We always say that great content is the key to a successful digital marketing strategy. And that’s still true! But what does “great content” mean, exactly? Other than providing helpful, relevant, or even entertaining information to your target audience, you have to optimize your content in order to wring the most benefit out of it.
Remember, you’re offering this content to your audience, in exchange for their time, attention, and even their contact information. In order to reap your end of the deal, take the following three steps to optimize your digital content.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Taking the right steps to boost your SEO will translate into higher search engine rankings, which means more people will visit your site and view your content. Take the following steps to bring more visitors to your site:
- Keep your content fresh – adding new content regularly keeps you visible to search engines.
- Use specific keywords – focusing your content this way gains you favor with search engines.
- Use a lot of keywords – keywords belong not only in your content, but in headers, sub-headers, links, title tags, and descriptive text. Meta descriptions are particularly important; this gives viewers an overview of your content, signaling them to click into your page.
- Use keywords naturally – they’re important, but if you over-stuff your content with them, search engines will penalize you and your content won’t be enjoyable to read.
- Use reader-friendly language. There’s no need to show off your impressive vocabulary in your blog posts. In fact, search engines and readers both prefer casual, accessible reading.
Lure visitors to your website with an ad. Whether you don’t have the patience to worry about search engine algorithms, or you just want to ensure that the right demographic of visitors find your site, creating an ad is a guaranteed way to boost your website views. A pay-per-click ad is exactly what it sounds like; you don’t pay for the ads unless people click on them. Facebook ads are another affordable option, and you can utilize Facebook’s vast bank of user demographic to promote your content to just the right audience.
Ads can be an affordable option to boost your page views, particularly if visitors follow your ads to content with a high conversion rate. In this way, your ad campaign can pay for itself.
Include a call to action. This is perhaps the most important step to optimize your content. Once you’ve provided something of value to your audience, it’s reasonable to ask a small favor of them. But they can’t read your mind! A call to action directs your reader, in a subtle and friendly way, to take action that will deepen your relationship. You might ask them to provide their contact information, subscribe to a newsletter, or call you to schedule an appointment. Many visitors won’t do these things on their own, but a polite request will spur them into action.
Speaking of calls to action, here’s ours: For more information on creating the right content for your website, give us a call. We will be happy to offer our expert guidance, and help you realize the most benefit from your digital marketing campaign.
