The Content Secrets of a 6.9 Million Monthly Visitors Mega Site

In this article we're going to break down Sleep Foundation.org

You'll discover.

• Why scale matters for Authority.
• One of the best content frameworks I've seen.
• Some lovely design elements that make their content stand out.
• And how you can borrow the same tactics for your site.

Let's dive in

$7.8 Million in Monthly Traffic- a Monster of a Site

The traffic scores of the Sleep Foundation are simply incredible.

The Sleep foundation gains 6.9 million visitors and ranks for over 1.2 million keywords.

And it has over 980,000 backlinks from 85,000 referring domains.

Now. I'm not going to talk about the backlinks and referring domains because this is just a monster of a site.

We can see that when they launched, they quickly gained 16,000 links.

Was the site purchased? Did they redirect old domains?

I honestly haven't tried to find out.

And with sites this big, I don't think it really matters. If a website has enough financial backing, it'll gain a lot of links.

But I am going to focus on the content because there are some incredible things that are going on and some tips we can borrow.

1471 Quality Pages: You Can't Fake Scale

The Sleep Foundation site appears to be a large affiliate site, but it also has 1471 quality pages that generate an incredible 6.9 million visitors a month.

These pages are focused on helping people to get better sleep with advice and product recommendations.

The content is well-researched, comprehensive, and extremely helpful to its readers.

But this is, again, another reminder to SEOs and businesses.

You can't fake scale.

Launching with 1000 Pages

If Ahrefs data is correct (and I haven't done much digging), this site launched in September 2018 by adding 1000 pages in a month.

Either way, by Feb/ March 2019, they added another 700.

Clearly, they've killed 300 or so, but I keep seeing really weird claims online around content velocity.

One SEO I saw talked about the risks of 'content flooding' a site.

What????

We need to get away from these wild and made-up SEO views.

Too many SEOs are making things up to serve their own purposes.

Thousands of websites have huge publishing ratios.

Thousands of websites are launched daily, with hundreds of pages.

If you want to be authoritative, you need plenty of useful content.

But what standard should the content be?

Their Top Page

With any site, I like to see its top-performing page first.

Why? Because this tends to reveal a lot about the site.

Websites care most about their traffic monsters.

They protect them, update them and spend money on them, so let's take a look.

The Makeup of a Great Page

If you've followed me for a while, you'll know that I'm obsessed with content design, and this article is packed with great elements.

Their top page is a Queen versus King mattress, and it's generating 139,000 visitors and ranks for 3400 keywords.

The page length is about 1900 words, so not exactly a monster.

But what's going on with the page?

So the first and most important part of this page that I see is that it gives you straightaway the authorship of the page

This is going to be key moving forward in SEO.

Readers need to know who wrote the content and what makes them an expert.

But that's not all with this page.

Tables and Charts

The page utilises some wonderful charts that allow readers to understand the pros and cons of each mattress.

This gives readers the ability to compare and contrast, allowing them to make a decision on which mattress is best for them.

Another nice touch was a filter system to gain your best mattress.

But in all honesty, I only got it to work once, so not sure if there are problems they need to fix here.

But the idea was nice.

However, one of the best aspects of the page was the voting system for the article.

I thought this was another great way to gain interaction with the page.

It also helps the marketing team to provide some great stats to management.

Ok, that's a nice page with some cool design elements, but what about their other content?

This Could Be The Best Content Framework I've Ever Seen

Over the years, I've seen a lot of ways to create and design content.

But I think what I'm about to share with you is the best example I've ever come across.

Their Best Sleeping Positions page was updated about 4 weeks ago, so I'm guessing this is what they'll want all their pages to become like in the future.

When you look at this page, it gives a whole new meaning to content creation.

Firstly, you're greeted with what is becoming commonplace among mega sites.

Details of the writer and also the person who reviewed it.

In this case, we have a Doctor.

That's pretty powerful and is a commitment to quality content.

If you're a business reading this, you can easily borrow the same approach. Have a writer and a specialist fact-checker.

Let's move on.

Is Listening the New Video?

The article has an audio version which is voiced using AI embedded within it.

I love this for so many reasons.

Firstly, it will increase dwell time, but secondly, sometimes, people don't want to read.

Tired eyes, laziness...it doesn't matter.

You're giving your readers another option to consume your content.

In Content Call to Actions

Another nice touch is the in-post call to action.

Sites don't use these static list-building elements enough, and I imagine that these convert pretty well.

Related News...a Nice Touch

Inside the post, there are links that take the reader to their affiliate pages, but the related news section at the base of the post is a nice touch.

I would imagine this is their equivalent of linking out to high-quality sources while also not losing the reader to other sites.

We know that linking out to authoritative websites is good, but can mean you lose the reader.

Having a section at the base of the post kind of solves that issue.

References...a Way to Beat AI?

Another really great part of the article was the references section.

That's a great way to show you put a lot of effort into the content.

One of the things I love about this is that it deals with the whole AI issue easily.

Who cares if you typed it or not? What matters is that you put the effort into the research.

I also think that this system would make it easier for the expert fact-checker to see what the writer was talking about.

A Giant Learn More Section

The final useful part is a huge learn more section.

This helps readers to stay on-site and keep them engaged and learning more.

All in all, it's a great article and layout.

Final Thoughts and What You Can Steal

The Sleep Foundation is another example of committing to quality content, scale, content design and research.

The site combines the best publishing tactics I've come across, and their site is an example of how great content should be created.

By having expert reviewers, citing sources and references and making the content easy to read/ learn from.

But how can you use this content?

• Find an expert to review your content (if you're not the expert)
• Add calls to action for email sign-ups.
• Add design elements such as tables and charts.
• Include sources and references in order to provide credibility.
• Write content that is easy to read and learn from.
• Add audio versions of your content.
• Use a learn more section to showcase articles that your readers can learn from.

Andy