27 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website
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27 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

Brian Dean

Written by Brian Dean

27 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

In this post, I’m going to show you how to drive more traffic to your website.

You’ll also see how I used these strategies to take my site from zero to 449k+ unique visitors per month:

Backlinko – Users – September 2021

It gets better:

All of these strategies are working GREAT right now.

With that, here are 27 ways to drive traffic to your website:

1. The “Upside Down” Guest Post

Here’s the deal:

When most people read your guest post, they usually skip the author bio section.

I can’t blame them…

Most author bio boxes are BURIED at the bottom of the page, like this:

author bio

This is a huge problem.

If people don’t see your link in your author bio, they’re not going to visit your site.

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution to this problem: The “Upside Down” Guest Post.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

1. First, write a guest post just like you normally would.

2. Next, include “helpful resource” sections throughout your guest post.

These sections link to 2-3 helpful resources on the topic you just covered.

Here’s an example:

additional resources

3. Finally, include YOUR content as one of the “helpful resources”.

For example, here’s a guest post I published a while back:

Brian Dean guest post

And I strategically linked to my content as one of the “resources to check out”:

contextual link

And that link brought in 78% more traffic than my author bio link.

Traffic from resources

Pretty cool πŸ™‚

Which leads us to strategy #2…

2. Overhaul & Upgrade Old Blog Posts

This simple strategy landed me 50.95% more traffic in 7 days:

increase in traffic

Here’s exactly how I did it:

1. First, I found a post on my site that was out of date.

As it turned out, my guide to YouTube SEO was insanely outdated:

old guide

2. Next, I updated and improved the post.

Specifically, I added new screenshots:

new screenshot

Sprinkled in new strategies and techniques:

new strategy

And eliminated old strategies that didn’t work anymore:

Removing content

3. Finally, I updated the new post to make the changes live.

update in wordpress

And just like that, traffic to that page shot up like a rocket ship.

(Because this was an old post, as you can see here in my Google Analytics, most of that traffic increase was organic traffic.)

organic traffic increase

This entire process took about an hour.

And I got WAY more SEO traffic than I would from publishing a new post.

With that, it’s time for our third strategy…

3. Use “Click to Tweet” Links

This is one of the BEST ways to get more shares from your content.

In fact, Click To Tweet Links are one of the main reasons that this post from my blog has over 6k social media shares:

List building post – Social shares

With that, let me show you how Click To Tweet links work:

1. Find something “tweetable” in your content.

This can be a bite-sized tip, strategy, quote or statistic.

For example, my post listed a bunch of list building strategies.

So I considered each strategy on my list “tweetable”.

Tweetable content

2. Create a Click To Tweet link.

Head over to ClickToTweet.com and write your tweet:

Click to tweet – Website

And the tool will generate a special link for you:

Click to tweet – Link

3. Finally, include that link in your content.

Whenever someone clicks on the link…

List Building post – Click-to-tweet buttons

…they get a pre-written tweet for easy sharing:

It’s that easy.

4. Optimize Your Content With LSI Keywords

It’s no secret that SEO is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website.

That said, most old-school SEO strategies simply don’t work anymore.

And that’s largely because Google’s Hummingbird algorithm changed EVERYTHING about SEO:

google hummingbird

Instead of ONLY looking at keywords, Google now understands topics.

(How big of a change was this update? Google said that: “Hummingbird affects 90% of all searches…”. Wow!)

The question is:

How do you make sure that Google understands your content’s topic?

LSI Keywords.

LSI keywords are words and phrases related to your target keyword.

For example, let’s say you just wrote a post about social media.

LSI keywords would be words and phrases like:

  • Facebook page
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Viral content
  • Pinterest

And when Google sees these LSI keywords in your content, they say: “Great. This content is definitely about social media”.

So: how do you find these LSI keywords?

A great free tool called LSI Graph.

This tool spits out dozens of LSI keywords related to your topic:

lsi keyword result

Then, just sprinkle these LSI keywords into your post…

…and you’re set.

5. Get More Traffic From Your Blog Posts With “Content Transformation”

Content Transformation is simple:

You simply convert one of your blog posts into another format (like an ebook, video, infographic or podcast).

For example, I published this case study on my blog a while back:

Backlinko – SEO Checklist

As you can see, this post generated lots of social shares…

SEO checklist – Social shares

…and comments.

SEO checklist – Comments

But I knew that I could squeeze even more value out of this content.

So I turned that post into a YouTube Video:

YouTube – Higher Google rankings video

That single video has generated over 496k views… and hundreds of website visitors.

(All from a piece of content that I published YEARS ago.)

That’s the power of Content Transformation.

6. Go On Podcasts

Podcasts are EXPLODING.

(In fact, one survey found that 26% of Americans regularly listen to podcasts.)

Does that mean that you should grab the nearest microphone and start a podcast?

No.

Instead, I recommend going on other people’s podcasts as a guest.

This strategy works so well that I try to go on 2-3 podcasts per month.

In fact, I’ve appeared on over 100 podcast episodes:

Go on podcasts

And these episodes have brought me tens of thousands of visitors.

For example, I once got 984 visitors in 60 days from a single podcast episode:

As a bonus, you usually get at least one backlink in the show notes, which can help your search engine rankings:

links from a podcast

And now it’s time for…

7. Promote Your Site With Blogger Outreach

So you just published an awesome piece of content.

Now what?

It’s time to promote it with blogger outreach.

In fact, one of my latest blog post got a nice spike in traffic largely due to a single tweet from an influential blogger:

Traffic spike

The question is…

How?

All you need to do is find bloggers that share content on your topic…

…and send them a non-pushy email.

Here’s a real-life example of this process in action:

First, I sent a personalized email to a blogger that already shared content on my topic:

Brian's outreach email – Content marketing study

(That way, I knew she’d actually want to read my post… before I hit “send”.)

When she got back to me, I sent her a link to my content:

Content marketing study outreach email – Replies

(Pro Tip: Don’t ask the person to share your post. If they think your content is good, they’ll share it.)

Because I wasn’t a pushy jerkface, this blogger was happy to spread the word:

Content marketing study outreach – Share

That’s all there is to it.

8. The Content Relaunch Strategy

This is similar to technique #2 from this guide…

…with an important twist.

Instead of just improving your content, you completely relaunch it.

In other words:

Treat your new-and-improved content like a brand new post.

For example:

I revamped and relaunched this old list of SEO copywriting tactics as a definitive guide:

relaunched article

So I shared the post on social media:

SEO copywriting – Relaunch tweet

And sent out an announcement to my newsletter subscribers:

SEO copywriting newsletter

Which led to a significant boost in traffic (including almost 10k visitors in one day):

SEO copywriting – Traffic boost

9. Create Content That Appeals to Influencers

Here’s the truth:

If you want influential people to share your content, you need to write stuff that appeals directly to that group.

Example:

A few years ago I created an infographic for a client in the investing niche.

Even though that niche is far from “interesting”, our infographic went viral. We’re talking thousands of targeted visits in the first two days.

Here’s the infographic:

client infographic

Now there are dozens of reasons this infographic did so well… from the design to the content promotion campaign.

But a good chunk of its success was due to one simple thing:

It appealed to the influencers in the personal finance space.

I’ll explain.

I noticed that, at the time, a lot of high-powered financial bloggers were up in arms about inflation:

inflation article

So I decided to create an infographic that highlighted the problem they cared about.

And this led to shares and mentions on several authority sites…

mention on authority site

…and a boatload of traffic.

10. Share Videos On LinkedIn

LinkedIn is growing FAST.

In fact, this study found that the number of people sharing stuff on LinkedIn has increased significantly since few years ago:

linkedin share stats

That’s great and all. But how do you use LinkedIn to increase traffic to your website?

Post video content.

For example, here’s a video I posted on LinkedIn:

linkedin post 3

In about 2 weeks, my video got:

  • 634 likes
  • 106 comments
  • 31 THOUSAND views

Try getting that kind of engagement on Facebook πŸ™‚

And now it’s time for me to show you another cool way to get people to visit your site…

11. Host a Giveaway Contest

People love free stuff.

(No surprise there.)

But what might surprise you is: you can use free stuff to get more traffic.

How?

Host a giveaway contest.

Here’s an example of a contest my friend Noah Kagan put together:

giveaway example

See how that works?

To enter the contest, people need to enter their email address (which you then add to your email list).

It gets better:

You can incentivize people to share your contest with their friends:

more entries

(And those shares will drive more traffic to your website and grow your email list.)

Now:

This contest was done with KingSumo. But if you have the technical know-how, you can set this up yourself.

12. Add “Share Triggers” To Your Content

In my experience, content largely succeeds or fails based on one factor:

Whether or not the content has Share Triggers.

What are Share Triggers?

They’re things you include in your content that push people to share it.

