When it comes to reaching a wider readership for a content marketing website, most marketers focus on external efforts like ads, guest posting, and syndication. While promoting your content elsewhere is important, there are lots of great ways to grow your audience without ever leaving home. Here are some on-page strategies for getting more clicks, reads, and downloads on your blog.
Find and use your target keywords.
We’ve gone into depth elsewhere about how to perform keyword research for the terms your prospects are searching. When crafting a content piece, you should be referring to your target keyword list constantly. Try to include relevant keywords in every element of your post, whether it’s visible to your readers or not: title, subheaders, body, meta descriptions, image captions and titles, etc. This will help you raise your Google search ranking, making it easier for people to find your content. Just make sure you’re not letting keywords overwhelm the natural flow and clarity of your writing.
Keep your content evergreen.
Reporting on industry news may be a winning strategy for big, popular content marketing sites, but chances are you don’t have the reach or the resources to take advantage of these kinds of stories. Instead, focus on “evergreen” ideas that don’t depend on current events. Since evergreen content marketing posts are less time sensitive, they’ll remain relevant to your audience far in the future, building traffic and adding value for much longer.
Make subscriptions your goal.
Instead of spending money on ads and bombarding your social media accounts to attract tons of new readers, focus on establishing a loyal base of repeat readers via subscriptions. Include a lead capture form with every post on your blog, along with a clear call to action asking readers to subscribe. If you’re offering downloadable content (neighborhood guides, ebooks, infographics, etc.), ask users to provide an email address in return for the file. Once you’ve built a list of contacts, you can keep them up to date on your content with a weekly email newsletter.
Make your content easy to share.
Don’t let all the activity on your Facebook news feed fool you: it’s a big deal when someone enjoys your blog enough to broadcast it to the world via social media, and likes beget more likes. That’s why you shouldn’t waste any opportunity for your readers to like and share your content. Be sure to add like and share buttons for every major social network (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, etc.), regardless of whether you use it. For sites you’re active on, include a follow or subscribe button as well. Finally, place these buttons not just at the bottom of your posts, but also at the top.
Let visitors consume on their own time.
Many of us come across great content that we simply don’t have time to enjoy at the moment. While there are several ways to save content, some are better than others. Browser bookmarking is clunky and outdated. RSS feeds are too technical for most users, and it’s easy to get lost among the thousands of posts in reader applications. Instead, people are turning to convenient apps like Readability and Pocket, which allow you to save content posts with one click and access them later on any device in a simple, readable format. Be sure to embed save buttons for each of these services alongside your social media buttons.
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