5 Ways for New Publishers to Increase Revenue with Organic Traffic
With over two billion websites online, getting organic traffic is harder than ever before and is only getting increasingly competitive.
When it comes to deciding the best strategy to drive organic traffic to your website, content marketing, SEO, or social media are always up for debate.
Which one works better than the other? Each approach has its value – but they are more effective when used together.
As a new publisher, however, it’s easy to get confused as you try to combine content marketing, SEO, and social media marketing to bring in new visitors to your website right away.
Let’s take a look at five different ways through which you can use each of these strategies to get an immediate boost in organic traffic (and revenue).
1. Create better content pieces
Most publishers tend to think that the more content they publish, the more traffic they will get. However, more isn’t always better unless it is compelling enough to rank on Google.
According to Search Engine Journal, more content can actually hurt you rather than help you:
Image Source: searchenginejournal
While it can be tempting to share repetitive content to get your message across…
You need to talk about topics your readers actually care about and provide sufficient information in every post you publish.
This means that they won’t have to leave your website to look for more information. Is creating that kind of content fun? Not exactly.
You’d rather head over to a content mill to save yourself the hassle and agony of creating and publishing compelling content, right? Wrong.
Rather than focusing on the number of posts you publish, aim for consistency by publishing a post once or twice a week. Take your time to actually write a good blog post and use a proofing tool to make sure it is readable and makes sense.
One of my favorite strategies for creating better content is leveraging current news. For example, check out this post Coronavirus impact on ecommerce, and pet food sales data:
Image Source: commonthreadco
By tapping into the current news cycle, this content is both impactful currently, and a source of future evergreen data.
Once you’re done writing, go above and beyond by adding custom images, charts, and data to boost the user experience and increase dwell time.
For instance, take a look at this sleep health blog that I love. Zoma consistently uses custom images:
And tables with data to improve skimming, too:
That’s a win-win!
I know what you are thinking: Can this strategy be adapted for already existing content? Maybe content that is good, but not great?
Absolutely.
SEO expert Adam from Loganix tells me:
“On-site SEO factors like pagespeed optimization, fresh content additions, or partial rewrites and updates can dramatically improve the impact of your content, and it’s far cheaper than actually creating new blog posts, too.”
A compelling new blog post (or refreshed old one!) will make your new web visitors come back to read more posts on your site while ideally moving themselves through your funnel… Assuming you have one in place.
Over time, your content will help you to build trust with your audience. If you’re lucky, they might also share your posts with their network friends, who could also be potential customers down the line.
2. Start a podcast
A podcast helps you tap into a new audience that you wouldn’t reach through starting a new blog alone. Remember, people consume content in different ways. Podcasts tend to attract those who want to listen during their commute to work, for example.
Your podcast will help you build a personal connection with your listeners who will be curious and naturally want to know more about you by visiting your website.
Did you know that in the past month, 32% of adults in the U.S have listened to a podcast with weekly consumption rapidly rising?
Image Source: statista.com
That’s a lot of listeners and potentially leads for your business!
To succeed with podcasts, you need to establish yourself as an authority, then build an audience.
Start by interviewing influencers in your niche and appearing as a guest on other podcasts. Simply start emailing.
You’d be surprised at how many people are looking for podcast guests! Just email your targets a calendar scheduling link, get them on the phone, and land your interviews.
Once you start hosting your shows, be sure to submit your podcast to Spotify so that your listeners have an easy time finding you.
Also don’t forget when you submit your podcast to include relevant links to content and landing pages in your transcript and show notes to help drive your listeners back to your website:
Image Source: buzzsprout.com
This is key if you want to bring listeners into your funnel and be able to monetize your podcast without running ads.
If you can’t tell already, creating a podcast is one of the best ways to reach new markets and drive organic traffic.
To really get the most out of it, try repurposing your content from your blog posts into a podcast episode, and vice versa.
You can truly do this with any niche and topic. For example, if you wrote a blog post on the best cities for digital nomads, you could easily take that content and repurpose it into a podcast episode.
With this example, you could really expand on the content itself by interviewing people who have lived in the cities discussed in the post and provide even more insight than a blog can go alone.
There’s truly no need to come up with fresh content for both your blog and podcast. Instead, repurpose content and have an intentional content calendar to ensure your content gets seen or heard across all mediums. This is what I call working smarter and not harder!
3. Link Building through Infographics
After creating compelling content that ranks in the search engine results, you need to continue building your domain authority through inbound links. A better domain authority means that your web pages rank better than your competitors in your niche, leading to more traffic.
