10 tips for generating traffic with content

Many website operators have a common goal: more traffic. Traffic refers to the flow of visitors to the website and is an important indicator of the awareness, quality and popularity of the site. In addition, if you provide advertising space, you can benefit from higher revenues if you can generate a lot of traffic. I have worked intensively on the question of how to sustainably increase traffic. In doing so, I realized that the measures for generating traffic can be divided into different areas.

Overthe next few weeks, I will take a closer look at each of these areas and describe the best measures and tips for generating traffic. I'll start with the foundation: content creation.

Content is ultimately what attracts visitors to our sites, what they consume, like, share and what is useful to them. That's why we should always think about the content we offer. Most websites run a blog for content creation, in which they post articles (in)regularly. The following tips and strategies apply to blogs in general, but can also be used for other content.

How to increase your traffic with content

1. topic relevance

Internet users want to be entertained, learn new things, get information and exchange ideas. The world is fast-moving and you have to keep up with it. What's more, you need to create content that arouses the interest of your readership! A horror scenario for a blogger: he or she painstakingly writes an article that nobody is interested in. Just like in the following picture:

Relevance is the magic word. But how can you create content that is relevant to visitors? Which topics are relevant? Research can be carried out in various ways. One possibility is to use online tools that make it possible to subdivide a topic complex into various smaller aspects.

Below you will find various tools for finding topic aspects and ideas. Here using the example of "insurance"

Get intothe habit of repeatedly splitting up topic complexes and working on these topic aspects (i.e. keywords) with good, useful content.

2. topicality

Another important factor for relevance (from the point of view of search engines and people!): Topicality of the content. After all, what do I care about the insurance premium for my moped from 2012? I need the figures for 2021, so the insurance broker mentioned above should keep their content up to date, which incidentally is part of "content recycling".

If you want to be up-to-date, you can use Google Trends, Twitter Trends or Buzzsumo to find trending topics for your own content and thus generate traffic. Reading your industry-related blogs, magazines or newspapers on a daily basis, as well as changes in the law, will always provide new ideas for current, relevant content.

The individual services are presented below:

But please remember, no matter where you get the ideas from: Offer added value, be unique and "fresh" - because that's what Google and, above all, people want. Write for your target group and not for the machine, this is the most sustainable and turns spontaneous visitors into returning visitors.

3. article ideas in the backlog

During your research, many article ideas will come to mind. Write them all down - every single idea on a piece of paper or as a file on your computer. This forms your so-called"backlog", a storehouse of future articles that you will create. Get into the habit of storing new ideas or to-dos in this backlog. This way, you won't run out of ideas so easily later on.

4. create an editorial plan

It is important that you blog regularly. This also makes sense: the more content you create, the higher the chance that someone will land on one of these pieces of content. Good planning is a prerequisite for a certain degree of regularity: with an editorial plan, you can schedule your article ideas from the backlog.

5. publish articles on a time-controlled basis

If your website offers scheduled publishing, you can even create articles in advance and then have them published automatically at the weekend, for example. This has the advantage that you maintain regularity, don't have to go online at the weekend to publish the article and at the same time "catch" your target group at exactly the right time.

6. content preview

If you have a functioning editorial plan and already know a while in advance what you will be publishing soon, offering a content preview is an exciting and highly professional method of generating traffic. You are familiar with this preview from all other media. A preview of the next issue is typical in magazines. This makes it clear to the reader that they will soon be provided with good information again.

The content preview can take place in various channels: In your blog itself, in social media as a post, in emails or newsletters and much more.

7 Sensational headlines

Which search result gets the click? The first one? Not always. It's the result that catches the eye the most (and matches the search). You can achieve this by adapting your headings, i.e. the title tag, accordingly. "Sensational" means that this headline really makes you want to read more. You want to appeal to the emotions of the searcher.

Take a look at these 3 SERP snippets:

Which one catches the eye the most? The order is correct, by the way. Personally, I find the first SERP snippet quite boring. In the second one, the 5 golden stars stand out as a sign of quality. So it's better overall. But the third headline is"sensational", so to speak, and would get my click.

It's like this - headlines like these lead to more traffic:

Sure, you can't always apply this tip, especially if you want to be reputable. One tool that I regularly use to test my SERP snippets in advance is http://serpsimulator.de. Here you can see in real time what your search result would look like on Google.

Traffic outreach

You've done it, you've created great content and you've thought of everything important. Now you should make sure that your content can also be found. We have 3 simple tips for this in this article.

8. make sharing easier

A very simple tip, but one that is essential for more traffic: make it easier for your visitors to share your content. The easiest way to do this is via share button plugins, which are available for every CMS. Here are a few examples:

If you search for "share buttons", you will find even more providers. Also give your visitors a hint that they should share your content, because a nudge like that can work wonders!

9. competitor sites

Why not benefit from the competition? Take a look at what your colleagues are doing on their blogs: Are there new types of content that you could also use? How are visitors' questions being answered? Do you recognize a strategy? More about competition and competitive analysis

Be honest with yourself: What do you find really good on competitor sites? Take these examples and do better. And then suggest to your competitors' backlink providers that they also link to your content. More about backlinks

10. link externally

You may be wondering why you should link "outside". After all, you are leading your visitors away from your own site. This is true, but not the whole truth. If you link to other pages in your article, these linked authors will become aware of you. In addition, these links are an added value for your visitors. Both lead to more trust and more traffic in the long run.

I hope these 10 simple traffic generation tips have given you some ideas to drive more traffic to your website. More articles with other traffic measures will follow in the coming weeks.

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