January 29, 2013 Leave a Comment
September 13, 2012 2 Comments

Top 5 SEO copywriting mistakes businesses make

Developing a strong search engine optimisation strategy is extremely important, especially if you are a small business just starting out. The benefits of investing in SEO include increased online visitors to your website traffic, higher conversion rates turning browsers into buyers, as well as brand awareness and longevity of organic rankings. Here are the top 5 SEO copywriting mistakes business owners can make when creating content (and how to avoid them on your own website!):

1.    Trying to do it all by yourself: Think about it this way, if you were getting married, would you try to take the photos of the day yourself? No? …So if you’re not a certified SEO copywriter or experienced in search engine optimisation, then why would you attempt to write the entire copy of your website yourself?! Even though it might seem like a peripheral expense, hiring a freelance copywriter can pay dividends in the long run. Still not convinced? Read our article on 5 reasons why you should outsource your website copywriting.

2.    Overlooking the importance of meta data: Stick with us here – we’re not talking in a foreign language! – meta data is just a fancy term which refers to all the textual content in the back end of your website that is not visible to your readers (for example the html coding and programming which you pay IT nerds big bucks to develop for you). The problem with ignoring the data in the back end is that it is exactly this information which Google and other search engines use to determine whether your webpages are worth ranking or not. At a very minimum, make sure your meta data includes a page title and meaningful page description, and don’t neglect to include any keywords you hope to rank for as close to the beginning of your sentence structures as possible.

3.    Keyword stuffing (aka sounding like a broken record): One of the most common SEO copywriting mistakes made by newbies is falling into the trap of trying to stuff as many keywords into your content as possible. Repeating targeted SEO keywords many times through the body of your text does not help your rankings, and in fact can work against you. The Google brains trust has become too clever to black hat SEO tactics such as this, and now includes clever ways in its algorithm to be able to sniff out keyword stuffing repeat (pun intended) offenders! Instead, concentrate on writing SEO copy that is less focussed on the number of keywords, and more focussed on the quality and readability of your content. Make sure your copy flows naturally, and incorporate keywords into your titles and as descriptions on your image files.

4.    Ignoring social media: Regardless of whether you ‘like’ the idea of using social media sites such as twitter, facebook and linkedin as part of your marketing strategy, the fact is, the even Google is now recognising the importance of these medium. Creating SEO copy for your website is half the battle – sharing this content and acquiring ‘likes’, ‘followers’ and ‘comments’ will not only show Google how relevant your copy is, it is also the perfect driver for new users to visit your website.

5.    Failing to measure your efforts: If you aren’t acquainted with website tracking tools such as Google Analytics etc – familiarise yourself with these handy (and free!) reporting sites STAT! It’s extremely important to understand your website data even at a very basic level in order to continually improve on your SEO copy and user experience. Regularly monitoring the behaviour of your website visitors will not only help you to create new content which is engaging and ultimately attracts other visitors, it also will show you the areas on your site where you are losing traffic. Look out for pages which have high bounce rates, low conversion rates, and low rankings in search engine results pages.

There’s no denying that if done correctly, spending time on SEO copywriting for your website content can give you a unique advantage over your competitors. Unfortunately, the same can be said of ill-thought out and badly written SEO copy – so it pays to get it right the first time! What are your top tips on SEO copywriting – or alternatively, are there any mistakes you made when curating website content which you learnt from in the early stages of your website build you’d like to share with us?

Please don’t leave just yet! Before you go, perhaps you’d like to subscribe to our blog newsletter, or ‘like’ contentforclicks on facebook to be notified when we post fresh articles!

