Is The Information Actually There In The Open For The Customer?

It’s almost inevitable. We check in a replacement client who is looking to make a tremendous content strategy. We've a kickoff call and that they tell us, “Yeah, we just launched a replacement website and now we’re able to really dive into our content marketing strategy.”

My heart sinks.

They just launched a replacement site, and now they're thinking of content strategy. It’s like going fishing. The content strategy of latest thought leadership is that the bait, on the other hand the hooks and poles that are the remainder of the web site are afterthoughts.

For so long, we’ve focused on blog and video content as being the pillars of content marketing.

The thing is, they’re not.

Your website — the knowledge architecture that creates up your entire navigation and user flows — is important to your content marketing success.

If the navigational systems on your website don’t add up and aren't optimized for search, you'll risk losing out on potential traffic and conversions. Without hooks and fishing poles, you’re not getting to catch any fish, regardless of what percentage you feed together with your bait.

Discover the strategy behind information architecture, and the way you'll optimize your site for more user engagement and inbound traffic.

Your Content Strategy Starts together with your IA

Before you'll write and publish any content on your site, you initially got to understand the sort of content which will entice your audience – and the way you’ll organize it. That’s where your information architecture (IA) comes into play. This is often simply how your site’s visitors will find the content they have and complete actions (conversions) on your site.

Your IA controls the ways your content is:

• Organized within the navigation bar

• Labeled in breadcrumbs and other links

• Navigated from various other pages

• Searched for by users

“When we found out our new site, we knew that we wanted it to be optimized for search and conversions from the start ,” says Nick Phillips, co-founder of youngsters Art Box, a subscription box service, “The key to doing this was to start out with a solid information architecture.”

Is IA an equivalent as UX?

Information architecture and user experience are similar therein they're both tools to make a positive experience for visitors on your site. However, IA must be established before a UX designer can start creating pages.

Content strategists generate a website’s IA into sitemaps. Then, a UX designer can utilize that plan during their website creation process. As a team, marketers and web designers can build a pleasant and easy-to-use architecture for his or her users. The goal is to form it as easy as possible to navigate through your site.

Businesses everywhere can enjoy strategizing their site’s information architecture. If users visit your site and can’t find the knowledge they’re trying to find , they’ll presumably leave and find their solution with one among your competitors. this will impact the bounce rate on your site, leave a negative experience with the user in how they see your brand, and most significantly , end in a lost opportunity for a replacement customer.

How the Sales Funnel Should Fuel Your Site Structure

Understanding the sales funnel and the way potential customers move through that process is crucial to designing the knowledge architecture on your site. Your IA represents the solutions you've got to supply customers, which Google and users will consider pretty far down the funnel.

When users visit the most pages on your site (such as product or services pages), their intent is presumably to form some quite buying action – whether it’s to truly buy something online or to fill out a lead form. These pages will often have high conversion rates. However, you want to focus your content on the proper sort of keywords – people who are closer to the buying stage instead of the thought leadership stage. You would like the proper hooks.

Your actual blog and owned media content will mostly be focused on thought leadership topics. It'll provide people that are above within the funnel with useful information they will use to narrow what they’re trying to find . To come back up with blog ideas, consider topics that are specific to your niche, something that a repeat customer would really like to understand . This could include recommendations on the way to use the products you sell or news that's specific to your industry.

Marrying this thought leadership with the particular pages on your site and understanding how they interact can assist you identify the paths of least effort . Find out where your visitors are within the sales funnel and supply content that matches their intent. Once you have this in mind, you'll present calls to action and other navigation to hook them and guide them through the journey.

Your goal is to get what it takes for somebody high within the funnel to read a blog post, stop by more pages, then be encouraged to mention , “Yeah, I’m able to buy.”

“Tightly knitting together new thought leadership with existing, optimized product/services pages is important to the success of a content marketing strategy,” says Melissa Dreyer, Director of selling at STANLEY Access Technologies, “Without these two components working together, you'll find yourself with tons of traffic, but not tons of conversions.”

Tips for Presenting an Organized Site

Information architecture could seem complicated, but it’s easier to place together than you think that . You only need to consider what makes the foremost sense when organizing the pages on your site.

Consider the following pointers to assist you begin building your site’s IA:

• Keep it simple. you would like the method of navigating your site to be easy and easy . Don’t add unnecessary distractions that keep your users from finding the button you would like them to click, the shape you would like them to fill, or most significantly , the solution to their query.

• Simplicity goes for the navigation bar, too. Keep your navbar simple and not overcrowded. An honest rule of thumb is to keep the main navigation under seven items. Your page groupings should add up and relate to at least one another, like service offerings or information about the corporate .

• Be strategic about internal linking. Invite your site visitors to find out more or take a step toward a conversion by presenting them with links to click through to product and repair pages or your Contact Us page. These hooks can take people from “just browsing” to consideration pretty quickly.

Research your industry. Take a glance at your competitors to seek out out what the industry standards are for presenting and organizing your content.

Phillips states, “Our site started from ground zero, and in only a couple of months we’re already ranking within the top 10 for variety of competitive keywords we thought would take a year or more to rank for. The research and energy put into the IA paid off very quickly.”

Please, Please Start Your Content Strategy together with your IA

To make your business more visible online and more successful with customers, you want to begin with a robust marketing strategy. Once you put careful thought into your content strategy – starting together with your information architecture – you'll not only make an impression by delivering real value to your industry, but you'll also catch tons of latest business – which was always the purpose , right?

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