Google rewards websites that have a significant amount of content. The more content the better (provided it is of a high quality), and it’s implied that simply creating the content should position your website in such a way that your hits increase and your sales/conversions increase with it.
But many content marketers have found that their content is providing them the hits but not the conversions. Yes, business may be increasing, but many are still finding that their overall numbers are much lower than where they want them to be. This may be because they’re not creating “Active Content.”
What is Active Content?
Active content is content that, in some way, directs visitors to the next step in the conversion pipeline. The most basic form of active content is adding a “contact us today” button to the end of an article, but most marketers prefer to take a more direct approach, crafting content in such a way that it naturally starts to move visitors towards sales.
The content itself may be something very basic, such as “5 reasons to do X,” but no matter the style of writing or topic covered, active content should still direct visitors towards the next steps in the process so that they have less of a desire to leave the page once they’ve finished reading.
Why is Active Content Preferable?
Active content has several benefits that make it the preferred choice of many marketers. Active content:
- Gives the user a next step so that they don’t leave the page.
- Actively sells them on an idea, product, or service.
- Ensures that every piece of content has a sales purpose.
Often you’ll find that, when writing passive content, much of your content appears “wasted.” There are still branding benefits and sales potential, but otherwise the content will far too often be used for information only without anything keeping the visitor interested in using your services. Active content is the solution to this problem, because it gives each piece of content a sales purpose – turning every page into its own landing page, which you can then edit to maximize the conversion process.
That’s not to say that passive content doesn’t have it’s place. We’ll get to that in a subsequent article. But active content is still a valuable tool in the content marketing world, and one worth considering for those that are planning to invest in high quantity content.