A lot of these principles were first discovered by behavioral scientists like Dr. Jonah Berger, Dr. Katherine Milkman and Jure Leskovec.

viral marketing research study

And they’ve proven in the lab what I discovered through trial-and-error:

When you include Share Triggers in your content, people are significantly more likely share and link to it.

For example:

One of the most powerful Share Triggers is Social Currency.

Social Currency is the idea that we share things that make us look good. And this Share Trigger is a large part of the reason that The Shrinking Dollar infographic I mentioned earlier did so well.

Specifically, this infographic confirmed what influencers were already saying: inflation is a big problem.

And my content backed up their rants with meaty data:

infographic data

Every time an influencer shared my infographic with their audience, it boosted their Social Currency.

So they shared it… again and again.

It even got included in Google News thanks to a feature in The Christian Post.

Google News

All because I strategically added the “Social Currency” Share Trigger into my content.

Very cool.

13. Retarget Visitors With Facebook Ads

Let’s face it:

Facebook ads are getting EXPENSIVE.

Fortunately, I found a little “loophole” that’s helped me get laser-targeted visitors for pennies:

Retargeting.

Here’s how it works:

First, create a Facebook ad that sends people to a blog post.

Here’s a real-life example:

facebook ad

Next, target people that have visited your site in the last month or two:

facebook audience

Finally, run the ad.

And you’ll probably find that your CPC is dirt cheap vs. most other types of advertising (like Google Adwords).

CPC for a facebook ad

Nice.

14. Reduce Your Bounce Rate

A high bounce rate damages your site’s pageviews, conversions… and it can even hurt your SEO.

(In fact, thanks to Google’s RankBrain algorithm, bounce rate is now a super important ranking signal).

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that improving your bounce rate is insanely easy.

I walk you through the entire process in this short video:

15. Publish Long-Form Content

A while back BuzzSumo analyzed a million articles.

Why?

They wanted to see which TYPES of content worked best.

And they found that long-form content gets more shares and backlinks than short posts (<1,000 words):

Analyzing the impact of content length

In fact, as you can see in the chart above, long content (>3k words) gets an average of 208% more shares than short articles.

I’ve noticed the same thing myself.

For example, here’s a long-form blog post from my blog (a giant list of SEO techniques):

Backlinko – SEO techniques

This guide is a staggering 6,558 words.

And the simple fact that my post is insanely long is a big reason why it’s been shared 13,995 times:

SEO techniques – Social shares

(And those shares have sent over 50,000 visitors to my website.)

16. Optimize for Google’s Mobile-First Index

As you might have heard, Google rolled out their “Mobile-First Index”:

mobile first index

This update means that Google now counts the mobile version of your site FIRST.

(It also means that Google largely ignores the desktop version of your site.)

So:

How do you know if your site is mobile optimized?

Well, Google created a free tool for doing just that: The Mobile-Friendly Test.

This nifty tool tells you if your site is optimized properly for mobile devices…

mobile friendly results

… and gives you specific recommendations to make your site better:

mobile recommendations

I also recommend checking out my guide to mobile optimization.

17. Create an Active YouTube Channel

If you want to drive more traffic to your website, YouTube HAS to be on your radar screen.

Why?

YouTube is the 2nd most popular website on the planet (only behind Google):

SimilarWeb – Top websites ranking

In fact, YouTube is one of my top 5 traffic sources (along with Google, Facebook and referral traffic from blogs).

That said:

Getting views on your YouTube videos is HARD.

But it doesn’t have to be.

That’s why I’m going to point you to two resources that will help you get more views on your videos.

Resource #1: Video SEO: The Definitive Guide

video seo guide

This guide shows you EVERYTHING you need to know about ranking your videos in YouTube and Google.

It covers keyword research, video tags and more.

Resource #2: YouTube SEO: How to Rank #1 in YouTube

This video will show you 9 tips that helped me rank #1 in YouTube for competitive keywords (like “SEO tutorial”):

18. Publish Viral Content

Is there a formula for creating content that goes viral?

Nope! Or else everyone would do it πŸ™‚

That said, there ARE 3 things you can do to increase the odds that your content spreads like wildfire.

1. First, viral content tends to contain lots of visuals.

These visuals can be a bunch of images. Or an infographic. Or a video.

The type of image doesn’t matter all that much. The important thing is that you use images in your content.

Why?

Industry studies show that image-rich content gets 90%+ more social shares vs. content that’s all text:

images more shares on social media

2. Second, viral content tends to have a high “Utility”.

This simply means that your content is super useful in some way.

Maybe you show people how to steam broccoli.

