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It is often said that cash is the lifeblood of a business. We feel this metaphor needs to be updated to reflect the age of digital marketing. Today, traffic has become the lifeblood of businesses – whether you’re a brick-and-mortar store or a giant of the e-commerce space.
In this blog, we’ll give deep dive into the 6 tips that could help you increase the traffic you generate and send some of them into your sales funnel.
Refresh Your Content Marketing Strategy
Let’s say you published a how-to blog in 2018. Fast forward three years later and it’s time to update it. Here’s why: Google (and other search engines like it)have a preference for new content.
Careful though, don’t try cheating the system by simply changing the date and publishing the same content again. Search engine algorithms have gotten pretty smart since their most formative years and will know what you’re up to. You need to add something fresh (and informative) to the blog.
It goes without saying that human users also love to read new content. So if you’ve updated the content to reflect the latest trends, make sure to indicate this somewhere on the blog. This not only gets users’ attention but also earns their trust.
Targeting Topics with Search Traffic Potential
Without a doubt, SEO is one of the best ways to attract online traffic. For as long you rank high in search engines like Google and Bing, you should be able to generate passive organic traffic to your site. And you don’t have to lift a finger.
But there’s a catch: you must write on topics that people are actively searching for.
You can use various tools to ‘decipher’ what people are actively searching for right now based on data trends. SEMrush and Ahrefs are two such tools that are straightforward to use. Simply type a keyword to see reports on hundreds of thousands of ideas on it.
You can also filter your keywords by two metrics:
Search volume: This number indicates demand for the keyword, or how many times it was typed in Google for a month, in a specific geographical area.
Keyword difficulty: This number is represented as a numerical value between zero to hundred and indicates the difficulty of ranking for a keyword.
The two metrics help you prepare a list of low-competition topics with a high enough search volume that can potentially generate traffic for you.
Pro tip: You can use Ubersuggest for free to do keyword research (up to 3 free uses per day).
Work on Your Landing Pages
Here’s the thing, people judge books by their covers. The vast majority of clients make the judgment on the quality of a product or service based entirely on the website design.
This applies even if you’ve written the best possible blog on the subject. This is why it’s so important to allocate more resources to website design, especially as it relates to the UI and UX. For starters, get rid of the unnecessary graphics and images that could distract the visitor.
Don’t be afraid of making use of negative spaces to arrange the information more creatively. Negative spaces, more specifically, white spaces, deliberately do not display content – and that’s actually a good thing. You can learn more about using white spaces here.
Writing Guest Posts
Guest blogging lets you generate ‘social proof’ that lets search engines know that your website is the real deal. It’s the digital equivalent of an authoritative person giving you their recommendation. The benefits of guest blogging include:
- More referral traffic
- More backlinks
- More brand awareness
Even if you don’t receive enough referral traffic, the backlinks you earn could give you a distinct advantage in SEO.
This isn’t to say that Guest Blogging is easy – especially when you’re just starting out. The best way to find other websites that are willing to accept your guest posts is to do a quick search on Google.
Here’s how.
Suppose you sell mechanical keyboards. To find websites that accept guest blogs in this niche, simply search for the following terms,
- “keyboard write for us”
- “keyboard guest posts”
- “computer peripherals guest post”
- “mouse guest post”
You’ll get access to a range of websites that are accepting guest post submissions. Now it’s just a matter of reaching out to them through email (or social media) and letting them know of your plans. The article writing services you hire will know how to find the best guest blogging opportunities.
Promote Your Content in Online Communities
You can target your audience in areas where they hang out on the internet. These communities exist on Facebook groups, Slack, Reddit, and various online forums. The trick to promoting your website on these forums is to focus on the content, and not the product itself. If enough people like the content, they’ll make enough inquiries to promote your product.
These days, the most clever forms of advertisements are very subtle and less ‘in-your-face’.
You can also create promotional ads on Reddit to target your niche more effectively.
Appear on Podcasts
Podcasts used to be a hyper niche market until celebrities like H3H3 and Joe Rogan took over. Since then podcasts have blown up on digital spaces and stormed their way into mainstream media. Even brands like Netflix are jumping ship and creating shows that are derivatives of the podcast format.
You can host your own podcast or pitch to be a guest at someone else’s podcast. Like guest blogging, you can find podcast opportunities by doing a simple Google search. For example, “top writing podcasts” will give you thousands of lists.
Wrapping Up
This blog post mostly focuses on tips that are free for anyone to work on. You can always spend money on paid traffic from platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Bing, and Google.
Paid traffic can be a hit and miss and is no guarantee for quality leads. Just because someone clicked on your ad and visited your website doesn’t mean they’ll always convert.
It could be argued that the main purpose of paid ads is to stay in the audience’s optics. This ensures that once they do feel the need to hire someone, they’ll think of you first. This leads us to a key concept known as ‘retargeting’ where you target the same user base over and over again with your ad. It’s not as annoying as it sounds as long as you do it subtly. Retargeting is a separate topic of its own and needs a dedicated blog.
For now, let us know if the above tips gave you some ideas about ranking higher on search engines and if you’d like to add your own suggestions here!
About Dave Dave Brown leads a team of professional article writers at Content Development Pros. He has helped businesses grow into household names for over a decade now using little more than content marketing. When he’s not busy working on creative blog posts, Dave can be found at the gym or working on his cooking skills! You can find him on the official website at Content Development Pros.
