No system of online traffic generation works like a quick fix, least of all SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
But getting huge amounts of free (i.e. organic) traffic from Google is endlessly productive for someone willing to do months of regular blogging (aka slogging). Ready for that?
My journey towards attracting traffic to my site began with following all the advice on the Internet from the “gurus.” Some said, “Blog 20% of the time and promote your blog 80% of the time.” Some said the opposite … “Blog 80% of the time and promote 20% of the time.”
None of these methods worked for me. I then decided that, as a solopreneur, I couldn’t do half the things people said I had to do to get more traffic. So I decided to do just one thing I liked doing – and did more and more of it.
I stuck to regular long-form blogging on any keywords in my niche that caught my fancy. I did no promotion at all – except for automatically getting excerpts of my blog published on rotation in social media channels … plus occasional blog commenting. What do you know? It has worked like the blazes! I now get traffic, not in droves, but just the kind of people, 70% of whom are willing to spend buying what I sell. Who wants more traffic than that?
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The simple translation for “organic traffic” is “free traffic.” It refers to the traffic you can get from search engines like Google, Bing, or others, where people are searching for topics in your niche.
If you answer their search queries in a qualitatively superior way, and Google ranks you high on the Search Results Page (SERP) for that search query, you get free traffic from people eager to see your answer to their question.
The two issues to getting such free organic traffic from Google (the biggest search engine of them all, and therefore the most coveted traffic source) are:
One, you have to blog a lot to attract people asking all sorts of questions they need answers for in any topic related to your niche. You have to create many gateways to your site, and each blog post is one more gateway for traffic that thinks it wants to head your way.
Two, it takes time (sometimes months) for Google to evaluate, experiment, and then decide that your answer to the search query is among the best ones for the searcher to see as against competitive blog posts.
If you consistently provide enough and more value to help the searcher with the answer to his query, sooner or later, Google will promote you up and up the results list till you can aim to be on the first SERP page for that search query.
Meanwhile, although you have aimed your blog post at one particular search query, your blog posts may also answer hundreds of other related searches so that you can expect traffic from many angles to your blog post.
The thing about all this is that you have to think of it all like “riding a bicycle.” Initially, you won’t get traction unless you pedal hard and furiously. But after a while, enough momentum is built up, so just pedaling now and then keeps your bicycle in beautiful cruise mode. That’s how blogging works. Blog a lot in the beginning to get that traction.
It’s hard to keep at it furiously in the beginning. Still, as the number of posts in your archive increase, Google starts seeing you as E-A-T-able (i.e., expert, authority, trustworthy) and starts ranking your posts favorably – because you have consistency, quality, and are valuable as a blogger to searchers. You enter cruise mode, and traffic generation becomes more effortless.
That’s a simplistic but honest explanation of how I find traffic generation works. You can try my methods below if you’d like.
Meanwhile, here are two quotable quotes on this whole “organic traffic generation” business. These two experts know what they are talking about.
"Today it’s not about ‘get the traffic’ — it’s about ‘get the targeted and relevant traffic.”
"All content is not created equal. Some content will go viral, generating tons of hot traffic to your blog, while other content will be lost in the archives. If you want more of the first kind, you’ve got to put your readers first."
If you’re unfamiliar with the term “longtail keywords,” here is what they mean. Let’s take a keyword like “shoes.” This is a short head keyword and probably has millions of people searching for it, but it may also be too general or too competitive for you to try writing a blog post that can rank on the Google SERP.
Now, if you take the keyword “shoes for women marathon runners,” you’ve got a keyword with a long tail. It is more specific than the generalized head keyword, and while it may have far fewer searches per month, it may not be so competitive. You’ll have a better shot at ranking on Google for it if your post is truly valuable to a clear segment of women marathon runners.
The secret to getting lots of traffic is to rank as many of your posts high on Google SERPS as you can. This calls for blogging a lot on innumerable longtail keywords (each with a moderate search count and low competition). You need to write somewhere between one post per day to not less than two posts per week.
