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Are You Missing Out On An Insane Amount Of Free Traffic To Your Blog?
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Who doesn’t want free website traffic?
If there was a way to attract more people without investing a dime, would you want the recipe?
I will assume that the answer is yes! So that’s exactly what this article will be about. A guide to an insane amount of free traffic.
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How to get free traffic to your blog
- Invest enough time into writing quality content
- Take advantage of all social media channels
- Study your demographics
- Put enough visual content into the article
- Follow trends and be among the first ones to publish news
- Add social share buttons to your page
- Be a problem solver
Which social media channel is the best one?
The short answer to this question would be all of them.
Long answer? It depends on the type of content that you are providing.
If your content revolves around gossip and funny videos, you wouldn’t expect to gain a lot of views from a “serious” social media channel such as LinkedIn, would you?
You should put that effort and energy into social media platforms such as Facebook and TikTok instead.
Still, it would be a mistake not to invest your energy into it at all. It is all about priority.
Each social media website has its “proper” usage and the type of content that works best on it.
For example, according to research posted by SocialPilot, “Video posts get at least 59% more engagement than other post types”. That is something you have to take into consideration when you are creating your content.
On the other hand, Instagram posts with a location attached to them get almost 80% more engagement, but that percentage is almost irrelevant on other major platforms.
If you want to generate free web traffic from social media, make sure you study the statistics behind it.
Post a solution to a problem
What is the number one article people will search for when in trouble? “How to…”
Just as when you are trying to fix something that went bad, or even when there is something you are trying to learn, how-to articles are your best friend.
According to these search metrics, more than 100,000 people search for different “how-to” articles EVERY MONTH! It is a gold-mine of free website traffic, and what’s also great is that it lasts much longer than average articles do.
Imagine that you wrote articles on “How to fix Error 102 on Xbox One” before anybody else did, your article would help thousands of people and get re-shared a lot of times. This generates an insane amount of free traffic without you moving a finger, simply because people want to share the solution that has resolved their issue.
Another great benefit of writing such articles is the backlink potential. Those people who are the first to solve a problem have high chances of generating QUALITY backlinks without even trying. Backlinks can generate a bunch of free traffic for your website.
Your helpful content can be shared on different social media platforms, websites, forums, streaming platforms, etc. That’s the power of helping others fix their issues with your articles.
Edit your older articles
You may have some older posts, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be used to generate free traffic. This is the one thing that many bloggers forget to do.
Older articles are often not optimized for the search engines, whether because you had just started writing, or you didn’t have proper tools back then. There is a simple way to update your old blog posts and I’ll mention a few ways to do it here.
How to update older articles
- Update outdated information in your older posts. Nobody likes to search for a topic and stumble upon outdated information, this problem leads to an increased bounce rate. Even though Google claims bounce rate does not impact the SERP, it will impact your potential sales. Always make sure you update your older posts because once you help someone, they’ll most likely return again.
- Update “broken” images. Since a lot of us save bandwidth by hosting images on third-party servers, broken images occur. Nobody likes to see an article with an image that doesn’t load because it looks unprofessional and people might assume it’s outdated.
- Fix typos. Maybe you didn’t have Grammarly back then, or you were simply in a hurry, but typos happen to everyone. Readers will forgive you for a typo, search engines won’t. Make sure you fix all typos that occur to make sure you get optimal SEO.
- Research keywords once again. A keyword that was relevant two years ago might not be relevant today. Analyze the articles you wrote and research the focus keywords one more time. Perhaps, your article has ranked on Google before, but it has stopped for some reason. You can refresh it by adding long-tail keywords that might be just what you need for that old glory.
If you haven’t already, you should update old posts and use the potential to gain free traffic.
Use influencers to go viral
Those who are trying to build a brand on any social media platform know how much time and effort it takes. What if there was a way to use those who already have a great number of followers to gain free traffic to your website?
There is a way to give influencers positive media presence and get free traffic out of it. That’s a win-win situation for both of you.
You don’t have to aim for Selena Gomez or Cristiano Ronaldo to enjoy these perks.
Let’s focus on Instagram for a second. According to Statista, there are over 1 billion monthly active users and there is a variety of “small” and “large” accounts. Chances are the top 0.5% of accounts with several million followers get tagged and contacted daily, so it’s hard to reach out to those, but what about smaller accounts?