Infographics can help you get inbound links from authoritative websites at scale. They bring data to life through enticing color combinations, icons, graphs, and charts. That’s why they still influence people’s behavior more than words will ever do.
Plus, any of your readers who are visual learners will certainly appreciate your efforts.
Another great infographic example is this SD-WAN buyers guide from GetVoip:
Image Source: getvoip.com
I especially love this one because let’s be honest, explaining SD-WAN is not the easiest feat in the world…
Especially when you’re dealing with a CEO or CFO as the decision maker and they’ve probably never even heard of SD-WAN… All they know is they need their internet to work and their data secure. On the other hand, someone in the tech department would be familiar with this technology.
So how would you break it down to them? Normally, with visuals… Right?
Do this same thing on your blog and website? This will greatly benefit your audience and your chances of ranking and getting backlinks.
Ready to create your own infographics? Here’s how to go about it:
- Identify an authoritative site that you’d want to get inbound links from
- Identify a topic that will appeal to both your audience and that site’s audience.
- Using these templates from Canva, create an attractive infographic
- Share it with the site’s owner (or whoever is in charge of content) to post it on their website then request for a link pointing back to your website.
- Do the same for other sites and see your ranking improve due increased domain authority
4. Have long-tail landing pages
Once a searcher is ready to buy a product, they will use precise phrases with three to four keywords, reflecting the product or service they are looking for.
As compared to informational keywords, long-tail keywords are not competitive. As you try to rank the content you create, identify the keywords your audience uses when looking for a product or service they need.
If you’re not quite sure where your own page stacks up, you can run a website analysis to perform an seo audit and gauge website traffic to see if your keywords are working for you or not.
Try building websites or landing pages with relevant long-tail keywords and copy that speaks to their needs. This will convert more visitors who are ready to buy the products you promote.
For example, Energy Seek targets different industries and has specific landing pages for each audience segment to boost conversions in each visit:
Let’s say you’re a data collection tool like Forms on Fire and you offer multiple different services but for the same target market.
It would make sense to have a dedicated landing page for each unique offer, right? Typically, the best strategy with landing pages is to keep things direct and with little distractions.
The last thing you want to do is have a landing page with multiple different offers and too many options that confuse and overwhelm the buyer.
Here is a perfect example of how you could segment your different offers. Take a look at Forms on Fire’s landing page for their mobile form app for small businesses:
Instead of just assuming that all of their traffic needs mobile forms, they created a new, segmented landing page describing the benefits of mobile forms, without complicating their existing offering.
The point here is that you don’t have to overcomplicate it or spend thousands having multiple different landing pages designed. You can literally use the same template and just change up the offer or target!
Just make sure you use a CRM to boost conversions because after you implement these tips, you’re going to be flooded with leads!
5. Monetization
There’s no definite number stating how much traffic you should be getting or how big your audience needs to be before monetizing your blog. However, there are two factors you need to consider:
- A consistent amount of traffic to your blog and
- A sizable email list, so you can begin to monetize your blog by sending personalized emails with your offers.
A consistent amount of traffic and a sizable email list are ambiguous. If you’re focused on building an email list, then you know how important it is to measure email metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
Why? Because you can always improve upon these for better results and more revenue through A/B testing email greetings, scheduling times, and more.
But can we put an exact figure on each of these terms? No. Your income goals will determine that.
If, for instance, you want to make $10,000 from your blog, you can promote a product worth $100 to 100 people or a product worth $25 to 400 people.
Again, let your goals guide you. To give you an idea of what’s possible, just take a look at my recent income report:
Image Source: adamenfroy
Summary
I know I just gave you a lot of information. Try not to get bogged down with all the different tasks, though.
It’s important to focus on the main drivers for you because on their own, these ideas won’t drive organic traffic to your website. The truth is, getting massive amounts of traffic to your website will take time because your readers won’t trust you in the first, second, or third encounter.
Patience and consistency will separate you from every other new publisher out there who dreams of making thousands of dollars through affiliate marketing. Not to mention, by providing your audience with valuable content, you increase the odds of a customer referring you to a friend.
With this in mind, start implementing these ideas one by one. Gradually, you’ll start seeing an increase in the traffic you get. Eventually, you will earn your audience’s trust and loyalty, which will eventually convert to making bank in affiliate sales.
Contributor-
Adam Enfroy writes about how to scale your blog like a startup to 400,000 monthly readers at www.adamenfroy.com. He launched his blog in 2019 and is now generating over $70,000/month in revenue. He wants to teach new bloggers how to start a blog and do the same. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, on Instagram.