Content is the most powerful tactic for building a marketing strategy and increasing the traffic to a website. According to The State of Inbound Marketing 2014 by HubSpot, companies that regularly blogged were 13x more likely to see positive ROI from their content efforts.

Content can have a tremendous impact on SEO and therefore brings people to the company website, increases the brand reach and improves trust with the intended audience. When people discuss SEO and content, they tend to focus on keywords, but the power of content stretches beyond this basic SEO tactic.

Quality content will:

• encourage backlinking , which boosts SEO and the grows the audience that the content reaches
• be shared regularly on social media, which will also increase traffic and improve the site’s social ranking

Learning how to develop content that will accomplish these two goals can improve a brand’s reach and reputation while also raising the website’s SERP ranking. This will bring traffic to the site and help the company’s bottom line. Here is what all brands need to know.

The power of the headline

According to Copyblogger , 8 out of 10 will read your headline, but only 2 out of 10 will actually go on to read your copy. Writing attention-grabbing headlines that pull in your readers and encourage them to explore what you have to say is critical to developing shareable content.

There are certain types of headlines that tend to perform better than others.

• List posts, particularly with numbers
• “How to” headlines
• Questions
• ‘Learn from me’ type posts
• Posts that offer intriguing tidbits to spark curiosity
• Negative statements

These headlines have repeatedly demonstrated that they help attract the attention of readers. Up to 80 percent of Google searches performed are for informational purposes. When people arrive on your website, these visitors are looking to learn something. The headlines are exactly what your visitors need to feel encouraged to click, read and learn the information you provide.

The content that drives second-generation traffic

Once you have convinced people to open your post, article, or other content, you then have to convince them to share it. What researchers have found is that the content people share tends to say more about them then it does about the content.

A study completed by The New York Times Customer Insight Group looked closely at why people share content online. They found that sharing revolves around relationships and how people relate to others. The content people chose to share helped them define themselves and show what they cared about. People also enjoyed sharing information that they thought others would enjoy and appreciate.

They identified 5 factors that were influential in determining if content was likely to be shared:

• it appealed to people’s desires to connect with each other instead of just focusing on the brand
• people trusted the information in the content
• the information was simple and straightforward
• the information was humorous for the reader
• the content contained a sense of urgency

Creating content that will resonate with the audience

Know your audience

To create content that will interest your consumer base and encourage them to link to it or share it, you need to understand exactly who will be reading the material. You should have a specific buyer persona in mind and a reason why this particular content will interest them.

Be original

There are more than one billion websites on the internet. Your consumers have no shortage of websites to turn to when it comes to finding the information they seek. To make your content worth reading and sharing with others you need to find a way to stand out. Put your own spin on the information, cite new statistics or call upon your personal experiences.

Be authoritative

Remember that people share content they deem to be trustworthy and helpful. To demonstrate this, you have to call upon your own expertise. You have experience and training in your field, so use it to teach your readers something in a memorable way.

Mind any sensibilities

The internet never forgets, which means that minor PR mishaps can be disastrous. Always err on the side of caution when it comes to making jokes or drawing parallels to avoid offending any readers. Having content go viral for the wrong reasons can be very bad for business.

Tracking progress

Once you have developed high quality content to encourage sharing and linking, you now need to monitor your progress. You have a unique business and a unique audience, which means that only you will be able to pinpoint the exact types of content that will work best for your marketing strategy.

Fortunately, there is technology like Page Reporting from BrightEdge. This program makes it easy to see how your page performs and the amount of revenue it brings in. The information is all available on an easy-to-use dashboard to make it easy to see the success of each individual page. You can use this information to focus on the content that is resonating best with your intended audience.

Content is the critical asset when it comes to building web traffic and encouraging people to pay attention to the brand. When visitors start linking back to the content and sharing it on social media, it can help boost rankings and expand the audience it reaches. Companies who want to improve the attention the quality content they produce receives should keep the above advice in mind.