Why you should care
The cost of producing content is significant in terms of time and spend (e.g. for images and copywriting). Yet many articles are only ever read by a handful of people.
Equally, much content (especially blog posts) are published by companies to help boost their website’s search rankings. But the impact that this activity is making on organic search visits is minimal.
Gaining more Readers
Some key factors in gaining more readers of your articles are:
- The titles need to be attention grabbing
- The subjects of your articles need to be ones that people want to read about. They need to address problems that many people have and want to solve.
- They need to gain a reputation for including stimulating original ideas or different perspectives. This is often misleadingly expressed as producing ‘unique’ content – an almost impossible challenge.
Once your articles meet the above criteria, telling people about an article with links to it in social media posts and emails can be effective if you already have sufficient followers / subscribers. Alternatively, I have found the use of display advertising to be effective and affordable if you can target a relevant audience.
Always remember that you need to bring people to your articles from outside of your website. Leading your website visitors to your blog posts from your website pages is the opposite of what you want: It’s almost as misguided as trying to steer your website visitors from its pages to your social media presence.
SEO Benefit of Content
When it comes to gaining useful search ranking benefit from content, four things are more important than all other factors:
- Target topics rather than individual search phrases
- Structure your URLs to show Google your focus on your chosen topics
- Link internally to guide Google to boost the ranking of an individual page for each topic
- Write value packed long articles rather than short articles of little value
I have seen far too many sites with minimal organic search traffic because they ignored the above factors.
It is also important to ensure that your SEO targets topics with sufficient search volume and that your entry in the search results attracts clicks. There is no point in high search rankings if they don’t deliver website visits.
Make more use of your Content
Having written a long article on a topic, the main points in it can be quickly turned into a Powerpoint presentation. This can then be easily be saved as a video which can be used in a variety of ways, including posting it in YouTube and embedded this in various relevant places in your website.
Content posted in a way that puts it in people’s news feed is rarely seen. So, don’t be afraid to post it more than once – suitable time spaced of course.
If you’re in a B2B company, think about publishing your article (full or a precis) in your LinkedIn Profile as well in the blog on your website. This sort of duplicate content causes no ranking issues and people in LinkedIn may well prefer to read your article there rather than on your website.
Lastly, if you are going to promote your content in social media, sending a message directly to people (with a link to your article) is going to achieve far more than publishing your message as a post which merely goes into connections’ news feed.
Conclusion
The phrase ‘content is king’ is often quoted and ridiculed. But used the right way, regular content production can drive lead generation, customer retention and brand reputation. If some of the points made in this article reflect challenges faced by your company, please contact me for an initial chat.
If you then want to dive deeper, I offer chargeable but affordable cost reviews and audits which provide quantitative assessment of your current position and detailed customised guidance on how to gain better results.
Author:
Tony Thornby
01494 440019