How to Create Content People Search For

Content creation is one of if not the best method to gain organic traffic or any type of traffic in general. This is because people will end up getting something back from reading your content which will have made it a good use of their time, because the last thing you want someone to think after looking at your content was that was a waste of time.

A common method to gain organic traffic is to produce high quality blog posts. There is a problem with this method. It doesn’t matter how exciting or knowledgeable your article is, if your target customers aren’t searching for it right now, you are going to lose the organic search game.

To achieve content marketing success, you don’t need to be in an exciting industry, or even have amazing writing skills. Content marketing depends on you researching the current search engine query trends (using a process known as content ideation) and writing content based on that.

Content ideation

What is it? Simply put, ‘content ideation’ is the process of finding relevant topics for content creation and deciding which ones would resonate with your brand’s target audience.

To match your content with what people are searching for, you will need to carry out some research into current trends online, on social media. You will need the right tools to do this research well.

• Keyword research: Google Ads Keyword Planner, Bing Keyword Research tool, AnswerThePublic.com, and Ubersuggest.io. Out of all of those keyword tools i prefer to use answer the public as it shows you a large variety of keywords and phrases that the public use when searching. Just remember you don’t have to only use 1 tool, it is better to use multiple so you can get much better answers.
• Look at what your competitors are doing after all, your competitors are people who are a similar company to you, which is the reason why they are a competitor.
• Ask your staff what questions they regularly receive.
• Identify what customers are concerned about using company studies and survey data.
• If you have comments on your blog, look through any questions they may be asking.

Content marketing creation do’s and don’ts to help organic traffic

Once you have found a query that people are searching for, there are a few more tips you need to follow to avoid being penalised by search engines.

• Don’t miss relevant keywords in your headline that relate to the content.
• If your headline is too witty or obscure so it doesn’t inform people or search engines what your content is about.
• It’s not all about self-promotion. These blog posts are never going to be seen by people who aren’t familiar with your products or service and not actively searching for them.
• Keep your headline to 65 characters or less.
• Add a descriptive bracket to your headline. For example: [infographic]
• Headlines including the word “photo[s]” performed 37% better.
• Use the word “who”. Studies have shown headlines containing the word ‘who’ achieve a 22% higher click-through rate.
• Solve problems. Create “how to’ blog posts as many searchers enter how to queries on search engines.
• Make your content easy to read by turning it into a list. For example: The 10 best gadgets of 2019.
• Answer a question. Searchers often type a question as their query on search engines so take advantage of this.

Promote your content

If you want to ignore the advice above and write a blog about anything you like, you can. However, it will cost you financially. Your organic reach will be low and you will need a large budget to promote your content which in turn will affect organic traffic.

Paid promotion can be effective if done correctly, but it does require a lot of planning. You will need to determine your budget, and where to promote your content. Get it wrong and you will be spending money for irrelevant traffic to your site. Promote with caution.

How to Keep People on your Website

Creating content people want is great because it will get people to your website. But how do you keep them engaged with your content There are a few things that you can do to help focus your audience and make your offer both easier to take up and more appealing. Here are 7 user interface (UI) tips to help you increase user engagement.

1. It’s better to give than to receive

If you give a little gift, this can reap dividends later on. You want to gather email addresses for your client data base but maybe just offering to bombard your customers with email newsletters isn’t quite doing it, sweeten the offering with a gift. For example “Receive 20% off and free postage for the first month on us! Sign up now!”

2. Repeat your primary action

There is a lot of discussion about where to make your call to actions on a web page; at the top, in the middle, at the bottom? Well actually, depending on the length of your page, maybe you should do all three. Don’t go mad, but a soft actionable item at the top and a prominent one at the bottom of the page gives you two possible slices of the pie.

3. May I recommend something?

Too many choices can often confuse and dilute your offering, so how about making a recommendation or emphasised selection. This can result in 25% more customers, it’s all in the psychology.

4. You can’t be all things to all people

By trying to be everything to everyone, you risk enticing no-one at all. By talking specifically to a qualifying criteria of customers, you are far more likely to connect. The flip side of this is that you are cutting yourself off from some potential customers, however in these days of saturated markets, carving a niche for yourself is by far the best way to get your head above the crowd.

5. Don’t ask for inside leg measurements

People are lazy, they don’t want to fill in huge forms. With each additional form field you add, you increase resistance to people filling them out. Fewer fields convert more.

6. Be concise, don’t distract or cloud the issue

It may be tempting to try to offer as much as you can to as many people as you can from one page but if you’re creating a page that has a single call to action, then all you’re doing is confusing and diluting the offering. Try a single column and build the story down the page to get to a single compelling call to action.

7. Don’t sell features, sell benefits

This is probably taking you back to basics. WIIFM. What’s In It For Me. Talk about the benefits that your product or service will bring to the life of your customer as that’s is what they care about the most.

8. Do your research

Great content is what you should aim for always, however your content needs to be great and relevant to what you do, for example if a fashion company wrote a blog about how to optimise your website for local search, it would not do well because if people who are familiar with the fashion company would be confused by the sudden change so they wouldn’t read it.