Before you find out the ways and means to create highly sticky content for your website and blog, you should know what it means and what its advantages are. Sticky content is important because it can change the rate of traffic to your website, the bounce rate that your website has and how closely your target audience engages with your website.

What is sticky content?

Sticky content refers to those pieces of information, articles, publications, advertisements, white papers, videos, images, etc. that make your audience come back to your website again and again. Sticky content really helps you to get a top position in the mind of your audience. This kind of content is memorable, informative, highly practical, useful and shareable. It gives your audience compelling reasons to stay associated with your website, blog, newsletter and even social media pages and accounts. It is one of the best ways to increase the traffic to your site organically.

Why is sticky content so important?

According to KnowledgeTree, human beings have an attention span of 8 seconds and they make a decision within this tiny window as to whether they want to continue going through your website or move to something else. Also on an average, 55% of your audience spends less than 15 seconds on your website. High bounce rate impacts your SEO score and SERP ranking negatively.

It is undeniable that audiences have a lot of options to choose from when surfing the net. You have to give them a solid reason to visit your website and then stay on it for a considerable period of time. Sticky content satisfies the informational, educational and entertainment needs of your audience and keeps them glued to your website.

How to create sticky content?

1. Build an online reputation and credibility

Credibility of your site is an important factor in making your content stick. You need to optimize your page loading speed and also create a highly usable and user-friendly website. You need to optimize the domain and page authority of your website so that your site gets crawled more often and gets indexed. This will give your site a higher SERP. This is from the SEO point of view.  From the content point of view, you will have to create highly researched content and provide ample proof to back the claims that you make. You will have to make a name for yourself as a domain expert so that people take you and your content seriously.

2. Learn to spin a tale

Most people enjoy stories. So, bring out and wear your storyteller’s hat every now and then; it doesn’t have to be elaborate. Even if your topic of discussion is not inherently glamorous or interesting, you can still spice it up by sharing anecdotes from your personal experience, those that you know or present facts to show how they influenced a particular situation.

3. Link judiciously

Linking your old and new posts internally on your blog or linking pages on your website helps increase stickiness of your content. People often come looking for one thing but then end up looking for something else because they find something more interesting. Linking is a very strong factor from SEO perspective and also from content perspective. Don’t ignore it.

4. Personalize and use emotions

You don’t need to be too politically correct and smug when creating content for web audience. You can take the liberty to use colorful language and expressions that directly connect with the audience. Use 1st and 2nd person usually.  Also, in the comments section, interact with your audience by addressing them by first names. Express your emotions openly, don’t be opaque or make your writing dull. Expressing emotions is even more important in videos as it helps to keep the audience tied down.

5. Be unique and quirky

Don’t be afraid to do the unexpected; don’t be so predictable. At times, you can even play with a negative idea or situation to exploit your audience’s affinity for the unknown and unexpected. It really works.

Creating sticky content is essential and imperative. You will have to chalk your strategies and use various metrics to understand the pulse and demands of your audience better. Through practice, it can be mastered and the return on your investment will be phenomenal.

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