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Informational content provides information of value and knowledge to the reader. It can be used for a variety of purposes including providing facts and statistics about a topic; exploring topics in-depth; giving advice on how to do something, and much more! This blog post will explore what informational content is and why it should be included on your website.
Informational content is content focused on providing the visitor details on a subject, to help them to a specific resolution. Informative content frequently has less SERP competition making it easier to rank for and will frequently be phrased in a question and answer layout of around 1000 words.
This type of content should be the bedrock of anyone beginning to build themselves a website or a brand in general, it is the easiest way to build brand awareness without targeted big ad spend campaigns.
The other benefit to starting a website with informational content is that there are millions of new searches done monthly per Google, that is search phrases that have never been seen before, which to website owners is the golden ticket to ranking on page one.
Why Write Informational Content?
The purpose of any website is to achieve visitors, visitors come from only a few sources reliably, advertising, social media, or organic search from the search engines.
If you want to gain serious traffic that can bring you high conversions at a good cost to your bank account you will need to focus on organic traffic since paid advertising requires lots of money upfront and social media can be fickle to letting traffic off their platforms.
Let’s dig into organic traffic and why informational content helps you to gain free traffic from the search engines!
Gain Organic Traffic
When you want to rank in search engines there are two primary things that will end up determining your ranking, keywords, and links. The best way to gain organic traffic is to be able to rank keywords that have little to no competition as this can lead to thousands of visits monthly.
This is why locating these informational keywords can be ideal for bloggers to write about as they can have large search volumes but be untapped by the current websites online, leading to traffic.
What’s even more amazing about organic traffic is that it will continue to come from the search engine for years to come as long as you write the best content available on the web for it.
Funnel to Buyer Intent Content
Writing content that can get you traffic can offer you a chance to route them over to your buyer intent-focused content, this could be things like affiliate offers, informational products, courses, or other money-making content.
While the amount that will convert in this method may be lower than visitors who come from primed buyer intent sources, like ads, getting a 5% conversion on 10,000+ visits (50) is better than 10% of 1000 paid visits (10).
This will help you to start monetizing your blog posts and help you grow income which you can then look to funnel into a content writing service, like Passion Posts or BuySellText, or deals on Fiverr.
Evergreen
A key to informative content is that it is highly prone to being evergreen, meaning it doesn’t need constant upkeep and revisions to stay up to date. When you build a content-based site you want to minimize rework and re-editing as much as possible to save time and effort for new traffic acquisition.
Evergreen content is the lifeblood of many blogs as it allows you to write a piece of content that continues to send you visitors for years to come, when you stack this effort with 100s or 1000s of posts this continual traffic can bring in income from ads and products with little continual effort.
Advantages to Informational Content Over Other Forms
Information-based content has many advantages compared with other forms of content, like how-to articles or general news-based posts.
Since this is about providing information for readers the majority of the work in writing is done upfront by you and then can be leveraged over time without much further effort required from you after publishing.
This type of article also tends to rank higher than other types of content because it focuses on teaching the reader something instead of just pitching them an idea or product.
Most Search Traffic is Informational in Intent
Nearly all search traffic from the search engines isn’t to find a product to purchase but instead, it is to answer a question or concern of the searcher.
This means that reaching out and providing the best information on your topic can lead you far ahead of other websites as Google will rank those who have the most valuable content at the top for their search results.
This also leads people down a path where they first find your website, read some great information on it, and then they are likely to follow up on your other products or services that you offer.
Writing informational content is a very powerful way of building an audience, monetizing it with affiliate links, and then funneling them through to more information-based posts for low effort in the future!
Get More Eyes on Your Brand or Site
As mentioned above, the bigger part of ranking this content can help you to build a reputation and brand with your visitors, this builds confidence in you and your site in their eyes and makes the suggestions you provide far more credence.
Getting these views will also help to show Google and the other search engines that people love your content, they stick around for long times to read showing engagement and they don’t leave to bounce to another entry in the SERP.
These factors can also help you to build your site’s E-A-T factors which Google has been moving towards which are Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
All this means that getting informational content on websites can be one of the most powerful tools for driving visitors who are interested in your topic and can help to build a strong presence for you on the web.
This is helpful because it will give search engines more reasons to rank you higher than other sites, provide people with great information that they want which builds trust, and gives an easy way of funneling them through to additional services or products if needed.
Types of Informational Content
There are many types of information-based content that can be built and used for a website.
This includes many types of blog posts from long-form articles, shorter list-style posts, or even longer lists of tips or tricks related to your topic.
