I feel like I’ll be stating the obvious with this particular article. However, I still think there are a lot of business owners—and even some marketing companies—who haven’t quite grasped this concept completely.
The Shift Has Already Happened
The point is that in the world of online marketing, things have shifted dramatically in the past 5-10 years. Websites used to be about visual appeal. Fancy graphics, animated elements, complex designs—it was all about catching the visitor’s attention and making your company stand out amongst the sea of competitors online all trying to vie for the same customer’s business.
This is simply not the approach of online marketing anymore. Now, good content is more important. Sure, you want your site to look sharp. You want it to catch people’s attention and build value for your brand.
Modern Design Approach
However, design nowadays is more perfunctory. The most important thing now is to have a site that is mobile-friendly, with a format that is automatically adaptable to be viewed on different web browsers and different devices (desktop, laptop, tablets, phones, TVs, gaming systems, etc.). This goal naturally hinders how “fancy” you can get with your graphics and visual elements, which is why you see a lot of template-type sites. Developers like WordPress make it easy to build your own site. Or, secondary developers piggyback on these platforms to repackage and resell templates designed for specific industries.
I’m helping one of my clients right now get started with a home investment company and, of course, there are many companies out there with plug-and-play mobile-friendly websites that are pre-built with all the SEO keywords, content, etc. I’ve gone into customize the content and make it more unique to my client’s business, but otherwise most of the heavy lifting was already done and the site was ready to launch minutes after my client signed up for their hosting package.
Content is King
The point is who ever builds and/or hosts your site, the “look” of the site is only a small part of the battle now. The way to grow your business is through content marketing. We’re talking about the content on the site itself, targeted community or landing pages, SEO tags and keywords and business blogs. When you have a lot of content that is relevant to your customer’s interests, of high quality and is added frequently, you will boost your organic search engine rankings.
Heck, look at the world’s leading search engine site. Google’s design is as plain as it gets. Sure, the point of their site is finding information. And yes, they do change the header logo every day to something clever. Honestly, I’ve always assumed that their graphics department got bored one day and started doing those headers—just for something to do.
Look at Apple’s website, as well. It is ultra clean and simple. It’s all about the products and content. It makes you want to shell out your money to buy the latest Apple technology. I am not immune, as I just picked up my new iPhone 8 last week!
Put Your Focus on Content
If you are going to be successful in online marketing, you need to make sure the majority of your focus is on the content side of things. Nice visual elements are great and not to be overlooked, but content is king and it will be for the foreseeable future.
To learn more about content marketing and business blogging, schedule a free consultation with me. Contact me at NextGear Marketing today.
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