Creating Compelling Content

The content creation prong of a traffic generation strategy includes articles and posts that are relevant to the website or blog’s topic. Effective market research will reveal the specific needs and issues facing your target audience. Write your content with the goal of providing the solutions your readers seek, and you will not only grow your readership but convert casual passersby into loyal readers.

Conduct keyword research to locate terms with high search volume and low competition. Good on-site search engine optimization tactics, such as including your keywords in the title tag, post title, and within your post will help those who are looking for answers find your site.

Developing Links

A good linking strategy is vital to generate web traffic. Links should be both internal (deep linking) and external (backlinks). The key to an effective linking strategy is to make sure the anchor text (the text the link is embedded into) is a relevant phrase, one that preferably includes the keyword you’re optimizing that article for.

Inbound links, or backlinks, add more authority to your site when they are relevant to the topic and originate from a site with good PageRank. One of the best ways to develop backlinks to your site is through article marketing. Article marketing provides benefits in addition to backlinks, such as helping position you as an authority in your niche and by introducing those who read your articles to you and your site.

Activity

The third part of a good traffic generation plan is site activity. Activity includes site visitors, blog comments, social media shares, social bookmarking, and any other means of interaction between you, your guests, and your website or blog.

A good blog commenting strategy includes returning the favor by visiting the sites of those who leave comments on your blog. Make your comments relevant and insightful — more than just writing “good post.” Some site owners may think a simple comment like that is a ploy to get a backlink from their site and might delete your comment. Activity takes time, but as more and more bloggers and website owners have become SEO and link savvy, some search engines have begun to weigh activity when determining where to display pages in the search engine results.

One of the best ways to initiate activity on your site is to simply ask. Ask readers to tweet, Digg, share on Facebook, bookmark, leave a comment, etc. Sometimes blog posts written from a controversial point of view receive more activity than a typical post or article. Ending your post with a question and inviting readers to submit their answers in the comment section can also increase activity.

A tip about on-site activity: make it easy for your guests to leave comments. If the security level is set so high that readers become frustrated when they attempt to comment, you may not only lose a potential comment, but possibly the reader, too. A good spam filter, such as Akismet, enables you to let the real readers interact without worrying too much about spammers.

Other Ways to Generate Web Traffic

You can increase awareness and interest in your site by developing “outposts,” such as posting relevant videos YouTube channel, recording podcasts and broadcasting them on iTunes, and becoming involved in communities and forums within your niche.

To learn more how compelling content can help generate web traffic to your site, sign up for the FREE Creating Compelling Content mini-course.

This is just a short list of ways to make your writing more effective. To learn more elements of effective writing, sign up for the FREE Creating Compelling Content mini-course.

What makes content compelling?
Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net polled his readers on what they considered “compelling content.” The top responses could be distilled into a few phrases: something that makes the reader want to change, share, try something new, or learn more. Darren boiled it down to this: “Compelling content inspires a reader to take action.”

That is the goal of most writers. Here are seven tactics good writers employ to accomplish this goal:

Entertain
Although readers read to learn and obtain solutions, many read for the shear pleasure of luxuriating in language or to escape reality, if only for a few minutes. Be interesting, different, controversial, humorous, shocking, emotional, dramatic. Offering your information in more than a just-the-facts-ma’am style helps to set your site apart from the countless other blogs and websites out there.

Enlighten
Providing useful information is one of the best ways to attract readers. Go a step further by being unique in your teaching approach and your readership will grow. Be the first to report about new techniques or concepts in your niche. Bring fresh angles to common topics. Push past merely informing your readers — enlighten them.

Intrigue
Include a bit of drama in your writing. Go beyond reader expectations by evoking an emotional response. Use a unique voice and write about interesting situations and developments within your niche. Provide an opposing opinion to conventional wisdom. And instead of covering every angle and aspect of a topic, leave a little wiggle room in your articles. Make your readers think.

Exhort
Sometimes people need a bit of prodding to proceed with their goals and dreams. Nudge them out of the nest with your words. Encourage your readers to take action and cheer them along the way.

Engage
An active community provides “social proof” to blog browsers. Sometimes all it takes to get readers to tweet posts or share their findings with others is a simple request from the writer. Ask readers questions they can answer in the comments area or forums. Make it easy for them to respond.

Impress
You wouldn’t go on a first date or “meet the parents” or attend any other important event without dressing to the occasion. Make sure your blog makes a great first impression, too. A catchy domain name, appealing design, easy navigation, and other elements will help those who are channel surfing the web stop and take notice. Include eye-catching images in your posts.

Interact
When regular blog readers are polled about why they return over and over to a particular blog, one of the top answers is that they like the blogger. Being yourself includes using your unique voice on the screen, getting personal when appropriate, letting the readers identify with you, branding yourself as an authority in your niche, and interacting with readers through comment areas, forums, and even email.

These are just a few tactics used by big-name bloggers to solicit readers to respond the way they want. To learn more about how to evoke your most desired response from readers, sign up for the FREE Creating Compelling Content mini-course.

Keep it Simple

Vague qualifiers, long prepositional phrases, clichés, and jargon can clutter sentences, making the main idea difficult to discover. Such sentences bog down the reader. Specific nouns and active verbs are the best words to choose to keep your writing fresh.

The average American reads at the seventh- or eighth-grade level, yet many writers produce prose at a much higher reading level, often throwing in big words. Instead of impressing the reader, this writing style typically has the opposite effect. Readers become frustrated and either skim the piece or even stop reading.

A writing coach I know suggests to her clients to practice writing using words with just one syllable. Picture a scene or an event you’re familiar with and describe it using one-syllable words. It’s an excellent exercise in creative writing.

Keep it Short

In addition to using short words, another quality of fresh writing is the use of short sentences and short paragraphs. Gone are the days where each paragraph required a minimum number of sentences. Some writers emphasize a single thought or even a single word by placing it in its own paragraph.

Short sentences can quicken the pace of your writing. Novelists use this technique. Longer, wordier sentences can be used when you wish to slow the pace down, but don’t drag it on for too long or the reader will get bored. The typical modern reader has a short attention span.

The proper length of a blog post has been discussed ad nauseum. Mine typically range between 300 and 700 words, but I try to keep mine as close to 500 words as possible.

Keep it Relevant

Most of us grew up with the writing mantra, “One main idea per sentence.” When creating content for the web, it’s also best to maintain one main idea per post. Some bloggers drag their readers along pig trails and tangents. This confuses readers.

Start your post with a catchy headline, begin the piece with an interesting lead, and wrap it all up with a tidy conclusion and call to action at the end. A blog post, like any other composition, needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. All on the same topic.

Make it Easy

People are in a perpetual hurry. And as much as we writers would hope readers flock to our words because of us, most audiences read with a “what’s in it for me” attitude. They are seeking solutions to their problems.

Write a title and lead that immediately lets the reader know your article’s take-away value. This will enable your reader to quickly decide whether or not to read your post, saving them time if they choose not to do so. But they will appreciate your consideration of their schedule and will likely return to your site.

Keep your site as well as your content easy. A good way to increase your rate of return visitors is to use an easy site navigation system with a pleasant color scheme. Good contrast between the font and background colors is a must. Black type on a white background is always a good choice.

There are many other ways to keep your writing fresh, but space prohibits me from listing them here. To learn more, sign up for the FREE Creating Compelling Content mini-course.