Developing an Effective Website Content Strategy to Drive Traffic

A well-planned and executed content strategy is essential for driving targeted traffic to your website. With the right approach, you can create compelling content that engages your audience and gets them to take action. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk through the key steps to develop a website content strategy that converts visitors into leads and customers.

Set Clear Goals and KPIs

Before creating any content, you need to define your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Ask yourself:

• What is the purpose of my content? Is it to attract visitors, generate leads, or drive sales?
• How will I measure success? Examples of KPIs are website traffic, conversion rate, lead generation, and sales revenue.

Setting specific, measurable goals will shape your entire strategy and allow you to track your progress.

Conduct Keyword Research

Thorough keyword research ensures your content targets the terms and phrases your audience is searching for. Use free tools like Google Keyword Planner or paid tools like Ahrefs to find:

• High search volume keywords related to your offerings.
• Long-tail variations of core keywords.
• Low competition keywords you can potentially rank for.

Organize your keywords into primary, secondary, and tertiary groups based on priority.

Primary Keywords	Secondary Keywords	Tertiary Keywords
web design	types of web design	freelance web designer
web development	web development tools	web development trends
digital marketing	social media marketing	marketing automation tools

Refer back to this list as you plan and create content. Focus on keywords matching your goals.

Map Out a Content Calendar

A content calendar helps you plan and organize your content creation. Include details like:

• Post title and topic
• Target keywords
• Post type (blog, video, infographic etc)
• Publishing date
• Promotion tactics

Space out your posts appropriately and align content with seasons, events, and holidays to make the content timely and relevant.

Tools like CoSchedule, ContentStudio, and editorial calendars make it easy to visualize and manage your calendar.

Create Audience Personas

Define 2-3 fictional personas representing your target customers. Include demographics, behaviours, interests, pain points and goals.

For example, a web design persona could be:

John, 35, marketing manager at a startup. He wants to redesign their outdated website to better support lead generation goals. His pain points are lack of design skills and small budget.

Keep these personas in mind as you create content tailored to their needs.

Choose the Right Content Types

Every piece of content you create should ladder up to your goals. Consider various formats:

Blog Posts: Detailed, long-form articles with tips, how-tos, and insights. Great for SEO and lead generation.

eBooks / Guides: In-depth guides that establish your authority and expertise. Offer as lead magnets in exchange for emails.

Videos: Engaging visual content perfect for tutorials, demonstrations, interviews and more. Optimize with subtitles and transcripts.

Infographics: Visual representations of data, stats and ideas. Easy to digest and share on social media.

Podcasts: Audio content that provides entertainment and education for listeners.

Mix up your content formats to appeal to different learning styles.

Optimize Content for SEO

Use on-page and technical SEO best practices to boost content visibility:

• Include target keywords in titles, meta descriptions, headings and image alt text.
• Format posts with easy-to-scan headers, bullet points and lists.
• Include internal links to relevant pages on your site.
• Insert keywords naturally in content and don’t over-optimize.
• Publish long-form, in-depth content over 2,000 words.
• Use descriptive file names for images and videos.
• Optimize site speed and mobile responsiveness.

This helps search engines understand your content and rank it higher.

Promote and Repurpose Content

Publishing content is only half the battle. You need an effective promotion strategy to get it in front of your audience, including:

• Share posts on social media channels.
• Promote blog posts in site banners, emails and newsletters.
• Pitch guest posting opportunities to other blogs.
• Make visual quotes and excerpts for social sharing.
• Repurpose long posts into short videos and infographics.

Continue promoting old content too through recaps, revisions and repurposing on social media.

Analyze and Refine

Track content performance in Google Analytics – pageviews, leads generated, conversions etc. Identify your best-performing topics and under-performing content.

Use these insights to adjust your strategy. Double down on topics resonating with your audience. Refine topics, SEO and promotion tactics for poor performers.

Test out new formats, ideas and partnerships. Continuously refine your approach to create an optimal content strategy tailored to your brand.

Conclusion

An effective website content strategy takes research, planning and consistent execution. Define your goals, focus on SEO, create diverse content tailored for your personas, and relentlessly promote it across channels. Analyze results continually and iterate to drive more qualified traffic and leads. With this comprehensive approach, your content will connect with your audience and significantly grow your business.

What aspects of a website content strategy resonate most with you? What challenges have you faced in content creation? Let me know in the comments below!