There are a few bloggers like Neil Patel, Pat Flynn, Darren Rowse who get a ton of traffic and links to their blog posts whenever they publish. And there are majority of others who struggle a lot to bring even a hundred visitors to read their content.
Have you ever wondered why?
The reason is: their content promotion tactics. People who get a ton of traffic implement the right content promotion strategies. Without a doubt, creating content that naturally attracts links is always the key to get more traffic and sales.
So how do you create link-worthy content in 2018 and beyond? In this detailed guide, you’ll discover 5 of the proven ways to create content that gets more links and traffic quickly.
Let’s get started!
How to create content that attracts more traffic and backlinks?
Brainstorm attention grabbing topic ideas
So how do you come up with great topic ideas that will go viral online?
I’ve a quick tip for you.
Write about the topics that solve your audience problems. Focus on coming up with topic ideas around your target audience issues.
This is the method most successful bloggers use for their content creation. Think about what your audience might type on Google to visit your blog. Then, start brainstorming those ideas. Eliminate the ones that doesn’t make any sense.
Apart from the above tip, here are some incredible tips to never run out of blog post ideas so use them to your advantage to skyrocket your website’s traffic.
- Use Quora: It’s the trending platform where readers find answers to their questions. Just enter a topic that’s relevant to your industry and you will see a ton of questions (if your industry is popular enough!). Pick the best ones among them to turn them into blog post ideas. You can also answer to that Quora post when your original blog post goes live. That way you can bring in additional visitors to your blog posts from Quora.
- Ask your audience: This is the simplest yet most effective way to come up with proven blog post ideas that go viral. Simply ask your audience about what they are expecting from you. Ask about their problems and write problem solving blog posts. Or even better, email them to share their favorite topic ideas that they want you to cover on your blog.
- Use Buzzsumo: Hands down, Buzzsumo is the best tool for finding great topic ideas for any blog (it doesn’t matter what niche you’re in). Just enter a topic on their search column and it will provide you a list of all the popular articles (along with infographics, eBooks, videos etc) according to their social shares, backlinks count etc. So you can easily decide the best topics to write to bring more traffic to your sites.
Reverse engineer your content creation
What do we do normally to get more traffic? We create more content, right?
And if that’s not enough, we churn out even more content regularly on almost every topic that’s relevant to our industry.
This is one of the biggest mistakes in content creation.
Instead of writing about any topic under the sun, pick those topics that are proven to go viral online. That’s what I call “reverse engineering the content creation”.
It’s creating content that will attract more links and traffic naturally. Let me explain about it in detail now.
If you’re blogging for awhile, you might have already heard about the term “the Skyscraper technique”. It simply involves in 3 steps.
- Finding top performing content in your niche
- Creating even better content around it
- Promoting it to the right people so you can get more traffic and links
I saw so many bloggers and marketers increasing their traffic and links by using this technique. Just make sure you’re spending quality time on finding popular topics that are relevant to your target audience.
Nail your headlines and make them click-worthy
8 out of 10 people will read your headlines and 2 of them read your copy.
That’s shocking, right?
If your headlines are NOT attention grabbing, the reader's are gone forever.
Your headlines play a major role in creating content that attracts more traffic and links. They will be everywhere on your blog post headlines, search engine results, twitter feed, Facebook shares and so on. So make sure to spend quality time on crafting headlines that mesmerize your audience.
That being said, here are few quick tips to create stunning headlines that make them click-worthy.
- Use tools like Portent. It’s free and easy to use. Just enter a keyword and it generates a ton of potential headline ideas. Use the best ones that you think will go viral.
- Analyse what headlines your competitors are using. Take a took at their top and popular blog posts to analyse their headlines. This way you can easily tweak and copy those headline samples to your advantage.
- Come up with 3 to 5 headline ideas for every blog post you write and pick the best one among them. You can use the remaining ideas while tweeting or in your sub headlines so they don’t get wasted.
That being said, writing magnetic headlines is not enough to create content that attracts more traffic. You also have to create stunning content around them to create more buzz. So let’s now talk about how to create great content that’s proven to go viral.
