We’re all familiar with the adage “Content is King,” but most people don’t understand exactly what it means.
The content you create for your website is what’s going to attract visitors to your company—but not just any text will do. You need well-organized and compelling content that fits the right audience, the period of publication and the location you’re targeting—and that will be identified by search engines.
So how do you create this high-level content and use it to drive traffic to your site? Here are some ideas:
Create a unique headline to grab the reader’s attention
Most people who visit your site will spend less than a minute scrolling through to see what your site is all about, so the main goal of writing an attention-grabbing headline is to capture the reader’s interest immediately. If you don’t grab them with a good first impression, they will move on to the next site. Also, most people share content mainly because of the headline.
So, make sure your headline is unique, specific and useful, provides enough information to be helpful to the reader, and compels them to continue reading.
Focus on creating longer posts
We are living in an era where competition is stiff and you need to differentiate yourself to stand out from the crowd. If you run an online business, one way to do this is to create longer posts. If you cannot write, hire writers to do the job.
Recent research from Capsicum Mediaworks showed that longer articles ranked higher on Google. In fact, further research shows that the average word count that ranked in top 10 results on Google is over 2,000 words.
This shows that the longer the content, the higher the chance of getting more traffic. But it has to be focused and substantial—not fluffy filler.
Use visual content
It’s okay to have high-quality content without any visuals or multimedia, but visuals outperform text with regard to social media shares, attracting inbound links, engagement, and time spent on a page. Research shows that about 40 percent of people are likely to respond better to visual content, compared to plain text.
To gain a competitive edge in your industry, supplement your content with images, infographics, videos or other media.
Write content for your audience persona
There is a common mindset that you should be creating quality posts for a broad audience. But trying to appeal to everyone will only result to appealing to no one.
Create an audience persona to help you create relevant and detailed content. Analyze your existing customers, find out their preferences—what they like, and what they dislike. Then create content based on these factors, and let them interact often. Use the power of social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to do your research and find potential prospects.
The bottom line is to create content that connects with your audience to get them to visit your page every time you post a new article.
Provide a solution for a problem
Keep in mind that your content is meant to offer answers to issues and concerns the reader may be facing.
You can do this by teaching your readers how to do things, which will make your content actionable. Be sure to include some examples of your research and results to beef up your rationale. And use visuals such as videos and screenshots to illustrate your lessons. As mentioned earlier, your readers will learn faster by seeing the actual steps in action. Visuals guide the reader to take action and perform the task.
Lastly, provide some additional resources since you will not have all the time to cover everything. Let your readers know where to go if they want to read further, and provide links to the content.
If you’re posting just to rank on Google, without prioritizing offering real value to your readers, it’s time to re-evaluate your content strategy. For PR firms, this is a great opportunity to master the tricks of content writing. It’s time to turn up the quality!
