The digital marketing industry is one of the most rapidly succeeding industries in the world. Aside from basic web development projects, search engine optimization has also played a huge part in marketing brands online. But what most digital marketing companies have been consistently been overlooking through the years is the ability of using insights and research in the planning stages of web development.
No matter how much effort we put in crafting SEO strategies and devoting time to create the best SEM initiatives, the core of a successful digital campaign begins with designing and developing the website. Well, that is actually essential – putting efforts toward SEO strategies – but to make your campaign more effective, it’s best to integrate those ideas in creating the website.
In this article, we will discuss how comprehensive content research and creation can help you plan an effective website, and how you can use also your target market’s profile and demographics to make it more successful.
Content Research
First thing that you need to consider is knowing what the website will bring to your client’s business. It will start by planning the materials or contents that you will put on the website. Honestly, a website doesn’t really have to be built with just codes, it needs to be built with conceptualised and sensible content. How would you do that? Well, you have to start creating a content strategy based on the keyword research. You cannot just base the contents on the ideals and principles of the company alone; if you want to dominate the search engine result pages, you’ve got to be more technical about it.
From the homepage to the contacts page, you have to develop a more intelligent content material that focuses on your consumers would want to see on your site. Thus, it’s not enough to just create a list of keywords with high volumes and try to spot which keyword will rank. You also need to create materials using keywords that has better opportunity – meaning, those that have high volume but with less competition.
Research and analyzing keywords prior to planning the content strategy will help you understand why the users are searching for those keywords, what types of answers they need, and what types of languages do they use. In that way, your website will be more effective and helpful for the users.
Content Development And Creation
Based on what you’ve research about user intent, you can come up with a content strategy that will fit the brand and make it more relevant. Keep in mind to always serve a purpose when creating a web content; it has to satisfy the user’s needs.
To properly plan for the website’s content, you have to carefully identify what the user intended when they were search for the keyword. Focusing your content research on the users has huge implications on the site architecture and design.
So, it’s not the other way around. You cannot plan for the website and think of the content afterwards. To be able to design a new site, you have to have a grasp of how you will fully answer the users’ inquiries. Although it can be fixed by simply tweaking the metadata and copy, changes on the content in the middle of a project may affect the entire structure of a website. Otherwise, you may need to create a whole new content strategy which adds to the cost of your campaign.
Some web developers are used to work on a temporary content (such as lorem ipsum) while creating the initial draft of the website. It is suggested to design using real content right away. In this way, there will be no need to have any revisions in the future. Also, using temporary texts make content a secondary priority, which in fact it isn’t.
SEO And Web Design
We all know that there are a lot of tools and software that can help you gather valuable insights even before completely planning a digital campaign. More than just the basic elements of SEO such as URL structure keyword research, and metadata, there’s a lot more insight necessary that many of us are neglecting but can be a huge factor in the success of the campaigns that we handle.
If you will not consider using the elements of SEO in the creation process, there is a high tendency that the website will be futile and it will not deliver as expected. So, before recreating the entire website or turning to plugins for quick fixes that may not actually work, give a high importance on integrating SEO during the process.
An integrated approach will actually result to better user experience and better conversions, together with a strong SEO performance. Same goes with a focused content that can help keep your website relevant, which is part of Google’s metric.
An Alternative Workflow
You can take a look at a project planning diagram by Smashing Magazine, which can help you create the project, integrate research and market studies, and make it beneficial for both the users and the business owner.
A typical workflow of a project goes like this:
But, Smashing Magazine suggested a new approach to include Creating a sitemap and architecture on the Project Planning and Usability audit and wireframes on the design process.
Project Planning: Create Sitemap And Architecture
On the planning stage, it is recommended to already include creating the sitemap and site architecture. You already have to define what goes on what page and what content is needed and why. This is where you can integrate the insights from the SEO and content research and check its feasibility in terms of creating a website. This stage should consider the importance of each elements to both the users and the search engines, and of course the business.
Design: Usability Audit And Wireframes
Initial wireframes and outlines should be an integral part of the design process. It should be separated from the conceptualising process as it’s a completely different tasks. Mapping basic boxes and titles to outline the sections of the website can greatly help in the speed of the web development. The wireframes is the start of the design process.
Usability audit, on the other hand, should be implemented too. This is to make sure that the website is user-friendly and that it doesn’t encounter any issues in the future.
