Let’s face it, folks – content marketing is here to stay. And if you do not pull up socks and gear up for the coming years riding the wave of this new form of digital marketing, be prepared to be entirely washed out by the stiff competition you face.
No matter which industry your brand or business belongs to, you should be looking for ways to optimise your digital presence to make the most of the time that your clients and customers spend on the Internet. That – in this fast-paced digital era – is a considerable time of the day indeed. Since your prospective clients are online looking for solutions to their problems that you (and your industry competitors, mind you) can offer, why not make the best of that factor and create content so appealing that it makes the readers stay on your site for longer, thus fetching you a higher rank in the search engines?
Nowadays, the mechanic round the corner also has his own website with details about the services that he provides and the many ways that people with vehicle troubles can reach him. So you can well imagine the scope that digital marketing presents for your business and the need to have a proper SEO strategy in place that works towards better and more relatable content that results in better conversion rates for your website, thus making the search engines happy and helping you take your business to better heights.
How to make your content stand out from the rest
What happens when you marry awesome SEO strategies to smart penmanship of your content folks? A spellbinding combination of content that works on the Internet for your target audience is what you get. There are plenty of ways to do that, but first, you need to wrap your head around the fact that you do need good content for your SEO strategy to work and an effective SEO strategy to help optimise that content, so it becomes ‘great’ instead of ‘good’.
Here are 8 sure-fire techniques to improve the quality of your content to make it more informative and SEO-friendly.
1. Recall your objectives
If you are aiming to refurbish the way content was previously published on your website, then you must recall your objectives. If possible, get your entire SEO and content team together to revise the primary objectives of the business once more. It is essential to understand that without proper knowledge of what your company wants to achieve and why, there is no way that you can find ways to make your content so engaging that it results in great conversion rates.
2. Know your audience
Know whom you are writing for. Try to get into their shoes. Think of the many problems in their lives that keep them awake at night and devise your content around those factors that you uncover about them.
The best kind of content online is relatable content that makes your audience exclaim, “Oh, you too!”, resulting in more time spent on your webpage and click-through-rates that shoot through the roof as well as getting you a higher rank (factoring in other things as well) on the search engines.
3. Keep it simple
Your blog or podcast is not where you should ideally highlight your penmanship. While being creative is imperative to having engaging content, try not to go overboard with the use of your vast vocabulary.
You should ideally be aiming for short and simple sentences that get your point across to readers. Studies reveal that simple and lucid language scores better in readability tests. Those are thus what you should ideally be aiming for. Shorter sentences and a simple writing style keep readers occupied and interested. Keeping it short and sweet is thus the need of the hour.
4. Brainstorm for inspiration
Conduct regular brainstorming sessions for inspiration and ideas. It is best to aim for content that is ‘evergreen’ which has a better chance of standing the test of time for your website. While seasonal organic shake recipes may be relevant for the summers for your lifestyle blog, you may want to look into more long-lasting options for new content ideas. For example, you can always put together a list of awe-inspiring role models for fitness or a list of motivational quotes that never go out of style for your lifestyle blog.
5. Lists work wonders
Presenting your content in a list form is appealing to readers, studies reveal. Try mixing up different types of content such as infographics and blogs in forms of lists and see them work wonders.
The innate human attraction to counting up or down will work in your favour once you start publishing content presented as lists of “Awesome Things to Try” or “Spectacular Beaches You MUST visit” and the like. Since scrolling through a list takes much longer than reading a paragraph-by-paragraph post, this is one of the cleverest ways that you can keep your readers hooked to your content.
6. Conduct regular reviews
At times, you must also review the response that you are getting from the new forms of content that you are trying out. Conduct regular reviews about the effect of the content on your readers. This is going to help you strategise the plan for SEO more effectively.
Reviews are great for pausing to reflect on the many manifestations of your content on your readers. This will help you devise newer ways to get them drawn to your content. During these reviews, it is essential for you to brush up on your writing skills as well. No, this does not mean you need a grammar or punctuation tutorial. Rather, look for ways that you can create compelling content in keeping with the latest content marketing trends.
7. Bring in recycling
Repurposing old content is also a brilliant way of honing your content to fit SEO needs. Do you have a long blog that can be chunked up into mini-infographics? Do you have a series of short blogs that you can club to make an e-book? Explore all of these options to create new forms of content from old ones that were popular among your readers. This will help you hone your writing skills by presenting old content repurposed to suit the needs of the moment.
8. All hail white space
Finally, one of the best tricks to get your readers hooked to your content is to allow a lot of white space in your writing. Chop longer paragraphs within your content into two or more chunks to allow white space in between. Having white space for your content is soothing for the eyes of readers who are used to staring at their laptop or phone screens for a long amount of time.
Get your SEO numbers soaring with the help of these tips to revamp your content for better conversion rates. Once you have a proper plan for refurbishing your content in place, all you need to do is to follow these tips while composing content.
