Content that generates traffic is great; Content that generates sales and leads is better. The editor Janet Driscoll Miller offers us his advice for content performance, from creation to optimization so that your Content Goes Beyond SEO.
Content marketing serves many purposes for an organization, not the least of which is driving organic traffic to a website. You have great content that is generating organic traffic, but are you really getting the most out of it? Is it enough to have a popular blog, lots of traffic, if you actually convert?
Regardless of the goal of your website – newsletter signups, sales, or some call to action – your content needs to support these goals.
Step 1: Creating Engaging Content
Content created with SEO in mind is a great start. However, How to create content that is not just SEO spam, but is it actually significant and can help your SEO efforts at the same time?
There are many resources to determine the questions that need to be answered in your industry. One that I use as an example is LinkedIn Groups. On a forum like the LinkedIn forum, I can see what types of questions people have and the solutions they are looking for.
Another great resource is Google Keyword Planner. What are the phrases and words that people search for? Next, I do a Google search. Are these questions being answered?
Creating engaging content can come from any number of sources. Think about what works for your industry.
Step 2: Optimize Content for Organic Search
Based on your initial content research, you probably have a pretty good idea of which keywords to optimize for your content. But SEO content is more than just adding some keywords to the content.
One of the most common mistakes I see, especially in blog posts, are images that are not fully optimized. Often this is because multiple blog contributors upload images and the contributors cannot be trained in the importance of image optimization (or even know how to optimize images).
Large images are often a major problem when performing page speed tests for SEO audits. So, as you're thinking about optimizing your content for organic search, don't forget these images!
If you use a content management system (CMS), there are often plugins that will help you perform image optimization. Since WordPress is the most common CMS, I'm going to use it as my example for this post, but almost all CMS platforms have some type of image management tool, either natively or added as a plugin.
For WordPress, I recommend WP Image Size Limit, allows you to set the maximum file size.
Another possible optimization problem may be too little content. What if the writer doesn't write enough content and Google thinks it's too little?
The plug-in WordPress Yoast It is useful for contributors who do not know the basic SEO rules for content. It can be a helpful guide as the writer is “qualified” along the way and gives helpful advice, including noting when the content may be too short.
Step 3: Get the Content to Convert
Once you have created and optimized content and it is generating traffic, it is important to evaluate how the content is performing. Step 3 is often the most overlooked step in content creation. If you did steps 1 and 2 right, you will receive a ton of organic traffic to your site. But how good is the traffic, if the call to action is not completed?
I was recently working with a client who does a fantastic job with content creation. The content is very creative and popular. One article alone brought in 17,000 unique visitors in organic search in one year.
The sad reality, however, was that none Of those 17,000 visitors, the site's goal was reached.
You probably spend a lot of time and resources creating content. And while content may be consumed by many people, unless you're a content editor by profession, your job isn't just to create meaningful content for everyone's reading pleasure. Your ultimate goal is to create that content for conversion.
The first step to understanding how your content converts is to make sure you have set trackable goals in your analysis. Once goals are set and your content starts receiving organic traffic, monitor whether this traffic is also completing goals.
Too often, I see fantastic blogs that have great organic traffic, just like my 17,000 client, but they don't measure conversions. So what can they do?
There are many conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools available on the market today, many very low cost or free. Some that I have tried are Convert Experiments, Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) and Optimizely.
Once you have a tool, you will need to try different techniques to boost conversion. Would a banner advertising your newsletter at the end of a blog post increase signups? Would more links within the text help with higher conversions? Would adding a popover be annoying, or would it generate more leads?
The sky is the limit when it comes to options. So test and test more, try different ideas.
