How to Attract Website Traffic Using Blog Posts in 2018
Attracting website traffic is challenging given the density of competition on the internet. Further, as search engines and their algorithms evolve, so do website traffic generation tactics. What worked for SEO and traffic generation yesterday may be irrelevant today. That’s why many small business owners and marketers struggle with online marketing. It’s clear that good content alone isn’t enough. Online marketers need the right strategies, ideas and promotional techniques to reach and attract the right target audience.
According to Hubspot, businesses with blogs attract 97% more backlinks than those without. Here are four ways in which you can attract website traffic through smart blogging strategies in 2018.
1. Focus on long-form content
According to a study conducted by Hubspot, the longer the blog post, the more the back-links it attracts. In fact, long-form content is also more likely to be read and engaged with. If a Google search offers 5 SEO tips to increase website traffic and 16 SEO tips to generate website traffic, why would someone click on the first post? Long-form content also increases reader engagement by increasing the average time spent on a web page, which in turn improves your SEO.
If you can’t hire a full-time writer to fulfill that requirement consistently, you can consider one of the two following options.
- Guest posting – One of the smartest ways to get high-quality content effortlessly is through guest posting. Further, if you can convince influencers from your industry to write for you, the content is also likely to attract a lot of website traffic. Add a note on your website announcing that you’re accepting guest posts. You could also search for “guest author” + “your industry keyword” to find high-potential authors to feature on your blog.
- Outsourcing – Alternatively, you can also outsource the effort to freelancers or fully-managed content agencies. The advantage of working with fully-managed agencies such as Godot Media or Brafton is that you can hold them accountable to produce content of certain quality.
2. Choose topics capable of increasing website traffic
Certain topics have the potential to attract more website traffic than other topics. For instance, Pokemon Go was trending around August 2016; but the trend has dropped off since then. The topics that you choose to talk about can decide how successful your content marketing efforts are. So, focus on choosing topics that are being searched extensively on the internet. You can also use newsworthy topics to attract attention and traffic for your blog. The technique is called newsjacking.
If you’re not sure how to identify such topics, you can find them using keyword analysis tools. The objective is to find topics or ideas in your niche that are being discussed.
- Run a Buzzsumo search – Type your keyword into Buzzsumo’s search bar. The resulting blog posts are the ones that have been shared the most on social media. You can use the results as inspiration to create similar topics and also figure out who’s sharing your type of content for promotion strategies.
- Study Google and social media trends – Using Google and social media trends, you can identify topics that are being discussed the most in your niche at present. On social media, you can even join trending conversations using the right hashtags to increase exposure. On Google trends, you can identify trends by the geographies that you are targeting.
3. Generate blog traffic through email blasts
According to this study, close to 250 million emails are sent daily. Research also claims that each $1 investment in email marketing results in a return of close to $42. If you open your inbox, you’ll see how many companies use email newsletters to broadcast their latest blog posts. Every marketer has probably worked with email marketing, but so few actually experience the full benefits of broadcasting content through email blasts. Why? So much of email marketing is lifeless.
The key to using email blasts to promote content successfully is to not fall back on mundane, outdated email content strategies.
- Build an elite, limited list of subscribers. This list should ideally consist of the most targeted leads, highly likely to convert. Engage with this list on a consistent basis so you are sure that they’ll open all emails. The content you send should be relevant and have actual utility for this small subset of subscribers.
- Barter email newsletter exchanges with non-competing companies in your niche. Identify a list of companies that are non-competing with yours but have an established presence in your niche. Create a co-marketing partnership by exchanging mentions in each others’ newsletters.
4. Invest in long tail keywords
Long tail keywords have high-potential and are cost-effective to target. The key is to identify a bunch of long tail keywords related to your niche and rank for all of them to create a constant source of website traffic. When identifying long tail keywords, focus on the ones that have the most commercial intent to boost conversions. What is your audience likely to be searching for before making a purchase?
There are different ways in which you can identify long tail keywords. Here are a few that are easiest and most effective.
- Refer to related Google searches. When you search for your industry keywords on Google and scroll to the bottom of the search results pages, you can see several suggestions of related searches. Each of these is a long-tailed keyword that you can use in your content to attract targeted website traffic.
- Browse through answer the public. Answer the public is a keyword research tool that suggests long tail keyword alternatives to the regular keywords you find on other keyword analysis tools. Use this tool to generate alternatives to the keywords you identify through Google searches and Adwords.
Generating targeted website traffic for small businesses is challenging. While blogging is a great way to generate targeted traffic, few businesses succeed in using the strategy. This blog post describes four smart blogging strategies through which you can generate meaningful website traffic in 2018. What are you waiting for? Get started and let us know what you think.
