rongIf you’ve ever tackled the art of content marketing? I can guarantee that at some point you’ve struggled to get eyes on your content and drive traffic to it.
But if we’re all such good writers, why does this keep happening to us?
The answer is simple:
How To Create Content That Attracts Traffic
Well written, interesting content and effective content are two very different things, and many content marketers fail to bridge the gap between the two.
Thankfully, there is a solution:
You can create tremendous, sustainable SEO results by using the x5 approach when creating SEO-minded content for your blog.
What’s x5?
No, it’s not a BMW—it’s a technique—and as you may have already guessed, x5 stands for “multiply by 5.”
Today, we’re going to go over 2 content marketing techniques for the implementation of the x5 approach into your content writing and white hat SEO strategy:
1. Make Your Content 5x Longer to Maximize Its Success
The average #1 result on Google is 2,416 words. How long is the average piece of content on your blog?
I’d venture to guess it’s quite a bit shorter.
Try multiplying that average length by 5, making each piece more detailed and comprehensive. The longer your piece, the more likely it is to rank for additional keywords, increase users’ time on your site, and create opportunities for users to visit multiple pages.
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These are all factors that will cause Google to improve your page’s rank.
But “long” doesn’t automatically mean “good.”
There’s plenty of 5,000 word dumpster-fire content out there that only exists for keyword stuffing purposes.
In fact, content length itself is not one of Google’s ranking factors.
Here’s is a better way to put it:
Longer content creates conditions that make it more likely for your content to be successful and drive traffic.
It allows for your content to maximize its success with the following factors:
- Longer content allows for more detail and comprehensiveness, making your content more engaging, and more likely to fulfill the needs of a reader.
- Longer content helps you out with Google’s user experience-based ranking factors, increasing time on page, increasing opportunities for conversion, and decreasing bounce rates.
- Longer content gives you the opportunity to create more enticing title tags and meta descriptions (the listing of your page that shows up in a Google search). Think about it: Are people more likely to click on “The Ultimate Guide to Organic SEO” or “A Guide To Organic SEO.” If your post is 300 words long, you’re going to feel really dishonest adding a misleading title tag that disappoints users looking for an “Ultimate Guide.” If your piece is long and comprehensive, then it may very well be the ultimate!
- Longer content allows your piece to rank for more keywords
Speaking of keywords, we’re going to talk about that next.
2. Boost Traffic to Your Content Using Keyword Research
The average #1 result on Google ranks for about 1,000 keywords. How many keywords does an average piece of content on your blog rank for?
I’m not asking to make you feel bad. Really, I’m asking because very few content marketers master the art of keyword research beyond targeting a list of 2 or 3 main keywords to target over and over again in a piece.
Only one listing can be #1 in a Google search, so the bar has been set.
How can you get your content to rank for more relevant keywords?
Before we dive into that, let’s learn about the reason it’s possible to rank for multiple keywords with similar meanings, and why that’s more effective than stuffing the same keyword into a piece of content 1,000 times.
Part of the answer is LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing.
LSI is an algorithmic process Google uses to determine relationships between similar keywords in a given piece of content or on a given web page.
It helps Google understand the relevance of your content to specific search queries.
A great example would be using the search terms “increase website traffic” and “get more website traffic.”
While the two terms have pretty much the exact same meaning, the presence of both of them signals to Google that your content is relevant to that topic.
Another great benefit of LSI keywords is that each keyword comes with its own search volume and traffic potential.
For example, when I plug “get more website traffic” into my favorite keyword research tool (mine is Ahrefs), I see that it gets only about 80 searches per month.
When I type in “increase website traffic,” the average monthly traffic is about 1,000.
Why not include both of these, increase your traffic potential, and along the way, reinforce Google’s interpretation on the relevance of your content?
What are the best keyword research tools for finding somatic keywords?
Below are my top favorites keyword suggestion tools.
LSIGraph – Generate Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Keywords for your SEO content with our free LSI Keyword Generator tool.
UbberSuggest – Find related keywords that use data from Google
SEMRush – Use SEM rush to research topics and keywords for your content
Ahrefs – Ahrefs helps you to learn what your competitors are ranking for, and shows what you need to do to outrank them.
Here are a few more keyword discovery techniques for finding more relevant keywords to include in your content
1. Use a keyword research tool to identify similar keywords to your targeted term
This technique is really quite simple, and it allows you to instantly find multiple keywords related to your originally targeted term.
Let’s plug our original search term, “get more website traffic” into a keyword research tool like Ahrefs again.
While the exact term itself only gets an estimated 80 searches per month, it’s parent topic, “how to drive traffic to your website” gets about 1,500, with a traffic potential of 10,000!
If look down at the “Also rank for” section,” we see a list of similar keywords, along with their traffic potential.
Let’s click on that section and expand it.
All of a sudden, you have a list of similar keywords to your original term, along with their monthly search volume, that you can try to include in your piece to dramatically increase traffic potential.
Not all of these keywords will be relevant to your piece, and you don’t have to use all of them, but many of them, such as “website traffic rankings” and “web traffic” are slam dunks with massive traffic potential.
Easy enough, right?
Here’s another technique:
2. Use Google SERPs to find even more related keywords to use
Have a target keyword in mind? Great!
First, Google it. We will use our trusty “get more website traffic” term.
Now scroll to the bottom, where it says “Searches related to [your query].”
As you can see, Google will give you a list of search queries related to your term.
The best part?
These are keywords that people are actually searching for!
You can repeat this for all of the keywords you found in technique 1, for an even more comprehensive list of quality, relevant keywords to use in your piece.
Pretty cool, huh?
x5 for the win
There are many different elements of content creation and white hat SEO to which you can apply the x5 approach.
For example, you can send out 5 times more promotion emails to earn authoritative backlinks to your content, or spend 5 times longer researching a content topic that actually generates traffic and buzz.
But it all starts with quality, comprehensive, deliberate content.
By taking the x5 approach to the length of your content and the number of relevant keywords you target, you will see a massive increase in traffic to your content and the engagement of those users once they get there.
So what are you waiting for?
x5 away!
Marco Pavoloni is the Director of Account Strategy at Sweor, a Minneapolis Web Design and SEO agency. He believes in writing as one of the greatest forms of self-expression and self-exploration, even if no-one ever reads what you have to say. Of course, as an SEO specialist, his priority is creating content people actually see!
Website: https://www.sweor.com | Twitter: @SweorWebDesign
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