Filed Under: business blogging, content marketing, copywriting, seo
September 2, 2012 15 Comments

How to create a content calendar for your business blog in 5 simple steps

content marketing calendarIn our article ’10 powerful stats that prove the phenomenal ROI of business blogs’ we noted the value of creating and maintaining a regular business blog to help build your website traffic. Along with other stats, it mentioned that businesses who post at least one blog a week are 66% more likely to generate business leads than those who do not, which is all very well and good to say, but not so hard to put into practice if you don’t have a solid content calendar in place to drive these regular articles. Here are our top 5 tips on how you can start to build your blog content calendar today:

1. Choose who will write the content for your articles: This will be tricky depending on how big your business is and the resources you have available. The first step is to find out if anyone within your business would like to write content for your business blogs, and secondly, if they are any good at it! Remember, writing for the web is a completely different kettle of fish to writing advertising copy or PR articles – your writers need to have the right tone and for your audience, and also the know-how to structure their posts in a way that will generate the best shares and likes on social media. Don’t have the time or resources to do it yourself? Or maybe you’re not sure if you want to have internal writers at all? There’s always the option of outsourcing your website and blog copy to a professional freelance copywriter.

2. Define your target audience: If we’ve said it once, we’ll say it again – defining your target audience is one of the most crucial things you must do before you begin posting blog articles! You may have one specific type of visitor you wish to attract to read your articles, or (as is the case with most businesses) it is likely that you will have several. The type of audience you wish to gain will determine the style, tone and topics of all the articles you write, and the more successful you are at building a clear and precise picture of who it is you want to read your articles, the better (and more shareable) your content will ultimately be.

3. Put down some measureable (and realistic!) goals: The only way you will be able to measure the success of your business blog and content marketing calendar is if you first put some thought into what success looks like for you. Writing and posting regular content on your business blog is still a regularly new form of digital marketing, and all signs point to it being a successful venture based on longevity. Write goals for 3 months, 6 months and 12 months to start with. These could include:

  • I want to write x amount of blogs a month
  • I want to post at least x blogs a week
  • My website traffic is current x amount of visitors, by the end of the 3rd month I would like to have achieved x amount of visitors

4. Brainstorm possible headlines for future articles: This will seem like a time-consuming and at first difficult task, but at the end of the day it will not only save you time but also provide immeasurable help each time you sit down to write a blog. The idea is to write down a ‘brain dump’ list of at least 20 to 30 (as many as you can!) possible headlines for articles you would like to write. Don’t waste time trying to refine the headlines, you just need a general idea (they can be refined at the time you start writing each one). A great way to think of ideas for headlines is by googling keyword search terms you want to rank for, and then refining your search results on the right hand side to just ‘blogs’ (click on the ‘more’ option to bring up ‘blogs’) – this will show you the types of blogs people already read on those topics you wish to be known for as well. Another great way to think up ideas is to subscribe to similar blogs within your industry, or use LinkedIn’s ‘News’ section for inspiration.

5. Populate your calendar: Once you have the headline list, the calendar will be a snap! This can be populated using a good old fashioned excel sheet or outlook calendar etc. Download our free blog posting calendar example here.

Creating a content schedule is almost as hard as writing the articles themselves, and once you’ve created your calendar you should find that the groundwork you’ve done makes it far easier for you in the long run. Do you have a business blog? What are your top tips on how to create and maintain a regular content posting calendar?

Did you enjoy this article? Comment and tell us what type of topics you want to hear more of – and don’t forget to stay in touch; subscribe to our newsletter or ‘like’ us on Facebook to be notified whenever we post new blogs.

Filed Under: business blogging, content marketing, seo
August 30, 2012 Leave a Comment

5 ways to attract more readers to your blog

Business blogs are the ultimate tool to have at your disposal in your digital marketing arsenal – not only do they drive traffic to your website, they are also an excellent channel to build your brand’s reputation as an industry thought leader, they help to funnel potential visitors into the key conversion points on your website, and at the end of the day, transform those visitors into tangible sales. It stands to reason then, that the more visitors who read your blog, the more sales you will generate. Here are our top tips on attracting more readers to your business blog:

  1. Spend time defining your target audience before you begin: The best thing you can do for your business blog before you start writing is to sit down and outline who you want to read your posts. For example, if you own an ecommerce factory outlet business and your target audience is Gen Y males who want to buy cheap gadgets from overseas, then it stands to reason your business blog topics will differ completely to say, an up-market technology store which sells luxury items to older, cashed up men. Similarly, your target audience will determine the style and tone of your writing. The tighter, more distinctly drawn picture you can conjure up of your key audience (or audiences), the more relevant your topics will be, and the more likely you will attract regular subscribers (and shares!) to your business blog.
  2. Write your content in an easy-to-digest format: In a world where data is a commodity and information is found at the click of a button there comes a down side – studies show that the internet is conditioning us to consume textual information in short, easily-digestible ‘info-bytes’ instead of the more traditional blocks of long-winded writing. Help your readers to find the information that is key to them by breaking up your blog posts into lists, dot points and smaller paragraphs which are sub-headed in bold. Not only are blogs written in this format easier to read, they are also more visually appealing to your visitors, and attract higher social media shares.
  3. Offer an RSS feed or blog subscription form: Highly engaged readers need to have a reason to re-visit your blog to read new articles, so providing an RSS feed which alerts them when new articles are available or offering a blog subscription service can be an excellent way of generating return traffic to your website. These can be easily (and freely!) created by using an RSS service such as feedburner or for email subscriptions, mailchimp.
  4. Publish on social media: Many businesses are choosing to build a social media presence these days (which is great) however, often they jump on the bandwagon without understanding where the social media ROI can be garnered from. One of the best ways to justify your time spent on these channels is to funnel traffic from social pages back to your website by publishing the links to your latest blog posts. Equally, mediums such as Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn can be a great source of ideas for future blog post articles – for example, you could poll your social audiences on the types of topics they want to hear more about, or scan the comments you have received on your status updates for frequently asked questions that can be turned into informative business blog articles.
  5. Get your articles indexed by Google: Despite the roaring debate on keyword density since Google’s Panda algorithm update, search engine optimisation should still be a key focus in any content you are producing for your website. By optimising your blog posts with keywords and keyphrases you would like to rank organically for, you will give your blog a higher chance of turning up in search engine results well after your articles have been written. Stumped on how to get started? Read our article on how to choose keywords to optimise for.

No matter what, always remember the bloggers golden rule: content is king! Put yourself in your readers shoes when you are reading over your articles before they are published – if you start yawning, it’s probably a good indication of how potential readers will feel while reading your articles too! Try to connect with your audience, and provide a resource which is valuable, interesting and easy to read and you’ll be attracting crowds of traffic in no time flat!

How did we go? Did you like our tips on how to attract more readers to your business blogs? Do you have some clever ways of attracting readership too that you’d like to share with us too?

Don’t leave just yet, we love you! Stay in touch by subscribe to our newsletter or ‘like’ us on Facebook to be notified whenever we post new blogs!

Filed Under: brand influence, business blogging, content marketing, social media, website
August 16, 2012 2 Comments

SEO Content: How to research the right keywords to optimise for

SEO keywordCreating quality content for your business website is only half the battle: if you’re serious about being successful online, you’ll need to “optimise your content”.

Don’t worry, this is just a fancy way of saying that the pages and blog articles you write for your website need to include a good quantity of the keywords you want to rank for in Google search results (and other search engines).

So, what makes the ‘right’ keywords?

  1. Keywords that clearly define your product/service
  2. Keywords that your potential customers are searching on

Researching and optimising for the correct keywords is important because it allows you to drive targeted, qualified traffic to your website and is a powerful leads generation tool (especially when used in conjunction with a paid Google Adwords campaign).

How to work out which keywords are right for your website copy:

Step 1. Make a list: For each of your website pages you will need to sit down and make a list of all the keyword phrases you think your potential customers might be searching on. The key here is to pick phrases which are about 2 to 3 words long and are relevant to your product/service. Don’t overthink it, just get the brain juices flowing and write as many as you can for now.

TIP: Got writers block? Here’s a great tool which actually spits out suggestions on keyword phrases you might like to optimise for: ‘Wordstream’

Step 2. Cull that list: Once you have a list of at least 20 to 30 keywords or phrases, the next step is to cut it down to size! You can do this by using Google’s free (and excellent!) keyword tool ‘Google Insights’ which allows you to compare search volumes across a range of locations and variables.