This strategy is far smarter than aiming for short head keywords with massive search volumes but no chance at all for you to rank your blog post. Lots of ranking blog posts equal lots of traffic – and that too, targeted traffic … because longtail keywords let you answer specific searcher questions without meandering around the topic generally (as you would with a head keyword).
1. Use keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMrush: These tools allow you to enter a seed keyword and generate a list of related keywords and phrases with a lower search volume but are more targeted and specific. You can also look at the search trends, seasonality, and competition for each longtail keyword to decide which ones to target.
2. Use customer language and phrasing: This can be done by analyzing customer feedback, support tickets, social media comments, or discussions on forums to see how your customers describe your products or services. This will give you a better understanding of their language and phrasing and help you identify longtail keywords they are likely to search for.
3. Analyze your competitors for longtail keywords they are targeting: You can identify gaps in their keyword strategy and find longtail keywords that they may be overlooking. Additionally, look at new trends or opportunities in your industry to stay ahead of the competition by targeting longtail keywords they haven’t yet considered.
4. Use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords: These are words and phrases semantically related to your main keywords and can be found using tools such as Google’s related search or LSI Graph. By including LSI keywords, you can improve your chances of ranking for longtail variations of your main keywords, which can help increase the visibility of your content to a broader audience.
5. Focus on the longtail keywords where the user’s search intent is crystal clear: Understanding the intent behind a user’s search query can help you determine what type of content or information they are looking for and create blog posts that tightly align with that intent. For example, if a user is searching for “how to fix a leaky faucet,” they likely have a problem they are trying to solve. You can offer to-the-point, high-quality information to rank well.
6. Find longtail keywords that begin with “What is …” or How to …”: Most of the time, these are the two most important ways people frame their queries. They either would like to know the meaning of some term, concept, or new idea … or they may want to know how to achieve a task or project, or just learn some new skill. Think of all the queries that your target audience may have that expect explanations or action steps.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, Ahrefs is one of my favorite keyword research tools – and I also find their videos very informative and educational. In this video below, for instance, they fully explain how to pick the outstanding longtail keywords that can skyrocket your site traffic. It’s a video I never tire of seeing over and over because every time I watch, I pick up something more I missed last time.
Sam Oh of Ahrefs has the goods on how to look for and pick the best longtail keywords, so go ahead and exploit this knowledge!
What is a buyer’s journey? You will notice that, whenever you buy any product, you will have gone through a journey of information discovery in stages … whether you realized it or not.
For example, you may have noticed you have a problem to solve. That will TRIGGER you to find some answers. Then you will look at the blog posts that answer your initial query, and you will CONSIDER the best one.
In the next part of your journey, you may zero in and CHOOSE one of the options you came across as a possible solution, and give it a TRY to see if it gives you a foretaste of a potential solution.
Then, in the third part of your journey, your trial may have convinced you toBUY a solution and EXPERIENCE both the product and the sales support services of the seller.
In the final and fourth part of your buying journey, the upsell and cross-sell offers the seller gives you may tempt you to REPURCHASE or to become an ADVOCATE for the product and earn commissions for referring your friends.
The whole journey in 8 stages would thus cover: TRIGGER, CONSIDER, CHOOSE, TRY, BUY, EXPERIENCE, REPURCHASE, ADVOCATE.
Now consider this: if you blog on all the questions your target audiences may have at the various stages of their buying journeys, will you not be able to increase your traffic because your answers are leading people to a definite destination they’d love to reach?
1. Questions people have at the TRIGGER stage: People are generally aware they have a problem, but they don’t yet know how to name their problem, perhaps. So they may be searching for something that matches their problem symptoms. For example, if a man has a fallen foot arch problem, he may be looking for ideas around “typical foot arch problems” or “curing foot arch pain.”
2. Questions people have at the CONSIDER stage: Searching at the TRIGGER stage may have yielded some possible ideas, which include shoes that have arch support. At this stage, therefore, the man may look to explore some 4-5 shortlisted shoes and have questions like “how to evaluate a good shoe for arch support” or “what to look for in arch support shoes.”
