Let’s face it—everyone wants their content to do something. Maybe you’re a bakery in Nashville hoping more people find your gluten-free cupcakes, or a law firm trying to land more clients for estate planning. Whatever your business, the goal is the same: create content that drives traffic and engagement.
But the truth is, most content just floats around. Like a flyer caught in the wind. It gets a few views, maybe a like or two, and then disappears into the digital void. What's worse? Many business owners pour time and money into content strategies that never really… stick. I've worked with dozens of clients who felt like they were shouting into the void. And it's usually not because their product or service isn't good—it's because the content wasn’t built with the whole journey in mind.
Creating impactful content doesn't start with a headline or a great image. It starts by understanding the people you're trying to reach. From there, you build storytelling, design, and optimization strategies that align with their needs and emotional states. Kind of like designing a foyer that makes visitors immediately feel welcome. So let’s walk through how to create content that doesn’t just exist—but actively pulls people in and moves them to engage.
When I first meet a new client, I usually ask them one simple question: "Why would someone search for your business?" Nine times out of ten, this stops them cold. It's not because they don't know—they’ve just never thought about it from the user's perspective.
User intent is the foundation of successful content. Understanding whether someone is searching to learn, to decide, or to act determines the structure and tone of your content. And believe me, Google notices. Search engines are optimized to give people what they want, faster. Your content needs to be just as tuned in.
Create content to meet those specific intents. For example, one local chiropractor I worked with had a blog post titled "What Does a Chiropractor Actually Do?" That's informational. But they had no content targeting people ready to book a service. We added a “How to Choose a Chiropractor in Franklin, TN” post and saw a 40% uptick in contact form submissions within two months.
Tip: Use tools like AnswerThePublic or Google’s autocomplete to see what people are actively searching for in your niche. Match your content to those queries.
Content doesn't have to be cold and technical to rank. In fact, the most engaging content I’ve built for clients were story-driven and intimately human. The trap many fall into is swinging too far in either direction: either keyword-stuffed SEO sludge or beautiful, heartfelt storytelling that no one finds because it isn’t optimized properly.
Here's the magic: when you blend storytelling with SEO, you make content that search engines favor and humans actually enjoy reading. That’s where the engagement comes in.
I helped a local dress boutique in Nashville that sold quinceañera and prom dresses. Their blog once focused on generic titles like "Top Dresses for the Season." Good content for Pinterest, not great for Google. We shifted their approach and published pieces like “I Couldn’t Find a Dress My Daughter Liked Until We Visited This Nashville Boutique.” We structured it around the story of a real customer’s experience, and embedded key phrases like “quinceañera dresses in Nashville” seamlessly into the narrative.
That post brought in over 3,000 local visitors in its first month and had an average time on page of 6 minutes. That’s engagement.
When writing content, always start with the story. Ask: Who is this helping? What’s the emotional state the reader is in? From there, you layer in SEO—not as a paint job, but as a support system holding the story together.
Actionable Strategy: Use the AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) to structure your posts. It keeps readers emotionally onboard while guiding them logically through your message.
Not all content should look the same everywhere. A blog post isn’t a social caption. A LinkedIn story isn’t the best fit for your home page. Yet I often see businesses copying and pasting content across platforms like they’re just filling space. That dilutes both traffic and engagement.
Think of your content like furniture—you don't put a leather sectional in a minimalist studio apartment. Likewise, you shouldn't put a 2,000-word deep dive on Facebook where short, punchy content performs best. That same deep dive might crush it on your blog or in a newsletter.
One of my clients, a startup yoga studio that used Webflow for their site, saw almost zero conversions from social media. After analyzing their posts, we realized they were sharing full blog headlines and long-form captions on Instagram—stuff no one wanted to read during their lunch break. We rebuilt the posts into carousel infographics with quick stats and motivational quotes. Their weekly reach doubled, and DMs led to 12 new sign-ups the first month.
Tip: Match content depth and format to user behavior on each platform—short-form infotainment on IG, detailed guides on the blog, client-driven updates on LinkedIn.
I can’t stress this enough: how content looks is just as important as what it says. Think of your content like you would a website. If someone clicks into a post and sees a wall of text? They’re gone. Just like a homepage crammed with 20 menu items or neon colors. Good content uses whitespace, headers, images, and flow to guide the reader through the experience.
Use headers not just to break up text, but to create a miniature outline the reader can scan. Include subheads that encourage curiosity and progress. I often tell clients: treat your headers like street signs, not labels. They should guide the journey, not just name the area.
Look at The New York Times or Medium. Their articles are beautifully broken up with space, hierarchy, and multimedia moments that invite attention. Those same principles apply whether you're writing an educational blog post or launching a new product page.
Strategy: Use a writing format that includes:
I work with a lot of local and niche small businesses—from arborists to wedding planners—and for many of them, mass keyword volume is the wrong KPI to chase. Something that gets 200 searches a month but is hyper-relevant can eat the lunch of a term with 10K but high competition and disinterest.
Enter the long-tail keyword. Phrases like "best wedding photographer Franklin TN elopement" or “eco-friendly carpet cleaning for apartments Nashville” are incredibly specific—and incredibly powerful.
One of my Webflow clients, a health coach, used to write about generic wellness topics like "How to Drink More Water." But when we refocused her content around location and audience—“Best Women’s Wellness Coach in Franklin for Busy Moms”—her inquiries jumped. We targeted long-tail searches that aligned with her actual clients’ language.
Action Tip: Use Ubersuggest or SEMRush to discover low-competition long-tail phrases and build niche-topic clusters around them.
Even if your content’s amazing, it won’t result in engagement unless it’s visible to your ideal local audience. That’s where your Google Business Profile, citations, and localized on-page SEO matter.
Don’t silo content onto your blog only. Repurpose FAQs as structured data on service pages. Layer links from blog posts to your Google Business Profile using embedded maps. And always write copy that reflects a local tone of voice—people want to feel like you know their area. One of my clients, a Nashville-based photographer, saw her visibility quadruple after we tied location-specific content to her seasonal blog posts. “Best Fall Photo Spots in Franklin” became her highest-trafficked blog post and drove dozens of DMs last September.
Strategy: Tie every piece of content back to a service and a place. Even blog posts should reinforce your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) and link back to core location or offering pages.
One mistake I see constantly: writing content, publishing it, and never touching it again. But content has a lifecycle, and those who revisit it stay ahead.
Every three to six months, pull analytics and revisit your top performers—and even a few flops. Ask:
One of my longest-standing Webflow clients gets 60% of their traffic from content we touched three or more times. We re-optimized a “Best CRM for Therapists” piece that suddenly broke page one after a basic update on software trends.
Pro Tip: Use Google Search Console to find underperforming posts with high impressions but low clicks. Tweak titles, meta descriptions, and introduce new media to re-engage those slipping past.
Great content doesn’t appear out of nowhere or happen by accident. It’s the result of thoughtful strategy, emotional intelligence, creative clarity, and technical insight. When done well, it not only attracts your audience but speaks to their needs and nudges them forward in their journey.
Think of creating content like designing a house you want people to walk through: it needs curb appeal (SEO), clear entry points (storytelling), a logical layout (structure), conversation zones (tone), and comfortable furniture (visual hierarchy). Because at the end of the day, you’re not just writing for algorithms—you’re writing for people who want to feel seen, understood, and empowered to take the next step.
Done right, your content becomes more than pages or words—it becomes a bridge between who you are and who your audience needs you to be. And that's when traffic and engagement become something deeper: trust, relationship, and growth.
Copyright © Zach Sean Web Design
