Bring Traffic to Your Site With These 4 Blogging Alternatives Is writing not your shtick? Here are four options for producing SEO-friendly content that requires minimum writing skills.
Edited by Dan Bova
You know you need awesome, engaging content on your website to compete for organic search traffic. But what if you're not a strong copywriter? How do you implement a strong content strategy that will help you rank high in Google's competitive search?
While, some people may turn to outsourcing and hiring a copywriter, this isn't always a feasible solution -- especially for startups on a budget.
For those looking to create intriguing SEO-friendly content and don't necessarily have the writing chops for blogging, here are a few alternatives.
1. Design an infographic. Well-produced infographics often have a higher probability of going viral than text-based content, as people enjoy sharing data portrayed in a visual format. While infographics usually aren't cheap to produce (unless you have an in-house graphic designer), there are a few services online like Piktochart that offers templates to design an inforgraphic at a low cost.
Related: 5 SEO Trends Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know for 2014
Whatever path you choose, make sure your infographic has compelling data, provides a strong storytelling element (or theme) and targets a specific demographic (usually your audience). Conducting customer surveys is a popular method of gathering data for infographics.
2. Produce a YouTube video. YouTube is the second most popular search engine next to Google. It's also owned by Google, and Google gives priority to its videos within search results. You can shoot a short video (one to three minutes) with your iPhone, upload it to YouTube and promote it across your social media channels.
Keep in mind, just like infographics, your video should be compelling and useful to your audience. Think about producing tutorials, a customer success story or be an expert in your field by answering a question.
Related: 7 Mistakes That Could Turn Your Corporate Video Into a Corporate Disaster
3. Create a slideshow. Because images are so popular online and they get indexed by search engines, slideshows are great for SEO. And they don't require much writing -- a title and a brief description for each image. For a great example of how to use slideshows as content, take a look at Electronic House's recent slideshow of "13 Really Cool Retro Home Theaters".
It is important to note that for slideshows to really resonate with your audience the content has to lend itself to images. So a post on "10 most popular buzzwords" probably would not make sense for this format.
4. Request reviews. Rather than writing content, how about getting your customers to write content for you? User-generated content is a fantastic tool for SEO and all you have to do is ask for it. Plus, it may help with social, as people like to share their content with their followers. You can publish feedback on a testimonials web page, and if you run an ecommerce site, you can ask for product reviews.
Related: All Content Isn't Created Equal: Tips For Making Yours Top-Notch
