If you are a brand or a business or even an individual, you already know the importance of having a blog in a working condition with regular updates. It opens up new avenues for your SEO strategies to take shape. But writing a blog is not enough, you need to generate traffic through it. You need to leverage your blog to become a user interaction platform, where people can come, read, comment and share on commendable posts all the time.
Well, while this is ideal, the reality is a lot different. So many times it happens that a well written blog remains exclusive to the eyes of the curator, may be a few precious others. Wait! Don’t give up just yet, you know you can’t give up on your blog if you are going to survive the rat race online. To make life easier for you (and to make your blog much livelier) we have compiled this latest cheat sheet on traffic yielding blogs. [Spoiler: You can expect some of the smartest marketers out there to share their geniuses with us.]
So go ahead and keep reading. If you try to look at all the ideas together, it might seem to be a little overwhelming. The idea is to choose one or two pointers that apply to you and start with them immediately, and then keep coming back for more.
Creating Viral Content –
So much easier said than done! Doesn’t everybody want to create viral content? Then why are only few players out there who get things right? Neil Patel has the answer, “. . . because they do not pay attention to the sites that create viral content, day in and day out.” Apart from his insight, he has also offered us the solutions that will help us remedy the process.
Catchy Headlines –
This brings us to our second point, which is a scintillating headline. You will know what we mean, when you take a look at this ad from the 1900’s:
The headline is not a string of words wittily knitted together. It is the opening of a compelling story, one that you are about to tell in the body of your content. You headline should have the emotional insight, catch and connection that will strongly resonate with your reader and convince them to click on and read more.
Creating beefy content –
Next up, is the length of your content. Over here, Neil professes long content (around 3000-10,000 words, if you will) as they give ample scopes for optimising SEO (they are great for back links and organic leads). They also give an impression that you are an expert on the topic and your readers can get everything they need in one place. Most people are still sticking to the 500-word format, not realising the importance of long content, so your big, beefy write-ups accompanied by serious research, is sure to stand out and do it’s turns before you can imagine.
Having a killer insight –
Support your content with a killer insight that your readers will have a hard time saying no to. And just how should you go about doing that? Well, you can follow a few simple steps: firstly, understand your audience and find out what they want. Secondly, generate great content ideas from useful reviews and comments, and thirdly present it in a way that has never been done before. Depending upon the context, you can leverage wit, irony, humour, sarcasm, caricature, mimicry or emotional story-telling to deliver content that will appeal to your audience.
Now that your viral content is ready, let us borrow a page from Rand Fishkin’s online expertise handbook to guide you further.
Appropriately targeting your content –
Here is where you have to do some digging and identify the group of audiences that are more likely to share your content than others and then pitch to them abundantly. For example, if you are writing about remarkable facts that challenge common assumptions then you will probably need a non-conformist (say a group of people with political opinion on macroeconomics) to spread the word. You will have to know where these people reside online and then reach out to them appealingly. That’s you sorted!
Conducting Keyword Research before putting your post together –
A traffic yielding blog is one that has been SEO optimised. There can be no two opinions on this topic. You should have guessed this one already, we are pretty sure. We don’t need a genius, even a novice to digital marketing should be able to tell you that a significant part of showing up in search engines has to do with targeting the terms and phases that your audience is likely to use when searching for content just like yours.
Guest blogging and accepting guest posts –
When you are starting out it can be a bit difficult but that’s where you will have to leverage your professional contacts. Nothing is impossible, especially if you have a compelling marketing message to deliver. Guest blogging is a fantastic way to capture a set of audience who aren’t already familiar with your work. It will also help you through the preliminary stages of earning links and references to your blog. But the key is to invest your time judiciously, knowing where to find a set of audience that will be relevant to your purpose.
All said and done, there goes our latest cheat sheet on traffic building blogs, coming straight from the horse’s mouth. These experts have been there, done that and excelled in their craft. Coming from their belly, you know that these pointers are authentic and will do your blog, more good than harm. While the internet is flocking with advices, tips and tricks; good advices from authentic sources still remain as rare as a diamond in a coal mine. So when it comes knocking at your door (thanks to these experts for freely sharing their knowledge), you know it’s time to buckle up and make magic happen.
