You might think that writing blog content is easy, but it’s not as simple as it may seem. There are so many different working parts that must all gel together if you want your blog to do what it’s intended to do, and that is attract traffic and then convert that traffic into leads and sales.
What I have found recently while auditing potential agency clients is that most people are publishing content on a dedicated blog, and doing it frequently, but the content is collecting dust. It doesn’t receive impressions in the search results, therefore it doesn’t attract organic visitors.
Sure, having new content for your paid traffic to read when you send them to your website is great, and even if you are only running paid traffic you will want to have a blog jam packed with helpful information, but most people want to double-dip.
If you are going to spend the time and money on content, why not make sure it also acts as an organic traffic magnet — after all, you will see that the extra optimization effort required is minimal.
So, I wanted to write a post that could benefit those that already have a blog packed full of content that might not be performing as well as one may desire in terms of organic Google traffic.
This little six-step content audit guide requires nothing more than your time to implement. You don’t have to spend a dime — only be willing to put in the effort. So, if you are ready to fully leverage all of your blog content, then dive in and put these simple tips into action — and watch your organic traffic numbers climb steadily month-after-month.
Use these 6 content audit steps..
1. Dive into Your Google Analytics and Search Console Data
There are two pieces of data that can help you take your content marketing to the next level, and they are both readily available right at the tip of your fingers — Google Analytics referral source and Google Search Console search queries.
Let me dive into each of these.
Google Analytics: When you are mapping out your blog content you have to understand that you cannot bank solely on Google traffic. Yes, it’s nice, but you also need to have several other sources of traffic that push visitors to your blog.
Google Analytics can show you where each person came from — down to each specific post on your website. This can help you identify the best sources of traffic, from guest posting to content promotions.
If you notice that a particular guest post is driving a lot of traffic, look into other ways to get more links on that site — develop a strong relationship so you can secure links to all of your posts. From an SEO standpoint, multiple links from the same domain will dwindle their authority impact, but in terms of referral traffic it might be well worth it. Too many people fail to analyze referral traffic for this reason and they miss out on important strategy development data.
Google Search Console: This is a huge opportunity to find new keywords to target as well as knowing what pages to put more effort into, SEO-wise. With Google Search Console you can see what pages received impressions in the SERPs and what keywords and search queries triggered them to show up.
If you are already targeting that keyword, you know to ramp up the effort or link building, so you can push that page higher in the SERPs and get more clicks, and you can also find pages and terms that you are ranking for that you might not have been targeting at all. Tools that tell you what keywords to target are nice, but they are just that — tools. The people actually performing searches are the best source of information, and it’s all their ripe for picking within your Google Search Console account.
2. Optimize Your Title (But Not URL)
One of the quickest ways to alter a page’s position in the SERPs is to change its title. Now, messing up can cause the page to fall, but intelligent optimization can have the opposite effect — and see your page move up a position or two.
Any time you are able to move up higher in the SERPs, even just one spot, opens the door to more traffic. The average person doesn’t fully understand how Google works, and they just assume that the top positions are the better listings. They are oblivious to SEO and how the algorithm works.
This is why the top of the search results is such valuable online real estate. Moving up just one spot could mean several hundred additional visitors hitting your website each month, which can then turn into more sales and revenue, by doing nothing aside from moving up in the SERPs.
So, if you have older blog posts that are ranking on the first page of Google, but towards the bottom, for some keywords you might want to look into optimizing the titles. There are two major things to look for when doing this.
First, you want to see if your target keyword is in your title, and if so, how close to the beginning is it? If it’s not in your title, simply placing it in there can help you tremendously. If it is, and you can move it up a bit naturally, do so.
What you do not want to do is change the URL. If so, it can result in broken links.
3. Link Out to Three Sources (and then email them)
Linking out to points of reference and other authoritative articles that back up any statement made within your blog content is part of how to create a properly optimized article. Too many people get stuck on the link juice theory and fear that linking out to another website will pass some of that juice to that site.
Well, it will. But, remember, if you are trying to increase the authority of your site and specifically, certain pieces of content, then you are probably building links, right? And if you are building links then you are violating Google’s best practices, as it frowns upon that.
But, everyone does it. The trick is to lay low and appear as natural as possible, because you never know when your website might be the subject of a manual review. If this happens, you will want your content to look as natural as possible, and part of a natural blog post is to link out to reference points and data notations.
Doing this is what Google likes to see. While you might pass the site some “juice” you are actually going to benefit far greater than if you didn’t. So, link out, and make sure it’s to highly authoritative sites, and ones you would love to receive a link back from.
