What is content and why is it important?
Think of a website like a book. Your home page and contact page is the front and back cover; But the actual pages, that’s the content.
A good book encourages a reader to keep reading. Good content encourages a visitor to keep scrolling, digesting and ultimately leads to a higher chance of a conversion, enquiry, download, subscription or whatever.
Unlike a book however, the internet is not static. Quite the opposite. This means that brands are frequently competing for a users attention through better and more optimised content, and ultimately more online visibility.
In this blog post, we’ll give our top tips for creating better content that will help you rank higher and reach a wider audience.
1. Original, targeted Content
We are not talking about the sexy photoshoots and promo videos we see as we scroll through our favourite social media channels, but the content that shows up when we google/Youtube/Bing things.
This is because the traffic back to your website is significantly higher from search engines vs social media. It all goes back to SEO. In order to understand SEO you must first understand the job of a search engine.
A search engine is designed to pair users with the MOST RELEVANT website to the users query.
2. Add value.
This is to ensure its users get the best experience and the most accurate match to their query. For businesses that means original, relevant and targeted content.
In other words, what does your audience engage well with. This means taking the time to really think about your audience. What’s important to them, what are the things they are looking for.
Don’t just mindlessly create content like everyone else. Make your content unique and personal to your brand.
This may mean getting help from professional content writers who help translate your unique selling points into value for your consumer.
Don’t be afraid to share your insights.
Sharing information, giving, tips, making unbiased reviews or giving away freebies are a great way of adding more value to your brand, products and is: 1. A great form of self promotion
2. Shows that you know what your talking about
3. Encourages more trust
4. Gets your name out there
5. Gets more traffic to your website or blog.
3. Focus On Creating Strong Headlines
According to copyblogger;
– 80% of people will read your headlines.
– But only 20% of those people will read the rest of your content!
Crazyegg have created a fairly in depth blog about how to construct engaging headlines which we highly recommend checking out. Strong headlines are crucial! They capture attention, and spark interest. Furthermore headlines, for H1s play a vital role in your SEO, so think about what your audience might be typing into search engines in order find out.
4. Make Your Content Actionable
So you have some great content, a video, blog, post, whatever it is.
Whats the goal of that content? Where are you trying to send your audience
Every bit of content you release should have a goal which can be tracked (i.e download, call now, or a link back to your main website/product or contact pages.)
If you fail to do this and are relying to users googling your brand after seeing your content, you could end up spending time, money and effort on loosing leads.
Make it easy for your audience and increase your ROI.
Noob guide to online marketing is a great example of actionable content and shows how any digital marketing effort should point back to your website or landing pages.
5. Provide Answers and solutions
Remember the ultimate aim of a search engine, to pair queries with the most relevant links.
Usually that’s an answer to a question, or solution to a problem. That could be in the form of information, a product or a service.
This ties back to strong headlines and SEO. ‘How to’s’ tend to rank very well due to the sheer search volume of these kinds of terms.
Think about your users and the issues or problems they encounter, and how your products or services can help. For example, if you sell lightbulbs, consider creating content for commonly searched terms such as how to change a lightbulb.
6. Be Accurate in Your Reporting and Sourcing of Information
This sort of goes without saying. Do your research, or have someone credible do it for you. Any statistic you state must be verified. Best practice is to link right to the statistic and original source. Accuracy encourages trust with readers.
Neil Patel speaks in detail about this and offers the following tips:
- Consider who you are linking too. Are they a trusted and authoritative source? Linking to other quality websites will earn more trust from your readers.
- Linking to more content can only help. The more you can back up and substantiate what you are writing about, the more trusted your content will become.
- Help the search engines out. Linking to other sources and content will help the search engines figure out what your content is about, and how it should be categorised.
7. Adding Images and Video content
There are many, MANY sites on the internet. And even more content. It’s common knowledge that google is the largest search engine on the planet, but did you know the second largest was youtube?
According to Hubspot, more video content is uploaded in one month than network television has produced in three decades! More research by Hubspot found that 54% of people want to see more video content from marketers.
Some more interesting stats
- 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool — up from 63% over the last year. (Hubspot)
- 6 out of 10 people would rather watch online videos than television. (Google)
- Mobile video consumption rises by 100% every year. (Insivia)
- By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic — 15 times higher than in 2017. (Cisco)
- 59% of executives say they would rather watch a video than read text. (Wordstream)
- Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text. (Insivia)
- 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video. (HubSpot)
- People are 1.5 times more likely to watch video on their mobile phones. (Facebook)
- 92% of users watching video on mobile will share it with others. (Wordstream)
- By 2020 there will be close to 1 million minutes of video crossing the internet per second. (Cisco)
8. Don’t waffle.
We all waffle. Less is often more. It’s challenging and takes work, but it makes a better and more targeted video, article, or design. Get to the point, because attention spans on the internet are very limited.
9. Consistency
Creating a reputation online, starting a blog, maintaining a website, managing social media channels and other digital marketing tactics is a commitment.
While you can write a couple of posts and then abandon the work, you won’t get many readers, or a wave of online sales every week.
Be consistent. Find topics central to your industry, or important to your user, then brach out. If you decide your’e going to blog, make sure you do it regularly. If you want to be more active on social media make sure you use a mix of mediums, and post regularly, always linking back to your website or landing page.
Many businesses attempt to absorb this responsibility internally and fail miserably. This is because they don’t have the time or skill set to commit to making these platforms viable lead generators.
The biggest brands in the world outsource to specialists – and you get what you pay for!
Additionally, search engines tend to reward sites that are regularly updated. One good way to do this is to blog, another is to constantly add examples of your work remembering to apply all of the points covered in this blog.
So there you have our top tips on how to get more leads by writing better content.
For more help on writing more valuable content get in touch with us today.
I love your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you create this website yourself or
did you hire someone to do it for you? Plz answer back as I’m looking
to create my own blog and would like to know where u got this
from. kudos
Hi, We created it in house. We would be happy to help you with you blog site, just email enquries@k-numerique.com