A search engine uses complex algorithms to detect content and decide where it fits within the billions of web pages it has in its index.
The words you choose are important. They signal the intent of your web pages. It is no different to a conversation between two humans. You listen to the other person’s words, their tone and patterns in their speech in order to decipher what the other person is trying to say to you.
A young child has low communications skills, while a university English professor has very sophisticated skills. The search engines sit somewhere in the middle; they are, after all, a combination of coding and machine learning. They are not smarter than a human, although when it comes to sorting information at this level, it would require a nation of people to achieve what the Google bots do!
Example
Let’s use the example of Boylen to see how this works. Clearly one of the services we offer is “web design Adelaide”. That is known as a keyword.
We want the indexing bots – or spiders – to understand that we offer this service.
One line on a page isn’t enough. Think of it this way. If you blurt out a solitary sentence to a visitor to your store or place of business, they will think it is rude. They will also fail to achieve anything but the shallowest of comprehension.
If you are going to sell yourself, you need to provide more information. Some people prefer to think of it as “data”.
In our example, we let people know that we have an Adelaide website designer that can meet their needs. This person – a team, actually – is professionally trained in their specialist field and they are incredibly creative.
Whether you are looking for a new logo or some initial proofs for a potential landing page, the people we have to help you are website creators - and Adelaide is their location, which is important. Local Search is part of the core of Google because people are usually looking for a service provider in their close geographic area.
Can you see what we’re doing here? It’s semantic variations on a theme. Another variation would be “Web design Adelaide”. It is such a small change but you need to understand that you are writing not for yourself, but for the legions of people who might potentially be interested in doing business with you.
The way a lawyer searches is different to the way the head of marketing enters their lookup queries, and the communications specialist in a high school will think – and type – differently to those two. A B2B search is different to B2C and so on.
It can be daunting trying to figure out how to construct content with the actual phrases that people are using in the real world. That’s why there are many tools you can use to find out – on a scientific basis – the answer to this, rather than relying on instinct.
Prioritise to Match Intent
So back to the Boylen case in question, do we opt for a term such as “Web development Adelaide” or “Adelaide web development”? Great question, we’re glad you asked
The answer lies in the data, in the statistics that are gathered by the likes of Google AdWords and a host of other commercial providers.
What we can tell you is that you should generally put your most important word first. The bots can tell where you are located, so is that more important than the service itself? Probably not.
Therefore, frame your wording in such as way that the critical aspects come first. This applies to your entire content strategy. Think of it as a pyramid. The most important, singularly critical thing – it might be “website design Adelaide” – is the point of the pyramid.
As you go down, there’s increasingly more space and scope to add more details. If you develop your copy in this manner, a person who stops reading after one line will still have a rudimentary idea of what it is that you do.
That, too, is essential because most people don’t read past the headline on your web pages. It’s like that old joke: “What’s the best place to hide a dead body?” The answer: “On page two of Google because nobody every goes there.”
In reality, not many people read all the way through your text unless they are really interested.
Satisfy User Intent
That last point is all about “intent”. Why has a person visited your web page? Clearly they are trying to satisfy a need. That may be information – such as finding out ‘who is Adelaide’s best web designer’ – or it may be a product they want to supercharge their broadband, satisfy their hunger or play an online game.
So they search and if there is a local option, that gets a better showing, at least in the maps category which sits near the top of the page. That’s great! That’s where you want to be. So being (a) an Adelaide website and (b) offering well written and carefully structured content, as well as (c) good reviews, will put you in contention to be listed with one or two others. (Those are your competitors. If you are not listed, have a look at what they are doing. Or ask a professional to explain what you need to do to bridge the gap. That’s one of the things we can help you with.)
In our case study, Adelaide websites have a geographic advantage over those that exist in, say New York, which are unlikely to be helpful for someone in urgent need of a dental practice or the best education websites.
