When most businesses design a website, their focus is more on the task at hand than in thinking about a long-term content management strategy. Yet strategising for the long-term health of any business venture is usually a vital move. Without this kind of future planning, you may find your presently healthy website turns into a jumbled mess down the track.

Many businesses will only think about the need for ongoing content once their SEO plan is underway. This is only natural, as the importance of content usually only becomes clear at this time. Before then, content is simply a way of communicating with site users whenever a need arises. As most businesses discover, SEO turns this idea on its head, as finding something to communicate to users is secondary in importance for the need for constant fresh content.

The best and only practical way to ensure your site gets constant fresh content is to devise a content strategy. The best time to do this is when you’re still in consultation with your search engine optimisation company, as they will be able to give you some direction. You can talk to our experts at SEO Consult about content strategies.

When designing your content strategy, ask yourself these questions:

*Who is going to write it? Not many businesses can afford to have a professional writer in-house all the time. Yet professional writing is vital if you want to maintain the standard of your site. Businesses that rely on staff to supply content to order tend to end up with a patchy quality of content, and disgruntled users.

Many businesses approach their SEO firm for content provision. This can be a good idea if you want your SEO tactics to be worked into your content automatically. Your other options include contracting writers for individual articles, although again this can result in patchy content.

*Who is going to design it? Even if you approach your SEO company for content provision, you’re likely to have a hand in the form it takes. Most site owners aren’t comfortable completely delegating the choice of topics and styles of writing in their content, although it certainly is possible to do so. However, you can’t count on content to be conjured out of thin air. Good content needs to be planned for and scheduled. Plotting out when you’re going to brainstorm topics for content, or sorting out other means of content design, is important.

*Who is going to implement it? As anyone who has ever designed a website knows, having the content planned out and written is just part of the struggle. Once it’s there, you need to post it to the site, format it and lay out any links you will need. This means not just linking to a new article from your home page, but finding points within the new content to anchor hyperlinks to other areas of your site. It’s also a good idea to put hyperlinks on other pages to the fresh content.

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