Content Strategy: Creating Engaging Website Content That Converts

When it comes to your website, content isn't just king—it's the entire kingdom. Great content engages visitors, builds trust, improves SEO rankings, and ultimately drives conversions. Yet many businesses struggle with creating and managing website content that truly resonates with their audience.

At WebScore360, content quality is an important factor in your overall website evaluation. In this guide, we'll explore how to develop a content strategy that transforms your website from a digital brochure into a powerful marketing and conversion tool.

What Is a Content Strategy?

A content strategy is your plan for creating, delivering, and managing useful, usable content that aligns with your business goals and meets your audience's needs. It encompasses everything from your blog posts and service pages to images, videos, testimonials, and even microcopy (like button text and form labels).

An effective content strategy answers these key questions:

• Who are you creating content for? (Your target audience)
• What problems does your content solve? (Value proposition)
• What makes your content unique? (Differentiators)
• What formats and channels will you use? (Content types)
• How will you create and maintain content? (Workflow and resources)
• How will you measure success? (KPIs and metrics)

Building Your Content Strategy in 7 Steps

1. Define Your Goals

Start by clarifying what you want your content to achieve. Common website content goals include:

• Increasing brand awareness and visibility
• Generating leads and inquiries
• Educating customers about your products or services
• Building credibility and establishing thought leadership
• Improving search engine rankings for key terms
• Supporting the sales process and reducing objections
• Fostering community and customer loyalty

Each piece of content should serve at least one of these goals. Be specific about what actions you want visitors to take after consuming your content.

2. Understand Your Audience

Effective content speaks directly to your audience's needs, pain points, and interests. Create detailed buyer personas that include:

• Demographics: Age, location, occupation, income level
• Psychographics: Values, interests, lifestyle, attitudes
• Goals and challenges: What they're trying to achieve and what's holding them back
• Information needs: Questions they have at each stage of the buyer's journey
• Content preferences: How they like to consume information (videos, blogs, infographics, etc.)

The more you understand your audience, the more relevant and effective your content will be.

3. Conduct a Content Audit

If you already have a website, evaluate your existing content before creating new material:

• Inventory: List all content assets across your website
• Performance analysis: Identify what's working based on traffic, engagement, and conversion metrics
• Quality assessment: Evaluate accuracy, relevance, readability, and SEO optimization
• Gap analysis: Identify missing topics or content types needed to support the customer journey
• Action plan: Determine what to keep, update, consolidate, or remove

4. Develop Your Content Pillars

Content pillars are the primary topics or themes your content will focus on. They should:

• Align with your business expertise and offerings
• Address your audience's key questions and needs
• Have sufficient search volume to drive traffic
• Allow for depth and breadth of coverage
• Differentiate your business from competitors

For example, a financial advisory firm might choose pillars like retirement planning, investment strategies, tax optimization, and estate planning. Each pillar can then be expanded into numerous subtopics.

5. Plan Your Content Mix

Diversify your content types to engage different learning styles and user preferences:

• Foundational content: Core pages about your products, services, and company
• Educational content: Blog posts, guides, tutorials, and FAQ pages
• Proof content: Case studies, testimonials, reviews, and results
• Visual content: Infographics, diagrams, product photos, and videos
• Interactive content: Calculators, quizzes, assessments, and tools
• Conversion content: Landing pages, comparison charts, and pricing pages

Map different content types to each stage of the customer journey, from awareness to consideration to decision.

6. Create a Content Calendar

Organize your content creation and publication schedule:

• Prioritize content based on business goals and audience needs
• Establish a realistic publishing cadence based on your resources
• Plan for seasonal trends, industry events, and business milestones
• Balance creating new content with updating existing assets
• Include distribution and promotion activities in your calendar

A content calendar helps maintain consistency and ensures you're addressing all your content pillars over time.

7. Establish Content Guidelines

Create standards for content creation to maintain quality and consistency:

• Voice and tone: Define how your brand should sound and speak
• Style guide: Establish grammar, formatting, and terminology preferences
• Quality standards: Set expectations for accuracy, originality, and depth
• SEO requirements: Include guidelines for keywords, meta descriptions, and headings
• Visual standards: Provide direction on imagery, colors, and design elements
• Accessibility: Ensure content is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities

Creating Engaging Content: Best Practices

Focus on Benefits, Not Features

Instead of just listing what your product or service does, emphasize how it makes your customers' lives better. For example, don't just say "24/7 customer support"; say "Get help whenever you need it, day or night, so you're never left struggling on your own."

Write for Scanners

Most website visitors scan content rather than reading word-for-word. Make your content scanner-friendly with:

• Clear, descriptive headings and subheadings
• Short paragraphs (3-4 sentences maximum)
• Bullet points and numbered lists
• Bold text for key points
• White space to break up text
• Informative subheadings that convey the main points

Use the Inverted Pyramid

Start with the most important information, then provide supporting details, and finally add background or additional context. This ensures readers get the key points even if they don't read the entire page.

Tell Stories

Human brains are wired for stories. Use customer anecdotes, case studies, and scenarios to make your content more memorable and relatable. Stories create emotional connections and help visitors see themselves benefiting from your products or services.

Add Visual Elements

Break up text with relevant images, charts, diagrams, and videos. Visual content can:

• Increase engagement and time on page
• Explain complex concepts more efficiently
• Appeal to visual learners
• Make content more shareable on social media
• Enhance the overall user experience

Optimizing Content for SEO and Conversions

SEO Essentials

While writing for humans first, incorporate these SEO elements:

• Keyword research: Identify terms your audience is searching for
• Strategic placement: Include keywords in titles, headings, opening paragraphs, and naturally throughout the text
• Optimized metadata: Craft compelling title tags and meta descriptions
• Internal linking: Connect related content across your site
• External linking: Link to authoritative sources to support claims
• Image optimization: Use descriptive file names and alt text

Conversion Optimization

Guide readers toward taking action with these techniques:

• Clear value proposition: Communicate benefits above the fold
• Proof elements: Include testimonials, statistics, and trust indicators
• Focused content: Remove distractions that don't support the page goal
• Strategic CTAs: Place relevant calls-to-action throughout the content
• Urgency and scarcity: Use when appropriate and authentic
• Address objections: Proactively answer common questions and concerns

Measuring Content Performance

Regularly evaluate your content's performance against your goals using metrics like:

• Traffic: Page views, unique visitors, traffic sources
• Engagement: Time on page, bounce rate, scroll depth
• SEO performance: Rankings, click-through rates, featured snippets
• Conversions: Lead forms, downloads, purchases
• Social sharing: Likes, shares, comments
• Qualitative feedback: User comments, sales team insights, customer interviews

Use these insights to refine your content strategy over time, doubling down on what works and improving or replacing what doesn't.

How WebScore360 Evaluates Your Content

Our website analysis includes several content-related factors:

• Content quality: We assess readability, organization, and value.
• SEO optimization: We check how well your content is optimized for search engines.
• Conversion elements: We evaluate whether your content effectively guides visitors toward taking action.
• Freshness: We look at how regularly your content is updated.
• Accessibility: We check if your content is accessible to all users.

Ready to Improve Your Website Content?

Creating and managing great content takes time and effort, but the payoff in terms of engagement, trust, and conversions is well worth it. Start by focusing on your most important pages and gradually expand your content strategy from there.

Get your free WebScore360 report today to see how your website's content measures up and receive actionable recommendations for improvement!