Your team has devoted plenty of resources to creating website copy and downloadable content — isn’t it time you made your content marketing work harder for you? These couple of steps might be all you need to take your digital content to the next level:
When content is both well-written and optimized for search, it can drive organic traffic to your site. It’s essential to create a keyword list and refer to it when developing content if you want to rank for competitive keywords in your industry. Pick about a dozen focused keywords that have sufficient search volume, but aren’t so competitive that you’ll never make it to the first page of search results. Practice incorporating these keywords into your writing in ways that feel natural. Learn best practices for both the technical and content components of SEO optimization, and be sure to stay informed of major updates to search engine algorithms and adapt accordingly.
Always incorporate a strong call-to-action (CTA) into your content. For blog posts and infographics, this CTA may drive readers to more in-depth downloadable content such as a white paper, encouraging them down the inbound marketing funnel and giving them the information they need to ultimately decide to buy. CTAs may also encourage site visitors to join an email marketing list or to directly contact a representative of your company.
Once you integrate CTAs throughout your marketing collateral, keep an eye on your site’s analytics to see the paths visitors take to and through your content. Are some CTAs more impactful than others? If so, use them as replacements for other, less effective calls-to-action and see if you can improve click-through rates.
Great website content adds value for your audience, and it can add value for your team (and your sales) as well. Put content behind a form that requires visitors to input their information before they access the download. Give your audience the opportunity to indicate their interest level and make a connection with your business by filling in their contact information. Allow visitors to include what they are interested in and, if you have more than one set of email lists, opt out of those lists that are not relevant to them. Not only does this allow your audience more control over how their information is used, it also allows you to target your messages more effectively and reach the right people with the right content at the right time.
Digital content takes time to develop, distribute and optimize, but if you follow a few of these best practices, the investment can be well worth it.
Photo credit: Charles & Hudson via Flickr Creative Commons
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