People turn to the Internet for two things: entertainment and information. If you’re not producing content focused on one of those two areas, you may not be getting that much traffic to your website. If you want to get visitors to your blog or website you need to create content that is either entertainment or information oriented.
If you answer questions, you will be found
What question did your visitor type to find your website?
The premise of any search engine is to provide results for the user’s query. A query is a question. People are looking for answers to questions they have about any problem they may encounter in this universe. I don’t care if your primary interest is saving the rain forest, promoting your small business or marketing your nonprofit, if your website or blog doesn’t answer questions it won’t get found by many people.
Internet users are looking for answers
It’s not enough to write a fluffy blog post why you are passionate about the anti-fracking movement, you need to address specific questions being searched for by a person who doesn’t know you exist. The effort to pose a question, write an answer supported by facts and links to credible sources and then offer a solution can be time consuming. The people or consumers you want to connect with want more than sound bites, catch phrases or rhetoric, they want answers.
Simple posts, highest page views
You need to get into the habit of creating blog posts from a perspective of “that’s good to know.” If you find it interesting and helpful others probably will also. Some of my best performing blog posts were conceived, research, sourced and written in a couple of hours. Simple posts such as how to pay a bill, find a provider, answer a nagging question can perform better than the entertaining history or hiking post that took me days to create. Often the source of inspiration came from a problem I encountered and figured out how to solve. If you have the question, there is a good chance that other people have the same question they need answering. My top five performing blog posts that receive the most page views in the last thirty days were –
- Uploading documents to Covered California
- What Type of Income is Counted for Covered California ACA Plans?
- Hiker’s rash: red rash between knee and ankle after hiking for several hours
- Mountain Bikes are Destroying Folsom Lake Trails in Granite Bay
- Medicare Sanctions CVS/Caremark SilverScript Part D Plan
Virtually no topic is too small to blog about
While some topics may sound trivial to you, your answers may be gold to someone else. Create step by step blogs on how to perform basic functions for your product or service. If you have a pet peeve, address it in a constructive manner. I was surprised to learn that someone linked to one of my blog posts on business cards. After being handed hundreds of poorly designed business cards I wrote blog on what to include and what to avoid. That was ultimately used in the blog 5 Reasons Why Your Small Business Brand Crawls.
Look at your statistics
Who is referring visitors to your website?
Review your website statistics to see who is referring your site, what type of search terms and words used to find your sight and what outbound links people are clicking. Early on I realized that my top referral sources were not social media but search engines. I also review what search terms or questions people type into their browsers that make my website pop up in their search results. This give me a gauge of if I’m answering questions and key words people use. Finally, I always check my outbound links. Even if people are clicking off my website, lots of outbound clicks shows I am providing good source information for the visitor.
Write for your audience and you
It’s important to have the basics of search engine optimization in place, but don’t let that drive the content. Don’t worry about the key words, those will naturally happen if you are writing an honest post to answer a question as opposed to marketing fluff. Look at the search terms people type in that found your website. They are the best indicator about what your audience is thinking about. If you like what you have written, more than likely other people will like it and find it informative also.
Forget social media
Insuremekevin outbound clicks, a measure of if I am providing good source links.
Unless your content is purely entertainment or you have a large following, most of your visits will be referred to your site through search engines. Occasionally, I’ll have one of those days where a blog gets reposted to reddit or Facebook and the generates great traffic. Otherwise, the search engines deliver 85% of my site traffic. There is no substitute for a well written and constructed blog post to drive traffic to your website.
Find your voice and diversify
Unless you are writing for a corporate entity, there is no reason you can’t blog about your favorite sport, hobby or interest. First, it’s easy to write about something you like and are passionate about. Second, it will diversify the visitors coming to your website. Third, you never know when someone reading your baseball blog realizes that your business is offering something they need. It is always nice to develop a relationship with a client based on an outside interest first.