It is a well-known fact that many blog owners create content but don’t get any traffic. Even though your comprehensive guides suggest tons of useful information, nobody reads them.
Why does it happen?
There are many reasons for this. But the result is still the same – the absence of traffic.
Likely, your blog isn’t doomed to failure. It can generate traffic regularly.
How is it possible?
In this post, you will find out ten actionable ways that will help you drive traffic to your site or blog.
Let’s cut to the chase!
1. Cover topics that people want to read about
Nobody can restrict you in choosing content topics to cover. It is up to you completely. You can write about the latest industry topics, breaking news, or whatever you like.
However, this way of content creation promises a so-called “spike of hope” that will be replaced by a “flatline of nope.”
What does it mean? “blog post” content type
A spike of hope happens when you publish some hot topic. It attracts people’s attention. Eventually, you can observe a traffic boost on your blog. However, when the topic becomes out of interest to your target audience, traffic starts to fade away drastically. And this phase is called a “flatline of nope.”
How to solve this issue?
Write about evergreen topics that people search for. It will help your posts rank for relevant search inquiries on Google. That leads to getting traffic constantly.
How to find these topics?
One of the most straightforward ways to do this is with the help of the Keyword generator tool from Ahrefs. Write your target keyword and switch the tab to “Questions”:
Review the ideas and work with the most promising ones for your blog.
2. Match search intent
Search intent is the basics of content creation. To put it simply, it is a “why” behind a search query.
Why is it so?
Google suggests the most relevant results per queries. Therefore, if your goal is to rank high on Google, you must provide users with relevant content. Otherwise, you won’t get any traffic at all.
In this case, the only option is to make sure your content aligns with search intent.
You might wonder what type of content to create?
To figure this out, you should put your target keyword in the search bar of Google and analyze the top-ranking pages in terms of the three Cs of search intent.
Let’s review them one by one:
● Content type
There are five major types of content – blog posts, product pages, category pages, landing pages, videos.
For instance, you want to find out how to create an infographic. Google suggests top-results that have a “blog post” content type.
Hence, if your goal is to rank for the long-tail keyword “how to create an infographic”, you should work on writing a blog post.
Alternatively, if you want to rank for “how to tie shoelaces”, you will see that the top results are videos.
As a result, you will have to work on creating video content.
FYI: There are also content types like polls, quizzes and puzzles if you want to entertain your readers with interactive content just for fun.
● Content format
Content format is all about blog posts. There are the following content formats to consider – news articles, “how-to” guides, reviews, etc.
For example, for “best watch brands” Google suggests listicle articles mostly.
While a search request “how to choose a watch” suggests “how-to” guides.
● Content angle
Content angle equals selling point of content. For example, if you search for “how to make a vanilla cake” you will see that the results are different but with a similar content angle.
As you can see, the difference is in small details – “the best”, “basic”, “bitcoin calculator”, “homemade” recipes.
There are some new tools on the market that can help you with content optimization Codeless have listed some of them in this article: Best Content Optimization Software
3. Email list
Creating an email list is a wonderful way to let more people know about your content updates. And drive more traffic to your blog.
Here at Visme, you can see a pop-up that suggests the site’s visitors sign up for the newsletter.
Why does it matter?
Email allows you to communicate with your audience anytime. While other platforms can limit your reach or remove you from the platform completely (like Facebook.)
Besides, if people find content suggested in the newsletter engaging and useful, they will want more from you.
4. Get in touch with people mentioned in your content
You can’t imagine creating an in-depth guide without referring to other third-party sources. Go ahead and let them know about it!
What will you get in return?
It will help you improve brand awareness, build new business relationships, and get an opportunity to acquire more backlinks, social shares, etc. Eventually, it will boost traffic to your blog.
5. Use internal links to boost up other posts
Internal linking is an excellent way to gain traction for the less promoted blog posts on your blog. Everything you need to do is add internal links from relevant pages to those pages that need some boost.
How to set up a process?
First and foremost, you need to figure out a few top pages on your blog. The simplest way is to use Site Explorer tool from Ahrefs. You will need to review a “Top pages” report. And if you filter positions #2-5, you will explore the best-performing pages.
