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A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you still need the words to get the job done. That’s what I found out when I read an article written by Robert Gorell recently about updating a website that sells to a niche audience. If you think you can’t improve the way your site sells its goods to your customers, keep reading.
I love reading this kind of stuff, though I know I’d hate to be in this situation myself. I like to think of myself as ready, willing, and able to write about almost anything (after doing the appropriate research, of course), but I have to admit the situation Gorell wrote about drew me up short. What exactly can you say about 100-ton drill rigs?
A reader had written to the Future Now website with just that quandary. She was supposed to write copy that would do well in the search engines, and she was stuck. The client sells new and used construction equipment at live auctions. You have to trust that your client knows their business better than you do. Presumably, that includes the nature of their market – and that’s where part of the problem sat.
The client was convinced that “all they need to do is show pictures of the massive, earth-moving objects, list some basic technical specs, and that’s all their audience needs to know before buying one of these things at a live auction.” That’s what they told their new copy writer, anyway. No wonder she felt stuck.
If you’ve ever engaged with a client who does business-to-business sales, you may have encountered the very same attitude: our products are pretty standard, our customers know what they want when they come to our site, so there’s not a lot to say; we just show them what we have and they buy what they need. Companies that sell plumbing supplies, pool maintenance supplies, hardware, or similar items online may have this attitude, and their web sites reflect it. Such clients, Gorell pointed out, make some very dangerous assumptions. They may know their market, but that doesn’t mean they know the best way to reach it. That’s where SEO comes in. In the next section, I’m going to take a look at some of those assumptions.
Next: Unpacking Assumptions >>
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