Content and media on a company website — where to start and in what order

Content on a company website looks like one decision and is four. A business that wants to "do something about content" usually has exactly one of the four problems below — and each is solved differently, costs differently and pays off on a different timescale.

This section is arranged as those four situations, not as a list of topics. Below is each one: how to recognise it, who it applies to, and where we cover it in detail. None of them is explained here from the beginning — that is what the texts we link to are for.

One thing worth saying at the outset about what this section does not contain: promises without a number. Each of the four texts rests on a measurement — someone else's where a credible one exists, and our own where it does not. Several of our own numbers are not flattering and they stayed in anyway, because without them the advice would be worth no more than anyone else's.

We do not know what to publish, or whether it does anything

The most common starting point and the most often misdiagnosed. Symptoms: texts appear irregularly or not at all, nobody can say what the last article changed, and the conversation ends with an agreement that "we should publish more often".

The problem is almost never the cadence. In our own search data, 86% of published articles do not appear for any query at all — a result that publishing more does not improve, it deepens. What decides is the choice of questions: whether anyone types what you are writing about, and whether the text contains anything that could not be generated from the title alone.

That text also answers the questions that follow: who should write (in-house, agency or freelancer, and what it depends on), how many hours a post really takes, and how to tell when to stop.

You will recognise this when the word "consistency" comes up in the conversation about content, and no specific phrase does, nor does the name of a client whose story could be told.

→ Content marketing — what actually happens to content after you publish it

We write, and nobody sees us

This looks like the same problem and is not. Here the texts exist, they are sensible, somebody publishes them regularly — and in search results they lose, or they appear for queries nobody asks.

This area is mined with rules everyone repeats and Google's own documentation contradicts: there is no sixty-character limit on a title, Google defines keyword density nowhere, and to the question of how to mark a page for the featured snippet above the results it answers in two words — "You can't". It is worth knowing which of those rules are documented and which are folklore before you pay for work done under them.

Separately: what happens to a text when the search engine answers instead of linking. That change is recent and measurable, and it hits definitional posts hardest — which is to say the most common kind.

You will recognise this when Search Console shows impressions and almost no clicks, or when the queries carrying you read nothing like what you set out to write about.

→ SEO copywriting — four rules Google contradicts in its own words

We need images and do not know where to get them legally

The question sounds aesthetic and is legal. A "free" image is under copyright — what is free is the licence, the permission for a particular use. The difference surfaces exactly when you do something the licence does not cover, and two prohibitions are broken unknowingly and routinely: implying that the person in the photograph endorses your product, and using a graphic as a trademark.

The other half is practical: where a stock image is fine and where it costs you credibility. The rule is one — stock is an illustration, your own photograph is evidence — and wherever you expect trust, evidence is what is required.

You will recognise this when the "About us" page carries a photograph of a team nobody in the company recognises, or when nobody can say where the header graphic came from and under what licence.

→ Image copyright — where to get pictures legally and when you need your own

We are wondering whether to start a blog

A blog is sold as something you simply have. It is an investment decision: it costs hours you cannot get back, and it works out in some cases. In an annual survey of over a thousand content marketers, 13.9% say their blog delivers strong results — the lowest figure in the history of that survey.

What decides is four conditions that must hold at the same time: demand in search, hours in somebody's calendar, knowledge the internet does not already have, and a path from the article to an enquiry. Three out of four is not enough. That text also carries the exit criteria — how to tell it will not work before a year has gone.

You will recognise this when the conversation opens with "our competitor has a blog", or when the site already has a section with three posts, the last of them two years old.

→ Business blog — when it pays and when it is a cost with no return

In what order

If only one thing can be done this quarter:

• You do not know what to write about → start with choosing topics. It is the one step whose omission invalidates every later one: a text answering a question nobody asks cannot be rescued by a title, an image or promotion.
• You have texts and no visibility → the craft of writing for search. The effect takes months, but the first decisions are free and take an afternoon.
• You have traffic and no images, or somebody else's → the fastest of the four fixes and the only one that works the moment the files are uploaded. Worth doing alongside any of the others.
• You are considering a blog → check the four conditions before the first post, not a year later. It takes fifteen minutes and saves quarters.
• You do not know which situation is yours → that is an answer in itself: the measurement is missing. Open Search Console and check how many of your pages appear at all.

The order on the chart above is not editorial. It follows demand measured on this market — from several thousand searches a month down to two hundred — and how quickly each of these things pays off. Topic selection comes first because it conditions the rest; the blog comes last because it is the decision easiest to postpone without loss.

One note that applies to all four: none of these things sells on its own. Content brings a person to the page where the decision is made — and if an article offers no way through to the offer and no way to leave contact details, you are measuring traffic, not sales.

What this section does not cover

• Visibility in search from the technical side — indexing, speed, links: website positioning.
• What to do with traffic once you have it — conversion rate.
• Social profiles and what they will never replace — social media and the company website.
• The mailing list and sending to it — email marketing.
• Local visibility and reviews — the Google Business Profile.
• What to build the site and the blog on — website building tools.