Lucid Lingo
Communicating... in plain English
Lucid Lingo
Many websites quickly fall out of date. The content becomes stale and often inaccurate, mainly due to neglect.
An out of date website is letting your business down. Your site is not doing what it’s supposed to do, which is to drive your marketing activities, and could even be harming your reputation and brand identity.
And here’s the thing. Once a user pegs your site as being out of date and not offering useful content, the chances of that person returning is slim.
This means having fresh content is paramount.
Sites fall out of date often because no one is looking after them on a day to day basis: updating content, ensuring it’s optimised for search engines, and, most importantly, giving your web visitors what they want.
In a busy world, that’s not surprising. It takes time and effort to constantly keep a website up to date with fresh content. With so much to juggle, it’s easy to simply ‘set and forget’.
A simple solution is to outsource.
At Lucid Lingo we can help you. By focusing on a few key areas we can have your website firing on all cylinders in no time – and it won’t cost the world.
Here’s what we can do…
Never underestimate the power of content. People are hungry for information; that’s why they’re online browsing. Yet, too many sites simply do not have enough content. That’s like opening a shop and having near empty shelves.
If you aren’t giving your web visitors what they want you can be sure they’ll find it elsewhere, most likely at your competitor’s site. Remember, another website is only a mouse click away.
At Lucid, we can quickly and efficiently write fresh compelling copy for each section of your site. First, we’ll research your product category and industry, evaluate your current content and identify what works and what doesn’t.
If you think there isn’t much to write about, think again. There is in fact a lot to write about on any given topic. It just requires time and application.
And remember, the more content you have, the more keywords you can use and the better it is for search engine optimisation (SEO).
What’s more, having sufficient website content not only helps with SEO, but it also reinforces your identity as an expert on the topic. It helps to build your brand.
As we’ve said all along, keywords are critical for SEO. That’s why when writing content, we first identify keywords that people are using in their search queries, and ensure we include them in the copy – in a seamless and natural way.
We’ll also ensure the keywords are placed in strategic areas of your page; for example, in the title, Meta description and Meta keywords of each page, and also headings and subheadings in the body section of the page.
On the Internet, people tend to scan. Their eyes skim over the page and only begin to read once you’ve gained their attention. With this in mind, your webpages need to be written and designed to cater to this reading style.
There are many ways to improve the ‘scannability’ of a page but one of the key techniques is write using links rather than in the traditional linear fashion.
With judicious linking you can convey a lot of information without having large blocks of text and forcing your reader to continual scroll down the page.
Linking also makes the user experience more interactive and encourages the reader to explore other pages on your site. The more pages they visit, the longer they stay, the better it is all-around.
Some websites don’t make full use of linking. This is most evident on sites where content is copied from printed publications. If this is the case, we can rewrite these to improve its scannability – shortening sentences, paragraphs and incorporating links to new pages of connected information.
Here’s a saying worth noting. If you dress shabbily, people notice the clothes. If you dress impeccably, they notice the person.
The same applies with your web content. If you write well, your message will get thorough and you will enhance your credibility. On the other hand, if your copy has spelling errors and typos, poor punctuation, bad grammar and clumsy sentence structure, your readers will notice. What’s more, they’ll be distracted and your message will hit an impenetrable wall of resistance.
At Lucid, we can go through your copy in detail, ensuring all errors are rectified. We can also ensure you are consistent in your writing; for example, you are using the same terminology throughout.
Details count for a lot. People do notice. So it is up to you to ensure what you publish online is one hundred per cent accurate and reflects well on your company.
In a competitive dog-eat-dog world the architecture of your site is vital for two outcomes: usability and search engine optimisation.
Good architecture enhances user-experience as information can be efficiently and intuitively located via a seamless navigation system. Users can easily find their way around and get to what they want in no more than a couple of clicks. If your users are clicking more than twice, then chances are your navigation and architecture needs refining.
Having a user-friendly architecture also helps search engines identify keywords and determine the theme of your site and index its contents. This will give your site every chance of achieving higher search rankings.
We can evaluate your site and guide you on how to make it more user/SEO-friendly. Then, as the project manager, we can the work with your web designer to re-develop the overall structure.
Key areas we’ll focus on include:
