Why Content is Crucial for Building Website Traffic

In our last article, we laid the foundation for building your website traffic by identifying:

• Who your target audience is and where they hang out online.
• Potential traffic sources that might bring visitors to your site.

By the end of the post, you would have gotten a clear idea of different online mediums that might drive traffic to your website. These could include:

• Search Engines
• Social Media
• Video Sharing Sites
• Image Sharing Sites
• Podcast Apps
• Related Websites

No matter what your traffic source is, it will be content that brings people to your site. The amount of traffic coming to your site will be directly related to the quality of content you share.

The type of content may vary depending on the medium. Whether it is videos, podcasts, articles, infographics or eBooks, it is content that grabs the attention of the audience and gets them to visit your site.

Let’s look at a few examples of content for various traffic sources.

1. Text Based Content

The most common textual content comes in the form of:

• Short blog posts
• In-depth articles
• eBooks or Whitepapers
• Status updates on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Whether the content is long or short, the key is to make it valuable to the end user. Even if only snippets of the actual content on your site are going to be shared online, it needs to engage with those who read it and add value to their life.

2. Audio Content

Podcasts have become very popular in recent years, as more people prefer to listen to them while working on other tasks. Sharing inspiring and helpful information through podcasts is a sure way to get people to subscribe to your podcast show.

Another advantage of audio content is that people get to hear your voice, so they connect with you on a more personal level. They feel you are right there talking to them and they engage with your brand in a better manner.

Some examples of information you can share on your podcasts are:

• Personal anecdotes
• Inspiration through success stories
• Interviews with leaders in your niche
• How – to tutorials
• Motivation to succeed in the business

3. Images

A picture is indeed worth a thousand words! Good quality, relevant images help emphasize the message you are trying to share.

Here are some instances where images play a major role in getting people to your site:

• Blog images
• Step by step images to explain a tutorial
• Screenshots of processes involved
• Actual photographs of your products
• Mockups of items on sale
• Inspirational quotes on social media
• Infographics

If the images you share are well crafted, they will be sure to draw people’s attention to what your website has to offer. Do note that it’s best to have custom images watermarked with your website address to get it more visibility.

4. Videos

Video marketing is booming like never before. Earlier, we had just YouTube to share videos, but now Periscope, Instagram and even Facebook Live enable businesses to share live snippets to a large audience.

Videos help people see the face behind the business. They associate with you on a personal level and this helps build a greater degree of trust.

Videos can be perfectly scripted and orchestrated, or they can be candid and shot on the go. Either of it will fly with your audience, depending on how you want your brand to be portrayed.

Some examples of videos you can share are:

• Behind the scenes look
• Interview with experts in your industry
• Trailer for a product launch
• Client testimonials
• Live chats with audience
• Q&A sessions
• Sneak peek at your latest project
• DIY tutorials

Whether the video is shot in a professional environment, or on your smartphone, the content you share needs to be planned ahead. The content needs to be inspirational and helpful in order to add value to the audience and engage with them.

5. Website Copy

Your website copy is by far the most important, with respect to the impact it has on the visitor. The content on your website has to draw the reader in and get them interested in looking around further.

This is true no matter what type of website your business has. The products and services your business provides needs to be explained clearly, in a manner that appeals to the visitor.

Whether it is the landing page copy, or individual product descriptions, they need to be scripted beautifully, so the reader is compelled to purchase the product/service.

6. Ad Copy

Content is essential, even for paid services that you use to drive traffic to your website. The ad copy needs to draw the attention of fleeting visitors. Banner images need to be catchy and brilliant if you need people to click on them.

Ads should be relevant to the user as well. They should pick up on issues the audience may be facing and grant a solid solution. And all this needs to be done in the seconds it takes for a visitor to browse through a page!

Now that we’ve seen the importance of quality content in getting people to visit your site, let’s look at how you can push out this content through selected online mediums.

Each of the mediums where you expect to get traffic from is unique, but let’s look at the big picture and plan things from a general perspective.

Step 1: Plan the Content

The first step is to, of course, plan the content you will be sharing across various online mediums. Based on the traffic sources you shortlisted in the previous step, decide on what kind of content you will be sharing and where.

Once you have an idea about the type of content, explore it in detail and decide how you will be presenting it. For example, if you plan to shoot a video, here are some things you need to plan in advance:

• Topic of the video presentation
• Detailed script (or at least the main talking points)
• Where the video will be shot
• Who will be shooting it
• List of additional content that may be required, like intro image, transcript, watermark, etc.

Step 2: Create a Schedule

Once you’ve planned the different types of content you will be sharing, identify how often you will be publishing it on each of the selected channels.

For example, you might have selected the following three mediums:

1. Blog (for SEO purposes)
2. Facebook
3. Other Websites

In that case, your schedule will look like this:

1. Publish one in-depth article (optimized for SEO) on the blog each week.
2. Share images, links and status updates thrice a day on Facebook.
3. Publish one guest post each month on another website.

Step 3: Procure Tools

Once you’ve planned out your schedule, the next step is to procure the tools you need to get the job done. Let’s take Facebook for example.

In order to publish regularly on Facebook, you’ll need the following:

• Repository of interesting content to share
• Scheduling tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite or the Pages Manager app

Step 4: Set up Editorial Calendar

The final step is to set the plan in action. Start filling out your editorial calendar in advance, so you already have the content ready before it is due to be published.

Let’s take a blog for example. It is possible to write all the content required for the month in advance, and schedule it to be published on the respective days. You can keep track of the content being published with an editorial calendar plugin or a plain old spreadsheet on your computer.

We hope this article has given you deeper insight on the importance of content for building website traffic. In the coming articles, we’ll explore how you can use individual channels to boost your incoming site traffic.