For More Conversions, Look to Quality Content over Keywords
Think fast. What’s the most important element to consider when creating content for your website? If you answered “keywords!” or “SEO rankings!”, guess again. The truth is, keywords play a vital role in content creation, but serving your audience’s needs should be your top priority. It’s easy to lose track of this critical element - the actual people reading your content - when you set out to develop a solid content strategy. In truth, shifting from a keyword-only strategy to an audience-centric strategy by delivering relevant, high-quality content at the right time will put you in the driver’s seat when it comes to creating content that converts shoppers into buyers.
Know Your Target Audience
When creating content, whether it’s for an e-commerce site, a travel destination, a higher education site or anything in between, it’s important to ask several questions.- What type of customers are you looking to attract?
- What is the role of these prospective customers? Are they decision makers? Leaders? Influencers or informers?
- How can you best get into the mindset of your target audience? Learning to speak their language and address their pain points will take you a long way toward creating relevant and persuasive content.
Consider Semantic Search
Two short years ago, mobile search overtook desktop search for the first time. While this had been predicted for years, 2016 was the year it finally became a reality. And people aren’t just clicking away at the tiny keys on their smartphones to perform their everyday searches. Increasingly, voice search is becoming the norm, with devices - and users - getting smarter and smarter at natural language search every day. Taken together, the rise of mobile search with voice search opens up a massive opportunity to get your brand discovered through these increasingly popular search methods. Incorporating a conversational-style article into your website’s content (think “What time does CVS close?” as opposed to “pharmacy hours”) will not only allow for more aligned indexing, it’s just easier for readers to digest. Which questions are your audience likely to ask? Try this: if you can read it aloud and it feels conversational, you’re probably on the right track. If it feels stiff and stilted, go back to the drawing board.Content Formatting
How do you read content? Do you enjoy massive walls of gray text in a tiny point size with very few paragraph breaks or bullet points? No. Nobody enjoys that. We’re all skimmers at heart, so break up your content into sections that make it easy for readers and search engines alike to see what you consider most important. H1 headlines should reflect the overarching theme of your content, while H2s are used as subsections of the H1; H3s are subsections of H2s and so on. Likewise, bulleted lists are both easy to read and easy to skim. Do your audience a favor and use them whenever the chance arises.Thinking Beyond the Written Word
At Noble Studios, we not only challenge our clients to do this, but we challenge ourselves to use this best practice. Once you have created the first version of your content, ask yourself these questions:- How can this article be better?
- What will engage our audience?