The Best Tactics to Keep in Mind When Trying to Write Quality Content

In the world of search engine optimization, content is most definitely king.

Today, one of the most impactful and positive things you can do for your site and its outreach is creating fantastic content that your growing audience can read, engage with and learn from.

That being said, it can be pretty hard to precisely identify what exactly makes great content.

How can you produce the right amount of valuable and shareable content?

The unfortunate truth is that you can consistently produce a great flow of new and fresh content and still not get the conversion rate and organic traffic you are hoping for. The reason for that is typical because even though your content is excellent, it is not answering the needs of your audience.

Why Your Blog Needs Top Quality Content

Your content simply has to be the best, and It has to stand out compared to the competition. Perhaps most importantly, it has to strike a chord with the people reading it, and it typically takes quite a bit of research (but we’ll get to that later).

If you are looking for ways to improve your content creation game, here are some tried and true tactics that you may want to consider.

Tactics To Improve your Content

Keep an eye on social media.

You’re probably already pretty tuned in to the activity of your brand on major social media channels. If you’re not, you definitely should be! But that knowledge alone is not nearly enough.

Make sure that you expand your attention to social media to capitalize on viral trends or issues that relate to your niche and business. You may be able to identify the very questions your audience merely has by paying closer attention to what conversations are being had on platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and more.

Make sure you really know who you’re selling to

You must keep in mind that your customers are more than just demographics with variable purchasing power at every stage of your business. When you are thinking of content that you want to specifically get your customers involved in, it is of the utmost importance to consider who they really are.

Look at customer notes, comments and complaints to spark up inspiration for your latest content post. Another great way to get inside your customers’ heads is to offer customer questionnaires on your site. Ask them how they feel about your brand. Ask them how they think about your products or services.

This will give you ample material to work with when creating content, but it will also help your customers feel more involved in the business and more heard. This will only help lead to greater customer loyalty.

Don’t you think understanding your customer base is essential? Consider the research done by Invesp, which found that creating a compelling buyer persona can result in an increase in conversion by an incredible 238 per cent.

Check out the competition.

In the dog-eat-dog world of business today, there is nothing wrong with looking into where your competitors are succeeding compared to you by taking a look at what kind of content is getting great feedback on the site of your major competitors.

You can do this in one of two ways. First off, you can simply look on their site and see what content is getting the majority of shares and responses.

The other more in-depth way to figure out what is resonating on your competitor’s pages is by doing a competitor content audit. This will offer you a comprehensive look at what is working in your industry. It is precious information that you can use to improve your digital marketing strategy and your search engine optimization strategy.

Another significant aspect of taking a look at your competition is to see what kind of social media influencers they are working with.

While you may not want to straight-up poach influencers from your game, you can certainly see how they use influencers and take advantage of their outreach and followership.

Research your keywords

Indeed, keywords are not quite as impactful as they used to be when it comes to improving the outreach of your site and content (tactics like keyword stuffing are very much a thing of the past), but that does not mean that keywords no longer matter. They totally do!

A great way to utilize keywords is to pick up your keyword research to see what people are talking about online, sharing and responding to. You can check keyword research tools such as this list here or just use ahrefs – or another keyword tool.

Use essential keywords to think up great title ideas or combine different keywords to develop a great new topic for your blog.

Don’t undermine the importance of your title

It can be easy to overlook just how crucial a title to your articles are, but missing the first thing that a potential reader sees is a severe mistake. Even when you know exactly what you want to write and have some fantastic ideas about what topics you will cover, take a deep breath and spend 5-10 minutes really thinking about the title of your new work.

Better yet, think about talking with some of your coworkers to see if they have any good ideas regarding a title. They might have a completely different approach that can improve the title and the content you are writing about.

A title should be quick and concise, draw readers in but not be clickbait. It’s a balance, and with that extra time, you can indeed find that outstanding balance.

Research, research, research

You want to make engaging and informational content, and one of the best ways to make sure that you actually achieve that goal is to jampack your work with valuable information. Don’t just write two to three pages of puff that doesn’t even teach the reader anything.

Another type of research that you want to do is find out what actually works when it comes to content creation.

Back in 2017, Buzzsumo looked at 100 MILLION posts to find out what people tend to share and why. The results were incredibly useful when it comes to content creation. For the most part, longer content is more popular. Images are particularly critical to success, and people tend to share things that they are emotionally connected with rather than intellectually connected with.

Believe it or not, the most common emotion linked with shareability was awe with 25 percent. The second most popular emotion was laughter was 17 percent. The second was Amusement with 15 percent. Believe it or not, considering what you hear about on the news, anger only took up six percent of shares on social media.

It is never a bad idea to include some cold-hard facts in your content either. There is no need to turn your content into a PhD dissertation, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to back up some of your claims with factual information.

Don’t forget to optimize

So, you’ve done the necessary research and have put your blood, sweat and tears towards creating an exceptional piece of content that your customers will surely enjoy. You’re close to the finish line, but you’re not there yet!

Now is the time to take the content you have written and make sure that you optimise your work before publishing by way of on-page search engine optimization.

If your writing has a specific, overall focus, chances are you really already have the keywords and concepts necessary.

Still, it is important to keep in mind the important SEO you want to keep in mind before you publish:

• Make sure your meta description is concise yet descriptive
• Make sure your sub-headers contain keywords and variants
• Link to authority sites that you have used to build out your content
• Link to internal pages that are related to the content to keep visitors engaged with your site
• Add images with descriptive alt text

Incorporating visual media such as videos and slideshows is not necessary to the success of your content, but it can definitely help!

It is also essential to keep in mind that there is simply no way to predict whether or not a bit of content that you create will be successful or not.

Summary

As hard as that may be to hear, no amount of hard work necessarily means your new creation is going to gain traction. That being said, if you consistently work to pump out well-written posts loaded with great information and insight, your audience will gradually grow. It will likely take patience – and it could take many months for you to really see the fruits of your labor, but those fruits will come!

Content is, in many ways, the personality of your business. It not only gives your audience and customers something to read, but it also lets them know about you, your personality, your interests, and so much more.

Don’t consider content just a simple transaction. Use it as a tool. Use it as a way to work out questions you are having within your own business practices. It can be gratifying in more ways than one.

All you have to do is start writing!