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<p>Building your online presence can be a tedious process for a business where one might get lost on where and what to start with.</p>
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<p>Recently, gaining popularity is the content-first approach where content is designed first and the design is considered later. This idea entails that the content should act like the cornerstone of your website and all other elements of the website should revolve around it.</p>
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<p>Content is defined as the best way to present your information to your target audience, creating customer interaction and engagement, while the design is considered to be a decoration of the website; its layout, and aesthetics. Since decoration could be evolving and ever-changing, on the other hand, content doesn’t require frequent changes, so it would be reasonable to start off with the content of the webpage than its design.</p>
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<h3>Form Follows Function</h3>
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<p>Content first approach is not a novel concept, in fact, it’s a relatively old one followed in various industries.</p>
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<p>Usually, a script is finalized before filmmakers start working on visuals and cinematography, the building purpose is determined before architects start drawing blueprints, and a book’s content is finalized before its page layout is designed. Each case shows content is created first to ensure consistency and harmony in design.</p>
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<p>When it comes to content in web development, it means collecting and organizing actual real-time content before one gets the ball rolling on any digital media, creating a website, or devising marketing sales funnel.</p>
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<h3>Content Creates Differentiation</h3>
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<p>As content drives most of the engagement on your website, it could also be used to differentiate your product from the competition. With ever-increasing competition in the digital world and short attention span of prospects, businesses should stand out from their competitors to survive in the market.</p>
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<p>If the content is planned out first, then it can prove to be beneficial for website’s blueprint development too. Since content defines the website’s purpose, tone, and style it gives a clear direction to businesses in the early stage of development, helping them to make a precise blueprint of the website.</p>
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<h3>Content helps you Focus</h3>
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<p>In content-first approach, design is devised according to the content formulated, but what happens, in a scenario, when it’s the other way round? The design followed by content?</p>
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<p>In such a case, the situation might lead to risk of a business getting trapped in endless options. As established earlier, designs are constantly progressing with new trends which means a business might finalize their theme of website on what looks best rather than on the target audience. Some might even change the design halfway through the process delaying the whole process.</p>
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<p>There is nothing wrong with creating a spellbinding website but fitting the content according to only the aesthetics of the website can lead to compromising quality and structure. <a href="#_msocom_2">[SK2]</a> </p>
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<h3>Starting with the ‘How’ part</h3>
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<p>Once the marketer understands the importance of using content-first approach, it’s time to deal with how one can work on the creation of content. The following highlights some of the best practices of the industry to get you started with content development. Even if any business already has a web presence, they can use this as a checklist to optimize the content <a href="#_msocom_2">[SK2]</a> on their website. </p>
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<h5>Know thy Customer</h5>
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<p>Content is created to engage with your desired audience so even before its development, a business should indulge in knowing its customers. Customers would only engage with your content if it is relatable and relevant to them. Relevancy can be achieved by creating content that can fulfill customer needs with the use of right tone and language. Thus, a research would help a business get customer insights which can be a source of creating appealing content.</p>
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<p>Usually, businesses conduct surveys to study their customers’ interests, behaviors, and motivations. This activity is repeated every once in a while, so businesses can stay up to date with their customers. By understanding customer mindset, a brand’s appeal could be effectively communicated to the target audience.</p>
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<h5>Researching Relevant keywords</h5>
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<p>The use of right keywords in content can determine your position in search result page. Whether you are redeveloping the website or creating one from scratch, one must ensure to abide by SEO rules when the content is created.</p>
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<p>The key here is to start with properly researching for keywords which are relevant to your industry then gather a list of search terms used locally or globally by your target audience. Utilize the ones with high search volume and low competition.</p>
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<p>In competitive industries, businesses usually go for long tail keywords. Since these words are more specific they have low competition and assist you in connecting with your target audience in a conversational tone to appeal to voice searches. Since voice searches have increasingly been popular consisting of <a href="https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/voice-search-statistics/">20% of searches on Google App.</a>, businesses have started using conversational tone in their content to be ranked higher on SEO. The only drawback of long tail keywords is that it has low search volume.</p>
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<h5>Getting Right Content Ready First</h5>
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<p>Content-first approach doesn’t mean all the webpage content should be ready and available before the designing stage has started. It simply means getting the right content ready first. It is crucial to identify which content should be developed first and which one can follow later even after designing.</p>
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<p>Generally following pages are finalized before designing could start:</p>
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<ul><li>Homepage</li><li>About Us</li><li>Services Page</li><li>Main Blog Page</li><li>Contact Page</li></ul>
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<h5>Using High Quality Images</h5>
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<p>Images can prove to be a make-or-break factor in purchase decisions as the quality of images determines brand appeal. For example, low quality can ruin brand image and high quality can slow down its loading time making customers scroll away. Businesses should ensure images should be placed with right format at optimum quality to attract customers.</p>
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<p>Also, images are preferred rather than long text passages so customers can visualize and connect with your brand identity. Therefore, increasing your web traffic and boosting your SEO. So, businesses must inject images and videos at different areas to keep customers interested in the content.</p>
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<h5>Structuring your Content</h5>
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<p>Content has to be not only collected but also organized and structured properly. Utilizing headings and subheadings along with paragraphing same ideas together will help readers understand your main points.</p>
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<h5>Sticking to Timelines</h5>
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<p>It’s essential for a company to spend their time wisely on each element of the website. Therefore, businesses should start by creating a timeline by working backward from the date of launch to present, allocating enough time to each process of website development.</p>
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<p>Business should organize their timeline according to their budget and resources. Many organizations use Gantt Chart for projects which visualizes the time planned for each activity, helping people keep track of timelines.</p>
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<h5>Always Double-Check</h5>
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<p>Proof Reading is one of the major activities of content creation where every blunder is corrected to make sure content is flowing smoothly without any typographical, spelling, or grammatical errors. Even the smallest mistake in content can create a bad impression for the brand, which can lead to brand losing its customers online.</p>
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<h5>Monitoring after Launch</h5>
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<p>Even though content-first approach focuses on creating content before design but that does not mean content is not monitored after the launch. By defining the objective of the content, its key performance indicators (KPI) should be set which can measure how well the content is performing. These KPIs can be compared and benchmarked with competition to track the effectiveness of content.</p>
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<p>If the content is underperforming it means it needs to be updated and revised. Often businesses start with trial and error method where they see which content is working for them by monitoring its KPIs. Consequently, topics which yields the best result can be utilized more often.</p>
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<p>Overall designing a website is challenging and demanding but one can always progress wisely by strategically planning its activities with timelines. Also, content-first approach makes it less time-consuming as design is followed after the content so designers make sure design is fitted according to the content.</p>
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