Tip: This step of the process is important: if you sell used cars in Sydney, you wouldn’t choose just the keyword ‘cars’, you’d want to target customers who are searching for ‘used cars’ at a minimum; targeting for just ‘cars’ would mean that you could capture irrelevant visitors who could be searching for ‘new cars’ or ‘toy cars’ etc. So make sure you cull the keywords which are too general and keep the longer, targeted phrases.

Step 3. Focus on ‘long tail’ keywords: Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture here! So many businesses concentrate on the search volume of keywords instead of the quality, and as a consequence their website copy is then wasted since it just contains broad general terms which any tom, dick or harry could be searching on. Your website will be lost in a sea of higher ranking website pages on Google if you do this.

TIP: Put yourself in your customer’s boots: Think about what YOU would type into a search engine if you were looking to buy your own product. Going back to the used car example, the keyphrases ‘buy used car’ or ‘buy used car Sydney’ etc. would feature frequently and generate a great targeted audience to your website.

But hold on… there’s more to it than just getting the keywords right!

Once you’ve done your research and chosen your keywords and keyphrases, the next step is to write the content for your webpages. Remember, there is an art to getting content written well, and written well for search engines. Google is too smart to be fooled by content which is just a page stuffed with keyword after keyword – it will know if you’ve decided to ‘keyword stuff’ and penalise you accordingly. Make sure your content is well written and relevant to your audience. There is much more to SEO than just keywords alone – if you’d like more ideas on how to optimise your content, read our article ‘7 ways to optimise your next blog post’

Hey….one more (unrelated) thing:

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Filed Under: content marketing, copywriting, seo, website
August 12, 2012 4 Comments

7 ways to get your business blog article trending on LinkedIn

how to get your business blog articles trending on linkedinIn the last couple of years, LinkedIn has seen phenomenal growth in numbers, with an estimated network of over 1 million members in Australia alone. Regardless of whether your business sits in the B2B market or sells directly to retail customers, there’s no denying the lucrative potential scale of audience your business blog can reach if your articles manage to trend on LinkedIn Today’s newsfeed.

Understandably, the best chance your business blog has of trending is to write quality content which appeals to your business networks, but aside from the obvious, here are our top tips on how you can maximise your chances of trending on LinkedIn:

1.    Post on Sunday nights at 7.30pm: There’s no hard data to say when or why you should post on Sunday nights, however having a look back on our own stats, contentforclicks can confidently say that our business blog articles which were posted at this time and day almost always manage to trend. Perhaps everyone is winding up after a nice weekend and wanting to see what news will greet them on their return to the office ahead of Monday morning?

2.    Post the link as a discussion on your group pages: There’s a reason you are a member of your LinkedIn groups, and that is because you share a passion or interest with your fellow group members. It stands to reason then, that these same people would be the most likely audience to find your content interesting, and therefore also the most likely to share your article. The more your business blog articles are shared, the more likely they will appear in the ‘trending’ section of LinkedIn Today.

3.    Post the link on your business page: Similarly, if you have managed to build up a following for your LinkedIn business page, then it makes sense to post the link as an update for your company – the people who follow your business are the most actively engaged audience for your content than any other social segment you will find.

4.    Choose the right topic (based on the headlines of other business blog articles which have trended in the past): Keeping a close eye on topics which are relevant to your business products and services and have trended in the past (not just on the LinkedIn newsfeed, but also on Twitter and Google news) provides you with good insight into what sort of topics people are wanting to read more about. In the ‘customise the news’ section, you can choose to follow multiple industry topics as well as industry sources which will help you stay abreast of the noteworthy business blog articles which are achieving significant views.

5.    Ask your networks to share the post: Seems trivial, but a recent study found that your shared links to business blogs and other content are twice more likely to be shared by your networks if you actually ask them to do so, as opposed to just posting the link and hoping for the best. The same can be said for tweeting (ask for a retweet) and other social media networks such as Facebook & Google+. Ask and you shall receive.