These types of writing are easily the most popular ways to build out websites because they allow you to convey a lot of different ideas in one article without needing to cover everything you could write about within one subject.
They can be used for outreach platforms like guest blogging or link building by providing valuable information, and they are also great at driving traffic through ads if monetized correctly!
This is helpful because it will give search engines more reasons to rank you higher than other sites, provide people with great information
Evergreen
The most common overall informational posts will be evergreen in most niches, think things like how to clean a room, this information overall doesn’t change frequently which means a post done today is just as useful in 1-5 years.
This content will be what helps you maintain traffic over the long term, it can be a strong basis for your outreach work as this content can easily be used for link building, guest blogging, or similar purposes.
The key to this type of article is that you need to keep your topic broad enough that readers will find value in what you are offering even if they don’t read every word on your site.
How-To Guides
These are very good depending on the topic and can help drive very focused and interested visitors to your website, these guides are typically more focused on one task or idea which makes it easier to follow along with the guide.
This type of article can be great for directing people into your product funnel because they provide value, but also allow you to advertise other products within these guides that will help them out later!
They come in many forms including text-based articles, video tutorials, or even infographic how-to guides which can help to better break down complex ideas into simpler chunks for people.
This is helpful because it will give search engines more reasons to rank you higher than other sites, provide people with great information that they want which builds trust, and gives an easy way of funneling them through to additional services or products if needed.
Time-Limited
Think of time-limited content as more like news content which is only available for a specific time period, this could be anything from discounts to limited sales on products or services which are created by the website owner.
This type of content can help you drive more traffic through your site as it is new and interesting information that people will want to act on quickly before it runs out!
These frequently only have a short shelf life though and won’t last for months let alone years but can get you onto content discovery platforms like Google Discover and similar news distributions which can hit huge volumes of web users.
Integrating a Strategy Into Informational Content
The best way to approach quality content is to have a purpose behind it, while it is nice to write on topics that will get you views you need to have a purpose behind why you are writing the content which comes from content analysis.
Are you looking to functionally build on your authority or expertise within the niche and with it your reputation? That’s a good plan but it means that you are writing content you don’t plan to use with the traffic it provides.
Instead, think about how you want to route that traffic, where is a good post to lead them towards next, is it someplace in the sales funnel itself or is it to another post to help move them down a funnel towards an intentional goal?
The 5 Stages of the Sales Funnel
There are five distinct phases to the sales funnel and each step introduces a better chance and willingness to want to make a purchase, what if you used your information content as the first or second stage, maybe you could massively increase qualified leads into sales.
Stage one is awareness, this is where most informational content functions to bring up the item or brand to a vast majority. This is just the first of many stages where you are bringing them along and when done successfully leads to more interest and further research.
Stage two is interest, this is where you are trying to build the visitors’ interest in the subject matter, whether an affiliate product, information product, course, or another offer.
Stage three is consideration, this is where you present your information on the item or offer to get the visitor to consider the offer you provide them and should be done once you know they have a solid interest.
Stage four is decision, and this is where you are trying to get them to actively make the decision, this is frequently where coupons and similar methods are used to help nudge the visitor into a buyer to finish the checkout process.
Stage five is purchase, this is always the end goal of buyer-intent focused content and not informational in the least. Using those informational pieces above though to move people from stage one to stage five can lead you to an immense increase in overall successful sales.
Finding Informational Keywords
There are many tools that can help you locate informational keywords and post ideas, if you have the ability to spend some money then a good way to start is my friend Ben’s Keyword Chef application.
If you are past finding only easy wins then you would be better off grabbing a more versatile keyword tool like KeywordFinder to start building content, or if you also want to focus on social content then using a tool like SEMrush is probably much more valuable.
Final Thoughts on Informational Content
Informational content is very important to websites because it can be used for outreach platforms like guest blogging or link building by providing valuable information, and they are also great at driving traffic through ads if monetized correctly!
If you have issues building content consistently or face writer’s block as I do, then I would suggest investing in Jasper to be your writing assistant helping to build content more efficiently.
This type of article can be great for directing people into your product funnel because they provide value, but also allow you to advertise other products within these guides that will help them out later!
Informational content is the most common overall informational posts will be evergreen in most niches, think things like how to clean a room, this information doesn’t typically change frequently which means a post done today is just as useful in 1-5 years.
If you are looking for a way to learn more about building an affiliate or niche style website and you want to invest in your future then I suggest looking into Project24 and getting started on your path to financial freedom today.
