The saying ‘content is king’ is very popular among internet marketers because it is true.
Why is this so? Well the idea behind starting a website or blog is to reach people and draw them to your site. The best way to do this is through your content.
A site with consistently great content attracts more traffic and thus better business.
So, how do you write captivating contents? This is a question every newbie blogger have to ask themselves.
There are many things you need to consider when you are writing. First of all, you have to write in your own voice and write as though you were having a conversation with your audience. In other words, be original.
Before you start writing, you need to find your happy place because your mood can be reflected in your writing.
For me, I use many different techniques to reach my happy place. In the morning for example, I listen to relaxing music. I love violins and piano music. This kind of music relaxes me and usually I find it easy to come up with new and exciting ideas.
Once in your happy place, writing becomes second nature.
Write original content
So many people for lack of time or initiative write poor content that is filled with copy and paste material.
This is the worst thing to do online because first it is unethical and second you could be punished by google.
Yes, google hates duplicate content; google rewards sites with high quality content by ranking them better that sites with poor quality content.
When blogging, quality is better than quantity. I know the idea with quantity is to put as many of your content out there as possible so as to increase the chances that people will interact with it.
But what good will it do you if all the people that read your content think it is rubbish?
When people read a captivating content, they are motivated to snoop around for more articles to feed their minds. I do this a lot and I book mark great content for future reading.
As they stay on your site, this leads to low bounce rates which is interpreted by google as good and thus eventually leads to better ranking.
So, use your unique style to write, write until you have exhausted what you want to say, write in everyday language (don’t make it overly academic) and then read it to make sure there are no grammatical errors and publish it.
Don’t try to make it perfect because there is no such thing as a perfect content; there are just good quality and poor quality contents.
Do your research and make plans
No one knows everything so it is important to do your research before writing your content.
As time changes, so do facts. Don’t write something with wrong facts because this can discredit you and lead to lack of trust from your readers.
As you browse the web, bookmark interesting pages for later reference. Read from high ranking pages with similar topics to see what they did right.
Before writing this post for example, I did some research on ‘how to write a great content’ and read from the top pages displayed by google for ideas.
After reading from the first four pages, I jotted down some ideas and made plans on how to write my content.
Before my research, I had some ideas but they were not enough. After my research, I came up with more ideas for my content.
Make your topic is captivating and specific
As people browse the net, they brush through many topics before choosing one to read. They usually stop at the one that has a captivating topic.
News net works have mastered the skill of captivating headlines. When you watch the evening news for example, they start by listing interesting headlines, then they hold on to the information till the end of the news, there by keeping you longer on their channel.
You can apply this technique to your content. You can start with a very captivating topic that piques the interest of the reader.
It also helps to make your topic specific so that you can target a certain group of people who are sure to react to it.
If you write a post about financial independence (too broad and general), and another blogger writes about financial independence for fresh college graduates(narrow and more specific), who do you think a college graduate will pick?
The second post of course, it pays to be specific and have eye catching topics.
Many people like adjectives like free, cheap, affordable, top quality…., so use them appropriately to get attention.
Provide answers
Make sure your content addresses the topic properly. It will be disappointing if someone visited your site for a topic that reads ‘how to build a website for free’ only to find a content that doesn’t do justice to the topic.
It is typical for scam sites to drive traffic to their sites by using captivating topics they never address.
So, don’t do the same thing because it will lead to lack of trust from your readers. Plus, people will not be motivated to stay and read other pages on your site.
I have had such experiences and it is very annoying. People go online for a reason, some only have so much time to research, so don’t waste their time.
Sites that have high bounce rates are usually filled with contents that do not address the topics they claim to address.
A high bounce rate will almost always affect the ranking of your site negatively.
Enrich your content with images and videos when neccessary
Humans by nature are visual beings; images and videos catch our attention better and hold it longer than text.
Content of high value has a good balance between text and relevant images/videos
Do not use images that are not relevant to your topic. Keep it clean, don’t over crowd your page with images.
Write in short paragraphs and leave breaks/blank spaces between paragraphs.
This gives the reader the opportunity to pause and rest their eyes; many people are turned off by academic style writing.
Highlight important lines to draw the attention of the reader. Vary your writing technique by changing from paragraph to say bullets, quotes, block writing and more, to keep your reader engaged.
Get to the point
Avoid repetition and unnecessary extension of your content just to make the word count larger.
Many people are told when they star blogging that google rewards contents with 1000+ words.
This information though true make many people write long contents that are not engaging, especially when they say the same thing over and over again.
Google uses a complex algorithm to rank pages; it is hard to tell what exactly makes a page rank better.
I have come across pages that are only about 500 words long, ranking on the first page of google search.
Update your content regularly
Update your content regularly, especially when they have facts in them that are bound to change with time.
More so, if your content is written to teach a course, then you should update it as trends evolve.
For example, if you are writing about ways to rank high on google, you need to constantly update your content to keep up with the changes that google makes.
