How to generate high-quality traffic for your Blog

The thirst for high-quality traffic is a common characteristic that is found in anyone running a blog these days. Blog owners often raise the question: Why are we not generating enough traffic?

This is a complaint that leaves blog writers discouraged, burned out, and utterly disappointed. Without the right amount of traffic, a blog is likely to get lost in the massive world of the internet.

Fortunately for you, we are here to help you out. In this article, we take a look at how you can address the problem of low traffic and poor-quality traffic, by following steps that will help you generate high-quality traffic for your blog.

It is important to attract high-quality traffic because it helps a blog build up a strong online presence, promotes the products or the services that it is offering, increases the chances of conversion, and ultimately, generates more revenue.

What are you doing wrong?

Before we move on ahead towards the steps of generating high-quality traffic, let us first set aside common misconceptions about website traffic and take a look at why your blog is not getting traffic.

Having a blog does not automatically mean that you will get traffic

This is one of the most common misconceptions regarding blog traffic. Simply starting a blog and posting content on it will not divert traffic to your blog. You need to promote it, market it, optimize it, and work towards generating traffic.

It takes time and effort to attract visitors and divert high-quality traffic to your blog. For some, it might just take weeks while for others, it might take several months before they can generate a set amount of traffic.

You don’t just need traffic, you need high-quality traffic

Let’s say that you are getting traffic on your blog. Does this mean that you are now a successful blog owner? Not necessarily.

Most businesses start a blog to fulfill a purpose such as marketing, revenue generation, brand visibility, increased conversions, etc. Now, if you are getting traffic on your blog but are not serving this higher purpose then you are not getting the right kind of traffic!

Getting traffic from the wrong sources, i.e. poor-quality traffic will eventually lead to your blog being useless and actually becoming a bothersome expense rather than being a tool for revenue generation.

You should not be looking to simply divert all kinds of visitors to your blog. Instead, you need to attract visitors that will help your blog achieve its goal.

The lack of social sharing

A crucial mistake that some blog owners make is that they do not share their blog content on social platforms. We are living in the era of the social web where the center of all internet activity is social interaction.

Nowadays, people will not just read articles on your blog, but they will share, analyze, and comment on it too. You need to make your presence known on the social web for attracting high-quality traffic to your blog.

A content marketing strategy is never complete without the element of social sharing in it since it misses out on the vast potential that the social web has to offer.

No keyword optimization

Most blog owners have a fair amount of knowledge about SEO, keywords, title tags, metadata, and how all of these work together. However, despite this knowledge, they fail to utilize this information on their own blog. This is due to the lack of keyword optimization.

Keyword optimization refers to the selection of the best keywords for a topic to divert high-quality traffic to a blog.

However, a common mistake that blog owners make is that they are not focused enough on one keyword or subject. This eventually leads to either the wrong type of traffic being attracted or no traffic generation at all.

The steps for generating high-quality traffic

Now that you are aware of the most common mistakes and misconceptions associated with traffic generation, let us move on to addressing the key question: How to drive the right kind of traffic to your blog?

We have already highlighted that content is not everything for your blog. In fact, just writing content will get you nowhere and will waste your time, money, and effort. What you need to learn is how to go about your content marketing strategy so that you can achieve your goals.

To help you with this, we have prepared a methodology that will assist you in promoting your content. Ultimately, generating high-quality traffic for your blog.

Step1: Share your content more than once

The reason that most businesses publish content is to build an online reputation, reach out to target audiences, and eventually, increase the amount of high-quality traffic on their website. However, the problem is that you might not be getting all the potential returns from the content that you publish.

If you want to drive high-quality traffic to your website, then you need to be serious about promoting the content that you publish and there is nothing better for this than social media. One great way for promoting your content is to share the content more than once on these platforms. While this technique is not very popular amongst marketers and some even advocate against it, it is very effective in driving organic traffic to your website.

Tom Tunguz performed an experiment to check the effect of reposting the same content on the traffic for his blog. He made use of Twitter for this experiment and monitored the number of retweets each ‘recirculation’ attempt received. He noticed that each subsequent tweet received approximately 75% as many retweets as the previous attempt!

What this study by Tom proves is that he was able to divert more traffic for his blog with the help of the same content. The key to his success? Re-sharing existing content on social media.

The reason that this works is that social media followers have hundreds of updates coming towards them every day. It is very easy for them to miss out on one of your updates. No one really notices whether you share the same content twice. No one really cares, too! You just need to be clever in the way you do it and you will never receive a single complaint.

The reposting strategy

When you re-share the content, you make sure that it reaches out to as many of your social media followers as possible. This is because some of them might have missed it the first time you posted it. This is essential not just for your own benefit but because it provides the audience with the value that you have promised them, as well. Remember that the more value you provide to customers, the more the chances of generating high-quality traffic for your blog.

