August 26, 2007 11:54
Category: Writing
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Prudence has it that you choose a keyword that is a popular search term used by many surfers to look for information on search engines. The keyword - rather keyphrase - used for this page, website content planning, has virtually no takers.
I tried the Wordtracker's new GTrends tool, Google's AdWords Keywords Tool as well as Overture's Keyword Selector Tool. They are free but they do provide a good preliminary inkling of a keyword's potential.
In all the three, website content planning draws a blank, though the term website planning does show some promise in AdWords' July 2007 search volume. The point remains that neither website content planning nor website planning nor content planning is a popular search term with web visitors.
This is a bit of surprising revelation for me because I feel website content planning, or website planning if you please, is going to be a hot concept in the days to come.
But pause awhile. What is this website content planning in the first place? Let me speak my mind.
Website Content Planning Defined
Avid web watchers will have noticed that for the past few years it is increasingly the relevant and targeted web content that is gaining supremacy for web pages to rank high in search results.
Yes, page optimization with keywords and weighty incoming links are important but what is more so is the strength of contents in a website. There are many proofs but let me not go into that.
Instead, if you are a website owner, let me come to the question, "Where do you see your website 5 years down the line?"
Based on my somewhat limited experience, I've found that very few, if any, website owners visualize their websites that far. For them the immediate need is to have their web pages optimized for given sets of keywords to fetch traffic from search engines.
There is apparently no harm in that. Even this website does the same if you care to notice its other pages. The danger however is that if you do not have a website planning in place, you risk making it lacking a clear direction in the months or years ahead.
With that in perspective, this is how I define website content planning:
It is that necessity that makes you decide as to how you plan to grow your website well into the future in accordance with your business strategy and objective.
Why You Need To Wake Up?
Till a few years back for many businesses a website would be just a piece of decoration, a brochure-like presentation that would have little more than those mandatory pages like 'About', 'Products', 'Contact', 'Testimonials', and so on.
All that was important was to proclaim, "Look, we've a website, so visit it." It didn't matter if there was nothing much to gain from the website for a lay visitor. It also didn't matter if there was virtually no external traffic. Indeed it mattered less that the website reflected nothing about the future of the business that owned it.
It would have been great if this would be how the businesses would conduct themselves eternally. Unfortunately, the reality is lot more grim.
More and more people are connecting to the Internet, which is fast becoming like a global village. There is no doubt that people will increasingly demand more information from the web and take decisive actions based on what they get to see in different websites.
Few business owners, who are savvy to have noticed the trend, are already remodeling their sites to maximize visitor satisfaction. And they are doing it with an eye on the future, aware that their websites will ultimately become the best mouthpiece meant for the outside world, which will help in bringing more business.
What You Need To Do!
Coming back to my poser, "Where do you see your website 5 years down the line?", 2 things follow:
- Your website will become the most popular gateway to the prospects of your business. It will be more so because of the marked emphasis by the search engines on what they call 'Local Search'.
- As a corollary to the above point, it is important that your website bears a clear pointer to how you perceive your business to grow in the future. In other words, it has to have a strategy in place to grow as your business grows.
Website Content Planning Revisited
If the points above strike a rational chord with your vision, you'll appreciate that there's no alternative than to work out a well considered website content planning. Simply said, this means your website is structured in such a way that it can seamlessly and organically grow as your business expands.
Are you giving this a thought it so rightly deserves? Are you getting the idea that in an ever-expanding digital world it will be your website that will become your best bet to survive and grow in the business you're in?
It's time that you consider website planning in right earnest, for else the competition, usually never much far behind, will outmaneuver you.
In the next part of the series, we will see why website content planning is more important than even page design and link building.
