Looking to get traffic to your website?

Maybe you read through some web hosting reviews to find a hosting provider for your website. Now you have to put together a site and visitors will come, right?

Unfortunately, millions of websites on the internet never get the exposure their creators had wished for. The assumption that building something great is enough to get traction is one that’s always inaccurate.

While there are many strategies you can implement to drive traffic to your website such as public relations, search engine marketing, social media marketing, and more…

They all require a significant investment to see results and a continuous marketing budget to continue. But there is one marketing strategy that can be great financially but also allows you to build a traffic flywheel that’ll continue to build momentum even when you stop putting resources into it. What is it?

Content marketing.

This can include blogs, videos, podcasts, and any form of media your target audience consumes. The goal of content marketing is not to sell directly but to build a relationship with your audience to increase trust and brand awareness. 

Over time, these people will become your customers and best promoters.

But how do you make content marketing work for your website to grow your traffic? Well, here are 5 tips you need to follow if you want content marketing to work…

 

#1: Produce High-Quality Content

Nobody wants to read, watch, or listen to some lazily put together piece of content that doesn’t help them in any shape or form. 

When people read your content, they are investing their time in you, and time is a valuable currency in existence. So if your audience has questions that need answers, advice to give, or a desire to fulfill — give it to them!

But that’s not all. 

Chances are, you have competitors in your industry or niche that have also spent some time on content marketing. Luckily, the majority of your competitors will take the quantity over quality approach.

This is exactly where your opportunity lies.

If your competitors are focusing on quantity but you focus on quality, who do you think your readers will get more value from?

Exactly. The better you can help your readers, the more they’ll trust you and share your website. 

 

Action Tip:
Focus on quality over quantity. Anyone can write dozens of articles and stick them on the internet. Only an industry expert can put together a quality piece of content that delivers value to the reader like no one else can. Be that expert.

 

#2: Understand the Different Types of Content

If you want to produce quality content, you must understand what type of content you are trying to produce and the goal you are trying to accomplish:

In general, there are four types of content:

• Informative and educational pieces
• SEO-focused content
• Branding & thought-leadership content
• Trending content

But, there are plenty to discover. A lot of the time a few of these will overlap. 

Not exactly sure what these types of content are? Here’s an explanation:

 

Informative & Educational Pieces

Informative content is one of the most common pieces of content you’ll find. Why? Because it helps your audience and automatically highlights your website as the authority. It is extremely versatile and is a safe bet for any content marketing strategy.

In fact, this blog post you’re reading is an educational piece. 

But authority isn’t the only benefit. Informative content works hand in hand with the next type of content…

 

SEO Focused Content Marketing

The purpose of SEO focused content is to get your website ranking higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). 

For example, this article about content marketing has a chance to rank on Google and get traffic to our website for the main topic ‘content marketing’. As another example, if you ran a small accounting business you could post blogs about tax return guides, small business tax deductions, and anything else that your audience searches on the internet.

 

Branding & Thought Leadership Content Marketing

Some pieces of content aren’t focused on SEO or driving traffic, but instead are for branding purposes. This can include content that promotes the mission of the company, highlight points of difference, and to outline a brand’s voice.

Content focused on branding isn’t something you see often, though. This is reserved for companies who have large budgets. Unlike SEO focused content and educational pieces, brand building pieces don’t produce quick and easy to measure results.

 

Trendy Content Marketing

Utilizing trends in your content marketing strategy can be extremely powerful in bringing in visitors. But unlike educational or SEO focused content, which are evergreen and will deliver results for years to come, trendy content is short-lived.

But when you capitalize on trends in your market and become one of the first to publish a quality piece of content on it, there’s a likelihood that it’ll go viral. This can be extremely effective in getting visitors to your site and can multiply your audience in a matter of hours.

 

#3: Increase Your Returning Visitor Rate

Once you have produced some content, you can begin working on retention. Without retention, you’ll constantly struggle to attract new visitors while also losing the audience you’ve already built.

Unless you have strategies in place to get visitors to return to your website, content marketing loses potential.

One strategy to increase returning visitor rates is to include opt-in forms to sign up for your newsletter, where you’ll email articles to them directly related to the original piece of content they read.

 

#4: Combine Content Marketing with Advertising

If you followed the steps, created a piece of content, and implemented strategies to increase the returning visitor rate, then you will have created a powerful ecosystem that can become self-sustained over time.

But if you want to quickly grow this ecosystem and your traffic, you can implement a paid advertising strategy.

For example, if you have a trending article that readers love, boosting this post on Facebook can increase engagement. Readers will share and like your article. Some of these will go on to read more articles you posted and some will even opt-in to your newsletter for later posts.

Keep in mind, a paid strategy should not be introduced until other steps are done, or a large budget exists.

 

#5: Optimize Your Website’s Loading Speed

Nobody likes a slow website.

Did you know that having a site that loads in 5 seconds compared to 1 increases the bounce rate of a website by 90%?

This means that a fast website is essential if you want to build up your traffic. Even if you have the best content marketing in the world, if it takes ages to load, no one will read it. And if no one reads it, your content marketing is useless. 

But that’s not all. 

When you have a  slow website, it could decrease your SEO levels. This means your rankings on search engines will be lowered and it’ll be harder for new visitors to find you.

We’ve created a list of the top 10 web hosting providers to help you find the fastest providers that’ll help you speed up your website and ensure your visitors have a great experience.