Or you teach them to nail their job interview.

Either way, research shows that extremely practical content has a very high chance of going viral.

3. Lastly, viral content needs an initial “push” to get going.

For example, Chris Gimmer got over 17k visitors to his site in one day (thanks to a blog post that went viral):

Analytics

And it wouldn’t have happened if Chris didn’t promote his content on sites like Reddit… which led to hundreds of visitors within hours.

Reddit thread

19. Promote Blog Posts and Videos on Quuu

Quuu is a dead-simple way to get people to promote your content on social media.

All you need to do is submit your best content…

…and they’ll ask influencers to share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more.

Some time ago I promoted one of my posts on Quuu. And got a handful of shares from influential people in the digital marketing space:

social share

Not bad.

20. Republish Old Articles on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an awesome place to syndicate your content.

For example, I published this study of YouTube ranking factors on my blog few years ago:

Backlinko – YouTube ranking factors

This post did well. Lots of people read my post and shared it on social media.

But I KNEW that there were thousands of people that could benefit from my content… but hadn’t seen it yet.

So I republished my content as a LinkedIn article:

linkedin article

Which (along with my other LinkedIn posts) led to a decent chunk of targeted traffic:

linkedin traffic

21. Use a “Question Analyzer” To Create Insanely Useful Content

This strategy is an AWESOME way to make your content better.

(As you know, the better content = more traffic.)

All you need to do is:

  1. Find questions that your target audience asks online.
  2. Answer those questions in your content.

Here’s how to do it…

First, use a tool like Buzzsumo’s Question Analyzer or Answer the Public to find questions that people ask:

answer example

Then, either create entire posts to answer these questions…

blog post answering a question

…or incorporate the answers into your content.

answering a question in a post

Simple.

22. Add Enticing Content To Social Media Posts

Here’s a mistake a lot of people make:

They share their content on social media… without giving people ANY reason to click.

Here’s an example:

Social share – Link and text only

I’m not judging. I used to do the same thing:

Brian tweet with no good reasons to visit

But I recently discovered that something:

Adding content to your posts can dramatically increase your CTR.

For example, when I tweet out a new post, I now include a bulleted list of features:

Brian tweet with good reasons to visit

As you can see, that extra content leads to a ton of engagement:

Brian tweet engagement

(And clicks.)

Sweet!

23. Improve Your Organic Click-Through-Rate

I have some good news:

If you want more traffic from Google, you DON’T need higher rankings.

(Seriously!)

Instead, you can focus on improving your click-through-rate (CTR).

For example, let’s say you rank #3 for your target keyword. And your CTR is 4%.

SERP CTR 4

And let’s say that you double that CTR to 8%.

SERP CTR 8

Well, you just doubled your organic traffic… without improving your rankings.

But wait, there’s more…

CTR is now an important ranking signal in Google’s algorithm.

So when you get a higher CTR, you’ll ALSO improve your search engine rankings.

SERP CTR rankings

So… how do you actually improve your CTR?

Here are a few tips that work great:

  • Add a number to your title (like “21” or “98%”)
  • Write a compelling meta description
  • Test different titles and see which one gets the best CTR
  • Use titles that are highly emotional
  • Include your keyword in your URL

Let’s dive right into our next tip…

24. Publish More List Posts

There’s no way around it:

When it comes to driving traffic to your website, list posts work GREAT.

And there’s evidence to back this up.

(Besides the fact that you’re reading a list post right now. πŸ˜€ )

Like I mentioned way back in strategy #15, BuzzSumo recently analyzed a million articles.

Well, in that same study they found that list posts CRUSHED all other content formats:

list post performance

As you can see in the chart, list posts got 6x more shares than how-to posts (and 40x more shares than infographics).

And when I look at my own content, I notice the same thing.

For example, this mega list of SEO tools is one of my most shared pieces of content I’ve ever written.

Backlinko – SEO tools

It’s got 20.6k shares and over 1100 comments:

SEO tools post – Shares and comments

25. Steal Your Competitors’ Traffic Sources

Imagine that you could see the EXACT places that send your competitors traffic.

That would be a goldmine, right?

Well, your competitors aren’t about to send you their Google Analytics password.

Fortunately, you don’t need it.

Why?

You can see all of their top traffic sources for free with SimilarWeb.

SimilarWeb not only shows you a sweet overview of a site’s traffic…

traffic overview

…but exactly where they get that traffic from.

referring sites

Goldmine.

26. Drive Traffic To Your Website From Forums

Forums are a VERY underrated traffic source.

