In one sense, all the content on a website is related. At least, it should be.
If you sell coffee, all of your content will relate to coffee, in one way or another. If you sell garden furniture, all your content will relate to gardens and furniture.
But that’s not what I want to talk about.
What I’m suggesting is that you create a series of streams of content that are much more closely related.
For example, if you sell or write about coffee makers, you might create a series of content pages which focus on all the different brands and models of single serve coffee makers. That’s a subset of the coffee topic, but gives you enough raw material to create a series of 5 to 10 pages of content.
And that content doesn’t have to be just text. You can include images, videos, infographics and so on.
Why create these series?
Because people like them. They like them on TV and radio, and they like them online.
In addition, you should like them too. When you write a compelling series, you are increasing your chances of keeping more readers engaged over a longer period of time.
For example, you might publish one new page each day for a week. Each week’s series of 5 pages would all be related to a single topic. Do that and you have an opportunity to get people coming back to your site every day for a week.
And whatever it is you are selling, you’ll have created a very engaged group of well-informed prospective buyers by Friday.
If you have the resources, you could do this every week…and announce the next week’s topic at the end of the week before.
You can see an example of this at work with a series of short videos I created, all on the topic of social media. Here is day one…
As this series is completed, you’ll see links to all the other videos on each page.
How to connect and promote these pages…
You have probably already seen links to “Related content” or “You might also like…” at the end of content pages. Then you see a few links to other pages.
But very often, the pages recommended are not really related at all. They are simply links to other pages the site managers would like you to visit.
What I’m suggesting is that all the content be very closely related, as part of a series.
The more closely related the topics within the series, the more likely it is your readers will click through and read more of them.
You also need to promote both the series and the individual pages of content. You can see the announcement of my video series here.
As that series is now completed, you’ll see links to all 5 videos at the end of that page. But those links were added one at a time, once a day for 5 days.
Each day you reach out to your audience through whichever channels you have developed – by email, social media or both.
And while my video series was promoting a particular program, there doesn’t always have to be a product or payout at the end the week. You can do this simply to deliver great value and build an engaged audience of readers who come back to your website time and time again.
Wrapping it up…
When you create content pages for your site, you are investing a lot of work and then hoping people will find those pages through the search engines or social media.
At the end of the week you will have created 5 stand-alone pages, but none will be supporting the others.
Instead, think about creating content in a series, over the course of a week or even a month.
Announce the series and promote it. And create links to each related page.
You’re now investing the same amount of time in creating the content, but getting a much bigger bang for your buck…and building a far more devoted and regular readership of prospective buyers.
About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…