3. Questions people have at the CHOOSE stage: Having understood what criteria to use to evaluate shoe brands with arch support, the man may now need to choose one shoe that best fits his budget, foot size, type of usage, etc. Questions he may have at this stage would possibly include, “Does the price of Brand X justify its value?” or “How do Brand X and Brand Y compare on arch support, given their same prices?”
4. Questions people have at the TRY stage: Having decided on one of the shoe brands after much information-gathering, the nature of questions at the trial stage would become more transactional. For example, the man may ask, “Is there a money-back guarantee if I try this shoe?” or “What is the returns policy of this brand if the shoes don’t match my expectations?”
5. Questions people have at the BUY stage: If the questions asked so far have begotten the right answers, the man may now be tempted to buy the shoe after the trial period and again ask more transactional questions like “What after-sales service and support will I get?” or “Is this shoe merchant using a safe payment gateway?”
6. Questions people have at the EXPERIENCE stage: If the shoe feels great after buying, the man may become “sold” on the seller, his products, and his service. He may then be ready to REPURCHASE other shoe designs or shoe accessories, or even become an ADVOCATE of the product by referring friends and family. Questions on his mind may be, “Is there a discount on the new extra pair of shoes I want to buy?” or “How much commission can I earn by referring friends to this website?”
I’ve never seen a better explanation of how the buyer’s journey works than the videos by Hubspot. They don’t follow my 8-stage buying journey concept but have their own buying journey model. Nevertheless, here in this video, I have chosen for you (below), there is a brilliant detailing of the stages of the buyer’s journey as people proceed from knowing they have a problem to actually finding and buying a solution and then going on to become loyal to a brand. The bridge that links each stage of the buyer’s journey is information (i.e., your blog posts that answer all the questions your target customers may have as they proceed on their journeys).
When it comes to increasing your organic traffic, it’s about attracting people with an end goal of buying rather than just those with an idle browsing attitude. That way, with less traffic, you can hope to convert more sales.
There are some excellent sources of information about which types of content attract the most organic traffic. It’s no surprise to me that the latest findings of research from Hubspot, Semrush, and Ahrefs pick blogging to be THE most effective organic traffic generation method.
Now, how many blog posts do you need to start seeing great organic traffic? According to a survey by Hubspot, companies that publish at least 16 blog posts per month receive 3.5 times more traffic than those that publish fewer than four posts. According to Google 2022 updates, companies can get 3 times more leads by publishing more than 400 blog posts than when they publish less than 400 blogs.
Experts recommend writing blog posts that have between 1,760 and 2,400 words. The general rule of thumb is that the more detailed a blog post is, the higher its quality. Semrush in 2021, discovered that businesses with a blog receive 55 percent more visitors to their website than those that don’t. They also produce 67 percent more leads every month.
Just so you don’t get the impression that only A-lister bloggers get all that lovely organic traffic, here’s a blogger I follow who wrote the article “How I Increased My Organic Traffic By 500% In 10 Months (And Doubled Them In A Year) – read what he says:
“Increasing the number of blog posts produced is one surefire way to increase the organic traffic of any blog. As you increase the number of blog posts, the number of keywords you are targeting also increases at a much higher rate, and it naturally attracts more organic traffic. It works even better when you target long tail keywords. Such keywords are much easier to rank and usually attract better-quality traffic.”
Moral? More blogging = more traffic. More blogging on longtail keywords = more targeted traffic. Don’t watch for rewards. Just keep writing … and writing … and writing. Traffic will follow.
1. Start with a clear outline: Before you begin writing, create an outline that breaks down the main points and subtopics you want to cover in your blog post. This will help you stay organized and focused as you write. Remember, the more points and sub-points you include in your blog, the more Google will give you brownie points for topic authority.
2. Use subheadings and formatting: Break up your blog post into smaller sections using subheadings, bullet points, and other formatting tools. This makes it easier for readers to scan and understand the content. Long-form content will work really well for your audiences only if it is readable, even on small screens.
3. Include visuals: Add images, videos, and other visual elements to your blog post to help break up text and make it more engaging, entertaining, and educative. Visuals elements not only add to the variety of material in your blog posts but create natural breaks and breathing space for readers from reading large passages of text.
