(Article series) - 15 clever types of content that increase your traffic

In this series of articles, I would like to show you ways in which you can generate more traffic in the long term. In the first part of this series, in which you learn 10 basic tips for increasing traffic, I already discussed the importance of content. I would like to delve deeper into this topic and show you 15 types of content here that you can use to increase your traffic.

Content types that generate more traffic

Depending on which industry your website belongs to, one type of content or another will suit you better. Let yourself be inspired and give it a try. I also look forward to your feedback on the individual tips!

1. lists

Lists have a huge advantage: they compress and structure information and therefore offer readers added value. Lists are also much easier to process semantically: The key points make it easier to absorb information. This is probably the reason why lists are so popular and shared. If your headline also indicates that this is a list, traffic should increase quickly. Here are a few examples of lists that you can certainly incorporate into your editorial plan:

• Myths: Maybe you're like me and myths attract you? Especially when a long-believed myth is uncovered, it's a real reward for my brain. Plus, lists like this provide conversation topics.
• Other websites: For example, you can directly attract attention with a list of the best blogs in your niche. Bloggers usually love it when they are mentioned. Definitely a way to achieve more traffic in the long term.
• Checklists: Absolutely popular and shared! This is free added value that is often rewarded with shares or backlinks. However, make sure that the checklist does not contain any errors.
• Top lists: Increasingly common: "The 17 best little helpers for kitchen and household" - often linked to commission-based remuneration for sales via your website (affiliate marketing).
• Summaries: With the list "The 7 most important articles of the last week" you could use the work of others almost without doing anything yourself. Of course, you should then also link to the sources.
• Most common mistakes: A touch of schadenfreude about the mistakes others make makes this form of list particularly attractive! The nice side effect: your readers learn something.
• Pros and cons lists: As with the top lists, various interchangeable products or services are presented here and then given advantages and disadvantages. These are often very subjective evaluations, but that's what makes them so credible.

In my experience, lists are particularly interesting if they save me having to look up this information myself. For example, I find lists in which certain tools for my work are presented and evaluated very interesting. A general tip: odd numbers and special characters such as brackets are particularly eye-catching. Keep this in mind when formulating your title tag.

2. guides / how-to articles

Guides add a lot of value and are very popular. Well-illustrated instructions or films are particularly helpful.

You could create the following guides for your blog:

• Tool or software: Tools or standard software are certainly used in your industry and you could write a how-to guide on their complex applications or settings. Especially if these are not everyday functions, there will probably be no or only a few similar guides for them. Theoretically, you could go further and explain several applications in a kind of series. This would also improve your reputation.
• Concrete problem: You explain the problem and explain the solution step by step. Research in forums or on ubersuggest, for example, pays off here in particular, as you will receive real search queries that you can use as inspiration.
• Products: Whether it's a recipe for cooking or instructions for building a birdhouse - anything that is haptic counts here. The difference to the previous point is that such articles serve more to inspire readers than to solve problems directly. Accordingly, you can be more verbose here.

You can create all of these guides as text, with images or as video tutorials.

If you are "fit" in a certain area, you can also write guides on completely different topics, e.g:

• Self-management: Many people have their own habits that often get in their way: Whether it's untidiness, the key you have to look for every morning, your own pig dog that you can't overcome or even low self-esteem - you can make self-management easier for your readers with a guide that may even go over several parts.
• Foreign cultures: Are you familiar with another culture? A guide that explains the customs in Thaiwan, for example, is worth its weight in gold for some people. But other countries also have cultures that differ from Germany's, which can be clarified.
• Job know-how: Have you gained experience with certain approaches in your job? Then share it with others and write a guide on how to successfully make cold calls or maintain customer relationships, for example. Other jobs require you to collect and analyze data: Create a how-to list to help those just starting out in their careers.

As with all other types of content: create a click-worthy headline, otherwise even the most ingenious content will fail to generate traffic.

