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How to Grow Your Organic Traffic
You blog. I blog. He, she, we blog. Yeah, we’re pretty confident blogging is an awesome topic for today. Databox is helping us out too. They interviewed and got the low-down on blogging best practices from marketers who are actually doing the work.
Learn from them, fam. Learn.
Blog Regularly
We’re supposed to blog religiously but not all willy-nilly. Think about it. Regular, updated, and relevant content is the holy grail of blogging. Here’s how to excel with that strategy:
- Find ways to stand out in the crowded market by finding a niche for your content creation. Warning: this could be time-consuming, but don’t chicken out just because of this.
- Consistency. Test time deliverability by posting on the same day per week for a year.
- Go evergreen. This content solves your customer’s problems. Not the product/service. Not the huge discount that everyone else is doing too. But how you can ease someone else’s issue.
Guys, the limit does not exist. Explore alternatives like case-studies, how-to videos, whitepapers, or ebooks.
The Pillar/Cluster Model
This concept focuses on a strong topic that your company wants to be known for. Campaign Creators increased organic traffic by 390% in a nine-month period using this tactic. Here’s what you gotta do:
- Map out your customers’ core problems
- Identify searchable keywords based on those problems
- Organize and optimize old content
- Create new content
Essentially, show your worth in topic areas, not single keywords.
Let Others Help You
It’s a simple, “you scratch my back, I scratch your back” kinda deal. Marketing Masterminds saw a growth in organic traffic by 200% in the past year from their strategy in guests posting.
If you feel like taking an alternative route, go with a Q&A strategy. Global Owls posted short questions that marketers from around the world could answer.
Update older content
Instead of continuing to bombard the online world with sub-par material, upgrade the old content. Why? Because outdated content is bad content. Here’s how you can hit the refresh button on your blogs:
- Add relevant quotes
- Update stats
- Refresh copy
- Do this quarterly
Want more? You know what to do!
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The Problem with Content & How We Fix It
We all know how important content is for marketing. We’ve heard the quote, “Content is king,” about a trillion times.
If that’s the case, why do we see stats like, “Only 39% of marketers are successful at tracking content marketing ROI.” That’s not a great stat. If you want your CEO to understand the value of content marketing, you have to get better at planning out a real strategy and reporting the ROI.
That means, of course, that it’s time for content marketing to grow up.
So how do we do that? According to Casie Gillette from KoMarketing, it comes down to three things:
1) Goals & Strategy. You have to have a detailed strategy with actual goals if you want to be taken seriously. To get there, ask three simple questions:
- What are you creating content for? Think about this carefully. Are you creating content for a reason or just for the sake of creating it?
- What content should I be creating? Find gaps in your content. Do you have a ton of TOFU content and nothing at the bottom of the funnel? If that’s the case, time to fix it.
- Where do I use my time? You only have so many hours in a day/week. You need to prioritize the content that will have an impact on your business. No guessing here.
2) Integration. Stop living in a silo as a content marketer. You need to be more ingrained in the entire company. To do that, Casie suggests a few things:
- Ask Questions. When planning your editorial calendar and creating content, ask questions from stakeholders in other departments. You’re rarely going to be a subject matter expert on a topic, but someone in your company probably will have expertise on the topic.
- Understand the Sell. Marketers often have to work with design and development teams to get things done. Make sure you explain the goals of your work when you ask them for something. Don’t just say, “Hey, I need this to be done.”
- Stay in Your Lane. We know, we just said you have to get out of your silo. And you should, but don’t step on toes when you do it.
We’re outta room in this email, so you’ll have to take the jump for the rest of this post from KoMarketing. And believe us, you’ll want to.
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Dress for Respect
We’ve all heard the saying, “dress for success.” You know, gettin’ all fancied up, wearing suits and ties and all that jazz. It’s fun, but that’s not what we’re talking about today. We’re here to talk about The Dress for Respect.
It’s not uncommon for brands to get behind a certain cause in order to make a change, it actually happens all of the time. We’re particularly a fan of how Schweppes decided to take a stand against harassment in their latest ad.
86% of Brazilian women have been harassed in nightclubs, and most men there don’t even see an issue with that. Nightlife should be full of great moments (here’s where you reminiscence your wildest night out), but great moments only happen when everyone acts with respect.
To show the real extent of this problem, Schweppes took to the sewing machine. They created a dress with sensors hidden inside of it. The sensors tracked how often the women wearing it were touched or grabbed unwillingly while they were out.
The results speak for themselves. Of course we can’t just tell you what they are… you’ll have to watch it for yourself.
“Content marketing is more than a buzzword. It is the hottest trend in marketing because it is the biggest gap between what buyers want and brands produce.”
Michael Brenner
