The joy of content creation is to have your final piece read by as many people as possible and convince a significant number of them to take some form of action. You’re well aware that achieving such high performance doesn’t come by luck but through strategic work.
So, what are some of the ways to improve your content performance? Read on below for details:
- Analyze Your Content
You won’t know if there’s anything to fix without first carrying out a thorough analysis of your content. Now, it’d be time-consuming and ineffective to manually go through your website content and try to identify its shortcomings or areas of improvement.
Fortunately, there are tools that are specially designed to analyze the health of your website with regard to SEO. You’ll find an SEO split-testing tool worthwhile because of its effective approach in determining your website’s SEO health. It can provide you with immediate insights on which you could base any decision that you’ll make for the improvement of your website.
Typically, a number of similar pages are split into two. The first group is the test group and the other group acts as a control. Once changes are made to the test group pages, their SEO performance is measured and compared to the performance of the control group pages in which no change is made. This effectively tells you what tweaks you can make on your website to improve its search engine ranking.
- Improve Your Readability Score
You understand that different audiences have different intellectual capabilities. As such, if your blog’s audience is majorly teens, you don’t want to use language that’s very difficult to understand.
Complex grammar is better suited for academic papers for higher learning institutions. For blogs, use simple language so that your target audience won’t find any problem trying to comprehend your message. If you think you could use some help, smart writing assistants can be reliable. For example, SEO Scout’s content editor helps improve the readability and optimization of your writing.
- Focus On Content
Believe it or not, you won’t go that far with keyword stuffing. Search engines are smart enough to detect what content offers value to the reader and what content is just stuffed with keywords for the mere sake of ranking highly in search engine results.
Therefore, ensure that anything you write comprehensively answers the questions of the reader. More so, no matter what keywords you have to include, ensure that they fit in as naturally as possible into the context of your content.
Forcing keywords into sentences will give an impression that you’re more concerned with search engine algorithms, rather than your readers. Readers are less likely to return to your website if they spot such weaknesses in your content. But if they find your content informative, they’ll always come back for more and even share your work with others.
- Avoid Clickbait Titles
Initially, clickbait seemed to do well, but it seems people worldwide have outgrown it. They’ve used the internet long enough to be able to spot titles that simply lure them into clicking but the content doesn’t deliver what the title promises.
In actual fact, in-depth SEO studies reveal that content with clickbait titles performs poorly when compared with titles that clearly inform the reader what to expect in the article. So, don’t think you can mislead the masses. Even if you succeed in the first few rounds, the public will mark you and they may never come back to your website again.
- Ensure Your Content Flows Well
Once your content title successfully lands internet users on your web page, maintain their interest from the introduction to the conclusion. Make it easy for them to follow your train of thought, line after line. Use short paragraphs, logically listed points, conjunctions to connect points, appropriate subtitles, and lists for main points. Coherence is key to propel them to the next sentence or paragraph.
- Tell Your Readers What To Do After Reading
Chances are high that your content promotes some goods or services. Whether you’re writing a blog, a guest post, or a direct mail to customers, that’s the very idea behind content marketing—to write about the benefits of a product, hoping that the reader will be convinced to make a purchase.
Therefore, on top of good content, ensure that your call-to-action is persuasive enough for the reader. Here are some useful tips to help you create CTAs that’ll attract a high click-through-rate:
- Blend them naturally into the content
- Use powerful action verbs like ‘call us now,’ ‘download this guide now,’ etc.
- Be very clear and specific. It’s better to tell your readers, ‘Call us now’ instead of telling them ‘You’re free to connect with us at your earliest convenience.’
- Instill a sense of urgency on the reader through words like ‘today’ and ‘now.’
- Make an irresistible offer such as a free sample or report.
In A Nutshell
There’s a lot you can do to improve your content performance. This six-point list is in no way exhaustive; it serves as a great starting point. Once you master the above-mentioned tips, feel free to explore even more options.