4. Use examples and anecdotes: Use real-life examples and anecdotes to illustrate your points and make your blog post more relatable to readers. The last thing you should do on long-form blog posts is to adopt a preachy tone throughout your 5000+ words essay. You are not writing a thesis. Your blog post’s got to be very conversational.
5. Research and cite sources: If you’re writing about a specific topic, be sure to do your research and cite any sources you use. This will make your blog post more credible and trustworthy. But one thing is not okay. A ploy that many bloggers use is to quote very long passages from other people’s posts in the guise of citing them. Not the best idea!
6. Edit and proofread: Before publishing your blog post, be sure to edit and proofread it for grammar, spelling, and other errors. This will help ensure that your blog post is polished and professional. But, phew … this is the tough part of writing uber-long blog posts. What I prefer to do is to proofread every main section as I complete it, so I don’t have to do it all at the end.
Clint Mally has a great video on the length of your blog posts. He explains why long-form blog content gives you great results, what those results are, and how long your content should ideally be. I agree with Clint that part of the success of long-form blog content may be because not too many people have the personal gumption to attempt really long articles, and also, when they do try long-form blogging, they “fluff” their content just for the sake of making it long. Readers can quickly figure out that you are trying to make an elaborate point to fill up the word count.
If you notice my blog posts, they are very long – but I have a template I follow to pack in value. Go through this post you are reading to see my template. Get yourself a long-form blog post template that works for you and your target audiences – and pip your competition on the rankings.
I know what I am about to write here may raise the hackles of many a blogging “guru,” but I have to say it. People who have already published thousands of blog posts, before so much online competition started, have the leeway to now declare to others that they have to do 20% blogging and 80% promotion.
They may say that now, but if you go into the history of all those writers with thousands of posts, they blogged and blogged and blogged – sometimes even doing three blog posts a day! The thing that seems to be working for them is that they have built a solid archive of hundreds and thousands of posts that are “evergreen” (i.e., valuable always and not time-limited). Even today, if someone searches for the topics they have written about, their oldest posts may turn up in the search results.
If beginner bloggers, or even those with some posts, spend a large part of their time promoting their blogs instead of writing new blog posts, there may be a temporary spike in the traffic a blog post gets, but it will soon subside, and they’ll be back to the traffic drought.
Having more blog posts in your archive ensures that every one of your posts is eternally battling it out for rankings. That’s what compounds your traffic, not the tiny spikes of traffic you get from the social promotion of your blog posts or getting influencers to shout out on your behalf.
I believe in what the guys at the Income School (notably Ricky Kesler says). Don’t waste time getting wee traffic spikes; keep adding more and more blog posts that can all jostle every day against the competition to get rankings. That’s the way to create compounding and sustainable traffic.
1. Set clear and achievable goals for yourself: This will give you direction and a sense of accomplishment when you meet them. It’s not the right way if you’re doing 40 blog posts one month and nothing the next month. Regularity and consistency is the key. So plan something like “two posts per week” or “one post daily” and stick to this plan.
2. Create a schedule and stick to it: Set aside time for writing and make it a non-negotiable part of your daily routine. I know some people who are morning birds … they wake up at 5 am and crank out their quota of blog posts. I also know others who wait till the family sleeps at night and go hell-for-leather on their blogging when the house falls silent. Go with your bio-rhythm, but get the scheduled work done.
3. Use prompts and ideas lists to inspire your writing: Keep a list of potential topics or post ideas you can refer to when you need inspiration. I’ll tell you a trick I use. I check my competitors for topics they’ve covered by putting them on my Feedly reader. Every morning I’ll pick ten topics from what they’ve written (not necessarily their article topics, but even topics that may pop up inside their article paragraphs).
4. Write in short bursts: Break your writing sessions into shorter, focused sessions rather than trying to write for long stretches at a time. Get a Pomodoro Timer from Amazon if you like nutty gadgets. Its’ nothing but a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato (Pomodoro is the Spanish word for tomato). Set it for 25 minute writing sessions with 5 minute breaks.
