What’s your website for?
Seriously – when was the last time you gave a lot of thought to how you position the content of your website? And I’m not talking about writing 500-word blog posts versus 300-word ones, or developing your editorial calendar. I’m talking about the flow, pulse, and purpose of every piece of content on your website – and what it helps you achieve.
We’re so quick to blog, we forget to create anything else.
Many of the newest, most powerful content management systems, such as WordPress, put the news feed – the blog, or whatever else you want to call it – right at the front. So, we build our content based on blogs. This is getting more and more common, and it’s not a mistake.
Updated, fresh content helps search engine rankings – “new” is great for SEO. that’s half of why any blogger writes – to keep themselves relevant in the face of a constant stream of other new posts. But what does this do for our pillars?
It’s very difficult to create pillar content in a blog post. Even with longer form, less commonly updated blogs, 1250 to 1500 word exegesis-style missives don’t usually cut it. How many blog readers actually want to read an essay? Not many.
This is why we need to get better at creating our Pages.
We – yes, you, me, and every other blogger out there – need to get better at making the pillars which hold up the remainder of our content stronger. We need to plan, not just what word to put where, but what aim each link in our websites have.
For example; in the next few weeks, I’m transitioning the primary focus of my website away from being wholly a blog. I’m going to be restructuring my information architecture, and using the blog as a supplement to that architecture, rather than a replacement for it. Why? Because my needs are changing, and the purpose of my work on the web must follow. If it doesn’t, I don’t lose anything – but if I can do things better, I stand to gain. And if I gain sufficiently, I can pass that gain on through other projects, so that you can gain as well.
That’s what the web is about; creating a cycle of consistent, Pareto-increasing gains.
So expect some difference here. Soon.
I’ll be sure to explain as it goes – because I wouldn’t want to be a bad leader and dump change on people without warning.
And, I’ll ask you as well: how intentional is the content structure of your websites? How much consideration (not just planning) goes into developing the information architecture of your new projects as they come out?
How can I help you do better?
image by suchitra prints.