Creating content that converts into sales and leads has never been more important. In this continuing pandemic environment, many traditional means of attracting leads and sales, such as conventions and other in-person events, have gone away. If your digital content marketing isn’t doing all that it can to convert site users to customers, you’re not growing your business and are likely sliding backward.
Making sure that you have content that converts doesn’t have to take all of your time. The idea is to create articles, videos, images and other content that will work on multiple platforms, from your website to your social media pages, so that you don’t have to be continually recreating and reworking your content.
How to Increase Your Content Conversion Rate
One thing that has remained constant throughout the ever-changing digital landscape is that quality content is always important. Make sure that what you post is interesting, relevant, and useful for your readers. Having said that, you don’t want to neglect SEO elements.
Essential elements for good SEO include:
- Title tags that relate to the article content
- Descriptive and concise meta descriptions
- Optimal keyword usage
- Readability and relevance
Good, consistent SEO practices help keep your content ranking well with Google and other search engines and not languishing on page 5 or 30 of search results. Without a good ranking, you’re not going to be able to achieve a good conversion rate because few people will see your content.
A Word About Keywords and Images
While they are an important part of your SEO efforts, keywords need to be used correctly. You want to make sure that you’ve done your research and chose keywords that are well-suited to your product or service. Don’t forget about negative keywords.
For example, if you are a restaurant look to promote your online ordering, you don’t want to attract internet users who are looking for restaurant jobs. (In this example, “jobs” would be the negative keyword, a word that is eliminated from your search algorithm.)
Once you have those keywords, use them wisely. Know where to place them in your content for maximum effect and to avoid keyword stuffing (using your keywords so often that the content sounds stilted).
Your images also need to be relevant. Better to leave out an image altogether than to add a generic image with little connection to your topic. Make sure that you add a meta tag and caption to your images that are relevant to your topic.
To return to our restaurant example, a picture of a plate of lasagna with the caption, “Marco’s makes delicious lasagna for carryout” is infinitely better than simply captioning it “lasagna”. Make sure your images and your captions support your content.
Understand Their Journey
Another essential element of maximizing your conversions is knowing the different steps along your customer’s journey from awareness to making a purchase. The best content knows where that person is along the journey and addresses their needs at that point. Ask yourself…
- Are they just looking for information?
- Have they decided to buy and are now shopping for a good deal?
- Do they need an incentive to buy…or, are they ready to purchase and just need the right tools?
Make the next step easy for your customer to understand and complete. For example, this company may have the best product in the world, but they’ve made their tool so difficult to use and understand that most readers in the beginning of their sales journey will click away without realizing the point the company is trying to get across…and without making a purchase. Make sure the next step you want them to take is easy and obvious.
At Pollock Marketing Group, we understand that as a business owner you have dozens of things you have to do each day and dozens of people who depend on your guidance.
It can seem impossible to find the time to devote to managing your digital content and maximizing your opportunities to increase your conversion rate. We’re here to help.
We understand the importance of good, optimized, relevant digital content and we can work with you on not just your content, but your entire marketing plan. Contact us to learn more about how you can create content that will convert on any platform.
