Looking to get more traffic in 2020?
Join the club.
In this video, Brian Dean from Backlinko shares 9 new strategies (plus two bonus strategies) he’s used to grow his blog to over 180,000 visitors a month.
Don’t worry, these aren’t the usual “fluff” strategies you hear like “share your content on social media”, “create a Facebook Page”, and everything else everyone is repeating over and over again.
These are advanced strategies that are working right now.
Check out the video, then see my comments on each of his strategies below.
(Note: Watch the video for the method’s Brian teaches… I won’t be repeating what he said, I’ll simply be adding my additional thoughts… so watch the video to get the full story!)
How to Get More Traffic in 2020
Traffic Strategy #1: The Upside Down Guest Post
I agree with everything Brian said here. The only thing to look out for is that many sites won’t allow you to do any type of linking within your article and will only allow you to use a traditional author box. If that’s the case, see if you can at least include a call-to-action for them to get your free offer back at your website.
Traffic Strategy #2: Use Click to Tweets
This is a very simple, yet powerful way to drive more traffic to your site with simple social shares. There are many plugins that can help automate this and make it easy, especially if you use the WordPress platform. My favorite social media sharing tool is Social Warfare.
Traffic Strategy #3: Publish More List Posts
List posts work really well for getting clicks and driving traffic to your website. Because they are very value-oriented you can use a straight up headline for your list post such as, “The 5 Best Tools for XYZ” or like in this post, “9 Ways to Get More Traffic in 2020”. Clickbait type headlines can work well as long as you are delivering on the goods.
Traffic Strategy #4: Overhaul and Upgrade Old Blog Posts
This is probably one of the most underlooked areas of SEO. I write for one of the largest websites on the internet which gets hundreds of millions of visitors a month. As a writer, I spend about 50% of my time creating new content and another 50% of my time updating older content. Updating old content can go a long way to not only maintaining higher rankings in the search engines; but also getting even higher rankings than you previously had.
Traffic Strategy #5: Add Share Trigger to Content
As mentioned earlier, the easier you make it for people to share your content online the more likely they will be to do it. It’s not just about having the right social media sharing tools but creating the type of content that they will want to share because it will make them look better when they are the ones who discovered the content and was first the share amongst their peers. Brian gave some great examples of shareable content, check out this post for 13 Simple Ways to Create Content That Gets Shared Online.
Traffic Strategy #6: Go on Podcasts
Believe it or not, even though for most of us in the marketing game podcasts seem very old school, podcasts are actually becoming more and more mainstream and are growing in popularity as a way for people to consume content. As Brian mentions, the fastest way to get started with podcasting is to pitch other podcasts to be a guest on their show. Because most people will post their podcasts online along with show notes you can get long-term traffic and SEO benefits from a podcast. Try implementing Traffic Strategy #1 with your podcasts as well.
Traffic Strategy #7: Create Predictably Viral Content
Of course, there is no proven way to create something that will go viral. If there were everyone would create nothing but viral content; then there really wouldn’t be such a thing as viral content in the first place! But as Brian points out there are some things you can do to stack the deck in your favor such as using great visuals, creating useful actionable content, creating long-form content if necessary, and giving your content a head start by pushing it out to your networks and event using paid ads.
Neil Patel wrote a great post on How to Create Viral Content That Generates 2,500 Visitors a Day.
Traffic Strategy #8: Post on Social Media at Best Times
While Brian gave some industry benchmarks for the best times to post on various social networks like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram (see the video for his recommended times) you’ll really want to schedule your own posts at multiple times throughout the day and see when YOUR AUDIENCE is most responsive and what times they engage with your post. You may find that the time your that work best for your audience differ from industry trends.
When it comes to scheduling posts I use Facebook’s built-in scheduler and am a huge user of Tailwind when it comes to posting on Pinterest.
Traffic Strategy #9: Content Transformation
One of my favorite strategies not just for driving more traffic; but for creating paid products as well. Reuse and repurpose everything you do. Enough said.
Bonus Traffic Strategy #1: Steal Competitor Traffic Sources
The reality is if other websites are willing to link out the other website who serve a similar audience then they may be willing to link to your site provided you are creating high-quality original content that is shareworthy (remember Traffic Strategy 3, 4, and 5?).
Bonus Traffic Strategy #2: Drive Traffic from Forums
I know what you might be thinking, this article promised “new” ways of driving traffic… isn’t forum marketing old school?
Yes and no…
You see just like email marketing, forum marketing isn’t the newest, coolest, or sexiest thing right now; but the fact is that it is a tried and true workhorse that works just as good today (if not better) than it did back then.
And the reality is all of these Flash in the Pan Johnny Come Lately’s who are only teaching the latest, greatest, bright shiny objects aren’t talking about things like forum marketing – which gives you an advantage to taking advantage of this relatively untapped traffic source right now.
There you have it, Brian Dean’s video on How to Get More Traffic in 2020 along with my thoughts and comments.
The key is to pick an idea, just one idea, and take immediate and massive action.
I’m looking forward to hearing about your results!