Have you ever heard of a business growing its online sales without getting traffic?
That’s because there’s no such thing.
Traffic is the LIFEBLOOD of any business growing online. It’s simple — no eyeballs on your business equals no customers. And no customers equals no sales.
And if you lack the deep pockets of an Amazon or an Apple (which, let’s face it, is 99.99% of us out here), you need to generate at least some organic traffic.
Now, you’ve probably already tried to research how to increase organic traffic using internet marketing — but the consensus is that:
- You better do your research and implement SEO best practices in every single post
- You better have a lot of time to dedicate to creating high-quality content each and every single day
Let’s cut to the chase — there’s a better way forward.
In this article, we’re going to show you eight lesser-known, highly-effective ways to increase organic traffic with less content.
Paid vs Organic: Which Traffic Type Works Better in 2020?
As the battle between organic growth and paid traffic — and which is the more value-laden, cost-effective strategy overall — rages on, let’s quickly make one thing clear.
Each of these has a significant impact on your traffic and they each have a role to play.
A key difference between the two comes down to this:
- With paid methods, you’re investing a recurring fee that continues to increase to pull in guaranteed traffic through a search engine
- With organic methods, you’re investing a recurring amount of time to attract traffic through a search. It takes a while to ramp up this type of content marketing before it gains momentum.
And it’s not either/or. Paid search results get 150% as many conversions from direct clicks, when compared to organic search results.
But, that’s only if and when people click. 70-80% of searchers ignore paid ads and first focus on organic results when they do a search.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/seo/seo-vs-sem/
There’s a caveat to that dreamy percentage of organic searchers: they consume content but won’t convert into buyers right away.
It also takes a while for your website to appear in first-page ranking results.
In short, experts agree: Though content marketing for organic search works like magic, don’t expect it to be an overnight success.
It does take around six months to a year to truly ramp up its results.
However, strategic methods can help you increase organic traffic while significantly shortening that phase where it feels like you’re in a desert of customers, visitors, and readers.
How to Increase Your Organic Traffic with Less Content
Increasing your organic traffic with less content requires you to see every aspect of content creation as an opportunity to gain organic traffic.
These “opportunities” are everywhere, if you know what to look for.
But let’s take the guesswork out of it: We’re going to outline eight simple but powerful techniques to amplify organic website traffic with less content.
(Hint: What you have is already more than enough).
1) Invest in Guest Posting and Outreach
Guest posting and outreach is such a powerful method of increasing organic traffic that Brian Dean has an entire section of his SEO strategy blog dedicated to it (the Skyscraper method being just one example), and online writing guru Jon Morrow has an entire course dedicated to its mastery.
Let’s be clear — a successful guest post needs high-quality content by expert writers.
And if you don’t have the time or expertise to build this kind of dedicated team, it’s best to use an external service.
The goal is to get backlinks, which then have a direct influence on your overall search engine optimization strategy.
Not only does it multiply your brand’s channels of visibility, it also increases your authority.
“My preferred way to get backlinks is by guest posting.
There are a ton of blogs that accept guest posts on a weekly basis. Guest posting gives me more exposure, and I am able to create a piece of content, or a resource, that will be on the internet forever. It’s truly the most rewarding type of backlink.” — Ben Walker, Loganix
Resource: Avoid These 8 Link Building Mistakes to Future Proof Your SEO Efforts
2) Choose the Right Email Finder
And this takes us to the very next part of your generating enough organic search traffic to make your guest-posting strategy work — outreach.
In fact, email outreach is one of the most effective ways to:
- Promote a piece of quality content (especially content that already exists but didn’t get enough views when it was first published)
- To request a backlink
- To form a partnership or collaboration with an influencer that’s right for your brand
It’s called content amplification. When you promote and distribute content you already have, you can boost organic traffic growth.
To do this, you’ll need to get the contact details of the person you’re hoping to reach. This information may not always be easily available, especially if the individual you’re trying to communicate with is a key decision maker.
So finding and using the right email finder can make all the difference. The right email finder is easy-to-use and connects seamlessly with your email, CRM and other sites such as LinkedIn.
As a bonus, look for a platform that offers a Chrome extension, to make your outreach even smoother.
Recommended Article: More About Website Traffic
3) Broadcast to a Multilingual Audience
This technique is Neil Patel-blessed.
So you know it works, right?
But, seriously, if you’re not translating your pre-existing content to other languages, you’re missing out on a large chunk of potential visitors that would actually find value.
And just how large is that chunk? Well, when Neil decided to run his own translation experiment, he found that it boosted traffic by 47%.
His number of new users jumped 60%.
So how can you mimic Neil’s results? He does walk you through a step-by-step flow on how to implement translations, but it’s a long time investment.
If you have the team and time, it’s a great way to maximize your translation traffic.
If not, consider a workaround.
Using translation platforms, you can outsource your content translations to a team of native speakers.
Translators can help the integrity of your content’s quality stays intact while also appealing to the colloquial idioms of your newfound audience.
4) Offer Value Through an Interactive Tool
Getting more traffic is one of the best ways to, well, get more traffic.
Let’s recap: When a post or a page on your site receives an influx of visitors, this signals to Google’s SERP rankings that your site is popular. The more popular your site is, the better its overall ranking.
What’s more, this technique will help you gain linkbacks from other content creators.
Here’s how it works:
- Create a page that features a major aspect of your overall services. You only have to create this content once and you don’t need to make the copy too long. Keep it between 500-800 words, max.
- Next, introduce an interactive tool that directly connects to your service — for example, if you offer content marketing services, you could create a Keyword Wrapper tool or a BulkWord Count Checker.
- Hundreds of other content creators who want to bring value to their own readers will use your tool.
Another good example of these interactive tools is offering a calculator.
Businesses working in the real estate, finance, or even life insurance space can create and embed a simple calculator that becomes a valuable tool for prospective clients.
Brian Greenberg, CEO of True Blue Life Insurance told me “implementing the interactive quiz calculator on our site has been the single biggest conversion breakthrough we’ve ever experienced. Period.”
However, it’s also a valuable tool for writers who are creating content around the insurance industry.
5) Invest in Social Media Ads
Social media ads are a great way to do many things at once:
- Create compelling campaigns that drive conversions directly to a sales page
- Retarget individuals who have already have familiarity with your brand or business (also known as the “Rule of Seven”)
- Redirect individuals to your content (driving more traffic)
…and more.
When it comes to content, social media ads can present your pre-existing content in an entirely new light:
“The greatest unlock to your ad account will not come from audience adjustments or bid strategies.
It comes from presenting your product in the most compelling way possible — new angles to sell to new customers.” — CommonThread Collective
6) Embed Pre-Existing Ad Content and Optimize Your Page
Chances are that you’ve got content sitting on a page that, firstly, isn’t optimized, and, secondly, isn’t providing adequate traffic to your other content.
There’s a way to fix that.
First off, focus on optimizing a post or a page:
- Research keywords that are relevant to your industry and make sure that these show up in the page’s copy
- Next, find three to five posts, pieces of content, or pages that you can link to within the copy
- Embed any videos and images made by your brand, explaining how your product or service works. These content types cut down on the need for more written content while still keeping your audience engaged.
In fact, pages that use embedded video content experience conversion rates that are 34% higher. That’s why it’s a good idea to embed video within a landing page, like InFlow does:
This method is also a great way to repurpose ad content that you may have created for campaigns, but could use a fresh breath of life.
Notice how this landing page from LFA features details about their product, but ends with a series of “curated” articles that they’re positioning as “related.”
(7) Create Once, Repurpose Again
People focus a lot on blog posts that bring a ton of value to readers — and which also tend to convert readers into buyers.
These include formats like the quintessential “How To” post or the “Curated List” post.
Blog posts that are greater than 3,000 words get more than three times more traffic and four times more shares.
And while the blog post is definitely effective, it gets a run for its money from the all-mighty Case Study.
Case studies are like a super-juiced, highly-actionable, long-form blog post.
They tend to break down exactly what worked and what didn’t. They also include screenshots, takeaways, links to useful resources, and related internal links.
And this means you can repackage these behemoths into smaller, more digestible bites:
- Creating memorable Twitter quotes linking back to the case study
- Using screenshots as images for a post on Facebook
- Simplifying your case study as a LinkedIn post
- Including it as a LinkTree link in an Instagram bio
- Using it as a content upgrade (an embedded lead magnet behind a newsletter subscription wall) in another blog post
Case studies also help boost a very important factor in getting more organic traffic: authority.
It’s why so many businesses rely on case studies as a way to underscore their expertise.
Like an experiment, these formats become the primary “sources” for others’ content, so you can expect a lot of referral traffic.
8) Streamline Your Upload Workflow
Ask yourself this:
How many half-finished posts and random drabbles are sitting in your Google Drive?
When you start looking for content, you’ll begin to see content everywhere.
Once you’ve addressed how to re-purpose, repackage, and refresh content you already have, it’s time to turn your sights to how you might streamline your content creation process.
One of the best ways to simplify your writing and posting workflow is to make sure your content actually gets published.
Using tools like Wordable, you can easily transform pending Google Docs into fully-formatted, publish-ready posts in WordPress. If you’re a content manager trying to maximize your content calendar, this one simple technique can help you get from “doing” to “done” faster than ever.
Conclusion
Anyone can throw a blog post together, but it takes time and effort to create content from scratch.
A well-crafted post can take up to a week to properly flesh out, gain quotes, edit, and align with competitive ranking goals.
If you’re focused on growing your organic traffic using SEO best practices, you’ll know it’s par for the course — or is it?
As marketing experts on Fannit will tell you, strategy is just as important to successful content as the creative aspect of it. Increasing organic traffic with less content depends on you executing on these eight strategies — so go through your archives and line-up those forgotten posts. It’s time to enervate your traffic and rankings.
Kevin Kessler
Content Marketer, Wordable
Kevin is a content specialist at Wordable, a tool that helps you export Google Docs to WordPress, formatting and all.