Design A Blog For Your Business
Your blog is another important element in marketing your organisation, whether it is a small business, a corporation or a non-profit. Digital marketing agencies in Adelaide – notice we put that geographic identifier at the end of the phrase – will probably have a broad ranging blog. It will contain topics such as a graphic designers blog, a subcategory or a standalone blog on web design, a general section etc.
Why would you do this? Why would you have a creative blog? The answer is that it’s a way to provide ongoing information in an area of your website where people expect to be able to find new and relevant advice that suits the sector you operate in.
What you say on your services page may not change from year to year. Likewise, your About Us page might stay the same because you have a successful model and you are busy satisfying your clients, your patients, customers … whatever is the appropriate term for your target audience.
This is evergreen content. To be continually changing it would not be authentic. Once you’ve perfected it, why would you change it just for the sake of change? It would actually devalue the user experience.
So that’s why we have a blog that serves the Adelaide web development community – specifically, those who are seeking the service of an Adelaide web designer or a graphic designer in Adelaide.
It is the place our clients – and other curious visitors – can come back to stay up with trends, challenges, changes to CMS upgrades, website security alerts, clever design hacks, discussion about creative elements such as fonts and colour, as well as technical matters such as page speed and how your code or image files might be hindering load times.
It’s market intelligence and also instructional but it can be much more than that.
Be open to new ideas. Look at what other people are doing.
You may be one of the many companies in South Australia that is struggling with a skills shortage. You can use you blog to show potential employees what sort of culture you have. Do you socialise together? Support charities? Win awards for the best website design in Adelaide?
In our case, a designers blog allows us to communicate with our key demographic, which is people who need to market themselves in both digital and traditional formats. It lets people judge what we say and whether we demonstrate thought leadership.
They can then jump across to our Portoflio section to judge us on the quality of our work. This section has many names, depending on your industry. However, the key thing about a projects page is that it fulfils the need of visitors, which is to judge you not on what you say but on what you have done.
The websites Adelaide companies will be shown in search results are often Adelaide companies. Perfect! If you keep updating your portfolio and your blog pages, you are keeping your site fresh.
If you don’t do this – or if you start and then stop – it can be worse than not having anything at all. This is because people tend to have a “recency bias”. If your projects are all several years old, they may decide you haven’t done anything worthwhile for ages and are on the way down.
If your articles or blogs are sporadic, it reflects on your operational discipline. It also projects an image of a company that doesn’t care.
And as we have already said, it’s not going to do you any favours when you are being judged by the likes of Bing, Yahoo and Google.
Summary
So in conclusion, what are the key points?
The main message is that semantics are your friend. Use a tool that shows you what word combinations are the favoured terms used by your audiences and then get to work to produce prose that covers all bases.
Thank you for reading to the end. Clearly you can see what we are doing with this article. If you would like us to help you with a similar strategy, we have the professional staff to deliver.
Unlike others, we never outsource this overseas. It’s important that your page vocabulary is clearly written by someone with English as their first language and who resides in Australia. Why? Because people can see through outsourced content. Nuances and cultural norms can’t be taught and must be learned through life experience.
Another promise is that we won’t spin up words using AI technology. We’ve tested a swag of them and while it’s impressive what the best of them can do, they still fail to provide depth. They are great for a paragraph or two but even those are really just slightly altered copies of what already exists on other websites (probably your rivals).
Any AI text of a decent length will probably fail the credibility test. One test we ran gave us a result that kept referring to a woman aas “he”.
So that’s why our writers are humans. They live in South Australia. Just like an Adelaide web page designer, our writers you can sit down with you or join you on a tour of your business. In that way, they provide you with the headlines, words, captions and product descriptions that will bring your offering to life.
If you would like to talk, we would too. We're passionate about all things digital and we don't employ sales staff. You'll talk to a project manager, an Adelaide web creative, SEO expert or someone else who will actually be hands-on with your project.
Are you an Adelaide business looking to get ahead? Talk to a website specialist or graphic designer.
