How to Create Engaging Content for Your Website
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Table of Contents
A Guide to Creating Engaging Website Content
Make an Obvious Call to Action (CTA)
Benefits of Engaging Website Content
A significant part of the SEO strategy for many websites is creating top-of-funnel content and attracting traffic to the site. But in order for a content marketing strategy to work well, it needs both keyword research and distribution, and high-quality and engaging content.
But what actually is engaging content? Most experts agree that it is a piece of content that can move the reader to perform a certain action.
What that action is purely depends on the goals of the writer and the medium. So for a social media post, engagement would be linking, commenting, and sharing the post. For top-of-funnel content, it could be something simple like subscribing to the newsletter or continuing to read.
For content that’s closer to the bottom of the funnel, it can be checking out the pricing page or making a purchase.
Granted, creating engaging content can be much harder than just writing another boring blog post. But the effort is well worth it, as making website content more engaging is key to turning your blog from a source of traffic into a source of leads.
Let’s explore this concept in more detail and learn how you can make your blog content more engaging.
A Guide to Creating Engaging Website Content
Creating engaging website content is no different from creating any other piece of content when it comes to the various stages that the content goes through. However, for each stage, there are some key guidelines you can follow to make your content truly engaging.
There are also a few important strategies that should be implemented during the writing stage.
Let’s start with the very beginning: the preparation stage.
Choose an Appropriate Topic
The first thing you should do when creating content, even before making the plan for the document, is to pick the right subject. Even if you are able to write about everything in an interesting way, picking a subject that doesn’t resonate with the audience is sure to alienate them.
So your first step is to do some research on what interests your audience so that you can find topics that they will find interesting. With the help of a keyword tool, you can determine which queries your target audience uses when searching for information. You can create content around these keywords that will most resonate with user interests.
When choosing topics to write about, consider the following factors:
Someone in front of a laptop writing in a notebook. Photo by Vadim Bozhko on Unsplash
The industry they work in
Their position in the company
The type of company they’re in
Company goals for the near future
Challenges they might be facing that you can solve
You want to find a range of topics that you can cover based on these characteristics. Then, sort them into separate groups based on the stage of the buyer’s journey.
You can either prioritize them based on the topics you think can perform best, or just go through them in no particular order.
Write a Detailed Brief
Once you pick a topic from that list, start crafting a brief for it. From an SEO standpoint, you want to find a few keywords that fit the article well based on the topic.
From an engagement standpoint, you want to focus on two main things: logical, coherent structure and giving the reader as much relevant information as possible.
An important step to achieving this goal is researching the competition. Go through articles that cover the topic you’ve chosen or similar topics. Here, you don’t have to look at the voice or tone of the articles, but rather at what information they cover.
Read through at least half a dozen or so articles and compile a list of what they explain about the topic and how deeply.
When you’re writing your brief, reference that list for inspiration on what to include in the article. Use your own judgment to decide whether to omit one of the sub-topics or add one that nobody wrote about. You can also decide which sub-topics to focus on, and which you can explain very briefly.
Choose a Headline
Your next step is creating a headline for the article. The headline should do the following:
Say exactly what’s in the article
Be clear and concise
Include the main keyword
Ideally, inspire curiosity in a reader
For an engaging piece of content, especially for a top-of-funnel topic, you want your headline to be quite minimalistic. It doesn’t have to be unique and creative because that increases the chances of people clicking on the article in the SERP and realizing they misunderstood what it's about.
So focus on clearly conveying what the article is about.
If the article isn’t meant to get a lot of traffic from the SERP and you expect your existing newsletter subscribers to read it, you can get more creative with the headline.
Write Clear Copy
A great draft explains exactly what you should cover and makes it easy to write a piece of content that gives value to the reader. When writing the draft you should focus on being clear in what you write.
Don’t go on tangents and keep the focus on the matter at hand. Use your brand style and tone of voice, but don’t let it distract from what you’re trying to talk about — keep the flow of the article steady and easy to follow.
Someone working on a laptop
Apart from the internal logic of the text, you want it to be readable. Here’s how you can do this:
Break down text into subheadings as much as possible
Keep paragraphs short — no more than five lines of text
Keep most sentences under 30 words
Alternate short and long sentences
Use simple vocabulary
Use industry jargon in a way that the ideal reader understands
Use bulleted lists where appropriate
Making the content easy to digest increases the size of your audience, and breaking it down into subheadings and bulleted lists makes it more easily scannable.
