Creating shareable content is one of the best ways to boost your traffic and reach new audiences. But how do you make your content stand out and get people to click, read, and share it? In this article, you'll learn some practical tips and strategies to create content that is engaging, relevant, and valuable for your target audience and for SEO.
Before you start writing, you need to know who you are writing for and what they are looking for. You can use tools like Google Analytics, keyword research, social media analytics, and surveys to understand your audience's demographics, interests, pain points, and goals. This will help you tailor your content to their needs and preferences, and make it more likely that they will find it useful and shareable.
It is important to know who your audiences are. This helps you make content that matches what they're looking for and speaks their language. When you know your audience well, you can use the words they use when searching online, making it more likely that your content will show up in search results. Also, your content will be interesting to them, and they'll stay on your page longer. This can lead to more people becoming interested in what you offer, like buying your products or services. So, knowing your audience makes your content more helpful, gets you noticed in searches, and can bring you more customers.
Create shareable content to boost traffic by understanding your audience, focusing on quality, using visuals, clear headlines, offering a unique perspective, enabling easy sharing, evoking emotions, storytelling, using formats like lists and how-tos, addressing current trends, encouraging user-generated content, leveraging interactivity, collaborating with influencers, posting at optimal times, optimizing for SEO, maintaining consistency, and adapting based on feedback and analysis.
Creating shareable content is the secret sauce to boosting traffic. But how? 1. Craft headlines that spark curiosity. 2. Deliver value that solves a problem or entertains. 3. Include easy-to-use share buttons and CTAs.
I totally agree with the points above and would like to mention a tool called SparkToro, to know more about your target audience and make your content more customised.
Knowing the audience for any content is the first step towards achieving this goal. When we don't know who we are creating content for, how can we expect it to be shared effectively?
Different types of content have different levels of shareability and SEO potential. For example, blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, and ebooks are some of the most popular and effective formats for content marketing. You should choose the format that best suits your topic, audience, and goals, and that showcases your expertise and value. You should also consider the platform and device that your audience uses to consume and share your content, and optimize it accordingly.
Infographics are essential for creating shareable content that boosts traffic because they visually distill complex information into easily digestible, engaging graphics, making it more likely for users to share and engage with your content across various platforms. Additionally, incorporating compelling and relevant data or statistics in your infographics can enhance their shareability by providing valuable insights that resonate with your target audience.
It's important to add relevant images, links (external or internal), videos, and stats about the content. This will increase interest on reading the page content and it leads to take the decision. For example: "Web Stories" is one of the key area to focus for the limited content websites and it helps small and medium businesses to reach the right audience.
For what it's worth, the two most viral content projects I've been a part of have both been infographics. Both were in-depth research projects, finding out what clients find interesting, collecting real customer data for months and months, organizing the data, and hiring a designer to create the infographic. If you really want content that gets shared like crazy, it takes time, patience, and budget
To optimize for SEO, prioritize content formats like blog posts, infographics, videos, and podcasts that allow you to incorporate relevant keywords, meta descriptions, alt text, and structured data, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your content.
I would say that begin by understanding the intent behind the search query or the goal of the user. Different intents may align with specific content formats, such as informational articles, product pages, videos, or interactive tools. Analyze the keywords associated with your content topic. Some keywords may naturally align with specific formats. For instance, "how-to" keywords often pair well with tutorial videos or step-by-step guides.
Your headline is the first thing that your audience sees when they encounter your content, and it can make or break their decision to click and read more. A catchy headline should capture the attention and curiosity of your audience, and promise them a benefit or a solution to a problem. You should also include your main keyword in your headline, and make it clear and concise. You can use tools like CoSchedule Headline Analyzer, BuzzSumo, or Ahrefs to generate and test your headlines.
Your headline plays a crucial role in attracting your audience's attention. It can determine whether they click to read more or not. A good headline should pique curiosity, offering a solution or benefit. It's also important to include your main keyword in the headline and keep it clear and concise. For instance, if you're writing about "Healthy Meal Prep," a catchy headline could be "Effortless Healthy Meal Prep Tips for Busy Lives." This headline not only hints at a solution (easy meal prep) but also includes the keyword "Healthy Meal Prep." To refine your headlines, you can utilize helpful tools like Co Schedule Headline Analyzer, BuzzSumo, or Ahrefs. These tools assess your headlines or effectiveness
Catchy headlines are very important to improve the CTR, don't just add the keyword, include top one word / two words specification or offer or top rated or the focus location or focus audience. Use Google Search Console to find the trending search terms (use BigQuery or looker dashboard for all relevant queries).