3. lexicon / glossary

Glossaries were initially integrated into websites to provide visitors with the definition or explanation of terms in texts with just one click. But then it turned out that glossaries are an ingenious SEO technique that can lead to a lot of traffic. This is because information is treated in a targeted and focused way in a document, which at least in the past was rewarded by search engines with good rankings. Many webmasters now use this technique and offer more or less good and detailed glossaries.

The important thing with glossaries or encyclopaedias is that they are programmed and designed in a user-friendly way. After all, anyone who regularly uses your website to access the glossary will soon look for an alternative if the usability is poor. I will discuss the fact that these technical points are also important for increasing traffic in the next article in this series.

With your blog, you can go one step further and deal with certain aspects of a glossary term in separate articles: For example, if you have a food glossary, you could highlight what the health risks of strawberries are in a blog article (should that exist). Of course, the internal linking should not be missing!

The real genius of glossaries, especially in combination with blog articles, is that you create content on a regular basis. More content means more keywords for which your website ranks, which means more potential traffic.

4. surveys / statistics

We come across them every day: statistics about this and that and - let's be honest - whether we believe them or not, we deal with them. Statistics are a wonderful way to back up statements (or to make them in the first place!). Many bloggers use surveys or statistics for their own articles,"recycling" them. And this is where you come in: start a survey on a relevant topic and publish the results as statistics.

You can also be creative - many people like to take part in surveys with a touch of humor. You can then use the statistics themselves in a separate article. If the statistics have real added value, it is also worth entering them in press portals. You can find out how to increase the reach of your content in a later article on tips for sharing content.

5. controversial topics

Nobody likes to read boring texts. But when is a text interesting? One possibility is to take up a controversial topic that touches people emotionally and stimulates discussion. Examples:

• Driving license at 16
• Smoking ban in public places
• Refugee debate
• forms of nutrition

etc. As you can see, these topics are very topical and affect many people. However, it is also possible to take up a topic that has no connection to current reality. For example: "Should children generally be implanted with a GPS transmitter so that they cannot be abducted?".

It is up to you whether you take only one opinion or weigh up both sides with pros and cons. However, ask your readers what they think or encourage them to take part in the discussion.

6. infographics

Infographics have been all the rage for a few years now. These graphics, often created with great effort, are a guarantee for traffic. The visualization of topics and complex information is food for the human brain. There are now numerous tools that you can use to create your own infographics. A quick Google search will bring up this article from Gründerküche, for example. I've already done a few things myself with easel.ly.

If you don't have the confidence, you can also consult a designer. It may cost a little, but it could be worth it if the infographic adds real value. My favorite infographic is Death and Taxes by Jeff Desjardins. It shows where the money in the US budget goes. The creator has since recouped the costs by selling printed posters with the infographic.

It is important that your infographic can be shared. You should make it possible for it to be embedded in other articles with a code snippet. Similar to statistics, infographics are often "recycled" by bloggers and used in their own articles.

7. videos

In the past, it was only possible to create videos with expensive technology and editing programs, but today many people do this with their smartphone or computer camera. Videos are a particularly attention-grabbing type of content because humans, as audiovisual beings, particularly like to use this form of information recording. It takes much less effort to consume content as a video instead of reading it. How-to videos or tutorials are a special form of video (see above). Such videos are very popular and continue to generate traffic even after a long time, provided the content is still up to date. A special form of tutorial is the screencast, in which a program records the screen. Screencasts are particularly useful if you want to explain a piece of software. You can show it directly on the screen and record the text via the microphone.

For many forms of video, you should write an outline or script to structure it sensibly. Also make sure that the image and sound are clear. YouTube or vimeo are suitable distribution media, and social media is best for further sharing and increasing reach. In order for your video to rank well in the video portals, you should also think about video SEO.

8. reviews

Reviews help others make decisions. They therefore inherently offer added value for others. In a sense, they are recommendations for products or services. Many people believe reviews rather than traditional consumer information aka advertising. A few examples of what you could write reviews for:

• Book: Classic - you give your opinion on a particular book. This could be a specialist book in your industry or something completely different.
• Tool / Software: Especially if your readers shy away from expensive purchase prices, they will enjoy your review of tools or software. What could be better than if someone else has already tested it?
• Product: Basically, a review can be written for every conceivable product. Platforms have also specialized in this. Test a product and list its advantages and disadvantages.
• Event: Do you often attend trade fairs? Then evaluate your last visit in detail and write a review about it.