Now let us take a look at how you can incorporate this into your content marketing strategy. For sharing your content more than once, we suggest that you follow these steps:

1. Create a schedule

First of all, you need to create a schedule for when (and on which network) will you share the content. When making this schedule, you should address questions such as: How often should I share the content? How much time should I give between each repost? How can I ensure that the posts do not look monotonous?

When you are developing the schedule, you should be careful not to repost immediately after your previous share, since it might be considered to be spam then. Remember that the goal in mind should be to create a social media approach that gets you more clicks. A good strategy is to report on the same day, the next day, the next week, and the next month.

The number of reposts depends on the feedback and the number of clicks that you receive on the previous repost. Furthermore, since each social network (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) will have a different reach, you should ideally look to make a separate schedule for each of them.

2. Don’t repost with the same message

This is the most important part of the reposting process. You should never share a post with the same message twice since it makes you look like a spammer. It also leaves behind a bad reputation for your brand.

The best strategy to adopt here is to add some variety to each post so that it looks unique while linking back to the same piece of content on your website. You should change the text and even the hashtags (if necessary) to add value for the readers. Another good idea is to post an image or a graphic that backlinks to the content that you are promoting.

Our suggested approach is to share the post the first time by simply posting the title and the link. After this, mix up between a question, a fact, a quote, an intrigue, or a related graphic for the reposts. Remember that the link should be in all your reports since it will drive traffic to your blog.

3. Keep a check on the feedback

As with every other approach, you should monitor the results of this technique, as well. This needs to be done to ensure you can adjust your sharing schedule and your approach, as needed. Alarming situations that you need to look out for are a decrease in post-activity or negative feedback from the audience. In such cases, you should rethink the strategy and the frequency of reposts. Though situations such as these are rare, you should always keep everything under check.

Step 2: Make use of video traffic

One of the best parts of content marketing is that there is no need to stick with a single medium. You can revamp your content strategy by incorporating videos, infographics, images, and podcasts in it.

In this era of speed, there are very few that prefer reading boring blog posts that are full of text. Instead, most online users prefer to watch videos or view information-containing graphics. In fact, a statistic by Animoto suggests the following.

4 times as many customers prefer watching videos about a product rather than reading about it! Click To Tweet

What you need is to make use of video traffic for boosting SEO and maximizing the number of visitors on your page. What you need to do is to create video content that discusses the core points of each article. Then, share this video on social media networks and on your website with a backlink to the blog post.

Just be sure to ensure that the video is engaging and interesting so that it catches the audience’s attention. The video should provoke the audience to ‘learn more’ about the topic. You can even mention the blog post in the video itself, asking users to visit the page for more information.

What you need to keep in mind though is that you should create similar video content as your blog post. It should not be the same and it should definitely not be covering an entirely different topic. There should be some overlapping in the video that justifies it being connected to the blog post.

Sharing video content

An effective way of sharing video content is to post them on social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. You can also create your business’ own YouTube channel (if it already does not exist) and share the video there to reach out to newer audiences.

Another good idea for utilizing videos and linking back to your content is to look for five to ten common questions in your niche. Once you have identified the questions, record a series of videos that addresses these questions and answer them. Publish all of these on YouTube with a backlink to your blog post in the description.

One of the best parts of sharing videos on YouTube is that it has its own search engine. This can be utilized for bringing in a lot of high-quality traffic to your website. Moreover, if your video gains a lot of views, there is a good chance that it will keep bringing you traffic for the years to come, as well.

Step 3: Get digital influencers to work for you

A digital influencer is defined as a social media user that has established credibility within a specific industry. A social influencer is a digital influencer that has an established and well-reputed profile on social networks. A digital influencer has access to large audiences/followers and they can persuade others through their reach and authenticity.

One effective method for growing your audience and diverting more traffic to your blog is by getting influencers to write for you. For this, you will need out to well-known bloggers and digital celebrities in your niche and ask them to become contributors to your blog.

You need to be sure that these digital influencers have a large social following in your industry. A bonus could be an influencer that is able to write excellent content on their own consistently. This is why we recommend that you target someone that has their own blog.

By getting digital influencers involved, you will not only be generating high-quality content for your blog (that will earn shares and traffic on their own), but they will also provide access to a powerful marketing channel in the form of the digital influencer’s social media following.

Another benefit is that since these influencers are generally in-demand, they are likely contributing to other media sites and blogs in your niche industry, as well. This means that they can backlink to something that they have written for your blog in the future.

Convincing digital influencers to work for you

Unless you have a prestigious high-authority blog of your own, you will need to pay these influencers to write blogs for you. You should also be sure to specify that in this arrangement, the digital influencers will be expected to share and promote the posts on their social networks (rather than just writing them).

In addition to payment, you can also convince these digital influencers by offering them a backlink to their own website or blog and giving them free access to your products and services.

