Think of investing dozens of hours writing content only to be buried under millions of search results, no traffic, no leads, and no sales. Frustrating, right? Writing to intuition rather than insight is often an entrepreneur’s or founder’s trap. The game changer here however is writing data driven content that ranks and converts.
It’s not about doing generic blogs or churning out keywords. That is about creating strategic research-based content that also gets love from Google and trust from your audience. The right audience who need answers to the pain points that data provides simply become attracted to content driven by data, and prompts them to take action; whether it’s subscribing, booking a call or buying.
Here’s how to use data to write high-performing content in this guide. All you’ll learn is how to find good keywords, how to analyze search intent, how to optimize for engagement, and how to track success. No vague advice. Straightforward, actionable steps for your content to outshine, rank higher, and get tangible business results.
Let’s start.
Steps towards writing data driven content that ranks and Converts
1. Have a Complete Audit of your existing content
If you’re working with data to build better converting content, it completely makes sense to see what you already have. Complete an audit of the content that currently resides on your site and further check how each piece is working.
It is important to note that performance is not just page views. In addition, you should also take other important metrics that indicate that a conversion is likely based on page retention, social sharing, engagement, and how you feel each piece has contributed to your marketing and sales process.
This data will have to be dug out of your analytics tools, but luckily, it’s not too much work to get and collate this data with what is already available on the market when it comes to analytics tools.
Once you’re done with this step, you may find that most of your content is not already performing too well. There is a high chance that most of the content that you have been doing till now isn’t hitting the minimum bar of “successful” content (this means getting enough social shares, activity, and most importantly conversion).
Learn about user generated content
2. Analyze your best-performing posts
Now that you have seen how your content is performing overall. This time, however, let’s cover the top performers. These are the posts that top performers can have that get very high Page Views per month. They could also be articles that are converting the most even if they likely don’t have a normal volume of page views.
Ask yourself the following questions and collect your top 10-30 posts.
- What gives these posts an edge over the other posts you published?
- How do these posts differ from other posts for your audience?
- Then how are people finding these top-performing posts? Is this through SEO or by a specific page on your site?
- After the consumers of these posts, what is the customer journey they take? What are they headed to when they come due to landing on these posts?
- And once they land on these posts, what do they do instantly whenever they do so (visit your services page, take a look at your homepage, read related posts, etc.)?
You might or might not know all the answers when you’re initially asking yourself these questions. If you have actual numbers and data to grovel your insights and analytics from then better.
3. Research what type of content your audience needs
Starting from data is part of using data to write content that converts. This is where you can rely on outside sources to have all the data you want from your analytics.
Learn the kind of content your customers might find valuable to read and see from you. This, for example, could be tied to trending topics or any other topics. But something so simple as keyword research can get you in the right direction, too, and if you wish to use forums, social media, or whatever else people use, too, so you can know what your clients ask and search for.
4. Find about the preferred content types
The ability to create content of more and more variety in more and more types, all online, super fast, is pretty easy these days compared with 20 years ago.
However, when we are debating what the best content format or type is—consider what your audience prefers. But preference does matter, and you should also take into consideration the reason for each decision.
- Are audiences looking for videos because they would rather something be able to see and hear the content delivered on the go and in the background?
- And is your customer into consuming blogs at a particular pace – again, consuming data and sources to get an idea of all that is happening without actually being there?
Well, simply stopping at what your audience prefers is not enough; you’d also need to find why. Take, for example, Google’s Year in Search collection. Yearly, they send out the hottest searches of the previous, from ludicrously insane obsessions that the world collectively took an interest into more topical yearning searches.
Maybe because they know their audience will prefer to consume the content differently, they built a page that asks the audience which way they feel they want to digest the report; either go through short slides with an interactivity component or a full video on YouTube.
5. Select the right distribution channels
However, you need to check if your chosen distribution channels (if any) are helping you write content that converts. Wasting resources if your audience is not tuned to where you are promoting your content.
Make use of the data you gathered on your customers to discover which distribution channels provide the most favorable pathway to consume your content. Then, this will be likely translated into how to repurpose said content into different types and formats, which we have seen in the previous section.
As an example, let’s assume a business whose clientele most very likely register on LinkedIn. Or maybe they could message and network on the platform for money. If someone wants to read a great post of your brand on their favorite platform, there are greater chances he will want to click or save the post for bringing to the later.
However, once you’ve figured out which distribution channels would be suitable for your brand then you can begin to experiment with different content formats to attract your crowd’s attention and then get them to purchase your products or services.
The example above was an article featured in the feed of LinkedIn Talent Solutions, who distributed a blog post with an eye-catching photo showing exactly what the article is about and also 30 behavioural interview questions featured in the article. Thus, interested audiences can follow the link to read the full post.
Read more about content to nurture leads
6. Make A/B testing a routine
You just need the perfect tiny tweak to get better results from your content. A/B testing comes in here. While there are many other ways to test your content for higher conversions, the most important thing when you do is to test only one variable at a time.
Otherwise, you won’t be able to easily identify which variable contributed the most to better conversion in the future.
Some of the different test variables you can play with in your content will vary based on the platforms you’re on:
- Email subject lines
- Article headlines
- Call-to-action (CTA) copy and design
Read to know about writing better landing page copy
7. Keep refining your writing process
The last but most important part of writing data driven content that ranks and converts is rinsing and repeating by resuming the process with the learning from your efforts up till now. Keep track of what you have changed since these steps above and then communicate these changes to your team. This will also aid you in onboarding new content creators or enhance your match to your sales team, even better.
Document everything related to your content performance reviews, A/B test results and changes in your copywriting, content writing, marketing, etc. With these up your sleeve, you can create better-converting content faster and faster over time, allowing you to test new variables and strategies specifically at this instant.
When you see your data working in the long run, you will be able to create better and better content every time.
Final Thoughts
Now that you know how writing data-driven content that ranks and converts works, what will you do with data so you can create better content to increase conversions? It’s important to remember, though, that this will not happen overnight. As such, give a little bit of time before switching gears again.
Apply the steps above to set you up with a data driven process around your content which can yield better and better content that converts more customers for you every time.
If you are looking for an expert team to offer you the best guidance with the process, BrandClickX is the name to call out.
Contact us today to discuss more!
FAQs
1. What is writing data driven content that ranks and converts?
Writing data-driven content that ranks and converts involves creating high-quality, informative, and optimized content based on real-time data and insights. This type of content is designed to not only rank high on search engines but also drive conversions by addressing user intent and delivering value.
2. How can writing data driven content that ranks and converts improve my SEO?
Writing data-driven content that ranks and converts helps enhance SEO by incorporating keywords, addressing user queries, and providing solutions based on current data trends. This improves your search engine ranking, making your content more visible to the right audience.
3. Why is writing data driven content that ranks and converts important for businesses?
Writing data-driven content that ranks and converts is crucial for businesses because it helps attract targeted traffic, engage users effectively, and boost conversions. By aligning content with data insights, businesses can cater to the specific needs and interests of their audience, leading to increased sales and brand awareness.
4. What are the best practices for writing data driven content that ranks and converts?
The best practices for writing data-driven content that ranks and converts include conducting thorough keyword research, analyzing competitors, using high-quality data, and incorporating clear calls to action. Additionally, it’s important to focus on creating content that answers user questions and provides actionable insights.
