As marketers, we all want to learn how to easily and effectively turn content into organic (free) traffic.

However, there is fierce competition for the top spots on the search engines, and getting your stuff ranked on the first page can be a huge struggle.

Luckily, ranking on the first page of Google isn’t the only way to bring tons of qualified traffic to your site.

In this post, we’re going to look at a proven, step by step method for boosting your blog’s performance that doesn’t involve ranking in the search engines.

No one can deny the importance of having a successful blog to your business’s growth.

When done right, your blog can be:

• A great source of ever growing, high-quality organic traffic
• The perfect way of attracting your ideal customers with relevant content
• A means of nurturing and pre-selling your audience by providing the information that they need to take the next step in their customer journey
• An effective way of positioning yourself as an authority or expert in your niche, and gaining more credibility in the marketplace
• A way of creating and distributing quality content to attract prospects and convert them into leads.

But, most business owners and marketers face the issue of trying to create high-quality blog content when they are starved for time. They are hyper-busy, and can’t ever find the time to create the type of content that ranks high in the search engines.

So, how do you ensure a consistent flow of effective content to your blog amid all the other blog tasks that you have to do?

By Following Our 3-Step Plan to Boost Your Blog’s Performance

This is a plan that will guarantee that your blog actually serves a function – Intentional Content.

Instead of blogging just for the sake of blogging, or publishing posts that produce no real results, this process helps you create and distribute your content so that it attracts and converts your ideal customers.

You will be able to grow your blog in a highly effective way that is time efficient.

The great thing about this plan is that it works whether you’re starting from scratch with a brand new blog, or you want to give your existing blog a huge boost in performance.

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the three steps to boost your blog.

Step #1: Create Your First Awesome Article

Most bloggers think that in order to be successful with content marketing you have to post multiple times a week.

While there’s nothing wrong with that (if you have the time and energy, or if you can outsource the work), most people who are just starting out don’t have the time or money to do so, and that’s why they need to get the best blogging results possible from as little blogging effort as possible.

So if that’s you, then your first step is to create a single article that is packed full of value.

Yes, just one will do, to begin with, but it has to be good.

No, it has to be EPIC.

Just throwing together a few hundred random words isn’t going to work here. You need to spend as much time on this one post as possible to ensure that it’s better than anything else your competitors are offering on that particular topic.

Your article must be well-researched and insightful.

There are 4 specific types of posts that are great for this:

Post Type 1: The List Post

And not just any list post – it has to be a super useful resource that your audience will want to bookmark and come back to often.

We’re not talking about one of those ‘Top 10 Reasons Why You Should…’ kind of posts.

Your list post should be long (at least 2,000 words), well-researched, and it should answer your audience’s questions better than your competition does.

It should either offer new information or a new perspective. And make sure to include plenty of pictures, examples, case studies, statistics, and so on.

Such content will be a great asset for your blog, and as time goes by you will be able to go back to tweak, add to it and improve it.

The post will attract tons of organic visitors over time, but when you’re just starting out, you have to get traffic flowing to it through paid channels.

If you have done a good job creating an awesome post, you have nothing to worry about here because that post will attract great prospects for you that you can then convert into sales. With this type of strategy, you can set it up so that the traffic pays for itself.

There are a lot of posts on our blog which cover the topics of conversions and monetizing your blog traffic.

But for now, let’s carry on with our examples of blog posts that work great for this plan.

Post Type 2: The How-to Post

These types of posts have always worked great at bringing traffic and they will continue to do so well into the future.

Everyone is looking for answers on how to do stuff and how to do it easier, quicker, cheaper, or whatever else it may be. It’s one of the main reasons why they go online.

But, you need to keep in mind that the internet has become saturated with how to posts over the years, and if you want to create a successful ‘how to’ post, you will need to ensure that yours is far superior than what is already out there.

Your post has to stand out and give extreme value, so take time to look through what is already on offer around that topic, and then craft content that is better than your competitors.

This type of post, when done well, is a great way to position yourself as an expert in your industry.

Post Type 3: The Crowdsourced Post

Although crowdsourced articles perform great online and are very effective for driving traffic to your site, they are among the articles that are least commonly used by marketers and business owners.

With crowdsourced posts, you generate highly relevant content simply by conducting interviews of well-known experts in your particular industry.

This is how it works:

Create a list of five experts in your niche, and then think of three interesting questions to ask each one of them. You should make the questions slightly controversial so that each of them will have a different answer to all the questions.

Next, reach out to the people on your list and ask them those questions. Once you’ve got all their answers, all you need to do is to put it all together into one great big post that is just going to be oozing authority.