6.    Use your analytics data: The best thing about digital marketing over traditional marketing is the fact that it is a highly visible medium – you are able to yield a considerable amount of data from using reporting tools such as Google Analytics and other measurement tools. Once you have started blogging regularly and have a minimum of 20 published posts under your belt, study your visitor numbers (most especially those received from social sources) and use this data to identify the business blog topics which garnered the best website traffic, and write more of this type of content in your upcoming blogging schedule.

7.    Include social sharing buttons on your blog interface: You can use free sites such as sharethis.com or addthis.com to develop a HTML code which is easily added to your blog template, and allows your readers to quickly and easily share your posts after they have read them by simply clicking on the LinkedIn share button.

There is no secret recipe to getting your articles to trend on LinkedIn however by following the steps above you can at least give your content the very best chance it can of being seen (and hopefully shared!). Do you have any great tips of your own?

…and don’t forget – if you enjoyed this article, subscribe to our newsletter or ‘like’ us on Facebook to be notified whenever we post new blogs!

Filed Under: business blogging, content marketing, copywriting, linkedin
August 9, 2012 Leave a Comment

7 easy ways to optimise your next blog post

If you’re serious about SEO and building a loyal stream of traffic to your website, then this is the article for you! As discussed in our previous article ‘5 reasons why your business needs a blog’, curating regular content for your website is the perfect marketing tool to build brand identity and influence – but what’s the point of spending time and money on well-written blog posts unless people actually read them?!

Below we discuss some easy ways you can optimise your next blog post:

  1. Inbound linking: Seems like such an obvious point, but once your reader has finished reading your post, the best way to keep these visitors engaged is to channel them onto other areas of your website. This can be links pointing to other blog posts, links pointing to information pages, or even links pointing them to your social media fan sites.
  2. Keywords:  Optimising your blog articles to include keywords and phrases is quite an art form – in the old days, Google and other search engine providers used to just count the number of times the keyword appeared in your copy – these days it’s not so easy to dupe the algorithm! This is fantastic news for freelance copywriters and people who are passionate about great content (like you, dear reader, I’m sure!) as it means that quality content is finally being ranked above dodgy sites which have resorted to thinly veiled key-word stuffing techniques.
  3. Meta tags for photos: Now don’t get scared on me here, meta-tagging is certainly not as technical as you are probably thinking – all it means is that when you add an image file to your blog (as you should be doing, as it makes the blog much more engaging for visitors to read!) , just be sure to include the keywords you are looking to rank for in the title and the ‘ALT’ field of your photo editor.
  4. Get syndicated: Another (more powerful) form of inbound linking, is to submit your blog posts to online bookmarking sites such as Digg & StumbleUpon. Additionally, you could search for online media hubs which syndicate articles within your industry and ask to become a regular contributor (NB: Just make sure that your original article retains its ‘canonical tags’ – a fancy word for the part in the back-end HTML code of your article which lets Google know that your site was the original author of the content and therefore will rank higher than the syndicated copy in search results.)
  5. Publish the links on your social media networks: Well this one is surely a no-brainer! Google has started to pay close attention to articles which are shared and ‘liked’ on social media sites. The reason for this is pretty obvious: if content is being shared, this is the equivalent of a recommendation and therefore Google see’s your content as being extremely relevant.
  6. Search for questions with a similar topic on forum sites like Quora and LinkedIn ‘Answers’: This is where you will find an active and targeted audience for your blog article because you know these people need the answer to their question, and you know the answer to the question lies in the points from your blog! Don’t forget to link back to your article.
  7. Calls to action! Numero uno importanto! (that means this answer is the most important one ….please excuse the pigeon Spanish). Calls to action are vital to your SEO strategy – there is no point getting people to read your blog just to leave your site and never return. Help your visitors out by reminding them to fill out your contact form, subscribe to your blog or monthly newsletter, or even ‘like’ your fan pages on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin & Google+….. See what I did there? ;)

Bonus tip for WordPress users: Install the ‘All In One SEO’ plugin. This is a simple plugin which helps you by optimising your blog posts and titles for search engines ‘behind the scenes’.

