Content can get intense, and it can delay a site Launch but it doesn’t have to.

Most times when a deadline is missed its due to clients not being able to get us the content for their site. There is a lot more to it so allow me to help you out. I’ve divided it into 3 sections to try and help you out with an additional section to help you with some optimization.

1. Basics

• Logo – Is you company logo in vector format and do you have a file for it that you can send to us? JPG version of the logo usually do not work. At the least, your logo needs to be a PNG file which has a transparent background.
• Tagline – These should clever and most of the time they use double meanings such as ours which is “Always running...” We are named Sneaker and sneakers are used for running plus the tagline alludes to the fact that our sites and server are always live aka running.

2. Site Content

It helps to get a Site Map together, which is a list of all pages on your site.

• Home – The home page is the first thing people will see usually so don’t fill it with tons of text but instead of a good amount of pictures and some headlines which people can click to read more. This should really be a place that collects information from all over the site and puts it on one place for easy access.
• Page by Page – Go through every page on your new site by making your own site map and then figure out all the content for each page. For example, what will the About Us page say? Is the About Us page going to talk about the present day company or is it a story of how the company started? A page of your product/service needs to be clearly written so people can understand what you sell. The more unclear writing can be the quicker you loose your audience.
• Blog/News – The blog section of your site can be used for some general news or even articles and whitepapers that you write. If you are going to use the entire blogging section of WordPress then we recommend starting the site with 3 articles. The latest article could be an announcement of the new site you are launching.
• Legal Pages – Most of the time site needs a Privacy Policy, or a Terms of Use page, or even a Disclaimer page. A lot of times lawyers need to review these pages so it doesn’t hurt to get the process started early. Feel free to use ours and switch out our details for yours since they are pretty generic.

3. Images

• Featured Images – Each page and each post you write, in WordPress, can have a Featured Image which is an image associated to the page/post which your theme can insert into different places of the site. So get an image that can be used for each page/post. These images can be used as banners and usually draw a lot of attention to your users.
• Sliders – Most sites these days have a banner slider on the homepage. This is where we put important information that we want people to see and we want to update on a regular basis. If you are going to have a slider on your site then get 3 images with their appropriate text and also where should those images link to? For example, if you are announcing an event, then do you have a page somewhere else on your site with all the details for the event?
• Alt Text – These are super important. “Alt text” is short for “alternative text” which means, if an image can be loaded then load some specific text instead. The main idea here is for screen readers that can’t read images to read off the alt text so users can at least understand what the image was trying to show. Since SEO came into the world, this Alt Text has turned into a great way to add in keywords to your site.
• Captions – Captions are a great way to increase how much reading your users will do. Intrinsically, we tend to read captions that around an image since we want to read a small commentary on the image we are looking at. This is a main part of the success of Instagram and other networks. Like Alt Text, this is a great place to insert more keywords into your site for the search engines to crawl and index.

4. Optimizing Content per Page

Meta tags are an a super important part of SEO (search engine optimization). Learn how to use it if you want to see your site rank well.

Titles and Descriptions as seen through Google results.

• Keywords – Whatever the keywords you want your site to rank for, make sure you pepper those words into the content of each page. If you own an law firm then you need to put the words law firm on the pages. Its sounds basic but many people don’t do it. Use these keywords in everything mentioned below.
• Titles – The Title of your page is not something people see on your site but when they view search results are viewed they are seen.
• Descriptions – Each page needs to have a description which is visible by the search engines though users on your site will not read it.
• Friendly URLs – Make sure you are using friendly URLs so people can instinctively know what your page is about even before they read anything else. Google also indexes you a bit better knowing that you are organized in how you are delivering your content.
• Headers – Just like a newspaper that uses a Headline at the top and then it has numerous other headlines through the articles, you need to have numerous headlines on your pages and then most important needs to be the one labeled <h1> or Header 1. Our current code can go from H1 to H6. Use them wisely.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Hopefully this will help you get started on writing your content so when its time for the site to go into design we will have all we need in order to move forward. If you need help in creating a logo, writing a good tagline or anything else content related just let us know and we can help you out.