When you become an active, respected member of a forum, you’ve built a funnel…

…a funnel that brings people back to your site.

Let me walk you through an example:

When I first got started with my blog, I was starting from scratch.

I had ZERO followers, ZERO visitors and ZERO email subscribers.

And I knew that SEO and social media are both great ways to get traffic… but they take time to kick in.

So to give my traffic a head start, I became an active member of a marketing forum.

I answered people’s questions…

forum reply

…and even posted some original content:

Forum post

And this led to a sold influx of visitors to my brand new blog.

traffic spike

And now it’s time for our last strategy…

27. Syndicate Your Content on Medium

Medium.com is one of the BEST places to syndicate your best stuff.

In fact, I recently got 310 targeted visitors in a week from ONE Medium post:

traffic from medium 2

310 visitors isn’t going to change my life or anything.

But they’re 310 visitors that took about 3 minutes to get.

All you need to do is repost your content (word-for-word) on Medium.

Here’s an example of one of my Medium reposts:

Medium post

Then, once your post is live, share it on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

(This will give the post some juice.)

And when Medium sees that people are engaging with your post, they’ll start to promote it within their platform.

Promotion

Bonus Strategy #1: Post On Social Media at Strategic Times

So CoSchedule analyzed the best times to post on social media networks (including Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and more).

Here’s what they found:

best time to post on social media infographic

As you can see, they discovered that the best times to post on each network are:

Facebook: 9am, 1pm, 3pm

Pinterest: 2pm, 9pm, 2am

Instagram: 9am, 5pm, 2am

Bonus Strategy #2: Find More Keywords With “Keywords Everywhere”

Keyword research is THE most important part of SEO.

Question is:

How do you find untapped keywords that everyone and their mom doesn’t already know about?

Keywords Everywhere.

Keywords Everywhere homepage

Keywords Everywhere is a Chrome extension that gives you keyword ideas, well…everywhere.

Once you install the extension, the next time you do a Google search, you’ll see search volume and CPC data on that keyword:

keyword data

Or the next time you’re shopping for a toothbrush on Amazon – BOOM – you see keyword data on the terms that Amazon suggests:

amazon search

Now It’s Your Turn

I hope this post showed you how to increase website traffic using some cool, untapped strategies.

Now I’d like to hear what you have to say.

Which technique from this post are you ready to try first?

Are you going to start syndicating your content on Medium?

Or

Maybe you want to publish an awesome list post.

Either way, let me know in the comments section below.

692 Comments

  1. Great read Brian. Love the idea on Share Triggers. I’ll definitely be trying to implement this strategy in the new authority site that I’m building. I’ll be keeping an eye out for the new training material you’ll be releasing. Looking forward to it!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Tom. Sounds good. Adding Share Triggers is one of those competitive advantages that can get a new site like yours off on the right foot.

      1. Thanks Brian, The best time to post on fb was listed as 7 am and 9 am, there are some discrepancies …..clarify? Does it vary from day to day?

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          You’re welcome, Nancy. That was actually a typo on my end. Fixed.

    1. I’m thinking about video right now.
      YouTube, sharing on LinkedIn, and Quuu

    1. Share triggers is on of my favorites because of the psychological factor. πŸ™‚ I also loved the upside down guest post idea. Really smart!

      1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

        Nice!

  2. Very Informative! I guess I have to start reworking on my previous strategy.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad to hear that, Nitish. Let me know how this approach works out for you.

  3. Influencers: garden bloggers, authors and speakers

    topics; GMO-seeds vs. heirloom, gardening hacks, new plant varieties

    Brian, your site is the definitive level for excellence in SEO, love your work!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good, Dave. You may also want to throw in health-focused bloggers to. They’re all about growing your own veggies πŸ™‚

  4. Thanks Brian, the number one thing that has helped us is to make sure the content we are creating is for our niche and appeals to influencers.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks for sharing your real-world results, Tariehk. As you read, I’ve found the same thing πŸ™‚

  5. Hey Brian! Great article. It’s timely for us as we are currently building our marketing strategy. My question to you is, what if there are not a lot of influencers in your niche? Also, what’s your process for finding influencers in your niche?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Jon.

      Good question. In that case you’d want to tap into a closely-related niche that does have influential people. For example, let’s say you ran an ecommerce site that sold ladders. Obviously, there’s no big names in the “ladder niche”. But there are plenty of influential people in the closely-related DIY and home improvement space. Make sense?

