Understanding the Basics of Successful Content Development

To rank webpages, Google considers a number of factors, which includes user behavior data (like click-through-rate, time spent on page, return frequency, bounce rate and more).

At one time, it was possible to boost your webpage rankings by writing a 400-word article with a 2 percent keyword density. But those days are now history. Poor quality content will now damage your website and make it yet another casualty just like other low-quality content that was created simply for SEO reasons.

The recent patent filing of Google clearly indicates that user metrics influence webpage rankings. Your content creation strategy must be centered on this principle. You must produce useful, relevant and high-quality content that will attract readers.

If you focus on high-quality content then your SERPs ranking will automatically improve.

You must develop a sound strategy around this premise before you generate content. Don’t make the mistake of churning out content for the sake of content.

You will understand the effectiveness of this strategy once your rankings improve as a result of better user engagement.

This article will help you to understand this simple strategy.

Identify Your Goals

Superior quality content serves a specific purpose. Hence, you must define the purpose that your content will serve.

You must ask yourself different questions. Are you creating content to boost your brand image? Attract customers? Convert users? Generate leads? Or is it something else?

After you have established your goals, you must determine whether content is the best way to achieve them. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that content is the best solution for everything.

For instance, although content is great for lead generation and increasing brand awareness, it is not the best option for converting visitors at the bottom of your sales funnel.

Different types of content are required for different parts of the sales funnel. You must be clear about what type of content is best for people at different stages.

Get More Information on Your Audience

Your content strategy will work only if you understand your audience. You will need to understand the type of websites that your target audience visits. You must also investigate the type of content that they engage with and share on social media.

You can do this via Google demographics and interests to understand the sites that users engage with. You should use Google Analytics to understand the type of content that your audience prefers.

Google analytics will tell you about the content that delivers the best results.

To do this, you should visit Google Analytics and click the following in order: Behavior à Site à Content à Content Drilldown.

You can rank the best results according to different metrics like page views, bounce rate and average time spent on page.

With this information, you will understand what your audience is looking for. This will allow you to create content, which you know is relevant to your users. This is better than guessing relevant content on your own. You can go completely wrong with the guessing game.

You should aim to improve metrics like page views, bounce rate and average time on page.

Establish Your Niche

The internet contains a lot of content that should not exist in the first place. Either this content does not provide any real value or it already exists somewhere else.

The vast majority don’t even see these pages because such useless content has a very poor ranking.

To prevent your content from being lost in this way, you must create material that provides genuine value to your visitors. Your content should be useful to your target audience, it must stand out from the crowd, and it must have a unique voice.

Your niche should be very specific. You have a much better chance of becoming an authority in a niche if it is more specific. This holds true, whether your visitors are looking for entertainment or information.

Your brand will gain a lot of exposure through a loyal fan base.

Assess Your Results

To develop the right content strategy, you must measure the results of your content effort. With this data, you can understand what your audience likes and what they do not like. You will also discover the reason why they liked or disliked the content.

Here are the different types of metrics you can use to gauge the performance of your content:

Consumption Metrics

These metrics are generated when people consume your content. You can see the relevant data by going to Google Analytics and clicking in the given order:  Behavior à Site à Content à Content Drilldown.

You can see data for bounce rate, average time on page and page views.

Social Media Metrics

You can judge how well your strategy is working by understanding which content your audience is sharing on social media.

To do this, you should first log into Google Analytics. Click Acquisition à Social à Overview.

You will see the following:

• Conversions: this indicates the aggregate number of conversions. This includes conversions from all traffic sources besides social sources.
• Assisted Social Conversions: social conversion will count if a visitor goes to the social media platform once. This also includes cases where another traffic source was used for the conversion.
• Last Interaction Conversion: visitors will be counted in this list if they are visiting from social media and they fulfill the said goal in the same time period.

Listen to Your Audience

While it is important to analyze metrics, it is even more crucial to listen to your audience. You must reach out to them on social media and the comments section of your webpage.

You must request their feedback and ask what they think about your content. This will give you valuable insights about what you can do to make your content more relevant, interesting and engaging.

If you are proactive in asking their opinion and responding promptly, your audience will feel valued and appreciated. This will increase their loyalty, and they will actively endorse your brand.

You can learn more about content creation at the Miami Ad School.