Understand different types of content

We have now generated lists of Keywords and Keyword phrases. Using these lists it is now time to decide what types of content to write,

There are a couple of different types of content.

Static content

Here we are talking about pages that are unlikely to change much over time and with one particular purpose. Examples are the About, Contact and Terms pages.

In WordPress these are created as Pages.

Informational and commercial types of content

Articles with informational and commercial content will make up the bulk of most websites and are written to rank well.

In WordPress they are created as Posts.

Transactional types of content

These articles are written to generate interest in and purchase of a service or product.

In WordPress they are produced as Pages.

Hybrid content

These articles are written in an informational style with the purpose of educating and generating sales of services or products.

In WordPress they are produced as Posts.

What types of content to write

The quick answer is that it really depends on the purpose of your website.

The Content producer

This website is designed to generate informational content that will support the sale of our own product, typically a digital information based product or course.

Here we work with Informational content with the intent to generate interest and traffic to our commercial and possibly transactional intent pages that will close the deal.

The Lead generator

The Lead generator also works with informational content with the purpose and intent of generating and qualifying leads to for example a brick and mortar business or a consultant.

Informational content makes up the bulk of the website. Several different and uniquely designed contact forms will serve to generate and pre-qualify the lead where the design of the contact form will depend on the subject matter.

There are several available plugins for customization contact forms in WordPress. The plugin Contact 7 is one popular alternative.

The Affiliate

The affiliate is a traffic generator working with hybrid content to generate sales to independent businesses for a commission.

Most of the content will be informational in style but there will be clear calls to action scattered throughout the article.

Affiliates do not have to produce and update a product of their own.

Instead they can choose to work with several companies offering the same service or product.

How to write great content

Back in the day a wise man named Brett Tabke wrote a guide about how to build a successful site in 12 months with search engine traffic only.

I want to mention this as my approach to creating content was born from this guide though it has evolved over time. Now, please note that Brett is unaware of my website, and this is simply a one-sided homage from my sida.

Keyword Surfer will give you ideas about what to write. The purpose of your page will help you decide what type of content to produce.

But needless to say great and unique articles have little value if they are not found.

And as most people starting out have no advertising budget we need to rely on the search engines for traffic.

So how can we make the search engines like us?

The answer is simple.

We need to produce unique, quality content that the search engines can read and index with ease.

Writing for two audiences

Whenever you write an article you always write for two audiences.

You write for the reader and need to make the content interesting, valuable and easy to read.

But you also need to make sure that the search engines understand your content. The search engines indexing programs will try to read and understand how to index your articles.

You need to make it easy to read and easy to categorize.

As we are long-term website owners we will always put the visitor first while observing a few key points to help the search engines along.

Helping the search engines index our articles correctly

I live by a few simple main principles when writing contentThe text needs to be easy to read. Ideally using short sentences.

1. Use natural scanner stoppers to give readers time to pause.
   
2. Subheadings, lists and bold text style can help create separators to make text less daunting.
   
3. I will attempt to use my keyword phrase once for each part of the article per below
   • in the URL (or page name)
   • META description tag
   • article heading
   • in the first paragraph
   • ALT tag for images used if relevant
     
4. Overall the keyword density should should be no more than in the range of 1-2% throughout the article

Focus on writing good articles. If you are on topic there will naturally be enough exact as well as broad matched keyword combinations to get your point across.

And there you have it – it needs not be more complicated.

And do not worry, there are excellent WordPress plugins that will assist you to evaluate your articles.

Both Rank Math and the Yoast SEO plugin offer free versions that are more than adequate for most site owners needs.

The plugin will automatically analyse your page and offer tips for improvement.

With a system and approach for creating great content in place we need to look at how to promote ourselves.

In chapter 8 we will look at ways to market ourselves to get visitors to our website.