Use Images and Videos
Not all ideas are easy to grasp with words alone. This is especially true of data and complex processes.
If you’re trying to present data, it’s best to add a graph or chart that illustrates it.
If you’re trying to explain a process or workflow that would take a few paragraphs to lay out, it’s best to add a graphic that outlines it.
This makes information easier to understand, and as a bonus, these images can be found on Google Image search.
You can also supplement your post with a video made by your company or by another creator. The important thing here is to use the video strategically.
You don’t want to post an hour-long video that explains the topic in more depth because the user may leave your page to watch it instead.
Use Humor or Storytelling
An engaging text should be clear and valuable to the reader. It shouldn’t be dull or dry, though.
If your brand voice allows it, by all means, use humor in the content. It can be a great way to hold users’ attention in longer pieces of text.
Now, what you can do regardless of your brand voice is use storytelling in your content. When you’re talking about a concept that can be a bit too abstract, it’s a good idea to exemplify it with a story from your own experience or one of your clients.
It will be more engaging and make the content easier to understand. In some cases, you can showcase how your company solves a problem and establish your authority.
Ask Questions
An easy technique to make your text a little bit more engaging is to use questions to introduce new sub-topics. By asking questions instead of simply introducing something new to the text, you’re framing it as intrigue, prompting the reader to be more interested.
You can take it a step further and frame new ideas you’re introducing with a problem—question—answer. Here’s a simple example of this approach.
“Many companies don’t save sales data. (Problem) Why do the companies that do this even bother? (Question) Even if you don’t have the capacity to analyze this data now, having a historical archive can be invaluable for historical analysis further down the line. (Answer).”
Make an Obvious Call to Action (CTA)
The most important thing in a piece of engaging content is that it encourages the reader to take a converting action. This can be subscribing to the newsletter, downloading an eBook that you’ve made, registering for a free webinar, looking at the pricing page, booking a call, or making a purchase.
Whatever it is, your CTA should be obvious and given with some context. Here’s how you can frame each converting action with your text.
Newsletter subscription — have a sidebar and prompt the user to use it near the end of the text.
Engaging with other content — introduce the content (an eBook, a webinar) as a source of information that can entice the user’s interest.
Making a step towards a purchase — introducing your business as a solution for the problem you’re describing in the article.
Measure Performance
With that done, all you have to do is measure the performance of the content you put out. For engaging blog content, you’ll want to measure traffic and conversions.
The beauty of digital content is if you don’t get it right on the first try, you can edit it further down the line based on its performance.
For instance, if you see that a piece of top-of-funnel content you expected to only bring in newsletter subscribers is receiving a lot of traffic, you can try to incorporate a direct sales pitch. Or you can change the type of CTA you have in the article if it doesn’t seem to be bringing in leads.
Benefits of Engaging Website Content
Making your content more engaging won’t take that much effort. So what you get in return is definitely worth it.
Engaging blog content has three main benefits:
Increased Traffic
Engaging content is likely to increase overall traffic to your website. Great, in-depth content is always more likely to be shared on social media and in private conversations. It can also be linked to other websites. Additionally, it can be leveraged in link building campaigns, helping to spread your content across the web and earn valuable backlinks that boost your domain authority.
This translates into higher direct traffic, so more people will be exposed to your brand.
Higher Rankings
Although this type of content doesn’t affect SEO directly, it’s attracting traffic and backlinks, both of which will be interpreted by Google as a signal to rank your website higher.
You can track how content and the links it brings affect your website’s overall rank with rank tracker tools. They will give you constant updates on how your website is performing for all keywords that are important to you.
You can also check how your website ranks for any individual keyword and see how the rankings change over time.
Increased Conversions
Lastly, and most importantly, investing in making your content more engaging has a direct effect on your business’s bottom line. It’s meant to increase conversions.
Whether it’s converting readers into subscribers or into paying customers, the content should have a better conversion rate. If it doesn’t, you can always improve it as you go.
Conclusion
Engaging content is about performing these steps: providing value in a digestible way, introducing a converting action as something that will benefit the reader, and closing with a CTA. It doesn’t take a whole lot of effort to produce and can move the bottom line of your business.
Follow the tips in this article, and your readers will appreciate the content you create more and more. Least but not last, don’t forget to always monitor your content’s performance and improve on it, if it’s not performing as intended.