Hope you enjoyed this post – Let me know if you have some great SEO copywriting suggestions of your own, and if you have any success from optimising your own blog posts?

 

Filed Under: business blogging, content marketing, copywriting, seo, website
July 29, 2012 Leave a Comment

7 ways to improve your content click-through rates

Great content marketing can be one of the most cost effective ways to drive traffic to your website and ultimately improve your conversion rates, but there’s no point writing great quality business blogs for your website if it never gets read! The below are 7 easy ways to improve the click through rates on your articles:

1.    Attention grabbing headlines: A well-crafted headline is arguably the most important factor determining whether readers will click through to your article. Articles that begin with ‘Top 5 tips to …’ or ‘How to….’ or include stats (eg ‘98% of people think…) tend to have higher CTRs and attract more readers than those which are less topical.

2.    Keeping your headlines short: Research has shown that short, punchy headlines which are straight to the point are 80% more likely to be viewed over those which are long winded. Specifically, headlines which consist of 8 words, none of which are embellished, are better than those which contain too many descriptive words.

3.    Write content targeted at your key audience: Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and ask yourself, if I was my customer, what sort of content would I be searching for? Instead of talking about how great your products or services are, talk about the benefits they will offer for your customer and how they will improve his/her life.

4.    Use optimised keywords: The higher your blogs rank in organic searches, the more people will see your content and click through, therefore it stands to reason that the more keywords you include in your articles, the more relevant Google and other search engines will view your content as, and the better your articles will rank.

5.    Include an image thumbnail: content which is accompanied by an image thumbnail is much more likely to be clicked on (and shared!) than those which include either no image, or just a stock standard image of your company logo.

6.    Promote via your social media networks: Your social media channels can be a great source of free ‘publicity’ for your business blog articles and other website content – after you have posted your articles, make sure you let people know that they are available for viewing via links on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and other social channels.

7.    Analyse your data: Once you have started writing regular content, monitor the click-through rates of your articles and keep an eye on what is working and what’s not. Note down which articles perform best, and then make sure you incorporate the same techniques and topics for your upcoming business blog articles.

Increasing your click through rate is the first step to building your website traffic and converting those visitors into paying customers – ultimately, the best way to do this is to regularly post interesting, well written content. And don’t forget – if you enjoyed this article, subscribe to our newsletter or ‘like’ us on Facebook to be notified whenever we post new blogs!

 

Filed Under: business blogging, content marketing, copywriting, seo
July 22, 2012 4 Comments

Top 5 mistakes business blogs make

business blog mistakesThere’s no denying the added value a business blog can make to your content marketing & SEO objectives. When done right, your blog can be a highly profitable investment (as outlined in our previous article ‘5 reasons why your business needs a blog’). In fact, businesses that blog generate 55% more visitors to their websites than those who don’t – its little wonder then that more and more businesses are choosing to blog!    That said, creating a blog for your small business is not easy. The below are 5 common mistakes businesses make when they blog and how you can avoid making them yourself:

1. Failing to write interesting content or worse yet, writing blog articles that are thinly veiled advertisements for your products/services: Your business blog should be a place where visitors can find topical, engaging and useful articles – not just another area where you try to sell your products/services! Often businesses try to integrate their ‘blog’ with the media section of their website and write blog articles which are either just a re-hash of their product pages, or worse – bland company news articles. Business blogs are not a place to recycle or store PR Articles! Instead, when creating content ideas for your blog try to put yourself in the mind of your target audience and concentrate on articles which not only establish your brand as a thought leader, but are also valuable enough to encourage your visitors to comment and share to their social networks.

2. Failing to include hyperlinks to other pages/posts on your website: An easy way to optimise your blog content and keep visitors on your site for longer is to include internal links in your articles to other pages/posts on your website. For example, see the opening paragraph where we mentioned a previously posted article, and linked to it? You should be including as many relevant internal links to each of your business blog posts and other website pages as possible!

