How to Increase Website Traffic Through Content Creation

“If you build it, they will come.” Well, not necessarily — at least in this case. A sleek and modern website isn’t the only thing you need for potential customers to find you. You also need compelling copy optimized with relevant keywords.

Creating good content for your website will help improve your online ranking over time. The higher you rank, the better your chances of obtaining more traffic and conversions. Today’s market is ever changing, brimming with competition and heavily reliant on technology. You can’t afford to not invest in optimizing your website. Here are just a few examples of content you should consider including on your website:
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• Blog posts: An article of writing or other piece of content published on a blog.
• Case studies: In depth analysis or report that provides facts and information defining the problem, objective and results.
• Infographics: A visual image used to help simplify complex information, engage readers and be easily understood.
• Videos: Visual medium for displaying a moving picture, which can be used to quickly evoke emotion, answer questions or educate consumers.

Web Content Checklist

Each piece of content on your website should be relevant, purposeful and interesting. Go through our ten point checklist each time you are generating content for your web pages or blog posts to ensure your content is on point. 

Are Your Blog Posts Quality?

With all of the above in mind, it is equally important to be mindful of how your content is formatted. Structure your content so that it is easy to read — subheadings are your friend. Subheadings will make it easy for your readers to digest the information and for search engines to find your content. Each heading or subheading should also be descriptive. Give the reader a glimpse of what they’re about to read!

Are Your Blog Posts a Good Length?

If your blog posts are too short, you aren’t going to be able to capitalize on optimization. Aim for generating content above 300 words; any less, and it’s really not an effective use of time. It’s okay to go longer on a post, but if you do, ensure you have several sub-headings, bullets etc. which clearly outline the material for readers who skim. Most people don’t read articles word for word, but jump around to the parts that interest them most.

Another great tip is to search for your target keywords, or what you want your post to rank for, and look at what's currently ranking high in search engines. If the first 10 results have 2,000+ words, it's likely you're going to have to write a short novel to rank.

Does the Blog Post Read Easily or is it Littered with Industry Jargon?

Have several colleagues or peers proofread your content. Reviewers should not only be looking for spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes, but also readability.

• Is the purpose of the article clear?
• Does the article read easily and make sense?
• Is the tone of the piece interesting and informative?

Write for your audience and make sure not to throw around too many acronyms or industry terms that could lead to confusion.

Is Your Topic Unique with Clear Subheadings?

Determine if your topic is somewhat unique or if everyone is already writing about it. You need to scope out the competition. Organize your content and use subheadings to make reading easy and efficient. The goal is to provide both quality content and the optimum user experience.

Does the Content Address or Solve a Common Issue?

If your topic solves a common problem, you’ve got the secret sauce! People are always looking for answers and ways to make their lives easier. You’re doing them a solid by providing them the most relevant and quality answers to their questions.

Does It Have a Powerful Message?

Aim to evoke some emotion from the reader. Your content should be both interesting and informative. Be a thought leader by crafting a message worth sharing!

Do You Provide Internal and External Links Within the Text?

Provide internal links to other pages from your site and external links to other sources, especially if the additional information supports and further educates the reader on your topic. ​

Do You Incorporate Visuals to Support Your Web Content?

Can you provide a downloadable pdf, chart, graph or diagram to further illustrate your content? Graphics can go a long way in enforcing or explaining more complex issues in an easy bite size way. Think small chunks of information attractively wrapped in easy to open packages.

Is There an Opportunity to Provide More Current Statistics?

Tackle the low hanging fruit. Check statistics throughout your content. Can you link to or provide more recent numbers within the body of text? If you want to lead the way in your field, provide authoritative, quality content backed by hard facts. Make it so good that everyone sees you as the trailblazer. Do this and backlinks will start to increase and you can easily share your content as the most recent out there on the web.

Do You Have the Keyword Research to Guide Your Content?

Keyword research helps you to identify trending words/phrases that people are searching for online.  Make sure to also include keywords, especially in headings/subheadings (when it makes sense). Keyword research is a routine practice done by professionals in the search engine optimization (SEO) field. This is how you will identify alternative search terms and obtain keyword search volumes to help maximize web traffic. Do not stuff keywords, meaning do not paste in keywords throughout the text. Use keywords when they make sense. It’s about quality not quantity. ​

What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? ​

When you write content for your website you should keep two things in mind: write for your audience and structure the content effectively for SEO. SEO is an area of marketing that focuses on growing organic (unpaid) results from search engines (e.g. Google, Bing). As you grow in organic searches, the traffic to your website will also increase. Quality On-page SEO supports overall efforts and is just a piece of the pie, but when done well, you should expect to see significant gains.

Helpful Tools for Content Creation ​

• Content calendar - Editorial calendar to organize projects, topics etc.
• Survey Monkey - Polling software to gain customer insight.
• Webtexttool - Program that provides guidance for writing optimized texts.
• Canva - Free graphic design tool.

When to Seek Outside Help for Your Website

There may come a point at which you should seek outside help with your SEO efforts. It can become a daunting and complex task if you aren’t familiar with the different aspects of SEO: off-page, on-page and other technical details. For example, link outreach is time consuming, so you may not have the internal bandwidth to support ongoing efforts.

Hiring a firm that has a proven track record in the field helps you move quickly and shifts the burden of management from you to them. Your SEO team will have the knowledge, experience and connections to get you the optimum website traffic and ROI. In addition, you will have a full team readily available to interpret and mine data for you. A reputable firm will also conduct a technical audit of your website to ensure you are optimizing each variable possible.


Want to learn more about SEO? Register for RyTech’s free webinar, “SEO & PPC: How Organic and Paid Collaborate and Compete” on Wednesday, April 18 at 11 a.m. ​