Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Stuck for Content - How About an FAQ?

One of the problems that small firms have is the size of their budget. Often a website budget has been based on that the design of a website costs and does not take into account the value of good copy.
Well-written copy, in my research, increases the business done on e-commerce websites by 40% on average. Well-written copy gets browsers enganged & gives them the key facts & entices them without bambozzling them with science.
Many firms do not want to pay for this service, however, and would rather write the content themselves. This can be fine but it's amazing how many people are dumbstruck when it comes to writing about their business, even if they go out and sell it all day every day.
One way to get started is with an FAQ. By thinking about the questions you get asked the most, by polling your clients to see what most concerns them when they make a decision involving your industry and by formulating questions and answers for each of the aspects of your business you have done three things:
  1. Formed the basis of each section of your site - you know the questions people ask when they're interested in your services now write your copy accordingly
  2. Created extra content for your site - you now have a user-friendly FAQ that people can refer to, allowing them to feel reassured by you & your business.
  3. Gained an extra page for optimization - you can link each question back to the relevant pages of your site with anchor text.

This can be an invaluable way of showcasing you as a source of good advice, of creating extra content & of increasing the content and relevance of your pages within the search engines.

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