6 Ways to Make Your Website Content More Relevant

Did you know that it takes only 50 milliseconds for visitors to form an opinion about your site? In a split second, visitors decide whether your site is relevant and interesting, which determines whether they will stay or leave.

You don’t have a lot of time to make an excellent first impression. People have short attention spans online. There are so many other websites out there that are competing with you, and unless you work on making your website relevant, you don’t stand a chance against them.

Fortunately, as an industrial manufacturer, there are many ways to make your website more relevant so that customers stick around. A good, relevant website will allow you to build relationships with leads, so a significant portion ends up striking manufacturing deals with you.

Regardless of what kind of jobs you work on and what kind of products you manufacture, the following six tips will help you make your website more relevant so you can improve your bottom line and increase your overall ROI.

1. Identify Your Target Audience

Your first step is identifying your target audience. If you don’t know who you are targeting, it will be impossible to make your website relevant to them. Your target audience will differ based on the types of products you manufacture and the types of jobs you complete (larger vs. smaller jobs, for example).

You have to know not only who you are targeting but what they are interested in and what type of services they are looking for. I would suggest starting off by creating an ideal customer profile. Try to put all of your customers into one person. What would that person look like?

For example, you can ask yourself questions like:

What type of jobs they need help with
What kind of products they sell
Their average age
Their location
Their desired turnaround time
And so on

Focus on them, not on you. What kind of problems do they face, and what kind of solutions are they looking for? When they land on your website, you want them to notice right away that you offer the answers they are looking for.

2. Know What Kind of Content Your Target Audience Is Interested In

Once you understand who your target customer is and what type of problems they face, you can figure out what kind of content they are interested in. They might be interested in tips on finding an industrial manufacturer, for example, or determining whether a job shop is right for them.

Again, take it in steps: First, figure out who your customer is and then figure out the problems they are facing. Then, create content that helps them solve those problems.

Do some keyword research so you can attract more organic traffic. Think about common search terms your ideal customer might be typing into Google and use an SEO tool like SEMrush to figure out if those keywords have decent monthly traffic volumes and low competition. Most keyword tools will also provide suggested keywords that might also be relevant when brainstorming for keyword ideas.

3. Understand That Your Target Audience Has Different Wants and Needs

It is essential to understand that your target audience might be looking for different types of content. The same people might have a few different wants and needs, and there are also various subsets of your target audience that you have to think about – for example, those ready to buy and those not yet ready to buy.

For those ready to make a purchase, you might create more promotional content. However, to attract those who are not yet ready to buy, you might create informative content with the goal of getting those people to follow you on social media or subscribe to your email list so you can continue to market to them.

Generally, there are three types of content that you should be creating in order to cater to the different wants and needs of your audience:

Content that is purely informative
Content that is purely selling something
Content that is a combination of both

It is crucial to have all three types of content. If you only have promotional content that sells things, you will lose out on a lot of potential leads who are not yet ready to make a purchase. By creating informative content, you can get them to become your fans, bookmark your website, follow you on social media, and subscribe to your email list. Later on, they might reach out to strike a manufacturing deal with you.

If your content is purely promotional, your organic traffic might tank as well. Google is pretty good at figuring out what content is informative and what content isn’t, and they tend to prioritize informative content. Google doesn’t want ads to show up in the organic search results – after all, they want you to pay for ads; that’s what Google Adwords is for.

On the other hand, if you only publish informational content, you will never get a chance to convert your customers to leads. You need to have some promotional content as well. As long as you target the right people – customers who are ready to strike a manufacturing deal – there is no problem with creating purely promotional content.

Finally, you should have content that is a mix of both. This allows you to attract organic traffic and convert some of the visitors who land on your page via Google to leads.

4. Make Sure That Your Content Addresses Current Issues

You need to make sure you are addressing current issues if you want your content to be relevant. That’s why it is so important to focus on publishing evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that is relevant forever.

There are two types of evergreen content: Content that is relevant all year round and content that is only relevant during certain seasons. For example, if you run a job shop, you might take on jobs related to certain holiday products. However, since that content will be relevant year after year, it is considered evergreen content, even if it is only applicable for part of the year.

It is okay to publish non-evergreen content once in a while as long as it addresses specific issues. Sometimes, it is necessary to publish such content. For example, now would be an excellent time to discuss how the Covid pandemic has affected job shops and industrial manufacturing in general. You can also talk about how you have personally persevered with whatever challenges you faced due to the pandemic, such as making sure your workers are safe.

However, make that a minority of the content you publish – try to make most of your content evergreen.

5. Write the Content In Your Target Audience’s Voice

The tone of your content is essential as well. Once you have figured out your target customer, you will be able to figure out what style of voice to use. Depending on the customer you are targeting, you can choose between various tones, such as:

Professional
Personal
Complex language
More simple language

You might want to experiment with slightly different voices and see which content performs the best. Using the right voice is essential for connecting with your readers and building long-term relationships with them.

6. Stick to Your Industry or Niche

Finally, my last tip is to stick to your industry or niche. While you can explore many topics related to your industry or niche – the more issues you cover, the more content you will be able to produce – don’t spread yourself out too much.

Remember that we talked about figuring out who your target audience is by creating the profile of an ideal customer? The point of that exercise was to narrow down your target audience so you can move on to the next step – creating content that your target audience is interested in. The goal here is to be specific with your content.

Don’t start covering topics that are not related to your industry or niche with the intent of trying to attract more people. First of all, if those people are not your target audience, you will have a hard time converting them to customers anyway. In addition, if you are not knowledgeable about those topics, you will end up sounding and looking unprofessional.

Even more than that: Covering irrelevant topics can drive away your real target base. It can cause the content they are looking for to become obscured in the sea of irrelevant content, and they might think that you are not the company they are looking for.

Definitely do not discuss highly controversial topics such as politics and religion. As a business trying to attract other businesses as customers, there is no place for debating those topics. Such discussions only serve to alienate half or more of your customer base.

Cnclusion

So, there you have it: six ways to make your content more relevant. Focus on creating highly informative (and promotional) content that is relevant to your target audience and helps them solve their problems. Stick to your niche and make sure your content addresses current issues – evergreen content works best.