How Can Storytelling Boost Your SEO Efforts
Storytelling and SEO don’t seem to fit in the same sentence. The former deals with human emotion, while the latter is technical and has less to do with human emotion.
However, for your SEO efforts to bear fruits, you need to move our audience emotionally, and that’s what storytelling is all about.
Incorporating storytelling has many benefits for your SEO. People love and are addicted to stories. That is why we watch movies and read storybooks to children.
Storytelling helps your content to be found. Backlinks and proper keyword density may rank you high on SERPs, but stories will keep your site visitors hooked and coming back for more.
Introduction to Storytelling
Storytelling is the art of telling stories to keep your audience engaged. Customers resonate with a brand that shows emotion as opposed to a faceless, emotionless one.
Whether the story is about a customer who used your product, an employee, a made-up person, or even your company’s history, it follows a general format; there was a problem, and the person used your product to solve the problem.
SEO is then incorporated into the story by adding backlinks, appropriate keywords, attractive headlines, and formatted subheadings, among other practices. Google algorithm will rank the content high due to proper SEO while the story will keep your visitors coming and increase shares and, consequently, traffic.
SEO Ranking Factors That Benefit From Storytelling
Site traffic
Keeping your readers hooked drives more traffic to your site. Visitors will keep coming back when your content is relatable and engaging. Sometimes they may also share your content on social media.
Traffic from a search is considered organic and, thus, different from that coming from social shares. Nevertheless, storytelling diversifies the sources of your site traffic, which benefits your ranking.
User Engagement
How long visitors stay on your page and whether or not they visit other pages is largely dependent on the quality of your content. If it’s engaging and relatable, the bounce rate is lower, and the time spent on-page is more.
Good content makes people read your post and possibly several more before they leave your site. You don’t have to be a renowned storyteller to keep your readers glued. Touching their emotions is all you need.
Click-Through Rates
When your readers can recognize your brand in searches, you’ll have established brand authority. According to a study, 82% of people selected a brand they were familiar with regardless of its ranking on the search results.
That means that even if your brand is ranked 4th on the search engines, many people will still click your site because they feel familiar with your brand. The more clicks your site gets, the more it’s recognized by Google and thus ranked higher.
Social Shares
Although social shares do not directly improve SEO, they are based on how your content resonates with your readers emotionally and personally.
People tend to share what appeals to them, what touches their feelings and makes them feel better and more excellent. If the quality of your content is high, it will attract more shares and views.
Using stories that your readers connect with will prompt them to share it as they feel like it brings out their desired image,
Building Backlinks
Backlinks from trusted and credible sites are priceless. When you link to another site, it means you trust them, and Google will also see the site as reliable, therefore raising their ranks.
But what about your site? How does storytelling help you to build backlinks?
As mentioned before, stories help you connect emotionally with readers. You will earn their trust over time, and when other bloggers who are your readers write their blogs, you will earn backlinks.
Quality Storytelling
The best storytelling technique is writing to your customers first. People are reading your content to improve their lives. Too much SEO-friendly content will make your content lose the opportunity to relate with the people, and the result is high bounce-rates and little to no page views.
Write for your audience first, then make it SEO-friendly. Also, remember to make it shareable.
Storytelling and SEO
Storytelling with SEO is a secret weapon to rank high in the SERPs. You should tell your brand story well so that you can engage with your audience in different senses.
Good brand stories tell of how your customers used your products to solve their problems. Use appropriate language and the right keywords to connect with the readers. Your brand story doesn’t have to be so fancy. Just something that gets your audience ticking and has SEO storytelling practices.
Mistakes to Avoid When Storytelling
Telling Lies
Do not tell lies to make your brand look more superior or about a product. People are trusting you by purchasing, and you might lose them forever if they discover the lies.
Telling Controversial and Unnecessary Stories
Avoid divisive and unpopular stories. Most political and trending social stories that are not related to your business may not work out.
Telling Good Stories Badly
Storytelling is an art, and while not everyone is a storyteller, you should strive to indulge your readers in good stories. A story may be good but fail to deliver the expected results because you didn’t capture your audience’s mind.
Benefits of Storytelling with SEO
- It raises your search engine rankings by building backlinks, increasing click-through rates, and increasing traffic to your site.
- It builds your credibility, brand authority, and customer loyalty.
- It makes content exciting and engaging
- Increases social triggers and user engagement
Conclusion
Storytelling is beneficial to your SEO more than keyword distribution and density. Good storytelling will resonate with your audience, be relatable, and engage your users.
SEO storytelling tactics will improve your site’s ranking and build brand authority. Whether you run a small business or a prominent brand, you need to meet your target audience at the same level emotionally and outperform your competitors.
