I’ll tell you a secret…
There’s a formula for structuring website data to make your website win at SEO, and it’s simple.
I’m not saying it’s simplistic. Hear me out.
Depending on your niche, you might need to use this formula more intensely to see results.
In some niches, the competition is tighter than a sumo wrestler in a bikini. You’ll have to throw money at the problem.
But the data structuring formula remains the same, no matter how much content is required.
Whether you sell services or products, this formula can toss your website into the clouds.
By the way, this is probably why WordPress is such a popular choice for building websites.
WordPress lends itself well to content flow, which is largely what this formula is based upon. More on content flow later.
Standard website
First, let’s look at a typical small business website.
You usually have the following pages on a basic website.
Whether it’s right or wrong is not the question. This is simply to show what an average small business site looks like. More on why it’s ineffective, later.
Home
This is supposed to be a gateway to the rest of your site.
It should have clear calls to action for the user. It should be built around your products or services.
This page is often, however, used to sing the praises of the company, not used to lead to products or services, as it should.
About
This page, if set up correctly, drives good traffic to your main offering.
However, it’s sometimes mistakenly used by companies to bore website visitors to death with information about the people behind the company, etc.
It’s frequently a missed opportunity to sell.
Contact
The contact page offers a golden opportunity to use keywords related to your niche.
Even if it’s a small reminder, it’s still a good place to use keywords related to your offerings.
This is typically not capitalized on, though. Most times a contact page simply carries a phone number, email address and contact form, whereas it could contain a solid call to action.
Services or products page
This should be a doorway page to your individual products or services.
On many small websites, this is a static page.
However, WordPress makes it easy to add service or product doorway pages that update automatically whenever you add content.
If your WordPress site contains custom post types built around your product or service, this page is automatically generated by WordPress.
Many business owners use this sort of page to add a list of their products or services, with no descriptions or images. It’s a waste of space.
Location
A basic page to make it easy for people to find your establishment.
That’s a standard website for a small business.
Unless you throw money at a website with only those pages, or unless your niche is so specific that you have no competitors, you can’t expect too much from such a simple setup.
The secret sauce
The secret sauce is not a secret. It’s plain old common sense.
To rank in search engines, you need content.
This is where a news, blog or article section can really help you shine.
If you consistently add great content to this section, you’ll start seeing an increase in traffic.
But you should be taking it a step further.
Here’s the formula
In a previous post I shared how some people wait until their website is pixel perfect before they launch.
They add every single product or service before they launch.
There might be a better way.
Stagger your content creation.
Instead of chucking everything onto your website in one go, build a content posting schedule.
Then add a product, followed by an article, or series of articles, based on that product, and link to it from those articles.
But you should take it further.
Instead of having those articles each floating around by their lonesome selves, bind them together using categories or tags.
(This can be done with the individual landing pages too.)
Thus, the formula is…
- Main product or service doorway page.
- Individual product or service landing pages.
- Articles based on each product or service, bound together by tightly controlled categories or tags, pointing to individual landing pages.
Two more steps
You can add two more steps…
Add your categories or tags (which automatically create doorway pages) to your main menu.
Add an XML site map to your website, so Google and Bing understands your content structure.
This formula works for any niche. Whether you’re selling cars, skateboards, dresses or paintings, the formula remains the same.
You have a doorway page, individual landing pages, and articles bolstering those pages.
It works.
How much content you need to succeed
Here’s where it gets tricky.
If you’re selling houses in a popular city or town, you may expect plenty of competition.
Your doorway and landing pages, as well as your articles, will need to be better than the competition’s.
Some marketers get clever here.
They create additional websites that have touchpoints with their main site, then employ the same formula on those sites, and link back to the main site.
This forms a content network that may or may not be of benefit to your business, depending on what Google thinks of those sites.
If Google thinks those sites are worthy of a ranking, such a strategy might work.
But it costs more work; more admin, and more content strategy planning.
It might just be better to stick to a single website, to which you keep rolling out delicious content.
Analytics
This is of utmost importance.
You must be able to see whether your content strategy works or fails.
For that, you need analytics. Something like Google Analytics is fine.
It’ll show you whether your formula is working, or not.
Whichever analytics platform you opt for, it must be able to give you insights into who visits your site, where they’re from, which pages are most popular, which buttons or links are clicked the most, and what people who use the search function, search for.
If you don’t know those things, you’re floating around in outer space without oxygen.
Content flow
There are two types of content on the web. There are more, but for the sake of this article, let’s compress the whole into two categories:
- Static content
- Flow content
Static content hardly ever changes. These are your about and contact type pages. You set those up and hardly ever touch them.
Flow content comprises things like blog posts.
Blog posts, or articles, if you prefer a more formal term, can bring in huge amounts of traffic.
If you’re not using flow content, you’re missing out. You’ll be forced to use paid advertising like Google Ads or Facebook ads to drive traffic.
Flow content, however, makes its way into search engine indices, which gives you an opportunity to rank for keywords related to your niche.
If you’re really clever, you’ll link flow content to your social media channels and drive traffic from there to your content, where you can hook website visitors with a nice call to action.
Conclusion
Your website’s content structure, and the content you post to your website, is of utmost importance.
If you don’t set up your content correctly, you’re making it difficult for website visitors to convert to customers.
It’s not a difficult formula to grok, but getting it right takes commitment, skill, and perseverance.
Get it right, and you’ll enjoy increased traffic and increased sales.
Book a consultation with Appstrax if you’re in the market for a conversion-focused WordPress website.