Long form of content is the key
Did you know that Neil Patel gets over 2 million visitors to his site every single year?
The surprising fact is that, he launched his personal blog just 3 years ago. That’s amazing, right?
So how does he attracts so much traffic?
The secret is: his content is really in-depth and highly informative.
At an average, his blog posts length ranges from 2000 to 5000+ words and sometimes even more. That’s the reason why his content always ranks well in Google search results.
The average content length of top 10 search results is around 2300 words. That’s the power of creating long form of content: it always performs well in search engines like Google.
So if you’re struggling to increase your traffic from search engines or want to attract more backlinks, focus on creating long form of content typically with around 2000+ words.
Even I’ve been following the same strategy of creating long form of content since 2014 and I not only tripled my overall website’s traffic but also tripled my website sales. That’s the power of content marketing.
That being said, how to create long form of content that naturally attracts more search engine traffic, social shares and links?
Here are few proven ways to do it right.
- Check out the top blogs in your industry. Find out how they are writing their content or coming up with new angles to create it. Analyse how they are breaking down their content to serve all kinds of audience. Once you learn the art of analysing, creating long form of content becomes easy.
- Start using sub headlines. They help you break the long form of content into small chunks so you can easily write 2000+ words without much fuss.
- Research is always the key in writing 2000+ word blog posts. Research as much as you can until you can easily add meat to your primary topics. That’s how you can create highly informative blog posts even if they are longer.
- Use lots of bullet points. Just analyse how I’m writing this long post by using bullet points. Bullet points make your long piece of articles easy to digest. Your readers can easily skim through your posts if you’re using bullet points correctly.
- Use a call to action at the end of every blog post you write. Ask yourself what’s the one thing that your audience has to do after reading your content. Is it a comment? Sharing your stuff? Or subscribing to your email list? Make sure to use appropriate call to actions for each content to increase user engagement.
Above all, make sure to create highly engaging content that’s useful for your readers. Don’t churn out 2000+ word articles just for the sake of getting more traffic from search engines. Make sure to remove every word that’s unnecessary to your overall topic. That’s how you create long form of content that performs well and attracts more traffic and links in 2018.
Content promotion makes or breaks your blogging success
Have you ever heard about the phrase “80/20 content creation?”.
It simply means;
- Focus 20% of your time on content creation and
- 80% of your time on promoting that content
The reason why most bloggers fail to get any traffic or links to their content is this: they don’t promote as much. They spend more time on content creation rather than content promotion.
I’m not arguing that you should spend less time on creating content though but you must spend quality time in promoting it. Only then, you can attract so much traffic and links to your site. It’s as simple as that.
That being said, here are few quick tips for you to promote your content the right way.
- Repurpose your content. Once you hit the publish button, turn that post into an infographic. Make it an eBook. Try creating a video around it and upload it onto YouTube. The more distribution channels you use for one specific post, the more people you can attract. Yes, it takes time but you’ll get more exposure to your blog’s content.
- If you’ve enough budget, go for paid promotion. Paid promotion involves in things like Facebook ads, twitter ads, Google ads etc. Paid promotion is what you need if you’re trying to generate high quality leads to boost your website traffic and sales in 2018.
- Make sure to mention other bloggers in your content. That way each time you publish a new piece of content, you can reach out to them via email. If they really like your stuff, they will link back to you! Or you can simply ask them for a comment, share or tweet.
- Submit your new articles on blogging forums. There are so many forums like Warrior Forum, Blokube, Blog Engage etc where you can submit your contents for free. Also, they are great for interacting with other bloggers.
- Timing is everything. When you’re promoting on social media, make sure to tweet at the right times. You can use tools like Buffer app (free) to find optimal timings for posting on social media to get more traffic to your sites.
If you want to create content that creates buzz online, you have to spend more time on promoting it. Without it, you simply fail to build audience who are interested in your stuff.
Final thoughts about creating content that goes viral
If you’re spending more time on creating content, that’s not a bad strategy. But if you’re not promoting it, you won’t get enough attention that your content needs. This is why most people struggle to get more traffic.
So what are your thoughts? Did you like the tips mentioned above? Do you have any more content creation tips? Share your thoughts in the comments.