When you have a few top pages, you will need to find those pages that require boosting. Use a “site:” search operator for this purpose. For instance, if you need to add internal links for a blog post on lead generation. Use the mentioned above search operator to find it on Google.
Finally, do an internal linking on your blog.
6. Link building
One of Google’s ranking factors is backlinks. Backlinks can be considered as a “vote” for information your content suggests. The more backlinks the page has, the more authorized it will be in the eyes of Google. Eventually, Google will start to rank it higher.
How to acquire backlinks to your site? Or how can you attain the best link building strategies?
You should build them. And there are many different link-building strategies to use in practice. Notwithstanding this fact, one of the most actionable strategies is guest blogging.
Guest blogging allows you to add links to your guest articles and build links naturally. Plus, you can promote your product pages legitimately.
How to find niche-related sites that accept guest contributors?
Go to Google and type [“your niche” + write for us].
The next step is to reach out to webmasters and suggest your topic ideas.
7. Content promotion across communities
If you want to find niche-related people in one place, you should devote your time to hanging on across different communities. You can find them on Slack, Facebook, Discord, and similar.
However, don’t delude yourself by thinking that you will be able to link back to your content here and there. Nope. Every community has rules you must abide by. Otherwise, you will be banned.
Thus, get ready to join the community and figure out what members are discussing. Then, become an active member. It means – participating in discussions, asking questions, answering the questions, leaving comments, and so on.
Your main goal is to be useful to the community.
Finally, you will have the privilege to share your content.
8. Work on creating shareable visuals
People consume information better with their eyes. Especially if they can see visual elements. Hence, it makes sense to repurpose your content into images, infographics, charts, etc.
Of course, your visual content needs depend on the niche you’re revolving around. Sometimes you can complement your content with hand-made photos, like a bottle of wine or apple cake.
But if you need to repurpose some guide with steps or stats, you should use infographics or charts.
Keep in mind that you should create shareable visuals. That’s why you will need to hire a professional illustrator or content design tool.
9. Use Reddit to share your content
Reddit is quite a challenging community to promote content.
Why?
Because you can be banned due to any kind of self-promotion activity.
You should start with understanding a community’s rules and culture. Make sure you know what members of the community try to find in different subreddits. Otherwise, you won’t have a chance to post your post.
Now, let’s say that you are a member of the community and abide by all the rules. What’s next?
Check out if the subreddit allows placing links in whatever content people post. If it allows then you can place one link for sure.
If link placement isn’t allowed, you should create a text post. Then remove all the links within the body of the post. Format it correctly. And publish.
P.S. You can place your link at the end of your post. This link should redirect to the original post on your blog.
The most simple but sure way to promote on Reddit is to join conversations where someone has already recommended a competitor. Seeing that someone has done that solves two problems: we’re certain that our answer is useful, and since someone else has posted a product name without getting banned, it’s also fair game for us to do the same. While conversations like that don’t occur every day, even just one or two comments per month can bring in some traffic. You can enter the list of all your competitors into a Reddit keyword monitor and get an alert when an opportunity to post presents itself.
10. Content advertising
Paid advertising is for those website owners who don’t like to wait. It will enrich your blog with traffic in a blink of an eye. You can run ads on almost every popular social media platform your know – Facebook, Quora, Twitter, etc. But make sure you use Google Analytics to track your ad results and integrate the reports into a CRM tool with the help of GA connector.
Paid advertising has one significant drawback. Once you stop paying for the ads, the traffic starts to fade away.
To Sum Up
You have just got familiar with ten actionable ways to drive traffic to your blog. Does it mean that you should use all these strategies at once?
Nope.
You can work with the strategy you like the most. And it will boost traffic by one hundred percent.
Despite this fact, think about the following – ranking on Google for your target keywords helps drive traffic. If people subscribe to your newsletter, they will read other posts from you. That brings even more traffic. Plus, some people might link to your posts back. It will help your blog pages rank on Google at a higher position.
As you already guessed – you should combine these strategies. And drive traffic insanely.
If you think this post lacks more suggestions, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.
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