You should target influencers that are anywhere in the range of 25 to 200 thousand followers, anything under or over and it can be too hard to reach or a waste of effort. Influencers like these should be easier to reach and you have a higher chance of linking up with them.
How to get an influencer’s attention
First of all, target those influencers that are in the same niche as you are. It is harder to write something that will make a person share your article on their social media if it isn’t in their domain of work.
Do proper research and make sure you share common interests; check what kind of content they post and what kind they re-post. Once you have done that research, you’ll know what kind of article you should write. One example of an article that has the potential to be re-shared by an influencer is “How to take the perfect photograph on your mobile phone”.
Inside that article, you would write all the tips and tricks that can be used to become a better photographer. To target an influencer you should dedicate one paragraph to them and explain how they helped you reach that goal. Make sure you post their social media account or even better, a website.
Once you complete the article, reach out to them on social media. Let them know they have helped you and send them a link to your blog post where you mention them. Don’t be too pushy or ask for a free shoutout, most users will enjoy the media exposure and post it on their own.
How to find influencers
You can use a simple method of going through hashtags on Instagram. If you are doing photography like in the last example, you need to find accounts with over 500k followers.
I searched for the hashtag “Photography” and found photos_tricks117 that has over 700k followers. This is a great profile where you can find plenty of smaller accounts in the range of 25 – 200k followers.
Browse through a profile like this and you’ll find that they often re-post photos that were taken by other people. Technically, you can go through their followers and find target profiles, but that is a long, inefficient way. A better approach is to open up their posts and see who has taken the picture.
In this picture, we can see a bunch of people credited, go through the list, and see if there is a fit. Right of the bat, we get manucoveney with 92k followers and njwhite sitting at 131k followers. Those are the accounts you are looking to target for some free web traffic.
This is just one of the approaches you can use to target them. Another one would be to write an article and ask them if it’s okay to use their picture in your post where you’ll credit them. Once you are done with the article, let them know and send a link. One simple trick you should use is to avoid contacting them through Instagram DM.
That kind of social profile gets hundreds of messages daily, while their email address is almost always in the description. Take the previously mentioned profile and you’ll see it right away. Remain polite and understand that not everyone is open to this kind of exposure.
Which social media channel has the most influencers?
It’s impossible to answer this one because influencers are a subjective matter. It all comes down to what your business is about. If you are in the photography business, that would be Instagram. On the other hand, if you are into videos or dancing, consider YouTube or TikTok.
Don’t judge a book by its cover though. There are a lot of influencers with large follower numbers, but they don’t get good engagement. You should focus on the number of comments and likes instead. That’s what really counts.
Explore your own ways of making all those influencers share your work. This is still a gold mine because they haven’t been around forever. Brands are always looking to increase their social media presence, so you should “steal” those influencers before they get paid for it.
Use trends for free traffic
Who would have thought Covid-19 would hit the whole world in 2020?
A lot of jobs have been destroyed and people have lost money, but does it have to be this way?
The answer is no.
There is a principle that works something like “finders keepers”, but in the free web traffic terms.
Which of the news has attracted the most readers during this pandemic time? Those that reacted first.
Most writers will focus on stuff that has already been posted. This approach is safe and good, someone else will start exploring and you’ll optimize their findings. However, there is a saying “Only those who risk win” and there is something true about it.
If you let the other people pave the way, you’ll almost always only get the crumbs. Research trending topics on social media like Twitter and hurry to make an article about it. If there is a small number of people writing articles about it, you can easily get free traffic.
How to use trends to your advantage
Do fast research on a trending topic, invoke laughter and other emotions if possible, and win traffic. You might be wondering – why laughter? Okdork conducted research on why content goes viral by going through 100 million articles. In those 100 million, the 10,000 most shared articles were analyzed by mapping emotions.
Their finding has shown that 25% of emotions in those 10,000 articles were “awe” and 17% was “laughter”. It seems that we love to share articles that are inspiring to others. Combine those findings with trending topics and you’ll get a win-win situation.
A good example of that combination would be to write an article such as “Corona has been defeated! A vaccine has been developed.” Those kinds of articles tend to be shared much more than regular daily ones.
Stay alert, follow the trends, and make sure you research keywords.
Guest author: Joe Ephgrave is the Director of Award-Winning Digital Marketing Agency WHR Marketing. He is renowned for his Digital Marketing Skills including his SEO Strategy consisting of On-Page SEO (high-quality content, structure for SEO), and Off-Page SEO (effective link building and content promotion through social media).
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