Content Strategy is the reason why you create content. It focuses on the purpose, creation, and delivery of content that's relevant to search engines and offers user satisfaction.
A successful content strategy guides the prospect from the awareness stage (Top of The Funnel) to the Evaluation to the Purchase stage, as illustrated by HubSpot.
Brands make use of content marketing to attract an audience for their products and services.
Let's look at 10 key ways to create powerful content for both users and search engines:
1. Search Intent
Search intent relates to why web users carry out a search. It could be that they are searching for a website, looking for answers to a question, want to buy a product, or are researching for a future purpose.
Hence, in order to effectively optimize your content page, you need to know why users come to your website in the first place. Understanding the categories of search intent will guide you to serve your prospects better.
For instance, if you’re aware that your target audience arrives on your site with the term "buy digital camera", then making your landing page an article on "how to fix a broken Nikon camera" is counter-productive.
However, if your product page is optimized for the search term, you'd see higher conversions.
So simply find the keyword being used by customers to access your site and you'll figure out why web users come to your page. You can find these keywords in your Google Analytics account.
2. Create Accurate, Descriptive Titles
Page titles are used by search engines to briefly describe your content in relation to the user's query.
They have immense optimization power. When a user searches for a term and Google shows him the search results if your title seems irrelevant to the user's query, your site will be ignored.
According to Brian Clark, 8 out of 10 people will read your title or headline. In addition to a catchy title, use 'Sentence case and include a power word to captivate your readers.
So, in order to catch the user’s attention on your page, your title must be very descriptive in relation to your content.
It also needs to accurately represent your content, otherwise, you will get click-throughs that bounce back immediately they notice your content differs from its main title.
This will result in Google demoting your page in the top results since your page doesn’t seem to satisfy the users.
3. Write Compelling Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Google updates its algorithm 500-600 times every year, and the major aim of these changes is to improve user satisfaction and help rank relevant sites better.
But how does Google know a relevant site?
One of the ways is through title tags and Meta descriptions. The Google crawler needs to know what your site is all about in order to rank it, and metadata achieves this.
In the screenshot below, you can see the elaborate description of the Pepsi website, this helps Google know what query to place your website for and users to know what to expect when they visit your site.
However, Meta description must be extremely clear, take a look at the screenshot below, which is a previous title tag and Meta description of the Pepsi website. Which of the two would you click on?
Obviously the first, because it's very clear as to what you should expect on entry.
Not only does it offer a detailed description it also provides links to assist the user to quickly get to his desired navigational point.
The goal is simple, yet provide user satisfaction and explain to Google the purpose of your site.
4. Interlink Your Relevant Pages Together
Interlinking is one of the ways to keep visitors longer on your site and this improves your ranking.
When users are going through your content, placing relevant links of your different pages helps to broaden the understanding of the user as well as notify Google what such pages are relevant for.
This will help all your pages to rank and reduces your bounce rate as well. It's also best practice to place links to pages that are performing well as this will further keep visitors on your site due to the power of the content.
Here’s an example of a post that links to its inner pages.
Also having an organized site structure with categories and subcategories is an effective interlinking strategy.
5. Collect User Behavior Data With Google Analytics
The more you understand about your site visitors, the more you'll be able to satisfy them. This is where Google Analytics comes in; it offers you quality data on the behavioral pattern of your site's users.
Basic metrics include the number of user sessions created, amount of visitors engaging your site and the specific pages they navigate too. This will help you know what content is performing and what one isn't.
Asides from these analytics permit you to measure the number of business transactions completed. This is extremely beneficial in optimizing your site to fit into the want of web users.
6. Meet Users Needs With Modern Website Design
According to CrazyEgg, using white space on your website increases user satisfaction by 30% and this is just one aspect of a modern website design. Rainmaker.fm is a website that allows a lot of negative space (or white space).
In order to make your site relevant to the modern user, you need to do the following:
- Have clear calls to action
- Optimize your pages for speed
- Allow plenty of white spaces
- Use hyperlink differentiation
- Proper image placement
- Optimize your site for mobile users (Mobile-friendly)
The modern user wants things done really fast and needs your content to be coherent early enough.
If your pages load slowly, for example, most visitors will simply hit the back button or if the page is cluttered with images or irrelevant images you'll lose the interest of your visitors.
7. Include Accurate and Relevant Data Points in Your Content
With the huge amount of information floating around the web, users seek to find credible information and the only way to prove your expertise is by including accurate and helpful data points in your content.
We always reference industry reports and studies. Below is our recent post where we cited a data point which was the result of an experiment by Marketo.
Linking to authority sites can improve the perceived value of your content. It makes your content better and more valuable than a personal opinion and establishes it as an authoritative source.
In turn, users will always reference your content as an authoritative force in its related niche as they've acknowledged its credibility, and this shows search engines that your content is useful, helpful, high-quality, and well-researched.
8. Use Keywords Naturally In Your Content
One thing Google dislikes is keyword stuffing, why? Well, it seeks to manipulate the system into offering its users irrelevant content. Google doesn’t want that to happen.
With Google's new algorithm updates, what matters now is “User Satisfaction.” Is it poor, good, or excellent? Aim for the latter on your website.
This is why your keywords must be placed naturally, so as not to hamper the flow of your content.
Visitors must not be confused or dissatisfied when engaging with your site due to the incoherent placement of keywords simply to outsmart Google, as this will lead to higher bounce rates, which is terrible for your rankings.
9. Make Your Content Page Mobile Friendly
A report by Digital Future across various countries shows how mobile users consume more than 2X minutes on mobile which is higher than desktop consumption. This is why it's vital to ensure your site is mobile-friendly.
Most engagements as seen above come from mobile devices and if your site isn't ready to receive such users, you'll lose them, as the pages will load too slowly or barely fit into their screens, which creates horrible user satisfaction.
10. Use Power Words to Influence Users Emotions
Every smart digital marketer makes use of power words. It works. You could see a 12.7% rise in conversions by simply using the right words. This was the experience of popular T-shirt brand Teespring.
Power words play on people’s emotions -- and these emotions could be greed, sloth, or curiosity.
You could use power words in your page title, subheadings, paragraphs, and so on. Power words such as ‘effective,’ ‘powerful’, ‘smart,’ ‘simple,’ and the like are emotional triggers.
Here, we added the power word “high-converting” in our recent post. Look at the number of views already.
Without this power word (i.e., high-converting), the title will read boring and generic like this:
How to Write an Offer Funnel That Will Grow Sales
Did you see the difference?
You should also use power words, phrases, and sentences in your content.
For example “Get this quality inexpensive fanny pack for half the price of one."
Such a phrase pulls on the "greed" of a user to get a quality cheap fanny pack and influences them to quickly make a purchase.
This is the importance of power words to influence users to make a profitable decision for you based on their emotional want.
Conclusion
Valuable content must satisfy both users and search engines. However, your major goal should be to ensure user satisfaction as this is what search engines aim for.
When users are happy with your page, Google will be happy too. Or so it seems.
Gone are the days when simple keyword placement guaranteed a top position in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), now you must seek to create value for web users to be ranked higher than your competition.
Do you want to develop a high-converting content strategy that will drive organic traffic and ranking? Bloominari can help you. Our San Diego Digital Marketing Company is ever ready to support you. Contact us now!
