By Chris Keenan on November 16, 2017
As a small business, you know your website is where a lot of customers will come to find out about your business and connect with you. Blogs are a great way to stay current with your customers, and an optimized website will help your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts as well through keyword research and content creation.
How can you address these needs? A content calendar is a great place to start. A content calendar can allow you to easily plan out your content goals for each month, be it a website page revamp or a new blog. Having a content calendar is also an easy way for multiple people to work collectively on your website for a cohesive finished project.
Not convinced yet? Below are just a few reasons why taking the time to create a content calendar can improve your website and ROI from a better user experience:
Visually seeing what you need to research as a small business can make the content of your website and blog less of a guessing game and more of a strategic approach.
Knowing what website pages you may be wanting to revamp or what topics your blog should cover can help the research process run smoothly. If you are not the sole person working on these pieces of content, a content calendar is also a great way to keep a team of content writers organized and on-task so that at the end of the month, the content is created and implemented to your website, increasing your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and creating a better user experience for customers.
Beyond just updating your own websites content and blog, you also want to make sure you are putting yourself and your business out there as an expert in your field. Guest blogs, on reputable websites, can be a great way to leverage your search engine optimization while also simply putting your name and business out there for others to find.
Knowing what content is being worked on can be a great way to find time to create a guest post and pitch it to different online platforms that are relevant to your business and mission. Guest posts can also be re-purposed pieces of existing content you have for your site. While they should be different to avoid any plagiarism issues, the skeleton of the post can remain the same, so you aren’t forced to create all new content. Guest blogs are great for link building and can help your websites domain authority grow through reputable links.
Visually knowing what you need to write can allow you to do pest control keyword research in advance to know what key phrases should be placed within the body of your blog or website content. This also carries over to others working if you have someone doing the research separately from the person who will ultimately write the content.
Being able to do this work in advance can allow the writing process to be more seamless instead of researching as you write which may create a jagged-sounding piece of content instead of something free-flowing and conversational–which is what customers are looking for.
Perhaps you need to hire a virtual assistant to help with your content for your website. Having a content calendar on hand is an easy way to hand over the work without there being a guessing game or much disconnect between your business and your new VA taking over your website’s content and the specific needs you need to be met both on-site and with blogging.
Having a tangible content calendar is a great way to stay organized. As a small business operation, you are most likely focused on other needs besides those of your website and understandably so. Taking the time to create an organized look at what you need to complete for your website is a great first step to having continuously new content or revamping your website that does not turn into a guessing game of “what comes next?”
Chris Keenan WeGetLeads.com
Chris Keenan is President of WeGetLeads.com, a search marketing and lead generation provider. He has over 10 years experience marketing and consulting for local businesses.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wegetleads/