5. Eliminate distractions: Find a peaceful place to write and eliminate potential distractions, such as social media or email notifications. Notice I did not say it has to be a quiet place. That’s because many people need some ambient noise – like that in a busy cafe or a home with a dog that barks often. For those who cannot get the actual noise, there are even recorded sounds of ambient noise to play while you write.
6. Reward yourself for reaching your writing goals: Give yourself a small treat or reward after reaching your writing goals to help keep you motivated. After every completed and published blog post you may want to allow yourself a teensy treat of some forbidden foods you crave. It feels really good to do your work and then cheat a bit on your diet, I assure you!
You must watch this video from my friends at the Income School (notably Ricky Kesler). They explain how blogging more is the answer to spectacular traffic results. Everything else (including blog promotion, hunting for backlinks, spending time on social media to spread word-of-mouth, or reaching out to other bloggers) is nothing but a distraction from producing more blogs.
I liked the sound of that. I am a solopreneur, and doing all that promotional work will be tough. Besides, Ricky’s method works so well … why would I want to waste time getting small spikes of promotion-kindled traffic when I can keep creating more blog posts that can all drive traffic to me as long as they live on Google’s index.
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Rather than guest blogging to get noticed by visitors of other websites (an oft-recommended but poor way to get traffic), what works for me is to get significant experts to be my interviewees. I chat them up over email (or record videos of Zoom calls), and I then publish interviews with them on my site. Anybody who gets interviewed invariably does their bit in promoting the interview on social media, so I don’t have to do that job.
But more interestingly, when I call in the B-listers for interviews (rather than the experts at the top of the pyramid – the A-listers), they are usually very forthcoming and often share excellent tips because they too are in an experimentation and progress-towards-the-top mode.
When you invite people of your level or just above you in the expertise ladder in your niche, you also make friends for life. Plus, there are lots of opportunities to collaborate with them later. Their readers visit your site to see what their hero has said, and the traffic does spike. If you’re lucky, some followers will like your style, too, and subscribe to your mailing list.
I have seen some bloggers do “reverse guest posting,” i.e., allowing others to post on your blog, so their followers will become your traffic. But rather than let anyone else add their brand voice directly to your blog, I personally find it immensely useful to conduct interviews where I am the person in control. I can ask the right questions highlighting my brand and get a rub-off from the interviewee’s brand power.
This whole thing often works in a reciprocal mode, so if your interviewees call you for a reverse interview, be sure to accept the idea.
1. Set a clear agenda and share it with the interviewee beforehand: Outline the main topics covered during the interview. Identify any specific questions you plan to ask. Estimate the length of the interview and schedule a particular time and date. Share the agenda and date/time details with the interviewee via email.
2. Test your technology and internet connection before the interview: Test your internet connection speeds, video conferencing software, camera, and microphone and before the interview. Make sure your device is fully charged or plugged in during the interview. Give your interviewee instructions on face lighting before the interview.
3. Use a professional background and dress appropriately: Avoid busy or cluttered backgrounds that may be distracting. Choose a neutral background, such as a plain wall (or that ubiquitous bookshelf, if you must). Dress should be semi-formal, and hair, face, or accessories must be minimally done and tidy. Maintain good posture during the interview.
4. Conduct the interview in a structured format: Begin with open-ended questions that allow the interviewee to share their thoughts and experiences. Once you’ve covered the initial topics, ask more specific questions to gain a deeper understanding of the interviewee’s experiences. Allow the interviewee to finish their thoughts before asking another question.
5. Watch how you close an interview: Before ending the interview, summarize the main points covered during the conversation. Confirm any next steps that will be taken after the interview, such as allowing listeners to send in questions to you for specific answers fr0m the interviewee (if that was agreed upon earlier).
6. End the interview on air as well as by email: Express your appreciation for the interviewee’s time and their willingness to share their experiences. Close the call in a professional and courteous manner. Send a thank-you email or note to the interviewee after the interview to thank them for their time. Add that you can return the favor any time.
Ian Brodie is an expert himself. When he talks, people listen. And when he asks questions, people answer. In this video below, he teaches the art of conducting expert interviews online – these can be traffic stoppers! Ian recommends something important when he says, “Who are the people you can interview on your website? Anyone who is an expert whose opinion and ideas would be valuable to your target audience. Think through what people might want to hear and who has useful information about that.”
