Keeping User Attention
Everyone managing a webpage wants to rank higher in SERP, that is no secret. With the top 3 spots getting the most attention, and most users never even going past page 1, ranking is more important than ever. However, these days, its not just enough to get on the front page. Having all the best rankings for your website isn’t really going to matter if no one is clicking on the URLs and going to the content within.
So what do you do? A fair question to ask as something will have to change in your strategy. How you write, and how you deliver content is that something. By doing so and adjusting your strategy, you can make sure that people are landing on your pages and consuming your content.
Getting Conversions from Search
Turning search results into conversions should be the goal of content generation. While his seems obvious, there are many who miss the mark. Knowing what to focus on can make or break whether someone wants to click on your content, or whether they are going to choose another result in their query to get the things they seek.
Identify Your Strongest Keywords
This one might seem simple at first, but it is about more than just identifying the keywords you are wanting to target for your content generation. You must also do research on the keywords that your content is tracking for and being most associated with.
Research what keywords are being associated with your content, and also be sure to take a look at what content on your website is generating the most traffic. If there are pages that are declining in traffic or not delivering like they used to, look into them to try to identify the possible reasons as to why they may have suffered a sudden hit to their performance.
If you find that people are bouncing off these pages, then it is probably time to analyze the SEO strategies and copy that already exist upon them to see if these are reasons why. If so, then it is paramount to change these problem areas to help these pages recover.
Using hard data and insights can assist in discovering user data and navigation behavior, as well to better assist in positioning your page and your content. By better knowing how they are discovering your content, you can leverage that for better performance.
Try Different Imagery and Branding
Another thing that can affect performance is the visuals you are using to present your content. Images, logos, and other branding can have dramatic effects on how your content is perceived, and whether or not people are deciding to engage with it.
If you are unsure of how your branding is being perceived, try taking the time to test a few pages, or a few blog posts. Doing so, you can see how these pages respond, and how, alongside with your other SEO efforts, people are interacting with the changes. If there is a positive outcome, it could be a sign to start rethinking your branding as a whole.
All companies need image updates. As time marches on, trends, tastes, and what is seen as attractive marketing all change. Thinking ahead is important but knowing when to adapt and adjust can always be a challenge to navigate. Jump too soon and you risk alienating your audience. Wait too long, and you could be seen as outdated. This is why its important to test and pay attention to the performance to best determine when and how to adjust your website’s image.
Establish Your Value
If you are selling a service or a product, you likely already know why people should engage and purchase what you are selling. However, most people are not going to, especially if they are unfamiliar with what it is you are providing.
Because of this, it’s important to establish what you are doing, and why people need it quickly. One of the biggest reasons for people bouncing off pages, or not engaging with them at all in the first place is not finding what it is they are looking for. The longer they have to take, the greater the chance of the user navigating elsewhere.
An easy way to tell this is to check Google analytics for your website. Google tracks a variety of metrics, but one of them is bounce rate. By checking this you can check your website as well as individual pages to track their performance. One of those things tracked is bounce rate, allowing you to see how often, and after how long people are leaving your pages.
With that information, you can better tune your SEO, and your content to address these issues.
Reduce Friction Areas
May websites will have pop ups for additional information, chat services to allow for better customer communication, and email forms to get people subscribed to mailing lists and other things. While all these things can be valuable to a website to gain new customers and visitors, they can become places that cause massive bounce offs.
If people find things invasive or too much like a sales pitch, they are much less likely to positively engage with them. A lot of people prefer to relate to things on a personal level, rather than being preached at in this day and age. The more you can make things feel like they are useful to someone the more they will want to know more or subscribe to your offerings.
Always Keep Aware of Changes
No matter what making any changes to boost your conversion, you can bet that you are probably going to have to make changes again. Monitoring page progress and keeping abreast of the changes in search and user habits will be important to ensuring that conversions continue to happen.
But with the right know how, and proper testing, you can make sure that when you appear in search, you are getting the traffic onto your website.