Once you do link out (I suggest linking out to about 3 external sites per post), shoot them a quick message letting them know you did. A simple,
“Hey, great article – just wanted to let you know we linked to it in this post: (URL)” is all you need.
Don’t ask them for a link back. Just let them know what you did. This approach will get you more,
“Wow, thanks. We just linked to one of your articles here: (URL)”
..than people agreeing to give you a link back after asking them.
This will help your strategy by improving your site authority and that of your blog posts, and can also help you score more referral traffic. It’s a simple tip that is easy to implement and can really trigger a spike in traffic.
4. Internally Link to Three Other Posts
Just like linking out externally is good for SEO, so is internal linking, and it can help you to keep your visitors on your blog longer, lowering your bounce rate, which can help your content rank higher in the SERPs, therefore attracting more traffic.
Also, internal linking passes on the juice from post to post, elevating your entire blog, and not just a few key pieces of content. If you look at some of the more complex blogs out there, you will see that some of their centerpiece content assets will link out to dozens of internal posts.
That is because they have spent a considerable amount of time and money promoting that specific piece of content in an effort to build links, and now all those links point to that one post. While it does help the overall Domain Authority, the page authority is credited to just that one post. But, by linking out, some of that is passed on, helping to increase the overall authority of multiple posts on the blog.
It’s simple, and allows you to spread the wealth, so to speak. Avoid interlinking with exact match money keywords. Instead use descriptive long-tail phrases. These are easier to rank for also, and this strategy can lead to ranking for several long-tail low competition keywords.
5. Create a Massive Content Map for Your Blog and Send it to Your Email List
Most blogs have no organization, aside from maybe some very broad categories, making it very hard for someone to find content beyond just your last few posts.
You will see a major uptick in traffic if you take a minute to really create a well thought-out content map, and dedicate an entire page to it. Now, I’m talking about going above and beyond just a list of text links.
Organize it into detailed categories and use icons and images to make it visual. More people will look for categories via icons and images over text descriptions 9 out of 10 times.
Anytime you can get visitors to bounce over to another blog post it increases the time that they engage with your business. The more they do this, the greater the chance of them turning into a customer. But, also, they might share your content on social media or email it to a friend that might be interested.
Don’t forget about your email list either. A simple email announcing you now have an organized “content hub” is a great way to not only see an instant spike in traffic, but also a way to ensure these people visit back frequently. The easier you make it to discover your content, the more visits you will rack up.
6. Share on Social Media Using a Scheduling Tool
“It takes me 20 minutes a day to create posts for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and I might only get 30 visits from all that work.”
This is something a client told me the other day and it left me scratching my head. While “only 30 visits” isn’t groundbreaking, that is almost an extra 1,000 visitors each month! You have to look at the big picture, and when you do it’s clear that you should do whatever it takes to make sure you do have daily social media content being posts to keep those visitors rolling in, hitting your blog, engaging with your content, and they if all goes to plan, converting!
Ok, so you might not have 20 minutes a day to create social media posts, and I get that. Neither do I. But, there are things you can do that will enable you to have that content being posted daily, without requiring you to lift a finger.
It’s called automation and scheduling.
One reason it probably takes that person 20 minutes to create content for social media is because they have to open all the accounts, sign in, then open their design program, think of the posts they are targeting, create an image, think of a caption, find the URL, etc.
The truth is, you can spend 2 hours one day each month and plan, create and schedule all of your social media posts for the next 30 days. Once you start, you have everything in front of you, you’re in the zone, and the entire process becomes much easier.
Look into a tool like Hootsuite — they even have a free plan that will work just fine for the majority of you. Scheduling this way is also a great way to repurpose old content that performed well in the past. If a post continues to attract clicks, keep sharing it. This is yet another reason why evergreen content is highly valuable and worth creating.
Conclusion
Now, I specifically wrote this post for those that already have been writing content and it just hasn’t performed as well as expected. But, that isn’t to say this can’t benefit someone who is just getting started with content marketing.
Using these tips from day one will help ensure your blog posts are optimized well for search off the bat, which should lessen the learning curve and help drive organic traffic from Google searches much sooner.
I also want to remind you that competition in terms of keyword difficulty and other websites optimizing for the same terms and phrases will play a key role in how much organic traffic you can pull.
A weight loss clinic in Los Angeles trying to rank for “Los Angeles weight loss,” for example, is going to face a much bigger challenge than a local florist in a small town with a population of 5,000 people trying to rank for local-intent keywords.
The industries are very different, and the population impacts location-based keyword difficulty. Just make sure to keep that in mind, because setting realistic expectations are important.
Do you have any questions related to optimizing blog content to improve your organic visibility? If so drop them below in the comments and I will do my best to answer them and help you out!