How to find the right digital influencers?

Well, so far so good, but let’s get down to the big question. How can you find the right social media influencers for your industry? You can either spend a bunch of time collecting data manually from all kinds of sources or you can just play smart and use a web monitoring tool, like Mentionlytics, to do all the dirty work for you.

Step 4: Redefine the purpose of your content

Sometimes, no matter how much effort we put into our content marketing strategy, it is not bear the fruit that we want it to. When this happens, the best step that you can take is to redefine the approach toward content generation.

Not being able to generate enough high-quality traffic does not mean that your content needs to be of better quality. Instead, it can also mean that you need to be more strategic about how to present it to the audience.

Think about the audience and identify their needs, put thought into how you can help them find a solution to your problems, and then make sure that your content reflects this. The most successful content that you will find online is one that addresses the reader’s issues and then provides a way to solve them.

Look out for trends

A good way to find out about what is trending in your niche industry is to check out Quora and see what questions are being asked. You can also use Mentionlytics for seeing what content is popular in your industry. Once you know what is popular, produce something that is better than what already exists.

Whenever possible, you should try to ensure that your content is evergreen i.e. it lives forever and does not ‘get too old’ for re-sharing. This makes sure that you can always generate more traffic to your blog by simply reposting the blog in the future.

The content style matters

As for content style, we personally believe that it is better to write fewer (but highly informative) longer posts than frequent shorter posts. Since longer posts add value to the reader’s experience and have more chances of generating high-quality traffic, shares, and links.

It is always best to include case studies, statistics, and opinions since these increase the authenticity of the content. You can also add multimedia in the form of graphics, infographics, and videos in your blog posts that increase the readability of the content.

Choosing the right type of content

According to MassPlanner, infographics are liked and shared three times as much as other types of content.

This shows the importance of making use of such content on your blog.

Making use of other content forms, particularly visual content, on other platforms is also very important. We have already highlighted how you can make use of video traffic for generating more high-quality traffic for your blog, but you can also make use of podcasts, presentations, and eBooks in a similar manner.

For instance, you can record a podcast of a blog post that is already written and upload it to iTunes. Alternatively, you can write an eBook (from a series of blog posts) and then put it up for free download on your website. These are all ways of attracting newer audiences to visit your blog.

Infographics are liked and shared three times as much as other types of content. Click To Tweet

Step 5: Reach out to known followers and sharers

There are numerous people that love reading and sharing content that is related to a particular industry or topic. When you look for them, you will be able to find numerous such ‘followers’ that can help you out in extending the reach of your content.

Unlike digital influencers, these individuals might not have a large social following or persuasive skills. However, these are people that are genuinely interested in your niche industry and will share the content so that it reaches out to whatever following they do have.

All you need to do is to identify people who are sharing content that is similar to your blog post and then reach out to them asking if they can share your blog post. You will be surprised by how most of these people will help you out just if you ask.

There is no need to pay them or offer them any incentives since they will share it just for the sake of it, especially if they like the content in your blog post.

How to find known followers and sharers?

There are many ways that you can achieve this. We recommend that you make use of Mentionlytics for this purpose, since it provides you with insightful metrics along with the information, as well. We demonstrated earlier how you can use Mentionlytics to find the right digital influencers for your brand. But, you can also utilize the social listening tool for finding known followers and sharers in your industry, as well. The variety of features available within Mentionlytics is what makes it an all-in-one toolkit for marketers and business owners.

Approaching the followers and sharers

Once you have the social media information for these followers and sharers, you can reach out to them via direct message on social networks or email (whenever possible). You should first try sending out an email and if that fails then you should contact them via social media.

You can write up a personalized script that explains that you have posted something similar to what the individual reads and shares about, and then ask them if they can share (or link back) to your blog post, as well. Be sure to add the link to your blog post in the email so that the individual can easily find it. If they like the blog post that you have published, your chances of getting a share are high.

It is recommended that you should reach out to 5 – 7 known sharers every time you publish a blog post. Even if you get a few of them to share, you will be reaching out to a newer audience that will divert more traffic toward your blog.

Conclusion

Content marketing is not just about producing and publishing content. In fact, this is only half (or maybe even less) than the real purpose of content marketing i.e. generating high-quality traffic for a blog.

Sometimes, you write content that is flawless in every way and yet, fails to generate even a single click. When this happens, you know that there is something that you are not doing right.

While producing great content is still important, you should not spend all of your energy into it. Instead, you need to promote your content and give it the exposure that it needs. At the same time, you need to be careful not to look like a spammer to the audience since that leaves a terrible impression of you.

In this article, we have put together a methodology that will help divert organic and high-quality traffic toward your blog. It is advised that you follow these steps for each blog post that you create so that you can generate organic, high-quality traffic for your blog.