The number of experts that you choose to ask and the number of questions that you ask each of them is entirely up to you. The numbers suggested here are just a guideline, but keep in mind that the more experts and questions, the bigger your post is going to be.

With the answers from the well-known experts in your field, you will have a highly relevant post that will generate a lot of interest among your audience.

The one potential barrier in this situation is that you may have a hard time getting a hold of the experts in your industry.

When you do your outreach, use the following tips to give yourself the best chance of success.

How to Land Industry Experts For Your Crowdsourced Post

• Tip #1:

Never ask the experts to ‘write a post’ for you as this will only scare them away (after all, if you don’t have the time, what makes you think they do?)

Instead, ask to ‘interview’ them.

This boosts their ego, and gives you a better chance of getting a yes. Writing a post certainly sounds like work, but being interviewed?

That sounds like something famous and important people do.

• Tip#2:

After getting answers from your first expert, name-drop that expert when approaching others.

It’s going to go must easier when you’re able to say that you’ve already got feedback on the questions from ‘Expert #1’.

When you approach the third expert, it will be even easier since now you can say that you have feedback from two experts. And so on.

• Tips #3:

Use audio if you can.

This will make things considerably easier for both of you. Your chosen experts may not have the time (or the inclination) to write out their responses to your questions, but if you offer them an option to do a short interview, they are more likely to agree.

A phone call is quick and easy to do. Just ask great questions, let the expert do most of the talking, and make sure that you record the call.

This should give you all the content that you need for your blog post.

While we’re on the subject…

Don’t offer to pay these experts for their feedback. Real experts wouldn’t care about getting paid twenty or fifty bucks for a few minutes of their time.

You know what they actually care about?

Exposure. Traffic. Credibility.

These things are even more valuable to them than money, and that’s exactly what you’ll be offering them. Leverage the fact that you’re helping them get their name out there as well as building more authority and credibility.

So, instead of offering money, you could offer to link back to their site in your blog post (which would bring them traffic), and the fact that their answers are appearing alongside other industry experts increases their credibility.

There’s nothing pros love more than being associated with other pros.

Most marketers would shy away from creating such a post because they assume that it must be impossible to get to those ‘big’ guys in their industry, but that is never true.

You’d be surprised at just how many experts in your own industry would be willing to let you interview them if you only ask.

But you’ll never know if you don’t try, so get out there and find some experts to feature on your blog. And now, on to the next type of post, which only applies if you already have a blog.

4. Your Best-Performing Post

This has to do with the posts that you’ve already published on your blog.

Choose the best performing one by looking at your analytics. Look for an article that has performed well in both email and social traffic. For instance, a post that generated lots of social shares, and it should have the highest CTR (click-through rate) from email.

If you find such a post, then you can use that for boosting your blog’s performance, and there won’t be any need for you to write one yet.

Now that you have your article, let’s take a look at the remainder of the steps:

Step #2: Create A Downloadable Resource From That Article

Take your high-quality post and turn it into a lead magnet (a free resource that you give away in exchange for people’s emails). Again, if you’re not sure how to do this, there are posts on our blog that outline all the steps.

After that, create a squeeze page (a simple landing page that is designed for the sole purpose of collecting emails).

This is where you’re going to offer your visitors the lead magnet if they opt-in to your email list.

Next, you need to integrate your squeeze page with your email service provider. If you don’t already have one, there are many to choose from including Aweber, GetResponse, MailChimp, and Active Campaign. You can sign up for a free trial on any of them.

Once that is set up, anyone who signs up through your squeeze page will automatically receive your resource in their mail.

Step #3: Get Traffic To The Post

The next step is to get traffic to that awesome article. How do you do this?

Well, you have two options:

• You can either wait until Google deems your post traffic-worthy, which might take the better part of a year, or…
• You can just go out and buy the traffic.

For anyone who is new to internet marketing, this may be hard to hear because most expect everything to be free, but for experienced, successful marketers, this is a no-brainer.

The only way you’re going to make money from your website is by getting traffic to it. And if you don’t want to have to wait for Google, then you must buy the traffic.

There are tons of ways to get paid traffic to your site, but the simplest way to start would probably be by promoting your post on Facebook. The nice thing about that is you don’t even have to spend much. Just start with $5, $10, or $20 to see what kind of results you get first before you send more traffic.

Now you have a blog post that does more than just generate visitors, it generates leads!

Your next step is to complete this simple process again with another article.

Whether you’re writing them or using articles from your blog, either way you’re going to start seeing a lot more traffic, leads, and sales with this process.

Feel free to post your comment below.  An email address is required but it will not be shared with anyone, put on any list, or used for any kind of marketing, just to alert you if there are any replies. Thanks and happy hunting!

PlanetBizOp.com

->Steven

Updated: Originally published August 31st 2018