing shorter blog posts, know that you’re not alone! Still, it’s important to remember that 750 words or even more is best (for reference, this post is 788 words). A higher word count allows Google to better understand what your text is about. In other words, more words means more clues to what your article focuses on — which in turn helps with ranking. Plus, a longer post allows for more keyword usage, more headings, more links, more images, and so on. Generally, Google tends to rank longer articles higher. 

If that feels like an impossible task to do on a regular basis, you can focus on 350 words or more for your regular blog posts. Then, try to mix in articles with 1,000 words or more to serve as your cornerstone content. This approach will help to improve your SEO and grow your organic traffic without putting too much pressure on you to write long posts.

To close, we want to touch on another popular topic for our clients: website testimonials.

Testimonials are important because they directly impact the experience of the visitor. We advise our clients to ask for reviews via Google My Business (GMB). You have to be logged in as a Google user in order to leave a review, which adds a lot of legitimacy to each testimonial. There is even a direct link you can grab from GMB to make it easy for your customers or clients. Then, you can ask for permission to repurpose them on your website. When possible, try to encourage people to use keywords that you want to rank for — like “best therapist in New York” — in their reviews. 

Whether it’s a brand refresh, brand rebrand, or new website design and development, we want your company to shine! Reach out to Carlisle & Co. today with all your digital marketing needs.