Content development, Whose responsibility is it?
When it comes to the search engine optimisation of a website it’s commonly known that ‘content is king’. The continued development of a website’s content is a key ingredient if you’re serious about long term search engine results for your websites. As someone working on the online marketing for many websites, one of the most common dilemmas I continually encounter is that of who should take responsibility for the continuing content development of a website. Should it be the client or should it be the SEO consultant as that is what they are being paid for?
My view is that a large part of this work MUST come from the client themselves. Why? Well, it’s their business and they are the ones who are best positioned to know what’s hot and what’s not, what’s the next breaking technology or fashion trend in their industry sector. Ultimately, it’s they who will benefit from a successfully ranked website in the search engines so helping build keyword rich content that will engage visitors is vital.
As with most things in life, success never comes easily; it takes a lot of hard work and determination to reach the top of your game and the world of search engine optimisation is no exception. By regularly adding new and interesting quality content to your website which focuses on various aspects of your business and industry sector, you’ll gradually build a library of keyword rich content which will target the search terms you’re interested in, drive traffic to your website and hopefully increase sales.
By regularly posting new content onto your website you’ll find that the search engines will then have a reason to come back and crawl your site more often. If you’re serious about your sites content development and have the time to post several times a day then you may find the search engines will be indexing your website daily. Regular content updates will also give your visitors a reason to come back and repeat visitor’s helps to create a strong user base, more organic inbound links, higher rankings and a more stable long term future for your website and business goals.
The problem I find though it that clients are often of the opinion that as content development is part of the search engine optimisation mix, it’s therefore the responsibility of the SEO consultant they are employing. To a certain degree this is true but then the old argument comes back into play that they, the client, are the experts in their field and it’s they who are best positioned to talk about the technicalities and specifics of their industry.
It is possible for the SEO consultant to undertake this content development for a client or to employ the services of a professional copywriter but I do feel that the quality of the end result is always likely to be compromised due to the lack of specialist knowledge of the intricacies of the industry/subject matter in question.
It is always good to bear in mind that while content development is a key ingredient to the development of a website it’s not the only part of a successful search engine optimisation strategy. By the client undertaking the development of their websites content they will ultimately by able to offer better, more relevant and engaging content for their visitors which will then allow the SEO consultant to target other areas of the websites online marketing. In other words the consultant will be able to focus on their strengths and consequently provide a better value for money service to the client.
January 9th, 2008 at 3:10 am
Great post!
From my experience, it is like pulling teeth to get the client to produce content! And that is understandable.. it can be very difficult for the company to produce it for themselves for a number of reasons
1. They are too close to the big picture
2. They professionals at what they do, not professional writers and it can be intimidating.
3. They don’t have a lot of time
4. It is essential that the copy be search engine optimized
5. With bigger companies, there may not be one single person who can write about topics for the entire company. If each department writes about their own expertise, then the content can seem disjointed.
100% of the client work I do is writing SEO content for other businesses. My process is to work very closely with key people, ask questions to uncover key things about the business such as what makes them unique, why their customers like doing business with them, what their strategic advantages are in the market, etc. I have found that clients thrilled and relieved when they receive the content and amazed at how closely it reflects the qualities of their company. There is definitely a process of learning the language of a particular industry, but this is usually easily smoothed out in the final editing process.
For clients in more technical industries, I often have them answer a key questions in a very rough-draft type of format that I would need to build a compelling page of content and then craft it into a smooth page of copy.
I think that most people would probably be surprised at how many types of copy are actually ‘ghostwritten’ by professional copywriters!