Content Marketing Tips That Drive Traffic and Revenue
Content is the bread and butter of almost all online businesses. Unless you don't want to invest money in paid advertising constantly, you need SEO traffic. To get SEO traffic you need good content.
Here are my best tips you can implement on your content in order to bring relevant web traffic to your site to drive more revenue.
1. Keep Your Content Fresh
Fresh content is like a hot fresh bread you have just bought from the bakery. Google loves it, your readers love it, so everyone is happy.
The majority of the content on the web is outdated. Even the so-called “evergreen content” tends to not help users anymore.
By writing and publishing fresh content on a regular basis you will invite search engine spiders to crawl your website more often. In return, Google will bring more audience to your website.
Websites are actively publishing fresh content is rewarded by Google.
But why?
Because Google's business is providing people the most relevant content. Providing the most relevant content to the reader with a good web experience make people continue using Google as a search engine.
Hence, Google can continue making money from advertisers.
I would highly recommend visiting your old content and updating it every 6 months or so to make it fresh for Google. You may think your content is awesome and you don't need to revise your content anymore. I would challenge that idea.
Before updating your old content, first, visit Google Trends to find fresh keyword ideas in your niche. Consider including all of these popular keywords you have found in your content. This will set apart you from your competitors. Because most of the people are lazy. If you do what I recommend here you will be ranking for many new keywords without producing a new piece of content.
Simple, isn't it?
I will give you an even smarter idea that I implement every once in a while.
This is the bonus tip, please share this content with the other people if you believe this content is helping you. I appreciate your support in advance.
Bonus Tip: Visit your old content and check its readability with a tool. If you are using WordPress you can monitor your content's readability with Yoast or other SEO plugins.
These plugins measure the readability of your content by assigning a readability score. Every time you update a single sentence to a more readable form. you will notice this score will improve.
By updating your old content:
You are creating fresh new content for your readers & the search engines.
You are improving user experience since people can read your content easier. Also, Google increases your on-page SEO score since readability is an important part of Google's algorithm.
But how to improve readability if your content seems ok and you believe you cannot make it even more readable.
Use a high-quality article rewriting/paraphrasing software that is advanced.
I can hear your objection. Do I recommend you update your content with an article rewriting tool? Absolutely no!
Don't get my point wrong. I don't recommend you creating content by using these tools. Article rewriting tools are terrible to create content from scratch.
However, these tools usually have certain modes to make your sentences shorter by keeping the meaning at the same time. It lets you correcting grammatical mistakes, building shorter sentences and fix the punctuation issues if you have any.
Making your sentences shorter will make your content more conversational. It will make your readers hooked on your content while improving your SEO rankings.
Let's turn back to our discussion about the freshness.
Freshness is a Google ranking factor. Google wants to serve users with the most recent information since it is likely to be the most relevant.
You should definitely create new content and publish it frequently. However, don't ignore what benefit your old content can bring to your business if it is updated every once in a while. I also recommend you to check out how to write content that can rank on Google.
2. Write Sticky & Catchy Headlines
Writing great content is good but not well enough. If you want your visitors to read your content you have to entice them by writing catchy headlines that are interesting.
Include numbers in your headers
Numbers work well, try including numbers in your headlines. For instance “12 awesome ways of horseback riding”.
Another good practice you can implement to your headlines is using special characters. Include #, % or * in your headlines.
People include even smileys in their headlines. Because headlines are displayed on search result pages.
If you don't have a fun and convincing headline, your readers won't even click on your links. You need to offer them a good reason to read your content.
Don't be clickbaity by using headlines that don't represent your content.
Ask other people's opinions if your headline is good to pull people's attention.
3. Don't ignore Image SEO
Once the discussion is content everyone's assumption is text content. However, good content today represents a good mix of text-based content and multimedia.
Including relevant images that compliment your content is extremely important. Images increase the user experience of your website. People engage more with your content and spends more time on your website.
In return, Google rewards you with high rankings and more visitors.
What to do to optimize your images for the best results?
I have a dedicated post about image SEO explaining the best practices.
4. Include for Long Tail Keywords with Low Competition
Long Tail keywords sound so obvious but many people ignore including them in their content.
