Once you’ve written an article or page on your website, do you ever wonder how people find it? With five billion people online, and about two billion websites out there, you probably feel like a needle in a haystack. Who will read your content, and how do they find it?

Actually, you should probably consider those questions before you even sit down to write! If you understand how internet users find your content in the first place, you can tweak your articles to actually attract more readers. In fact, you can make significant progress simply by focusing on the titles of your blog posts.

Step One: Imagine the types of questions or search phrases your target audience might type into their search engines.

For example, someone searching for plumbing advice might type, “How to fix a leaking sink.” A person looking for divorce advice might ask, “who gets custody of the kids in a divorce?” If you’re a plumber or a family law attorney, writing articles on those very same topics can help you attract readers to your website.

Remember to use the words and phrases that your potential clients would use, and steer clear of industry lingo or complicated language unfamiliar to most people.

Step Two: Create topics that use basic keywords or ask questions. For content published offline, it can often be acceptable to craft creative, abstract titles. But when you want to optimize search engine results and boost views for online content, keep search terms in mind when creating titles. That means using the exact keywords that you expect your target audience to be using. To use our above example, a plumber might use titles such as,

  • “How Do I Fix a Leaking Sink?”
  • “4 Reasons Your Sink is Leaking”
  • “What to Do if Your Sink is Leaking”

Or, you can actually use their exact questions as titles. Internet users who search those queries, or closely related questions, will be returned a list of articles like yours (and hopefully including yours).

Remember, steer clear of the abstract. “Mom’s House or Dad’s House: Which One is Best” might sound creative, and most readers might intuitively understand your intention, but search engines won’t pick up on it. And if search engines don’t pick it up, potential readers won’t find it.

For more help with writing compelling content that attracts attention to your website, contact us to learn more about our process. We can help learn what your audience wants to hear from you, and how to effectively communicate with them.