Day 10

Welcome back to day 10 of the Traffic Stampede: 14 days to 100,000 visitor course.

It has been a long journey so far and we are still only just getting to the juicy bits.

On day 10 of this course we are going to create a kick ass content plan for your website.

This is where the rubber hits the road because we have to now sift through the spreadsheet/ list you have an pick the targets we want to go after and create the content that will grow your business and traffic levels

So, how do we get traffic?

Where are the sources of our traffic going to come from?

This is what we are going to cover today.

The 3 Core Traffic Sources

   We have three sources we can and want to gain traffic from.

  These are:

1. Viral

2. Community

3. Search Engine Traffic

And we are going to break each one down to ensure that we understand what it is and why we need it.

Viral Traffic

Viral traffic is the kind of traffic that comes as a result of your content being shared online.

This is great because your content is spread quickly and seen by a new audience.

The issue however,  is that it is short lived.

Yes, this kind of traffic comes and then goes.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try and get viral traffic, it can be very powerful for your business.

First we need to understand why things go viral.

If you remember I told you about a blog post that has delivered over £30,000 worth a work to my business.

That post is this one:

The post was a smash hit and allowed me to showcase my 'Shareaholic Method' (of note I have since change the title for SEO purposes).

Now, I do believe you should read that post in detail however this is the short version.

To gain the best chance of going viral with your content you need to have your content found (and shared) by 'shareaholics'.

So, what is a Shareaholic?

A study by the New York Times revealed there are 6 types of personas geared for online sharing:

1. Altruists- A Person who cares for others

2. Careerists- Those that share valuable and intelligent information (often based on their career goals)

3. Hipsters- Creative, younger types

4. Boomerangs-People looking to post to get a reaction

5. Connectors- These are the types that put the right information to the right people

6. Selectives-People that think before sharing. They only share useful stuff to certain people

Within these 6 personas are the hardcore 3:

Boomerangs, the careerists and the connectors.

If you look at these 3 types of personas and focus on creating content for them, your work will have greater chance of going viral.

This is because these 3 groups of people are sharing content for a reason.

The boomerangs want a reaction.

The connectors want to help the right people.

The Careerists are sharing to further their own careers.

So, what type of content works for this broad audience?

Content that:

1. Creates debate.

2. Is helpful.

3. Contains facts.

4. Content that contains a strong opinion (but is based on experience).

Yep, that is it. 

So, go down the list you have an look at the problems you have found. 

You will no doubt see a wide variety of subjects where you could write content that activates the boomerangs, connectors or careerists.

And that is your goal.

To ensure your content hits one, some or all of those factors.

Community

The next way to gain traffic is from communities.

Now there are a wide range of communities on the web.

These can be forums, Facebook groups, Sub Reddit's, Slack groups and more.

The are some of the best places to gain traffic from for your website but in doing so comes an issue.

You can't just 'drop and run'.

You must be an active member of the community or you will find your content is never shared.

We will cover the role of being in a community and growing your network in our Promotion Engine section.

My personal view towards communities is strongly geared around generosity and giving value (this will all make sense later in the course). 

But is there another way?

Why of course.

You can have your content shared without being part of a community or being spammy, it just takes a bit of tactics.

The way to have your content shared in the group without getting spammy or joining the group is simple.

Message or email the website or group admin.

Send them a message like this;

 'Hi I was doing some research around (insert subject) and came across your group, I have a post that might gain a lot of group interaction, if you think the group might enjoy this please feel free to share.'

If you run a group online you want to see it active and as such an article that is super helpful, creates debate or encourages discussion is going to help the group owner.

So don't be afraid to reach out to them.

My tip is to make a list of communities online so you can start to tap into them with your content once it is ready.

Some if these groups you will want to be an active member in and some you won't have the time and will just have to send messages to them.

The good thing is that you might be asked by the group owner to do a live interview if your post is a hit in the group.

But as stated the best method for promotion will be disclosed in our 'Promotion Engine strategy' that is coming up soon.

SEO

And finally we come to the next and best way to gain traffic.

Through the use of SEO.

We already know that we are going to use The Skyscraper 2.0 technique to create kick ass articles for our website.

And this is a must.

The question remains as to which keywords we must target.

The answer is....the easy to rank ones.

Now search volume will differ from niche.

Some niches you will be able to blast past the 100,000 visitors with ease but others it will take time.

So let's look at an example in the copywriting niche:

Because I have access to Ahrefs I will search for copywriting and then look at the keyword suggestions it brings up.

Once I do this I will use the filter tool based on keyword difficulty between 0 -10.

This is going to give me an idea of traffic levels for low competition keywords.

I can see from the list that copywriting examples is a good fit.

It is a problem my audience might have an issue with 'what does good copywriting examples look like?' Or it might be someone trying to do the copy themselves and are struggling.

Either way I will take this problem and then check out the search engine results.

I can see that the top posts are list posts and the highest number of items in a list post on page 1 is 17.

So I am happy to say this wins a thumbs up.

I think this is an article I can rank for online without much if any SEO effort.

So if I chose this as a good fit for my business I will use the Skyscraper Technique to create an article such as 50 Copy writing examples.

A post like that would also hit our list on the viral traffic side and also be something that writing communities would love, making it great for building links to your website and a great choice for gaining traffic from communities and social media.

But remember, I am aiming for LOW difficulty and LOW competition keywords.

The whole point of this course is to get your website focused traffic in the most efficient way possible and not have to take on those bullies of Google.

So we are avoiding a fight for traffic.

The Sweet Spot

The goal of course when creating content is to make content that drives traffic from all 3 sources.

That is your ultimate plan.

But that is easier said than done, we can sometime struggle to come up with the right ideas for our business.

Fortunately there is a hack that I use to come up with an endless array of content ideas.

The YouTube Hack

Head over to YouTube and drop into the search bar the keyword/ problem you identified that your customers/ readers face.

Let us use SEO as an example here:

As you can see I will find a wide range of videos and see just how many views they have and their headlines.

This tells me with a super quick glimpse of what type of content works for that problem.

And very often these videos are the exact problems that your audience faces.

Let's take another stab at this and look at a traditional industry like 'wooden fencing';

Again you can start to see what people want.

This is more of a research hack for you, especially if you are one of those people who struggle to come up with winning content ideas (and even the best have this issue).

But remember we also need to hot the sweet spot, your subject might gain a lot of views on YouTube, but is it easy to rank for on Google?

This is something you need to look at. 

It is OK to create content just for a community or with the hope of going viral, but you need to be clear about that before you write it.

Creating Your Content Plan

By using the YouTube hack you will start to see some ideas of titles that work for your industry and the title will matter a great deal as to if people click on the article and share it online.

Your job now is to flesh out the content plan for your website.

Now I won't lie you will find out tomorrow some content frameworks that help your posts to go viral and also rank online.

However you need to build out your next 12 months worth of content.

Have a play with this, you don't have to get this all done and perfect overnight. 

Have a think and start to make inroads into this

But remember, no matter what you create it must be quality and written so understand that saying you will create 100 Tips For Teaching Your Dog To Sit' means that you will have to create those 100 tips and that takes time!

Homework

OK, so today's homework is to come up with your list of content.

Try and come up with at least 12 content ideas, don't worry too much about the titles for now just make sure you have a spreadsheet or table that looks a bit like the one above.

These are the loose ideas for content that you are going to create to get traffic to your site and rank in Google.

Once this course is over you will start to work through these ideas bit by bit and grow your website month by month.

Next up we are going to start to look at distribution and frameworks

Exactly how we are going to promote your kick ass content. 

See you then.

Andy