8 Formatting Tips for More Traffic

8 Formatting Tips for More Traffic

Formatting is what makes your content easy to read by people and search engines.

Image by Dallin Nguyen

Quality content is the foundation for your online marketing success. At the very minimum, this means information that is useful to your audience, interesting and easily read.

Would you want to read the post above? No Way!

Useful to your audience means that your post solves a problem, provides a benefit or teaches something related to their needs. This is the most important factor for every piece of content. Always keep in mind the reader’s viewpoint: ‘What’s in it for me?’ when creating compelling copy for your reader. Read this post to learn more about how to rock your brand/focus your content.

Compelling content also means engaging the reader on a personal level, touching their emotions with story and metaphor. If you don’t connect with them personally, it’s much harder to create a relationship or prompt an action, like buying your products. If you want to learn more about story, read this post on crafting a story that sells.

In today’s fast paced digital world, most people are skimming your content to see if it is useful or interesting to them. This means you need to use good formatting to make it easy to find what it’s about and whether they are interested. Poor formatting can turn off those readers you worked so hard to attract to your website or blog.

Here are 8 formatting tips for more traffic:

Start with a great headline that captures attention, creating an interest to find out more. Great headlines bring traffic!
Use pictures or images that capture attention and/or evoke emotion. This is your second chance to attract readers to your content. Mine stinks, but I wanted to make the point of bad formatting.
Include your keyword(s) in the title and headlines. This helps your content be found by search engines for SEO.
What’s your point? Make it clearly and early. Tell people the main point in the first few sentences.
Use sub-headlines (H2, H3, etc.) to highlight key ideas and benefits in your post. (See bonus tip below.)
Use shorter paragraphs and sentences than traditional writing. Most readers are probably skimming on a mobile device. This makes your post easy to read and skim.
Wrap up your post with a call to action like ‘read this, sign up, or buy today.’ What action do you want your reader to make?
Make sure your content is formatted for mobile. Approximately 61% of news and social content is now accessed on a mobile device, and read later if they liked what they skimmed!

Bonus Tip: WordPress makes formatting easy. The toolbar includes choices for format, headings, bolding, quotes and lists. And WordPress makes it super easy to add pictures, videos and media to your content. This is another of the many reasons that we use WordPress to build all of our websites.