Make no bones about it—Google wants your website to have great content. You don’t need to write in dense language that sounds as if you’re composing an encyclopedia; but you do want to attempt to achieve that same effect. In the past, people reached for the closest encyclopedia to get a definitive answer for their question. Now, people do the same online.  Whether you have an HVAC business, a power company, or sell organic crèmes and supplements, you want to write content that provides the best answers to pressing target audience questions.

Jay Baer, a social and content marketing thought leader, agrees. Driving this point home, he says, “Google wants you to figure out what content to make not by obsessing over keywords and data reports, but to answer the questions that you can genuinely answer well.”

Fortunately, this is easier to do than you might think at the SMB level.

How to Do It

When we use the term “SMB,” we mean the type of business that operates at a very local level. As an SMB yourself, you probably have a few hundred thousand in annual revenues and maybe even in the low $1 million range.

The thing about content at this level is that even though Google swears up and down you need it—and everyone knows it—almost no SMBs do it. Thus, those that do produce content rise to the top as thought leaders in their niche.

Most SMBs are simply not educated on the value of authoritative content or perhaps exhaust their digital marketing budget on other services first. Or perhaps they do it all wrong.

If you’ve searched HVAC-related topics (or anything DIY for that matter), you’ve probably seen a series of posts that look something like this:

• How to Hire a Dallas HVAC Contractor
• What Services Should your Dallas HVAC Contractor Provide?
• Is It Time to Hire a Dallas HVAC Contractor?

Pretty clear what the keywords are here, isn’t it? While it’s not bad to write blog articles with these titles, the problem occurs when these are your only titles. When you happen to read these posts, you’ll see they often contain awkward language and obvious information everyone knows anyway.

The point of a blog is to serve as the most useful online resource regarding a specific subject. So, when you write a post about five things you need to do to prepare your A/C for the upcoming cooling season, make sure these are five REALLY in-depth tips searchers can’t find anywhere else. You can also craft a 5-8-page report discussing how to prep your home for maximum summer cooling efficiency.

The point is to be consistent and authoritative in your writing. Create four to six blog posts per month and a special report two to four times per year.  Since you’re one of few companies to do anything of the sort, you’ll become a “go-to” resource within your category. And when customers are ready to actually buy, guess who will win their business?

This is how content works. Get your keywords in there too to drive more traffic from search engines. Before you know it, you’ll be well on your way to content success.