He also suggests that people who have just written a book or are launching a new program could be among those very willing to be interviewed, and those are the low-hanging fruit to go after. Besides, there will be much to talk about without sounding forced with the questions.
There are two technical areas where you need to get savvy on improving your site for greater traffic. One, ensure that your site is genuinely device-responsive, especially for mobile reading. More people are reading blogs on their mobile devices these days than on laptops.
Two, do everything you can to improve page speed – it adds a lot to the user experience of your site if eager treaders (that hard-won traffic) doesn’t have to wait for your site to download long after that click into your space.
There are many ways to make your site content mobile responsive. One, you can choose to have two different sites – one for laptops and one for mobiles, where the second one has a design and content tailored for mobile readers. Two, you can use Progressive Web App (PWA) technology which simulates an app-like feel without actually building a mobile app.
Or three, you can put all your website in a mobile responsive mode while designing your website, if you use a website builder like Elementor Pro, which allows you to see previews of your site on a laptop, tablet, or mobile mode as you build your site, so you adjust everything as you go along.
To make your site’s user experience outstanding, you have to use every tactic you can. User experience is not rocket science … it’s that feels of ease, comfort, and clarity with the arrangement of your site that makes a reader sigh with satisfaction. Cut the clutter, make navigation easy, and make your space an engaging hangout.
1. Make sure your site is easy to navigate: This can be achieved by having a clear and consistent layout, using intuitive labeling and organization of content, and providing a search function. Offer a clear and visible site navigation menu and breadcrumb navigation to show users their current location within the site allows them to easily navigate back to previous pages.
2. Gather and analyze user feedback: This can be done through surveys, user testing, or monitoring user behavior on the site through tools such as heat maps. By understanding how users interact with the site and their needs and pain points, you can make targeted improvements that will enhance their experience.
3. Optimize your site for accessibility: This means making sure the site can be used by people with disabilities, such as those who are blind or have low vision. This can be achieved by using proper heading structures, providing alternative text for images, and ensuring that all functionality can be operated using a keyboard. By improving accessibility you can improve the experience for a wider range of people.
4. Use clear and concise language and visual elements: Avoid using jargon or technical terms unfamiliar to the majority of users. By communicating in a straightforward and easy-to-understand manner, users can find what they need and complete tasks more efficiently. Also, visual elements such as images, diagrams, and videos can help break up text and make the content more engaging and easier to understand.
5. Create a sense of trust and security for users: This can be done by including trust seals, displaying customer reviews, providing clear privacy and security policies, and using SSL encryption. Additionally, providing easy and clear options for users to contact customer support or get help if they have any issues can also help to build trust and provide a positive user experience.
6. Personalize the user’s experience: This can be done by using cookies to save user preferences, or by recommending products or content based on their browsing history. Personalization can make the user feel like the website is tailored to their interests, and can increase their engagement and satisfaction. Additionally, providing options for users to save their progress, such as in a shopping cart or form, can also help to improve the user experience.
Flux Academy has a great video that explains all the user experience design factors to take care of. Why do you need to focus on user experience as a traffic generation idea? The answer is here: let’s assume your site ranked on Google and someone clicked on it. When they get to your site, they hate how it looks and behaves. They jump right out. Now Google will treat that as a poor experience and demote your rankings (i.e., loss of rankings and future traffic). Do you want to lose the traffic you fought so hard to get to your site in the first place?
Watch this video and do just as much as it teaches you, and I promise you’ll have people loving your website enough to come by again and again.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not an anti-guest-posting supremacist. In fact, I used to be an active votary of guest-posting for more traffic till I saw all that was going on in the guest-posting world – and it was not nice.
For starters, there were reputed people who used to allow guest posts because they needed more content on their website to get traffic for themselves. If we guest-posted on their sites, we too could expect a share of the traffic through the one or two backlinks they allowed us.