More words included in a keyword level of competition lowers. The total monthly searches also less for the long-tail keywords. However, this can be your edge to compete with those high authority websites without building links.
You can benefit from Long Tail Pro since it finds long-tail keywords with low competition very easily.
To bring in more people who are looking for information about your product or service, you should definitely include multiple long-tail variations of your keyword.
If you don't use the long-tail keywords people actively searching for in your content, you miss a significant opportunity from Google searches.
5. Bring an influencer to your blog
If you are writing about cats, find the manager of the zoo in your city. Call him/her and ask if you can make an interview with him about the cats.
Include his name and responsibility in your blog post to back up the data you are providing. Google loves authority content. Recent changes in Google's algorithm making it more important to provide information directly from the authority.
Hence an opinion of a vet or zoo manager can help you boost your SEO rankings. Make sure you include the titles and the names of the people in your content.
What to do if your niche is not cats but SEO?
Wouldn't it be difficult to ask Neil Patel to have an interview with you?
Try to interview people on your level or a little better thank you and give them credit in your content by linking them from your content.
Many people are friendly to help you if it is also for their benefits as we have already discussed.
Over time, you gain more exposure in the market you can outreach more influential people for an interview.
Do you know a famous blogger in your niche or someone extremely talented to enlighten your audience? Reach him to share his/her knowledge with your audience. People many times are more helpful than you think. Make sure you credit people by backlinking to their site.
6. Utilize “structured data” to introduce your content Google better
You want to make sure search engines understand your content in their fullest potential. Structured data is the term refers to organizing your data in a way more understandable to the search engines.
For example, if you have a bunch of items that are not easy to read, consider creating a table to make it easier to consume for your readers and search engines as well.
If you have the data of “average monthly rain during a year” consider making a table and also a pie chart. Google can read tables and charts. It knows you are increasing the user experience. You should definitely use structured data as much as you can.
7. Link to authority websites
You already know the importance of internal linking on your website.
Linking the authority websites builds your authority. That's right. You earn authority and relevance once you link to an authority site in your niche.
But, how come outbound links can boost the authority of your website? Isn't it the vice versa?
Google wants to see you are linking from your content to the authority resources. It doesn't bring the same SEO benefit to link Bob's blog while you can link to Standford University's website.
Because Bob doesn't have as much authority even though he is influential in the niche. Information provided by Standford University is more likely to be considered solid content by Google. Hence Google will have an easier time trusting your website.
8. Have an Awesome and Responsive Site
You knew this one was coming. Who wants to be on a site that pages are not opening, images taking too long showing up? No one would want it.
If your website is loading more than 3-4 seconds, Good luck!
You will not only lose people simply because they will not wait for your pages open but also depreciate your SEO rankings due to providing poor user experience. Here what you can do to immediately speed up your website.
It should be your priority to provide a mobile responsive, fast loading and responsive site if you have serious intents to move your content marketing to the next level.
9. Answer The Search Query
You visit a website because Google suggested you like the best website matching your search query. You are searching for a response to your question. Searching and searching but cannot find the information you are looking for.
That happens quite often for all of us. It is not Google's guilt. Google is a robot, although it is getting better and better, it is not perfect.
You need to satisfy searchers' intent by responding to its question.
Bonus Tip: If you can respond to searchers' questions in the first or second paragraph with a very clean and accurate response, chances exist your response may be chosen as a featured snippet.
Featured snippets are also called #0 result of the Google search results page. Google chooses your page as the best answer and features it.
How to write the most accurate answer with the best use of grammar?
You write a great response and rewrite it to make it as short and compact possible.
10. Check Your Analytics
This part is fun depending upon if you have invested the necessary time and effort. If you have done a good job you will notice people stay on your website for a long period of time. If you gave them garbage they left in a matter of seconds.
Analytics never lie. Google measures the time spent on site, your CTR, mouse scrolling behaviors, and all other ingredients to give your site a quality score.
You may include the best keywords in your content and rank for it for a while. However once the competition comes with a better user experience, more time spent on their site will outrank your website.
Make sure you keep the bounce rate low and time spent on your pages as much as possible.
If you want to outsource content work with the professionals. I have ordered content several times from the Content development pros, and I got very good results.
Thank you very much for reading my content. If I could help you please share it with the others to help this small blog grow.