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Content is King

How to Add Good Content to Your Website

This is a simple, practical and workable guide to help you add good content to your website. Keyword research, content matrices, and marketing plans all have their place, but they all require resources, time, and money.

While you’re fiddling with those, your website, Google, and the world are waiting for your knowledge.

A Bit About Content

Content is not easy – you have to think.

Content takes time – imagine spending 10 minutes writing content for each product on a website. For even quite a small store – 100 products – that’s almost 17 hours of labour.

… and describing products is easy.

Explaining an opinion derived from years of experience is hard … and time-consuming.

Adding content is the most significant part of creating a website. Your developers and web designers cannot do it: what do they know about the intricacies of life insurance or mural painting?

This is your expertise – it needs your input.

So, get into the habit of adding content regularly. The sooner it’s on your site, the sooner it will appear on Google.

Making Engaging Content – part 1

Don’t rely on AI. Really. Don’t. Use it to provide a structure; use it for ideas; but don‘t let it provide your words. These are the first lines of the last three articles I suggested chatGPT should write.

  • In today’s digital age, crafting search engine-friendly web content …
  • In the digital age, where the internet has become a cornerstone of communication and commerce …
  • In today’s digital world, passwords are an essential part of everyday life …

As of January 2025, AI text is dull, repetitive and humourless.

Making Engaging Content – part 2

First, think about who you want to engage. If you have any sense, you want more customers like your current, favourite customers. You know them; you know the questions they ask.

If one of them asks you a question that you need to go away and think about – that is gold. That is a blog post. That is content that they haven’t been able to get elsewhere.

That is an opportunity.

If you get asked a question and another client asks it a week later – that too is gold. If two or more of your clients want to know something, it’s likely loads of people, rather like your favourite clients, want to know the same thing.

Explaining an opinion derived from years of experience is hard. But it is also valuable and rare. Your knowledge is your best asset – even if you only sell rubber washers.

Sharing some of that knowledge is evidence of your suitability to resolve their problems and an expression of trust. The right people will engage.

But don’t just don’t give all those pearls of wisdom away. Always leave your audience wanting more.

Before You Knuckle Down

Ask yourself: “Would I read this page if I wasn’t me?”

If the answer is “No”, stop, think and see if you can re-frame the content so that you would.

So here’s a question I asked recently:

“Do I need PAT testing for my office?”

Getting Practical

Writing Enough

You do not need to write War and Peace. You are not Tolstoy; you are an electrician.

Google only beeds to see at least about 250-350 words on a page.

That’s ten sentences. If you think your answer through and explain some of your assertions e.g.

“… the 1998 BS 7430 UK guidelines state that …”

Your article will look both authoritative and trustworthy. Also, you’ll soon be well over your recommended minimum words.

Understanding What Google Wants

“If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product”

Google is a free sheet, much like the Rotherham Record. It is entirely reliant on advertising revenue. It sells that advertising space because millions of people come to Google to find things out.

When you type a query into Google, you are the product – the next page you see will be at least 50% adverts.

Google is a free sheet
You get less than you used to. Google these days is more advertising than search results.
  • Ever felt like your favourite magazine is now nothing but adverts?
  • Ever felt like your favourite social media platform is now nothing but adverts?
  • Google is already in slight decline – it’s not hard to imagine why.

As soon as Google stops being the best place to find things out, its ability to sell that advertising space suffers.

Search engines need good answers to people’s questions. You are an expert. Be confident and provide those answers.

Good content is good content. It is as valuable to Google as it is to Bing and the various AI engines hoovering up the world’s knowledge.

If it’s good enough, your content could well outlast Google.

So Look at What People are Actually Asking

Professional tools can help you identify these things, but you can also do this yourself, without a lot of planning or expertise.

Google tells you what people’s searches are that relate to your question …

Google search results - People also ask
You get less than you used to. Google these days is mostly adverts

Make these (or something like these) into your subtitles, bullet points, ALT text and photo captions.

Google is telling you that people are asking these questions. If you can answer them well, Google will consider your content worth relaying to the world.

Don’t Type Straight into Your Content Management System

… if you can avoid it.

A lot of money has been spent making the word processor you use good at spotting spelling and grammatical errors. Rely on it.

Save it somewhere on your computer.

That way, when you want to re-use this article as a blog post, presentation or acceptance speech at the Oscars, you don’t have to fire up Google to find out what you said.

Website-based text editors can and do crash. You don’t want to lose your work.

It’s much harder to set aside a document in a browser window than one you have saved, temporarily, on your desktop.

Never Neglect a Description

The meta description is your opportunity to publish directly onto the world’s most widely used website. It’s not long – you have about 160 characters to tell the world why they should read your web page. If Google likes it, will publish it below your website title. Make it count.

Google Meta Description
The Little Fire Homepage in Google – Title and Meta Description

If your content management system doesn’t allow you to enter a meta description directly, uninstall it and install a new one.

If your web developer cannot help you extend your content management system to allow you to enter a meta description directly, sack them and call Little Fire Digital.

Google Meta Description
Editing the meta description with the popular Yoast plugin

Get the Page Title Right

It is the same as the description; only more people will read it … and you only have 60 or so characters.

So You’ve Got Your Article

It is erudite, it is articulate, it is funnier than ‘A Night at the Opera’, it’s wittier than Wilde.

Marx Brothers - A Night at the Opera
Marx Brothers – A Night at the Opera

… put it down, leave it for a bit, make a coffee, sleep on it, whatever … just go away.

When you come back, ask yourself:

  • Is it as clear as it can be?
  • Is it as funny as you thought it was? If that’s what you were going for.
  • Is it as short as it can be? What can you take out?

Your audience will love you but, you know, maybe not that much.

People’s attention spans are short; they want to get to the knowledge quickly.

It doesn’t need to be minimalist but every line in an article should contribute to the whole.

Finishing Up

Publish the damn thing.

It won’t be perfect, but no one ever got good at something by never doing it; your next one will be better.

Besides, this still isn’t War and Peace.

It’s a web page. You can edit it later … at which point a search engine will notice it’s been updated (if your developer has ensured your sitemap works) – re-index it and, most likely, give its position a little boost.

And What do Little Fire Do?

We’ll share with you all this and more. We’ll help you find your audience, we caan help you find your voice, we’ll help you format your article, we’ll help you get the right images in the right format so you can step back and say:

“I did that”

We’ll optimise your site, your copy, your website. We’ll ensure your page is visually engaging, semantically correct and fast. We’ll help your efforts shine.