If you run a small business, you need to be creating regular content for your customers.

Doing so can help you improve your SEO and boost your rankings on the search engine results pages, build trust with your customers, establish your brand authority, and more.

In this article, I’m going to outline the different types of content you should be creating in 2021 if you want to grow your audience and make more sales. Read on to find out more.

Ultimate guides

If you’re looking for a great way to show your expertise and provide your audience with plenty of helpful advice, consider creating an ultimate guide.

This should answer all of the questions someone might have about a particular topic that is relevant to your business or the field you work in. To come up with an idea for an ultimate guide, consider what kinds of questions you frequently get from your existing customers, and conduct some keyword research to see what kinds of queries your ideal audience is typing into their search engines. Looking at what your competitors are publishing and aiming to fill any gaps they’ve left can also provide you with plenty of inspiration for ultimate guides.

For example, at Loganix, we have a practical guide to creating a website outline for SEO, which our target clients are likely to find very helpful. It’s an incredibly comprehensive piece of content, which covers absolutely everything someone might need to know about structuring their website in a way that will boost their search engine rankings.

The topic is relevant to what we specialize in — digital marketing and SEO — so creating this guide provides us with the perfect opportunity to show our expertise. Plus, because it addresses so many queries people might have about the subject, the piece is likely to rank for a wide range of organic searches.

Most importantly, though, someone looking for this kind of information will probably be interested in using our services, either now or once their business is more established. So, while we’re giving away a lot of information for free, it helps to get the word out about what we do, and builds trust with people who might look to spend money with us down the line.

Due’s ultimate guide to invoicing is another great example of a comprehensive guide that is going to attract their ideal clients. In it, they outline what invoices are, the different types you might come across, how to create your own invoices, and more.

This guide is aimed at freelancers and small business owners who are looking for invoicing help. And it’s probably safe to assume that a lot of these people will also be interested in a payment processing solution like the one Due offers. Therefore, by making an in-depth guide about invoicing, the company will be able to attract more high-quality traffic to their site, and build trust with people who might just be interested in Due’s services.

You can still use this tactic if you have more of a niche audience, too.

For instance, Venveo is a marketing company that specializes in helping building material manufacturers find more customers. And, on their website, they’ve published a guide to marketing to architects, which covers everything you need to consider when creating campaigns that will appeal to this very specific audience.

With this ultimate guide, they’ve solidified who their target clients are, shown their expertise, and will be able to build trust with the people who are most likely to be interested in their services. You want to make it very clear that you’re an expert in your field, and ultimate guides are ideal for showing that.

Finally, Search Engine Journal actually has an ultimate guide to ultimate guides, which outlines how you can create this type of content in the right way. The website’s target audience includes content marketers, SEO professionals, small business owners, and more. So, it’s very likely this comprehensive piece of content will attract just the people they’re looking for.

If you aren’t already creating ultimate guides relevant to your ideal customers, it’s time to start. They allow you to target a lot of keywords, answer your customers’ questions, attract new people to your website, and could even save your customer service team time, as a lot of commonly asked questions should already be answered on your site.

Infographics

Have you noticed that a lot of infographics are being shared on Instagram at the moment? That’s because they’re eye-catching, easy to digest, great for repurposing, and particularly shareable.

So, if you’re looking for ways to keep your content fresh and engaging while streamlining the creation process, making infographics is a great way to do it.

If the concept of an infographic is quite new to you, or you’ve never made one before, this might seem daunting. But, with the right tools and advice, you can actually make a whole host of different infographics quickly and easily.

Venngage has a great guide to the nine main types of infographics, which also includes templates you can use to create your own. They outline the purposes of statistical, informational, timeline, process, geographic, comparison, hierarchical, list, and resume infographics while showing you how to make them.

This resource is a great place to begin if you want to start jazzing up your blog posts and social media feeds with visual content that will also inform your audience.

Buying guides and comparison pieces

The goal of creating a buying guide or comparison piece is to help your customers make the best possible purchase to suit their needs. Having these on your website can lead to better reviews, fewer customer complaints, fewer returns, and less work for your customer service team.

You don’t even necessarily have to sell the products you’re talking about in the comparison pieces you create, as long as the content is still going to be helpful for your target customers. For example, there are third party sites out there that focus on reviewing and comparing products in their niche to build trust and improve their brand authority, while boosting their SEO.

InVPN often does this. It’s primarily a comparison website, which helps its audience to choose the best VPN services to suit their needs. For instance, their guide to NordVPN vs ExpressVPN compares the pros and cons of each option, while outlining why someone might choose one over the other.

Because the website now features so many VPN reviews and comparison pieces, the company has become an authority in its field.

Money Under 30 is another advice site, which focuses on providing people with high-quality money advice. They’ve published an article comparing the most popular meal delivery services and, at first glance, this might not seem like the most relevant topic for this kind of publication. However, consider who their target audience are: busy and hard-working people who are looking for ways to make their money go further. So, reviewing meal delivery services that are going to save these people both money and time is a great move.

This comparison piece will reel in young professionals who are short on time, which also happen to be the exact people who might be interested in information about credit cards, investing, and insurance. So, when you’re thinking about what kinds of products you could review or compare on your site, don’t feel like you can only talk about the items you sell. Think outside the box, and come up with ways to attract the right people to your website.

Free tools and resources

Free tools and resources can be very powerful marketing tools for a wide variety of businesses. The likes of online calculators, downloadable templates, and quizzes allow you to show what you do, build loyalty with your customers, and improve your brand authority.