3. Failing to optimise blog articles with relevant keywords: Your business blog provides an excellent opportunity to increase your organic rankings for keywords in Google and other search engines by subtly including keywords in the copy that you are trying to rank for. Just make sure the articles you write are key-word rich, but not so diluted with keywords that they end up sounding like a broken record!

4. Failing to share links to your new articles over social networks: Do you post excellent, well thought out blog articles only for them to get lost in the ether? By using your social networks to promote your blog content via links back to your articles, you will be able to reach not only your current ‘fans’ and customers, but also have the opportunity to connect with a large audience of readers through your friends of fans and extended networks through shared and like posts. Make sure social sharing is easy for anyone who reads your articles by including social sharing buttons on all your articles.

5. Failing to post regular articles! This is quite possibly the worst thing you can do – stats show that businesses who blog regularly are the ones who gain the best benefit – in fact, businesses that blog at least 20 times per month generate over 5 times more traffic than those who blog less regularly. Creating a business blog is just the first step – you need to commit to regularly updating it with fresh content, otherwise you will miss out on valuable business leads. Think about putting together a blog creation calendar and utilising others within your business who are capable of writing articles – or better yet, look at outsourcing your business blog articles to a certified SEO copywriter.

All this said – the #1 mistake a business could make is to not have a blog at all! Do you blog for your business? Have you been found guilty of making any of the mistakes above? What do you think is the worst mistake businesses make when they create content for their blogs?

Filed Under: brand influence, business blogging, content marketing, copywriting, seo
July 19, 2012 Leave a Comment

5 types of content that drive traffic to your website

These days, to run a successful business it takes more than just an unremarkable website to gain customers – you need to build an online presence that stands out from the crowd! Content marketing is an excellent way to differentiate your brand from its competitors, drive traffic to your website and ultimately convert those regular visitors into paying customers (and brand ambassadors).

But wait…..what is content marketing?

In simple terms, ‘content’ refers to anything contained on your website – articles, blogs, Facebook applications, videos etc. And when we talk about ‘content marketing’ what we’re really discussing is your strategy around how you plan to develop (if you have time) or acquire (by outsourcing to digital professionals) said content for your site.

Here are the top 5 types of content that drive the most traffic to your website:

1.    Business Blogs This is the number one type of content to create if you are serious about SEO and building an active, engaged website audience. Not only can you optimise your articles with the keywords you want to rank for in Google, but blog articles are also the best and easiest way to build your reputation as a thought leader and influencer within your industry. Not only that, but if you’re wondering what to post on your Facebook fan page and other social networks, wonder no more – your articles are great content to share!

2.    User-generated Customer reviews There is nothing more powerful than a happy customer whose experience was so great that they felt impelled to write a review for others to read. Research shows that 90% of online consumers trust brands that have been recommended online by someone they know.

3.    Images We live in an increasingly visual world, and online is no exception – for example, Facebook updates which include images and photos are twice as likely to be shared as plain text. In particular, recent additions to the image format are ‘infographics’. An ‘infographic’ is just a fancy way to describe those cool pictures that show stats in an easily digested format, such as graphs or cartoons, stats etc.

4.    Videos Did you know that YouTube is actually the world’s second largest search engine? (Second only to Google, who incidentally owns Youtube anyway!). There’s a reason why Youtube is so popular – people LOVE videos! And with the advent of smartphones, anyone can be the next James Cameron, just point and click. If you do decide to create a video, make sure it’s short, punchy and relevant to your business industry. How-to videos make for great website content.

5.    Whitepapers/Case-studies Offering reports and studies as downloadable documents on your website is another great way to cement your brand as a force to be reckoned with in your industry. It’s also a great way to measure conversions – just make sure you ask your readers to fill out a short contact form first as ‘payment’ for the content.

No matter which type of content you decide to generate for your website, the key to it all is to put yourself in the mind of your ideal customer – what types of content do you think they would find useful, and better yet, what sort of content would they want to share to their networks? The best type of content is topical, interesting, bite-sized pieces of information that your audience will be able to digest easily. What types of content do you think are the best to drive engagement and conversions on your website?

Filed Under: business blogging, content marketing, facebook, social media