To boost click-through rates (CTR), it's crucial to craft attention-grabbing headlines. Avoid merely inserting keywords; instead, consider adding one or two impactful elements such as specifications, offers, top-rated mentions, location focus, or audience targeting. Utilize Google Search Console to identify trending search terms, and you can leverage tools like BigQuery or Looker Dashboard to gather insights on relevant queries.
Incorporate powerful and emotionally charged words that trigger curiosity, excitement, or a sense of urgency. What I observed that people love lists and specific numbers. Headlines like "10 Proven SEO Tips" or "5 Steps to Boost Your Traffic" are effective. One more important thing is that make the reader feel directly addressed.
The most shareable content is the content that provides value and quality to your audience. This means that your content should be original, informative, relevant, accurate, and well-written. You should also make sure that your content is easy to read and scan, by using headings, subheadings, bullet points, images, and other visual elements. You should also proofread and edit your content for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors, and avoid plagiarism and duplicate content.
Creating content that is helpful, interesting, readable and formatted correctly is a great foundation. Ultimately, website content should exist to provide a good user experience and help your audience in some way. In terms of providing value, it's important that the website is set up in a way where the content is not only useful and considered quality by web crawlers, but also by your audience. A common way that websites lose sight of this goal is focusing on conversion in areas of websites that should not be conversion focused. For example, an instructional article that has a trigger for a discount popup every 30 seconds is not providing value or quality and will result in a poor user experience. Understanding content purpose is key.
Establishing a strong foundation for content involves crafting material that is informative, engaging, easy to read, and properly structured. Ultimately, the primary purpose of website content should revolve around enhancing the user experience and assisting your audience in some meaningful way. To deliver genuine value, it's essential to structure your website so that the content not only meets the criteria of search engine crawlers but also genuinely resonates with your audience. One common pitfall to avoid is overemphasizing conversion tactics in areas of your website that should prioritize user experience.
When creating content always think of the audience first and utilise data to understand what they may wish to see. You should look to create something that is engaging, whether that be a statistics-led piece with data you have collected from surveys and various other sources, or an explanation article with an accompanying video. Regurgitating old content can work to a degree, but make sure you are always trying to provide the user with more information, more to engage with and more to digest... aka something meaningful.
It's all about adding values. By consistently providing valuable, high-quality content, you can attract and retain users, readers, earn their trust.
One of the ways to increase the trust and authority of your content is to add social proof and credibility. Social proof refers to the evidence that other people have liked, shared, or endorsed your content, such as testimonials, reviews, ratings, comments, or social media buttons. Credibility refers to the sources and references that you use to back up your claims and arguments, such as statistics, facts, quotes, or links to reputable websites. Adding social proof and credibility can boost your content's appeal and persuasiveness, and encourage more shares.
The above mentioned notions will also help improve the EEAT signals for the article which in turn boosts the authority of the article and helps in ranking the article at the top in SERPS
Incorporating social proof and credibility signals, such as reviews, testimonials, and authoritative backlinks, positively impacts SEO by enhancing trust and authority, leading to higher search engine rankings and increased organic traffic.
The last step to create shareable content is to include a clear call to action (CTA) at the end of your content. A CTA is a statement or a button that tells your audience what you want them to do next, such as subscribe, download, buy, or share your content. A clear CTA should be specific, actionable, and compelling, and create a sense of urgency or curiosity. You should also make it easy for your audience to share your content, by adding social media icons, widgets, or plugins to your website or blog.
Adding a CTA will allow you to measure performance from content too. Whether that CTA is downloading an app, or joining a mailing list etc, it will allow you to see is the content you are creating engaging enough? If not, you can then use this data to reassess and see how you can improve. Adding a CTA doesn't just help convert users, but allows you to measure the engagement of your content too.
Adding a clear and compelling call to action (CTA) can boost SEO performance by improving user engagement and encouraging desired actions on your website, such as clicks and conversions, which can positively influence search engine rankings.
Including a clear CTA in your content is vital for guiding your audience and encouraging them to take specific actions. One should clearly state what action you want the user to take. Whether it's signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or sharing the content, specificity is key.
People love data and numbers. Utilise this where you can when creating content as it feels tangible to the user and therefore they feel more connected to the story you are trying to show.
Knowing your audience well is the key to success. Understand your target audience's interests, preferences, and pain points. Tailor your content to resonate with them. By consistently delivering high-quality, engaging, and valuable content, you can encourage more shares, increase traffic, and expand your online reach.