But one of the best things about creating free tools and resources is that, if they’re genuinely useful, a lot of other businesses and publications will want to share them with their audience. Plus, when they do so, they should credit you with a link, which will improve your backlink profile and boost your SEO.

In short, when websites in your niche link back to you, Google takes this as a vote of confidence. The more high-quality links you get, the more trustworthy you’ll look, and search engines will feel more comfortable sending people your way. This means your rankings should improve as a result.

Let’s take a look at some businesses that do a great job of using free tools to attract their ideal audiences and promote their services.

For instance, Looka has a free logo maker people can use to get a taste of what the business does.

The company specializes in branding for businesses, so providing a free tool like this is very relevant to their expertise. And, once someone sees just what Looka can do through using their logo maker, they’ll be far more likely to trust the business with the rest of their branding. So, it’s ideal for building trust with those they want to work with.

Similarly, Canva is an online graphic design tool that people can use to make posters, invitations, social media posts, and more. They offer an extensive library of free templates people can use to get a feel for the tool, but then there are also more polished options that are only available to subscribers.

If someone really enjoys using Canva’s free features, they might eventually decide to upgrade and start paying for some of the other elements. Plus, more publications will be willing to link to the site when they know people can use it without spending any money, which will be great for Canva’s backlink profile.

Interactive content

Most people are stuck at home and scrolling on their phones a lot more than usual. So, if you’re looking for a way to take your content from good to great, consider making it interactive. This can really help your business to stand out from your competitors, and can even build stronger bonds with your customers — especially right now when interactive content is still relatively uncommon.

There are lots of different types of interactive content you can create, from calculators and quizzes to interactive maps. The right option for you will depend on the type of business you have and what you’re trying to achieve.

Microsoft is a company that tends to do interactive content very well. For example, their help me choose feature allows their customers to take a quiz to work out which device is going to suit their needs best.

Purchasing a new computer can get confusing, especially when you aren’t familiar with all of the different features and specs available to you. Different people might use their computers for writing, graphic design, gaming, work, or just the basics. And, if someone is struggling to pick out the right model to suit their needs, this quiz can help them to narrow it down.

Not only is this interactive quiz very helpful, but it’s also quite fun to take. So, visitors will leave the webpage feeling like they’ve had a really positive experience with the company, which could be enough to turn them into full-fledged customers.

Listicles and round-ups

If you want to provide your customers with a lot of information in an easily digestible and engaging way, a listicle or round-up could work well. These kinds of content can also be particularly shareable if you choose the right subject, which could be great news for your backlink profile.

For instance, SocialPilot tends to create round-ups of similar social media tools to help their customers make the best investment to suit their needs. As you can see, the company offers its own social media scheduling tools, but it’s also created a great round-up of Facebook publishing tools that their target audience might be interested in.

This gives the company the chance to show exactly how their own tools measure up to the others on the market. And, because it offers so much valuable information that’s relevant to their target customers, it’s a piece that’s likely to bring high-quality traffic to their site.

Best Nursing Programs is a website that also publishes high-quality and in-depth round-ups that are sure to be very valuable for their target audience. They specialize in helping aspiring healthcare workers to find the best education route for them. And, one of the ways they do this is by creating listicles like their round-up of the best accelerated BSN programs.

In these pieces, they talk through which schools are offering these courses, what the cost of each is, and what the graduation rate tends to be. They also include a link to the actual school or course they’re talking about so anyone interested can find more information.

Their listicles provide just enough information for prospective healthcare workers to narrow their options down. Plus, they provide so much helpful information, which really helps to establish Best Nursing Programs as an authority in their field.

How-to guides

How-to guides allow you to address your customers’ pain points, target relevant keywords, earn your audience’s trust, and establish your business as an authority in your field. When you’re trying to teach your audience how to do something, you could even include a video tutorial for those who prefer to learn visually.

Let’s take a look at some examples of high-quality how-to content that you could take inspiration from for your own website.

For instance, Continental Message Solution is a company that helps their clients to set up phone systems that will pick up calls even when their workers aren’t there to do it.

The company works with a whole host of different industries, and they’ve created a how-to guide for medical practices to target this segment of the market. People who come across this piece of content have probably already decided that they need an answering service and, by creating this guide, Continental Message Service have shown they’re experts in this area.

Plus, while the article includes all of the information someone might need, it also shows that the process can be quite complicated, which means a reader might be tempted to enlist the help of a professional. And, because they’re already on the Continental Message Service website, they’ll be far more likely to spend their money there.

How-to guides can be more light-hearted, too. For example, American Kennel Club is an organization that specializes in helping people to look after their purebred dogs. And they have a wide range of how-to guides, including a tutorial on how to teach your dog to roll over. It’s likely that people who are interested in this content will own young dogs or puppies. And, from here, they can access additional training resources, expert advice on nutrition and dog shows, AKC services, and more.

The how-to guide will do a great job of attracting the right audience and building trust with them, so they’ll be more likely to invest in AKC’s services after reading.

Summary

If you want to grow your audience, improve your search engine rankings, and make more sales, you need to be creating attention-grabbing content for your small business.

Certain types of content are going to be more effective for helping you to reach your goals, though. In 2021, you need to be creating ultimate guides, infographics, listicles, how-to guides, interactive content, and buying guides if you want to stand out from the crowd.

Take these tips on board, and it won’t be long before you’re making a lot more sales.

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Author bio

Adam Steele is the Founder and COO at Loganix, an SEO fulfillment partner for agencies and marketers. We build easy-to-use SEO services that help businesses scale. If you liked this article, please check out our SEO guides and templates on the blog.