If you want to build a solid subscriber base, it is not enough with writing hundreds of articles. Instead, you’ll need to be strategic about how you create your content. If you just create content without a smart strategy, chances are your content will not convert.
However, with the right content creation strategy, you will not only generate way more traffic, but you will also be able to grow your subscriber list and increase your business revenue.
So, how do you write content that converts?
In this post, I am going to show you how to create amazing content that converts in 10 steps.
Let’s dive in!
The first step is to make sure you are writing your content for a targeted audience. If you just write generic content without a targeted audience in mind, you’ll hardly convert your readers.
Instead, you need to know exactly who are you writing for:
Once you have this specific and targeted audience, and can solve their common problem, you’ll be able to create content that converts.
Some ways you can get to know your audience better are:
All content is not created equal. These days, the demand for high-value content is on the rise. But the competition is also fierce.
If you want to attract readers, you’ll need to create better content than your competitors. But overall, you need to find content ideas that will attract your targeted audience. This will help you to drive more traffic and generate leads.
In order to do that, you need to find topics in which your audience will be interested.
Some ways you can find content ideas that resonate with your audience are:
One of the main factors to rank in Google is user intent. User intent is the identification and categorization of what a user online intended or wanted to find when they typed their search terms into an online web search engine for the purpose of search engine optimization or conversion rate optimization. (Wikipedia)
In essence, is trying to understand what a user needs and ensuring that the content behind the most relevant keyword truly matches what the user is looking for. So no matter how good your SEO content strategy is. If you don’t optimize your content to match user intent, you won’t rank as high as you could.
1. Identify queries that bring users to Google’s top results.
You can do this, by checking Google’s top 3 results:
What queries do they have in common?
Your content should also address these queries. Also, you can optimize your existing content by checking your search console information. Simply head to Google Search Console > Overview > Search Results > Search Queries.
There you’ll find the queries that get your impressions and clicks. Additionally, this exercise will help you identify keyword gaps on your website.
2. Understand the intent of those queries.
Next, you will need to analyse the sites that are ranking:
Once you understand the key factors you need to rank, you should create your content considering these factors.
The headline is the first thing your readers are going to notice. So make it count. If it catches their attention they will stay for more. But if it does not, you will lose them for good. That means you need to engage them fast.
Only by keeping them on your page, you will be able to engage them and will have the chance to convert them into subscribers.
These are some rules you should follow to create good headlines:
If you want to increase your conversions from your content, you need to write personalized content for your audience.
Bear in mind who are you writing for and use an adequate tone. Also, you need to focus on their needs and pain points. The more identified they feel with your content, the higher the chances to increase conversions. Moreover, when you write conversationally, you have better chances to rank for voice search results.
Readability is an important factor, no only for SEO, but to keep your readers on your page. Your ideas have to be presented in a way your audience wants to read them. A clean layout, legible font, and the use of visuals are key to accomplish this.
Lastly, this will need to be combined with good writing and an interesting topic to help you increase your leads.
People get bored easily. If your content is mainly blocks of text, chances are no one is going to read your all content.
Visuals are a very important part of any content strategy. You should include in your content visual elements like images, videos, infographics, memes, etc. According to PR Daily, visual content gets viewed 94% times more than content without any visuals.
Some ways visuals can help your content is:
So if you really want to make the most of your content, pay extra attention to your visuals.
One of the easiest ways to generate more leads is by providing content upgrades. Content upgrades are lead magnets specifically created for a or piece of content.
Essentially, you will be creating a highly-targeted lead magnet for a very specific audience. Which normally converts very well. For instance, If you are reading an SEO article, you probably will be interested in an On-page SEO checklist. You can then offer this SEO checklist for free in exchange for your reader’s email.
Some ideas of content upgrades are:
If you want your readers to take action, you need to guide them.
The easiest way of doing it is by adding call to action buttons. If you just follow all the previous steps, you will create for sure an amazing piece of content. But now you want people to take action when they read your content.
With a call to action button, you can guide them towards the next steps. For example, if you are reviewing a product, at the end of the article you could add a “Buy Now” button. This will guide them towards the action you want them to take. Also, you can use “Subscribe to my email” buttons for people to join your newsletter. All of this will invite your readers to take action.
If you want to increase your conversions from your content, you need to keep testing and trying.
Using Google Analytics will help you understand which content performs the best. For example, you can create more content similar to the articles driving most of the traffic. Then all you need to do is to optimize your best performing content for conversions.
You can also check what are your top converting articles and why. If you can crack what makes something work and apply it to the rest of your content, you can boost your traffic and conversions in no time.
If you prepare a good content strategy, you can achieve a solid subscriber base in just a few months. Forget about writing content just for the sake of it without a purpose.
Instead, focus on solving the problems of a targeted audience, and you will see how your traffic, conversions, and revenue increase over time.
Author Info
Sergio Sigler is the founder of The Niche Guru. After building many niche websites for different clients, he created The Niche Guru to help people finding blog niche ideas and turn them into profitable online businesses.