So you want to be heard, you want to be found and you want to make an impact? Hell, of course you do, thats why youre writing the content in the first place!
Your content is the first and most important component of building a thriving online audience; outstanding content is crucial to attracting visitors and can play a massive part in gaining high search engine rankings.
Creating that outstanding content is not as difficult as you might believe, you simply need to think about what your visitors want and what search engines need.
Make your content work with these 6 tips:
Quality matters
If you dont believe in your content and dont find it interesting then your readers wont either.
Unique quality content has always been necessary, but as a few of you can probably testify after the recent Google changes, its now more important than ever. Make your content your own by injecting your own thoughts and unique personality into your articles. Google places greater value on unique content and your audience will always prefer an article written with passion and personality, so let your thoughts and uniqueness shine through!
Quantity is important
Content is important for search engines and the more good content you provide the better. However, the attention span of most readers is pretty short, so make any content interesting, focused and attention grabbing.
Focused content will also naturally include your keywords therefore having the added advantage of satisfying the search engines, leading to that sought-after high ranking without reducing the quality of the content.
Easy to scan
Its not enough to create real value, your posts must also be easy to scan.
With so much information and competition online you need to help readers find what they are looking for quickly; use proper headings, keep paragraphs short and add bullet lists to organize information and to keep your posts targeted.
Easy to share
Not only do you want people to read your content but you also need them to share it.
Writing great content that is worth sharing is a good start but you also need to make it easy to share, so ensure the social media share buttons are in an obvious place. Content shared through links and tweets will give you a bigger audience, so go ahead and self promote a little!
New content
Create new content on a regular basis. Sites need to grow rather than remaining static, so keep writing. Stuck for ideas? People love top tips, how to articles and step-by-step guides, and I think Ive already mentioned that search engines love content!
Link naturally
If its useful and will benefit your audience then link to it naturally within your content. Dont over-link your keywords though, as this can be very annoying to your readers. Relevant cross-linking throughout your blog posts will have a positive effect on your Search Engine rank.
The bottom line Quality
Always remember that quality matters the quality of your content is absolutely imperative to both your readers and your Search Engine ranking.
What do you feel is important when it comes to writing content? Id love to hear your thoughts and what has worked for you.
Hi Hazel, I agree with all your points. It’s particularly important to get your own personality across in your content. A lot of the small business owners I work with in the UK feel their blog articles should be written with a ‘more corporate’ tone.
Another good way to make your content work is to submit it to social bookmarking sites yourself such as StumbleUpon as this can help you reach a wider audience.
Jamie, you mention StumbleUpon — any tips on specific UK/European social sites?
Hi Ruud, I’ve been looking into this area recently and idigg.co.uk and abcbookmarks.com look like they might be useful and are both UK sites.
Thanks Jamie!
You make some very good points especially about including keywords in articles naturally. It is a real turn of when a perfectly good article is spoiled because the author tried to stuff in as many keywords as possible which don’t make any sense.
Great writeup here Hazel, you’ve made it seem simple enough to get content to “work,” so nice job.
One thing I want to reiterate in my comment is something I haven’t seen others promote enough: the value of personality. Adding your personality to your content is by far the easiest way to make it unique, duh! So when you say “Make your content your own by injecting your own thoughts and unique personality into your articles.” you are really making a powerful point.
Kudos!
Great post you have here Hazel! Very strong points you have and it is really informative… Thanks for sharing Hazel…
These are great points on how to have strong content on your site. I have been surprised by how many people put content on their blogs that is one HUGE paragraph, without any line breaks at all. Obviously, the headings are a big part of it as well.
The social bookmarking buttons are also a big plus…I’ve seen people’s traffic triple simply by adding them on their sites so that people could share the content.
Thank you for all your comments. Submitting content to social bookmarking sites is a very good point… thanks Jamie.