But now, because of the entire blogger population scrambling for backlinks and being willing to pay an arm and a leg for these, even people of renown are selling guest-posting space on their sites. I get gazillion emails a day offering the moon for a guest post with one measly “do follow” link!
The other thing that happens is that after all the hullaballoo of guest-posting, one fine day, without a word to you, your post is removed, and someone else (a higher paying customer?) has his post up on a similar topic. Or suddenly, all “do follow links” are changed to “no follow links, with an email saying “do follow” links are now at a price … or some such jiggery-pokery goes on.
Even if we decided to ignore the ugly underbelly of guest posting, the traffic from guest posting is measly. Guestpost.com itself says, “Direct traffic from the links in guest posts is pretty minimal. Some posts only brought in a few dozen views, coming from reasonably high-profile sites. Heck, a guest post on Business Insider only brought in 531 hits.”
Instead of guest posting, I find it easier and more fruitful to do blog commenting (more of that later in this post).
1. Quality control issues can harm you: Guest posting can be risky because you rely on the quality of the guest blogger’s content. If their content is not high quality, it can negatively impact your website’s reputation. A site I thought of as reasonable good suddenly started outsourcing content from Fiverr, and the quality went down drastically. What can you do about your brand value if your past guest posts exist on a site that has descended to the dumps?
2. Lack of personal control can spoil your image: When you guest post on another website, you have less control over how your content is presented and promoted. This can make getting the traffic you want from the guest post challenging. For example, if your content requires some visual charts to go with it to make it valuable, but the guest poster publishes your post without such visuals, you will look like a half-baked brand.
3. It’s time-consuming to find guest-posting opportunities: Finding and reaching out to relevant websites for guest-posting can be time-consuming and may not yield the desired results. Nobody has quite calculated the time it takes to make idea pitches, wait for responses, accept the negative replies, and then tweak the post and find another host to guest-post the same ideas.
4. Search engines can dump penalties on you: If the website you guest post on is penalized by Google, it can negatively impact your website’s search engine rankings. And let’s face it, Google thinks most guest-posting frenzies are ways to build backlinks, so there is a tendency to watch you with suspicion. I’d rather not have Google put me on a watch list by guest-posting too often (if only I knew what “too often” means to Google!)
5. Link quality of the host may be detrimental to you: Even if you are not guest-posting for backlinks and only doing so for traffic, the quality of backlinks the host site has will affect how you are perceived. Not all links are created equal, and if the website you are guest posting on has low-quality links, it can harm your website’s link profile and search engine rankings.
6. There’s limited reach from guest posting: Guest posting on other websites limits your reach to the audience of that website. Each site has its own target audiences that may or may not exactly overlap the exact target audience you want. Guest posting may not be as effective as building your own audience through organic traffic.
This video from Matt Cutts of Google came out quite a while ago, but I thought you should see it again (if you have or haven’t seen it before). If I were you, I’d watch the body language of Matt Cutts more than just what he is saying. That speaks a lot to me about what Google really thinks of guest posting. And besides, you can see from the viewer question Matt Cutts is answering that the blogger has asked about guest-posting for backlinks (the grand obsession!).
I think this video tells me not to tread the fine line that Google is drawing between guest posts that are “okay” versus guest posts that are “not okay”. The only issue is that despite all his detailed explanations, even Matt Cutts can’t quite say where that fine line is drawn by Google.
Blog commenting, as a powerful weapon for getting qualified traffic, was first brought to my attention by my good friend Ryan Biddulph, who has written the ultimate book on Blog Commenting, (really worth buying and reading).
On several of my posts I used to find Ryan leaving a very thoughtful short comment, that I started thinking to myself “Who is this person?” I grew curious and started reading his blog. I chanced upon his book and bought it, and since then I’ve been a fan of the blog commenting method of getting my traffic. That’s how powerfully blog commenting works.
(Caveat: there are a lot of people who think we must leave blog comments for backlinks, which is again misleading as a goal. The objective should be “getting qualified traffic” and not backlinks.)
Set up Feedly reader to see the latest blog posts every day from your chosen expert authors and blogs in your niche. You should aim to be one of the early ones to comment because only the first few comments are generally read by blog post readers.
