One of the biggest reasons to create content for your website is to increase your levels of relevant traffic. But, if you’ve been creating content for a while and see stagnant or declining traffic levels, then continuing to publish content can be a little disheartening.
But, before you stop publishing and give up altogether make sure you read this post. You could be committing a few mistakes that are holding back your content creation efforts. Below we offer a few different ways you can diagnose any mistakes you’re making and offer ways you can fix them to improve your content.
You can increase your traffic levels by improving your content and this post will help you get there.
1. You’re Only Creating a Single Type of Content
Creating content on a regular basis is important. But, if your traffic levels haven’t been increasing, then you could be creating the wrong kind of content. Content diversity is just as important as publishing consistently.
If one kind of content isn’t bringing you the traffic you desire, then it’s time to experiment. It could be the case that your audience simply doesn’t like to consume the kind of content you’ve been creating.
You can go well beyond creating basic blog posts and create things like infographics, videos, in-depth guides, presentations, and much more. You can even package your existing content in different formats to see what performs better.
2. Your Content Doesn’t Speak to Deep Needs
If you’re just writing about things that you “think” your audience might enjoy, then you’re doing yourself a disservice. The content you create needs to cater directly to your audience’s deep needs if you want it to be effective.
To create content that your readers care about you’re going to need to do your research. This involves things like:
- Checking out your competitor’s content to see which pieces of content are getting them the most traction.
- Doing keyword research to see what kind of topics your audience is actually searching for.
- Browsing Quora to see what kind of questions your target market is asking.
- Using Buzzsumo to see which pieces of content in your niche have received the most social shares.
- Look through your existing analytics data to see if any of your content is performing better than others.
3. Your Content Isn’t Optimized for the Web
Finally, your content could actually be great, but you’re not delivering it and presenting it in the right format. To gain attention on the web you need to be playing be certain rules.
If you have a lackluster headline and content that isn’t formatted properly will discourage people to click on your content and actually stick around to read it.
Implement the tips below to help optimize your content and make it more enticing for your readers:
- Create a clickable and attention-worthy headline. If you need a little help, take a look at this post.
- Format your content properly with short paragraphs, images, subheading breaks, and even graphs and charts where necessary.
- Include easy to see social sharing buttons on your sidebar to encourage social sharing.
- Include a call-to-action at the end of the post to encourage your readers to take a specific action, like join your email list, share on social media, or leave a comment.
We hope the tips above will be helpful in improving your existing content strategy, so you can get the levels of traffic your website deserves.
If you need some help with your existing content strategy, then reach out to our team today.
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