These days it is not enough to have a pretty website with your services, an about page and a contact form. If you’re looking to drive traffic to your website or blog it’s essential to be offering good, no…wait for it…great…. content. Content is king.
There is so much noise and distraction in the online world, the only way you are going to grab attention and more importantly, hold attention is if you give people great “stuff” to watch, listen, do or read on your site. This might sound daunting, but it doesn’t need to be. Really. We’ve got ways ;
Are you familiar with bounce rate?
They come, they glance they go, ba-boing ba-boing! We are looking to avoid bounce rate, and these days, to do so, we need to be creative.
I talked about 6 easy ways to get traffic to your blog or website in this video last year, so for those of you who would rather watch and listen, head on over here.
Often times the content can be driven from off-site, like Facebook, or a great video ( or series) you produce on Youtube. With a link back to your site you’re gathering folks from the outside and drawing them in. Of course now your job is to keep them on your site, so how to do this? Creativity. Thinking outside of the box.
Check out blender company Blendtec.com’s series of video’s “Will It Blend?”
In this video BlendTec’s CEO Tom Dickson attempts to blend an Apple iPad.
In the past Tom has blended everything from marbles to a tire repair kit and some more insane products, all in the name of sheer entertainment and fun, but guess what? This video series became viral back when no one knew the meaning of the word viral and has garnered monstrous sales for BlendTec simply due to its’ creative and interactive set-up. People send suggestions in, and Tom gives most things (most…the more outrageous challenges like a Volkswagen Beetle I think he’s passed on). By thinking out of the box the company was able to create great fresh content that fans anticipate like their favorite HBO TV drama.
Give them reason to stay. Make your info stand out- pop!- even if its not yours- grab articles, be a forum, or a resource, run a tip of the day, or a contest ,or offer a quiz ,with a prize, either in your blog or in your email e-zine, with a link back to your original post on your site.
The most important thing when creating content is to add value. I can’t state this more emphatically. You don’t have to be Hemmingway, but you must add value. There are a lot of bloggers out there and they are all screaming for your audience’s attention. What is going to set you apart?
The second most important thing is to keep the content “fresh”, another Google update that will help your website or blog get indexed higher in the search engines.
Stale Content = Poor Search Engine Rankings, and conversely:
Fresh Content=Good Search Engine Rankings
If you’re not a writer, hire one, and provide the content, or even easier, share others, making yours the “resource platform”. That’s just as valuable as your own content…sometimes more. No offense.
Bringing in guest bloggers is another way of creating great content and creating good, relevant backlinks for the blogger as well as for yourself.
Heidi Cohen wrote a fabulous blog post called 7 Ways to Curate Content Without Working Too Hard with all sorts of creative ways to garner content that won’t send you to bed with a headache and a scotch.
I need to address an issue here that I’ve been coming across more often these days, so hopefully this will clear the air for folks who bring on guest bloggers.
There seems to be a lot of confusion and wariness about guest blogging these days due to Googles newest Penguin updates, and their warnings around the issue of duplicate content.
The duplicate content you need to be careful with is any content that is taken from another site where there is not appropriate linked credit to the author. What Googles’ latest Penguin algorithms are saying is that any content that has been scraped and reposted as the new site owners content is in violation of the new rules and will be punished by lowering the sites raking. Actually it lowers both sites ranking, even the original site. The other thing they are trying to reduce is duplicate content on a particular domain, so be careful there as well.
The other big thing they are coming down hard on now is relevancy. If you were, say a landscaper and posted my (say) medical blog posts on your site, Google would definately call you out, as that is obvious link farming, and they are cracking down hard on that.
If you have the “expert” posts set up with proper credit and links this will not violate any duplication rules.
Here is the latest info directly from 2013 Google Webmaster Tools to help you better understand what Google is trying to do but it’s essence is this:
“Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the no index meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.”
So think out of the box, but if you’re looking for website traffic, and more importantly, website retention– fans that come back for more and are eager for what you have to offer, do yourselves a favor and create some great content, or if it seems too daunting and you’re not sure where to start, contact me to help you figure it out at Suzen@omaginarium.com, or leave me a comment down below.