As the internet becomes increasingly contested – to the point that it almost feels uncompetitive – more and more people are looking to move away from technical concepts and instead focus on what people want. After all, search engines continue to become more sensitive to the actual actions of people who use them, so it makes sense that quality content will ultimately lead to better performance than poor content that is optimized well. If you have a great premise for your blog or website but find it underperforming in some areas, then it may have to do with your approach. We’ll discuss how to hook people on your content below with some dos and don’ts, with the goal of boosting traffic, shares and overall engagement.

Market Your Greatness, Not Your Pitch

The goal to turn any blog or website into a successful endeavour often revolves around – at least in the mind of the creator – monetizing the efforts to a degree. After all, spending ample time on creating a blog or website usually has to be justified with the hope of earning money at some point. Unfortunately, readers – particularly younger ones – often sense many attempts to directly market a product or service, and respond negatively. Subtle incorporations of your pitch are acceptable, but you should strive first and foremost to create content for pinging search engines that is informative and of the highest quality. After that is fulfilled, then you can work on tying in your calls to action and other plugs.

Use Multimedia

People do like to read, but there is a tendency to subconsciously enjoy and share less often when you do not have a secondary element with your content. Studies have shown a consistent trend between content that features images and the amount it is shared. Usually, a piece of content with at least one image will receive twice as many shares as a piece of content that has no images. Not only is it a good idea to include images because of this, but search engines themselves also rank content higher that has forms of multimedia included. Without this critical component, even the best pieces of content can fall flat on their face, which is a shame considering that multimedia creation/incorporation takes far less time than the actual creation of text-based forms of content.

Accentuate with Links

No matter how great your content may be, people tend to gravitate toward sources that provide, well, sources. A website or blog that is solely reliant upon opinion without abstract or concrete examples to explain their opinions consistently will rank lower in search than those who use other links. It’s not just pinging search engines successfully that requires you to add links, but also due to the fact that fewer people are going to share a piece of information that appears to be based on nothing. Compelling, addicting content that is supported by others’ opinions will do better in search engines and will do even better among readers. Whether it is a how-to or a debate on public policy, people want to know what you’re telling them is the truth.