Read the blog post thoroughly and add your comment on any point in the article that catches your attention strongly. Let your comment be short but be very conscious of how you are showcasing your brand authority with that comment.
The post owner will be thrilled to see comments on his blog and if you do it regularly, you will befriend that person. I have found that a lot of terrific quality traffic to my site includes other commenters on the same blog post. This kind of traffic is full of “ready-for-active-engagement” kind of people. And it’s far easier to get their attention by writing a comment than a whole guest post!
1. Comment on relevant and high-traffic blogs within your niche: Leave valuable and insightful comments that add to the conversation. This will increase the visibility of your blog and attract more traffic. It’s not the length of your comment but the points you make that raise your brand profile and beget traffic to your site.
2. Include a link to your blog or website in your comment signature: This will allow readers who are interested in your comment to easily find and visit your website, potentially leading to more traffic. Avoid putting in lengthy links to your blog posts. Just a link to the home page of your site will do. Hopefully, your home page will lead people to explore your site more deeply.
3. Participate in blog commenting communities: Blogging communities are groups of bloggers who usually comment on one another’s blog posts. By actively participating in such communities, you can get your name and your blog in front of a large audience, which can help drive more traffic to your site. By actively participating in these communities, you can get your name and your blog in front of a large audience.
4. Make sure to always follow the blog’s commenting guidelines: Each blog may have different rules and etiquette when it comes to commenting, so be sure to read and follow them. By adhering to the guidelines, you increase the chances that your comment will be approved – and it will also help you avoid getting your comment flagged as spam.
5. Timing is important: Try to comment as soon as possible after a post goes live. This way, your comment will be among the first ones and has more chances to be seen by other readers and the blogger himself. Additionally, it will also help you to join a conversation while it’s still fresh and active, and increase the chances of getting a reply or a site visit.
6. Be consistent in your commenting: Blog commenting can be a long-term strategy to drive traffic to your blog. By consistently leaving valuable and relevant comments on a variety of blogs within your niche, you can build a reputation as a thought leader and increase the visibility of your own blog. This will help you to establish relationships with other bloggers and readers over time, which can lead to more traffic to your blog.
My blog commenting mentor I talked about, Ryan Biddulph, has given a video interview on exactly how to comment – using his method to bring high-quality traffic to your site. Listen to what he says because he knows blog commenting like the back of his hand. The interesting part of Ryan’s method is to do “genuine blog commenting,” as against just being able to tick off 10 comments on your to-do list every day, done in a useless way. You have to put some thought into what you want to say in your comment, and it has to add solid value to the post.
As Ryan says, people who read blog posts also read the comments because they like to know what oters think of the post. If your comment catches their fancy (and makes them curious to know who has made this valuable comment), they can click your name and arrive at your site.
1. Getting organic traffic in a steady stream that can become exponential – and that too, highly targeted traffic – is not a quick-fix game. It takes months of consistent blogging. Yet it is the cheapest way to build massive traffic to your site.
2. You must build a starter archive of at least 50 blog posts to see some traction … and then keep adding to that at a regular pace of at least 2 blog posts per week or more. By doing so, you create many gateways to your site, where each blog post is one more gateway for traffic that can head your way. Also, everyone of your posts will produce traffic eternally, so long as it remans in the Google index. So your traffic will not just grow, it will compound.
3. Feel free to use my list of 8 eminently do-able steps to build your organic traffic. It’s a battle-tested plan I have used to grow my own entrepreneurial venture and my clients’ businesses.
Most experts liken organic traffic generation to the growing of the Chinese Bamboo. For the first four years after planting, there are no shoots at all. None. Then in the fifth year, the Chinese Bamboo suddenly shoots up to 80 feet in just 2 months. It’s not by a miracle. It’s been building its root structure invisibly to sustain its eventual height. That how your traffic pattern inflow will grow.
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Give yourself truly big benefits.
Get my weekly newsletter packed with cutting edge brand content tips, tricks, tactics, techniques, and trends. I scour the Net for you.
Use my Privilege Discount on all my products and services – at any time, without limit – as long as you’re uninterruptedly subscribed.
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