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Creating Quality Content is the most effective strategy to increase organic traffic and conversions.
There are billions of Google Searches a day, your perfect client is looking for you, engaging content will get you found.
According to Hubspot, websites with blogs create 15x more traffic than sites without blogs.
That is a lot of traffic. And that is exactly why we continue to encourage all of our clients to create new content on a consistent basis.
We at Clapping Dog Media recommend that you employ a combination of these blog types:
Listicles Long form (educational) Round Ups Ultimate Guides Q&A
In this post we are going to explain each type of blog and show examples of each.
Okay, let’s dive in with the most popular and most effective – the Listicle
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Listicles or List Posts
These are everywhere.
Here are a list of the Top Audio Books of 2021.
I read Tieghan’s 9 Favorite Things, every week. Love her.
Lists are popular because they are easy to skim and they are an effective way to show your audience that you know a lot about a certain topic.
Lists also simplify complicated subjects and visitors really like that.
Pro Tips for Writing Listicle Blog Posts
- Provide as much value as possible.
- Odd numbers and unexpected numbers are enticing, so instead of 10 Top Tips, do 11 instead.
- In your title use the actual number and not the word.
Further Reading on Listicles:
The 6 Step Guide to Writing Listicles How to Write a Great Listicle Post
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Long Form Posts aka Educational
Educating the visitors by giving them as much information as possible builds trust and establishes you as an expert.
Jay Abraham said that if you can define a problem better than your customer, they assume you have the solution. There is no better way to define a problem than through a long form post.Another bonus of long form posts is that they are, well, long. They contain a lot of words and therefore they are helpful for SEO. Long form posts give Google context. Remember Google reads words.
Some great examples of long form posts are:
- Case Studies
- E-book
- White Paper
Pro Tips for long form posts:
- These posts should be a minimum of of 2000 words
- Only tackle one problem or concept at a time
- Be as thorough and helpful as possible.
Additional Reading on Long Form Posts:
The Ultimate Guide for Long Form Content What is Long Form Content and Why You Need It[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_id=”roundup” _builder_version=”4.14.7″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]
Round Up Posts
We love Roundup posts at Clapping Dog Media because they consistently drive organic traffic. Roundup posts are very similar to Listicles (the most popular type of blog post) but they are a collection of things.
Let me explain.
Roundups are generally a compilation of the “Best Of” or “Expert Opinions”
Like this post from the NY Times the 10 Best Podcasts of 2021.
Or they are a collection of expert opinions on a topic like this one, SEO Trends According to 44 Experts.
Or this one by Success is What, where 72 People Reveal their Most Powerful Tips at beating procrastination.
If you create a large roundup of other resources, you can ask those resources to share your post – which is why these posts get so much attention. Like if all 72 people who contributed to the procrastination post above shared the article with their followers – that is a lot of traffic.
Pro Tips for Writing Roundup Posts:
- If you mention experts in your article, always let the person know, if you don’t reach out and ask them to share it, they probably will not.
- Use experts as good examples of things, never call people out on anything.
Additional Reading for Roundup Posts:
How to write an amazing round up post How to write a round up post that will drive a lot of traffic[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_id=”ultimate-guides” _builder_version=”4.14.7″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]
Ultimate Guide Posts
Okay. This one is our SEO Favorite, the Ultimate Guide Posts. Ultimate Guides are the definitive guide for a specific topic. Obviously, they are helpful to the reader, but they are amazing for SEO as well because they are long and link to other articles within your site which increases the key engagement. They also help to establish you as an expert in your niche, which is a win win win.
Ultimate Guides do take a significant amount of time and resources to create, but if done well, they will lead to increased organic traffic and raving fans.
Here are some great examples of Ultimate Guides.
The Ultimate Guide to n95 MasksWhat we love about this one:
- The article is long, but is very skimmable
- It is filled with sources and links to additional information
Here is another fantastic example, the Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing
What we love about this one is the Table of Contents in the beginning, which makes it so easy for users to quickly jump to the part of the article they want to read.
Pro Tips for Ultimate Guide Blog Posts:
- Be helpful and thorough
- Go very deep
- Think of them as an ongoing process, you can and should add to them and update links
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Q&A or FAQ Posts
The final super helpful, must have content type of article are Q&A posts.
We love this format because Frequently asked question (FAQ) pages answer the needs of your audience quickly and comprehensively, all in one page.
A good Q&A page can be a valuable content asset for your website. An effective FAQ is a resource that can educate, inform, and help the user navigate a website and its content. FAQ pages can improve the customer’s experience of a website, build trust of the product or service by providing comprehensive, accurate answers to their search query. Research shows that good FAQ pages play a role in people in order to resolve their fears and concerns before buying a product or service.
Question and answer format has been around a long time since people have always been asking experts for answers. We have noticed that there is an ongoing need for this kind of content as many users search in question format.
Also, people Google questions. Have you noticed on the Search Results page? AND we love these types of post because they can easily be used on social media.
Here are some great examples of Q&A posts:
How to Write an Effective Q&A Post How to Convert Readers on a FAQ PageWhat we love about these:
- FAQs are an organized compilation of valuable information that is easy to navigate.
- Potential customers can find quickly in an FAQ the answers they are looking for
- We know that an FAQ page is the second most clickable page after the Home or Services page
Pro Tips for Writing Q&A Posts:
- Write the questions from the view of the customer
- Fully answer the questions and don’t link to a different page
- Be thorough and accurate
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The websites that get the most engaging organic traffic have a variety of content types. We recommend that you write a variety of types of blogs and the minimum word count for any type of blog be 600.
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