Great website content-the kind that holds a visitor’s attention and gets them to return-is what’s known as “sticky” content.

 

Sticky content is good content that keeps visitors coming back and helps you build up a loyal following. Blogs and other sites that don’t put much thought into their content strategy tend to be full of “slippery content”-content that’s so dull it slips right out of your mind! (We would love to say we coined that one, but looks like this guy beat us to the punch).

There are lots of ways to make your site content more sticky (more on that in a bit), but first you need a quick self-diagnosis. The most telling signs that your content isn’t up to snuff can be found in your analytics (you are regularly looking at your Analytics, right??) Look to social and external links and traffic sources for other indications.

6 Signs Your Content Isn’t “Sticky” Enough, and How to Fix It

 

Here are 6 specific things to look for, and for each issue we’ve provided some suggestions for improving the “stickiness” of your content:

 

#1 - “Returning” vs. “New” Visitors

If your site has a high percentage of New visitors and not many Returning visitors, especially no improvement in Returning visits over time, it could be a sign your content isn’t giving people enough of a reason to come back.

Solutions:

• Develop a more effective content strategy. Are you targeting the right reader? Are you producing content that is relevant to your audience’s interests?
• Encourage comments and be responsive to those you receive. What’s your gameplan for following up with those visitors? (Do you even have one?)

#2 - High Bounce Rates

Pay close attention to your bounce rate-the percentage of visitors who enter your site and then leave the site without continuing on to view other pages. Bounce rates above 50% are typically considered problematic. Although a high bounce rate isn’t always indicative of a problem (depending on what type of site you have and what the purpose of its content is), it’s an important metric to gauge things like engagement and usability.

Solutions:

• Make liberal but effective use of links to encourage visits to other areas of your site.
• Feature relevant related content alongside target content to entice readers into clicking through to other pages.

#3 - Average Time on Page is Low

Pages with content that isn’t performing well will usually have a much lower amount of time spent on them by visitors. Some utilitarian pages aren’t meant to keep visitors hanging around, but if you’re seeing these kinds of numbers on blog posts and other places where you should be putting your best content forward, you can assume that your content isn’t what your readers were expecting, or it isn’t holding their attention.

Solutions:

• Use a clean, streamlined design that allows for good readability.
• Instead of paragraph upon paragraph of text that is a chore to read, break up text into easily-digestible “chunks” and use bulleted lists, spacing, blockquotes, and and other types of formatting to your advantage.
• Incorporate images, video, and other types of multimedia into your content. Break up all that monotonous text with interesting things to look at.

#4 - Lack of Social Media Activity

If you’re regularly disappointed by the lack of social engagement on your pages-no Likes, no Tweets, no +1′s-it could mean that your visitors aren’t excited to share what you’re offering, or that you’re not making it easy for them to do so. This rings especially true for blogs and other “consumable” content with built-in social features.

Solutions:

• Are you actively promoting your content enough through social channels like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest or just waiting around for it to be discovered? Don’t be afraid to step up your game.
• Consider rewriting your headlines or making other tweaks to your content. It could be that it’s just not exciting or urgent enough to compel your visitors to pass it on.

#5 - Disappointing Comments

Does your content regularly get comments or do you mostly hear crickets?

Solutions:

• Include calls-to-action and incentives to encourage visitors to leave comments. It can be as simple as posing a question to your visitors to solicit a response.
• Ensure your content is actually relevant, helpful or valuable in some other way and you’ll find people want to thank you for it.
• Make it easy to comment. People are very busy and they don’t want to spend a lot of time fussing with your overly-complicated website in order to leave a simple comment. Offer multiple ways to leave comments, e.g. via Facebook, Twitter, and good old-fashioned name + email, that give visitors a solution they’re comfortable or familiar with.

#6 - Lack of Links and Referrals

When reviewing Referral Sources in your analytics, do you find that there’s a good mix of different types of sites like social networks, forums and other blogs? If not, it’s a safe bet that your content isn’t getting spread around types of places where people tend to share content. Sure, you could embark on a link-building campaign and self-seed links to your own content, but if that isn’t already happening naturally it’s an indication that your content may be weak.

Solutions:

• Include more relevant links within your own content. Linking out can help your site get discovered and encourages two-way participation.
• Focus on making your content better-that’s priority number one! There are a number of great, free resources out there that will help you do just that. Here’s one of our favorites: ProBlogger.net

Related posts:

1. Content Marketing: Next Big Buzz

Comments(3)

3 Comments »

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     Comment by see — May 12, 2012 @ 7:58 pm

2. [...] in some way); and at other times, we slough it off like water. Sticky content is, as the writers at Web Ad.vantage have so aptly put it, “…good content that keeps visitors coming back and helps you [...]

     Pingback by Sticky Content And Why It Is Important To You | Work With Art | Improve Your Online Marketing — May 17, 2012 @ 12:50 pm

3. [...] (typeof(addthis_share) == "undefined"){ addthis_share = [];}In this blog post by Web Ad.vantage, 6 Signs Your Content Isn’t “Sticky” Enough (and What to Do About It), talks about how you can determine whether your content is compelling enough to invite your reader [...]

     Pingback by Is Your Content Sticky? | — June 16, 2012 @ 6:34 pm

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