The following applies to all reviews: You can also publish them as a video. This is particularly useful for product reviews (this is how I chose my food processor, for example).

Nice side effect: Reviews are an excellent basis for affiliate marketing! If you link directly to the product in your review, you can benefit from sales commissions via an affiliate program.

9. picture galleries

Many publishers are leading the way: Image galleries are a real traffic magnet. Visitors click through the galleries to pass the time. If you do it cleverly, galleries can increase the time spent on your website enormously.

These galleries are particularly popular in social media and are often shared. They are usually funny pictures. So if you put together photos from your industry and perhaps add some text, you can look forward to additional traffic.

10. case studies

In the B2B sector, case studies are popular content. For example, if you have carried out a customer project, you can describe it in more detail. A case study is usually divided into 4 parts:

1. Introduction of the project: For example, the customer or the product.
2. Challenge: For example, the previous problems or the goals to be achieved. This also includes the customer's requirements.
3. Solution: How was the goal achieved, what techniques were used, etc.?
4. Outcome: What is the result of the project? What advantages are there now? Key figures are also often used here to illustrate the result.

Also offer the case study as a PDF. Anyone who wants to download the PDF must enter their e-mail address - this will generate a lead for you.

Important: As a rule, you must obtain your customer's consent, as this is partly internal company information.

11. questions and answers

This type of content again focuses on the added value for visitors. If there are services or products in your industry that require explanation, you could attract visitors to your site with a question and answer article. These pages are often also called Q&A or FAQ articles. As soon as there are new questions and answers, you should update the article you have created.

The other way to utilize questions and answers is to answer "real" questions from your customers in a case study style article.

12. quizzes, games

With quizzes and games you are guaranteed visitors: Create a quiz about your industry on your website and draw attention to it on social media. Plugins are already available for many CMSs, so you don't have to develop anything yourself.

You can go even further and turn it into a competition. The nice side effect is that you can generate leads here, provided you query the user data.

13. skyscraper article

I got this method from Brian Dean's blog on backlinko.com. It involves writing a long, detailed and informative article that usually summarizes various other sources. In my opinion, the following points are the biggest advantages of skyscraper articles:

• Unique content: copying the article (content theft) is almost eliminated due to the length.
• Ranking: Google tends to display long articles in the top positions because they are more holistic.

Although such a huge article costs time and effort, it is usually worth it, as this added value for visitors is often rewarded with a backlink or sharing in social media.

14. mini courses / article series

If you want visitors to come back, the opposite of the skyscraper article is a good idea: Break up your content into small bites and "serve" them at regular intervals. This could be a course, for example, or a series of articles in which you teach your visitors something in detail or present it in greater depth. It is important that you plan this precisely so that there are no empty promises.

As far as the duration is concerned, I would recommend that the series should not last longer than 1-2 weeks.

15. content recycling

If you run out of ideas, it's also worth taking a look at the archives: can your older articles be reused? It is also useful to look at analysis tools such as Google Analytics to see which of your articles have previously brought in a lot of traffic. After all, their potential is the highest.

You can certainly update or expand the article. Perhaps you can give it a new form (create a video or list)? Perhaps you have several articles on one topic that you can combine into a new article (skyscraper method). Attention: Think about redirects to avoid losing rankings!

But you can also recycle third-party content: Look for content that is a little older and no longer current. Use this content, rewrite it and update or improve individual sections. To round things off in terms of backlinks, ask the backlink providers of the original article whether they would also like to place a backlink to your article.

As you can see, there are numerous ways to create good and unique content. The tips from our first article will make content creation even more efficient. In the next article, I will look at other content-related ways to sustainably increase traffic through good reputation management.

Read here how to write optimal texts for the internet "

Previously published articles in this series

• 10 tips to increase your traffic with content
• 15 clever types of content that increase your traffic

Some of the images used in this article come from other sources. You can find the sources in the imprint.