Another big benefit of content marketing is that it helps to keep your audience on the site longer. You want your audience not just to visit your website, but to stay on there for as long as you can get them to, because the longer they stick around the more likely they are to convert. Improving session duration should proportionately improve bounce rate and ultimately conversions. So, the question becomes how exactly can you keep people on your site longer? Well, as we mentioned, this is a huge benefit of content marketing. Let’s give you the rundown on how you can leverage your content marketing to increase the duration of your audience’s visits to your website.
[ READ MORE: Top 10 Reasons Why You Need Content Marketing ]
Readability
The first and most important things to focus on when creating your content is readability. Most of the time a visitor will come to a landing page and quickly scan it to see if it’s worth their time. If your post isn’t very readable, they’re going to leave and find somewhere else to get the information for which they were hunting. This doesn’t just mean the style of your posts, though making sure your text is literally readable is also important. Rather, it means how easy your content is to consume.
The easiest way to improve the readability of your content is to break things up. You can do this not only by inserting images and video, which we’ll touch on in the next section, but by literally breaking up your text into more easily digestible sections. Write short paragraphs, utilize bulleted lists with brief sentences, separate your content into engaging subheadings that tell them exactly what a certain section of the piece is about and so on.
[ READ MORE: Build Audience Trust with Content Marketing ]
User Experience
User experience is just as important as readability, and they really go hand in hand. The more your post is broken up with imagery the easier it will be to consume, thus enhancing both the readability and user experience of your content. Use relevant images and videos to hook your audience in – especially the latter, as videos are much more likely to be consumed by your audience and they naturally keep people on your site for longer. Infographics are another big way to improve user experience, as they’re much easier for your audience to consume, however they cannot be scanned by crawlers like regular content so don’t overdo it.
Another key part of the user experience is making sure that your content is easy to consume on multiple platforms. When you’re building your website and ultimately your content, make sure that each page you make looks good at multiple sizes. Mobile is incredibly important in this day and age, as is the tablet screen to a lesser extent. You definitely want to check these screen sizes to make sure that your content is reflexive and easy to read on any screen.
[ READ MORE: Engaging Your Audience with Content Marketing ]
Calls to Action
Finally, the most crucial way to reduce bounce rate and increase conversions is to work calls to action and other links into each piece of content you make. You want to include a few links to related content already on your website throughout each piece, keeping in mind that bogging down a piece of content with links can be counterproductive. Some of these links should stand out, either by turning them into buttons or simply removing them from the body of the work – the way I have done on this page here.
You should also make literal calls to action, typically at the end of your piece but perhaps after the first paragraph if you’re having difficulty keeping people on the site. These should spell out exactly what you want your customers to do and include links or forms for them to do just that. For example, a button that takes the customer to your inventory: “Buy Now!” Or perhaps a button that pops up a fillable form: “Join Our Mailing List!” You can even have a form right there on the page rather than linking it through a button. Check out a more obvious example below, and good luck with your content marketing!