Many websites are turning into collections of regurgitation; material and sell sheets taken off other websites, reworded and posted again. While it is true that there are only so many ways that we can describe the selling points of a laser printer, a collective white noise is creeping into the webscape. Web pages on certain subject matters are blurring; not only in the message they communicate, but in the style and words chosen, until the tone sounds like Ferris Bueller’s history teacher, calling role (anyone? anyone?).

Content is the key, for just about every venture on the web. Whether the subject you are discussing is SEO, search engine placement, sales, page depth, or traffic, the content of your pages is the key. It is that simple.

A recent study showed that web surfers on the whole make up their mind about the professional quality of a website in the first 5 seconds of their visit to the landing page. The landing page is not always the front page (in fact most of the time it is not). If your content doesn’t attract the reader’s mind in that time, then you have probably lost them. Chances are, if your website is regurgitating the same message as the rest of sites in your category, you will loose them no matter how well designed or professionally laid out your pages are.

SEO’s will talk to you about key word depth and percentages (they usually say about 3% is a good number, though some suggest as high as 7%). While this may be true (and has yet to be proven in any satisfactory way other than SEO’s keep saying it, so it must be true), what happens then? For the moment, let’s say they are absolutely correct and you have gained top ranking on the search engines, and people are coming in droves to hear what you have to say. What are you saying?

Bueller? Bueller? … Bueller?

A long standing quality of the Internet has always been, that it is easy to get people to come to your website, what is difficult is getting them to return.

Posted by Glenn Hefley in Glenn's Desk, Web Content