Content is king once again. Just ask any buyer or seller where they’ve placed their bets for post-cookie targeting and contextual is top of mind.
That’s why for publishers, building a strong content taxonomy revolves around quality content and a frictionless user experience. And for advertisers, it’s really not that much different, especially if they want consumers to land on relevant pages once they’ve clicked on one of their ads over on a publisher’s site.
That’s why it’s really important to weed out issues with old and irrelevant content, broken links, outdated branding, readability, and anything else stopping visitors dead in their tracks. And let’s not forget about Google’s algorithm updates that constantly shift rankings. You want to make sure people can easily search and find the content that’s important to them.
So, why not perform content quality assurance and SEO checks from the start to reduce any worries about the disconnect between your content and conversions?
We chatted with Kevin Bobowski, Chief Marketing Officer, Siteimprove — a SAAS company that creates cloud-based tools and services for website governance and optimization — about ways in which both marketers and publishers can optimize their content for accessibility, improved user experience, and boosted performance.
Yakira Young: July is Disability Pride Month. Can you elaborate on Siteimprove’s involvement at the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities? Also, Siteimprove has been driving conversations around digital inclusivity; how so, and why is this important?
Kevin Bobowski: Siteimprove is a pioneer and leader in digital accessibility, with inclusivity as part of our platform for over a decade. Our mission is to allow everyone to participate in the digital economy, and we are continuously strengthening this commitment across our offerings and company culture.
As a business, we empower marketing teams to optimize content for specific outcomes — accessibility, user experience, expanded reach, and marketing performance. As a company, we are a truly inclusive workplace, valuing the unique perspectives and skills of those with different abilities. Our accessibility Pledge ensures that the solutions are effective, efficient, engaging, error-tolerant, and easy to learn for users of all abilities.
Recently, we were honored to have our Sustainability Report 2021 in the United Nations Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative. We had a leadership role in the “Building Capacity to Implement Accessibility Policies” event at the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
YY: What are the main benefits for marketers and publishers who use your platform?
KB: Since 2003, Siteimprove has been empowering marketing and content teams to optimize for accessibility, user experience, and marketing performance so they can expand their brand’s reach, exceed their marketing goals, and work towards a future with purpose. A seamless, engaging UX drives revenue and increases brand loyalty.
Siteimprove offers an all-in-one solution, becoming a true technology partner with the over 7,000 companies we have worked with. Our solutions have proven to deliver a 275% ROI, reduced the average time spent on error detection and content monitoring by 90%, and bolstered traffic significantly through data-driven SEO.
We recently partnered with Merck during a major website relaunch. The company’s ambitious objective was to merge three different websites with over 10,000 pages into one unified estate to strengthen its brand and create one voice. Since the relaunch, with the power of the Siteimprove platform, the Merck team could quadruple traffic and gain deep data-driven insights to inform digital marketing efforts.
YY: What are the processes for marketers and publishers who use the platform?
KB: The connection between Accessibility and SEO is more important than ever before. Building our content with this in mind will enable marketers to capitalize on new content faster with better rankings, more organic traffic, and improved discoverability.
Siteimprove informs marketers about important on-page aspects of both Accessibility and SEO simultaneously to enable them to make better decisions earlier in the content creation process.
Siteimprove’s pre-publish checks enable marketing teams with insights that speed up the content creation process and foster collaboration between multiple writers. Our pre-publish check grants insights into on-page issues. Resulting in better-performing content from the get-go.
YY: What role does Google’s web vitals play in your process?
KB: Siteimprove offers multiple ways of improving important factors from Google’s web vitals, such as a complete performance area in Siteimprove’s Content Experience that provides a broad range of insights measuring loading performance, visual stability, and load and interactivity.
Our SEO Pre-Publish checks provide 20+ SEO-relevant assessments to ensure a better content and page experience; some are developed explicitly with Google’s web vitals in mind.
Optimized content is becoming even more critical, so offering engaging and high-quality content builds credibility and loyalty with users.
YY: In June, you launched a new solution that ensures error-free content, fully optimized for SEO and accessibility before content is even published. What is the tool, and how does it work?
KB: Our latest solution, Siteimprove Prepublish, allows marketers to deliver error-free, on-brand experiences. Prepublish is available in all the leading DXP’s including Optimizely, Sitecore, Adobe, and others. We have developed innovative solutions such as Accessibility NextGen, Accessibility Checker, and Color-Contrast Checker to complement manual testing to ensure that a user’s first impression is positive. Audiences interact with flawless content the first time, creating a positive user experience.
This solution provides publishers with the data and analytics needed to ensure all website content is error-free, fully optimized for SEO and accessibility, compliant, and aligned with brand standards. Prepublish boosts the quality and performance of a brand’s website content before it even goes live, improving workflows and increasing productivity with measurable time and cost savings.
Optimized content is becoming even more critical, so offering engaging and high-quality content builds credibility and loyalty with users.