How to increase content popularity and site traffic

Even if you are a blogger loved by many with great experience, you will always have both successful materials and not so good ones. Some articles do not reach the audience, while others are cut out in search engines. In most cases, popular posts are “evergreen content”. Such content does not cease to be relevant and useful for quite a long time.

In this article, you will learn some tips to help make your content even more popular.

Try to update old articles

If the old top articles are not updated, they will lose traffic over time. Let's give an example. The Google Tag Manager setup guide received 7K + views in the first three months after it was published. Over the last month - 1.3K. Despite the fact that the article is relevant and in demand, it lacks answers to some of the readers' questions. This can be seen in the comments to the article. In addition, Google regularly rolls out new system updates. In our case, to increase traffic, you just need to update the post. As a result, the updated article will be perceived as new and unique.

Important: be careful with evergreen themes. For example, for more than one year, users have been interested in how to promote a Vkontakte group. It should be borne in mind that the ways of promotion are constantly changing. Or when updating an article on types of floor coverings, keep in mind that the market does not stand still, it is constantly evolving. Coatings, brands, installation methods may change over time, as well as their assessment by visitors.

Update and keep your content up to date (where necessary) regularly. It is necessary not only to correctly enter the keywords, but also to provide useful and verified information.

Promote your newsletter on pages with evergreen content

Popular content receiving traffic can be safely used to generate even more traffic to other pages. This refers to the integration of other online marketing channels. It is enough to add a newsletter subscription form to the page with top posts to get more readers.

To increase the percentage of subscriptions, we recommend using a relevant call to action. You can rest assured that the conversion will delight you. One day, the Fiverr blog decided to make a huge selection of the best deals from the company for 2014, breaking it down into several parts. At the end of each piece, there was a call to action inviting you to subscribe to the newsletter. All new readers received 10 more proposals in PDF format.

As a result, the analytics shows that the subscription percentage increased from 0.54% to 4.82%.

Run regular email digests of the best content

The key is not entirely new content, but relevance. You can safely offer users an article a year ago. It is important that the material is useful, has value to the readers, and is consistent with other materials in the mailing list. Let us remind you that users who read your newsletters are the most loyal and conversion audience.

Link to popular posts in site widgets

Navigation blocks allow you to draw attention to articles that have been published for a long time, raising their rating. Stick to a specific update frequency. It is important not to spam with "hits" along with new publications. Also, don't go overboard with direct anchor entries. If you do not want to invent your own algorithms for ranking articles on a web portal, you can use special plugins - they are abundant in any sensible CMS.

Internal links and not an ounce of SEO

Internal linking is important and no one argues with that. The main thing is not to overdo it with traffic and SEO. Articles should be useful to readers and answer questions they might ask.

We advise you to make a page in the spirit of "Start Here". In it, collect links to the best materials from the blog, which were previously visited by readers. You can try to tell the story with links to top content. To make it easier for users to familiarize themselves with the material, correctly structure the information.

Remember an important point: try to avoid direct occurrences in anchors.

Ask for something in return

Remember the freedom of choice: make sure that users have the opportunity to close the pop-up window. After all, not everyone wants to perform a targeted action. You don’t need to be obsessive, because this way you can lose the reader’s interest in your site, reduce performance. Beggars don't poison anyone, so offer a fair deal right away.

Recycle evergreen content

To achieve the desired popularity, it is highly desirable to act in several mediums at once. Popular content is always available on YouTube, Pinterest, SlideShare and other sites, as well as competitors.

Let's look at an example. Colleagues at KISSmetrics took a couple of Dan Zarella's posts and turned them into three infographics. As a result, the graphics turned out to be more popular. This suggests that it is necessary to use a variety of means to convey content to readers.

Distribute content

Guest blogging is a great opportunity to promote your web resource without investment. The tools are simpler than you might think. To do this, you do not always need to remake or uniqueize articles. Don't be afraid to lose traffic. Believe me, the information noise and the chance to start a dialogue with new people are worth the "lost" views.

The rel = canonical attribute makes it easy to solve the problem of persistent traffic. It will show search engines that the original is stored on your blog. And if the web resource that uses your material does not violate anything, then it will definitely indicate the link to the original source.

Continuously expand and supplement your content

It's okay if you decide to update your article by adding a few paragraphs. But it's better to get serious and broaden the topic. Expand and supplement your content whenever possible. Submissions with more than 2,000 words are ranked better than short texts under 1,000 words. Ready-made materials can be saturated with longtail keys - thanks to this, you will be ranked for several additional queries. Expanding and deepening old articles allows you to increase traffic from Google. Remember that there should not be any water, checking is required. Articles on the site are interesting and useful.

Improve your headlines

How about new media headlines like AdMe or BuzzFeed? These are pipelined formulations that generate interest or emotion from users. If this continues, the Internet will become a big BuzzFeed.

Below are the "baits" that are the most reliable. They can be actively used both in commercial and entertainment Internet. The following words stimulate user interest, resulting in higher CTRs in search results and social media:

1. How to do -
2. Free -
3. You / you -
4. Advice -
5. Why / why / why -
6. The best -
7. Secrets / Tricks -
8. Chic / amazing / ingenious -
9. Simple / easy -

We hope the above tips for writing your dream title will be helpful and helpful.

Use social networks

• Use Open Graph markup. The setup looks like the formation of a compact offer card with a title when reposting a post. If the markup is not selected, the social network determines the image and its caption according to its algorithm;
• Form the reason for opening the post. The text should cause desires to go. Ads with intriguing headlines! You can give only partial information, with an ending in a clickable post;
• Increase the number of likes, comments, reposts. The platform ranks posts according to this principle. Accordingly, the higher the post, the wider the visibility for the audience.

We must remember that nothing is static on the Internet. You can not throw your old materials if you want to increase the popularity of the content and traffic to the web portal. Try to constantly work on your materials and improve your writing skills. This budget method will allow you to increase traffic and customer loyalty several times. By following these simple tips, your site will definitely not resemble an outdated encyclopedia.