Who do you blame when your sales are slow?

I doubt the reason that your business isn’t landing leads is because Google, your competitors, your SEO and your link builder conspired against your success.

It’s more likely your content. Bad content will not drive leads or sales. You can market the hell out of your site – have all your SEO sorted including link building, be advertising in Google and getting plenty of traffic, but all that won’t help if you’re website content just isn’t enticing to the visitor.

Heather Lloyd-Martin from Success Works has outlined 4 main issues that arise from bad website content and how you can fix them.

• Bad content issue #1: Your site is so focused on SEO that you ignore the customer experience. Have you spent thousands on link building, social media management and technical SEO – but you made your admin assistant write the copy and told her to stuff it with keyphrases? If so, what are you thinking? As my father used to say, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Your link builder and SEO may be able to drive more traffic to your site, but know that “driving traffic” doesn’t mean “you’ll make sales.” If your content sucks, there’s no reason to promote it. Fix it instead.
• Bad content issue #2: Your site is so filled with marketing-speak that it turns off your readers. Have you ever chatted with someone who liked to flaunt their “intellectual superiority?” Boring aren’t they? Yeah – well, your dirt-dull SEO content has the same effect on folks. If you’re pushing your “consultative” angle, speaking over the heads of most readers will do nothing but turn them off and cause them to feel like they can’t “connect” with you. When you write approachable copy, people will approach you. It’s that simple. (And yes, I’m talking to you, B2B companies.)
• Bad content issue #3: Your site is all about you – and not about your reader. Here’s a newsflash – your prospects really don’t care about your mission statement. Or your warehouse. Or your process – unless you can show how that process helps your customers. Think about it: do you recite your mission statement every time you chat with a new prospect? Of course not. Why would you write content that does exactly that?
• Bad content issue #4: You don’t have much site copy because you want people to call you instead. Yes, it’s important to chat with prospects. At the same time, people won’t call you unless you give them a reason – and that reason means smart, customer-driven content. You don’t need to give away the secret sauce of what you do. But, don’t you want enough copy to explain what you do and why people should give you a call?

So, if you find that your site content isn’t that great, it might be time to take half a day to site down and tackle the problem head on by writing content that is actually going to encourage visitors to take action. Good luck!

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• 10 Tips for DIY SEO Copywriting
• 3 Reasons Why You Should Comment on Blogs
• Dos and Don’ts of Creating a First-Class Home Page