      1. Yes, that makes sense. I’ll start brainstorming. Thanks!

  6. Debayan Das Avatar Debayan Dassays:

    The real question is the finding a profitable niche and then going for building a fan following. The article has surely made me think!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Debayan, that’s true: niche selection is important. If you choose a niche where there isn’t any money to be made, this approach won’t work nearly as well.

  7. Adrian Avatar Adriansays:

    Thank you Brian. I am following your posts for some time and every time i get great tips. I will try to follow your advice and hope it will work. Thank you, again, By the way, How was Italy ? πŸ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Adrian. Definitely give my advice a try.

      Italy was awesome!

  8. Great post Brian – couldn’t agree with you more about not just creating great content, but creating the “right” content.

    This is inline with a shift I plan to make this year with my content creation efforts for various projects.

    To answer your question about influencers in my niche, one project I am in the middle of revolves around social media automation tools, such as Buffer.

    So I think the influencers in my niche would be identifying social media influencers who use some sort of social media automation who are interested in streamlining their efforts.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Chris.

      That’s a good start. But you may not need to drill down that specifically. Just “social media bloggers” is enough to get started with. From there, you can figure out what they’re interested in…and tailor your content around that.

      1. Great point Brian…I’ll keep that in mind as I move forward. Thanks.

  9. Brandon Beckwith Avatar Brandon Beckwithsays:

    Influencers: Tech blogs and journalists that cover new tech news. More specifically such as tech security firms talking about new online threats or ways to protect yourself online.

    Topics: Do it yourself training blogs, keeping your computer virus free tips, and great software to help optimize and keep your computer free of malicious infections.

    I have no idea what it would cost but I’m very interested in your course SEO That Works.

    I’m trying to build my business from the ground up with just SEO. Currently getting about 150 phone calls a month but need more!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Brandon, that’s an excellent start. Perfect, actually. Definitely more than enough to get started.

      You may also want to throw “tech bloggers” into the Influencers category. They tend to be a little more open to sharing than linking because
      they don’t get bombarded with pitches all day long like journalists do.

      1. Brandon Beckwith Avatar Brandon Beckwithsays:

        I thought trying to use the skyscraper technique would be a good idea to create good content in my field since I am NY no means a great writer. I started using some of your tools that you mention to find quality content that is already out there and being viewed and shared a lot.

        Do you think it would be appropriate for me to write a few articles using those methods and then contacting bloggers from places like TechCrunch or Gizmodo and asking them to share my content? What do you recommend in terms of promoting the content you create in the early stages like myself?

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Brandon, The Skyscraper Technique is a great way to find content. But it’s just one technique.

          I wouldn’t sweat the promotion just yet. I’d first study those journalists and bloggers and get to know what topics they talk about and care about.

  10. Venchito Tampon Avatar Venchito Tamponsays:

    Great post! πŸ™‚
    This is exactly what I did with my content promotion post: digitalphilippines.net/creative-content-promotion-strategies/, which up to date, has 2000+ organic social shares (almost 1 hour promotion only).

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Venchito. 2000 shares with one hour of promo?! That’s really impressive work.

      1. Venchito Tampon Avatar Venchito Tamponsays:

        Yep. Because influencers are the first one to share the post and the amplification part just started from that.

  11. OK, I will.
    My problem is that the majority of the really popular blogs in my niche spend their time bemoaning how feminism, increased use of social media and smartphones are hindering their efforts to meet quality women. Fundamentally they are “rage” posts, designed to rile men up because Western women are fatter, more self entitled etc etc.
    I’m not having this experience. Nothing much has changed for me over the last 10 years. Instead I focus on practical, useful content that a guy can cogitate on and use to make themselves more appealing to attractive young women.
    Problem is, it doesn’t seem to be as popular as the rage posts.
    I have no intention of changing what I write (because it’s what I believe in) (i) because I know that my approach is more effective and I do much better with women than these guys do and (ii) I think it is all a bit depressing and silly.
    The traffic I do get converts well, by and large…There is just not enough of it.
    So , difficult problem, I think!

    Cheers

    Steve

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Steve, it sounds like with your approach, you could actually appeal to mainstream dating blogs. People love someone that takes a stand. So simply saying,
      “you know what, my approach treats women with respect, and I’m not ashamed to say it. Here’s how I do it…” could appeal to certain influencers in the dating space.

  12. Brian, I have been enjoying your newsletter and implementing some of your strategies. Here are my answers:
    Influencers: Hot rod shop owners, racers
    Topics: Project cars, parts they use, racing events/successes

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad to hear that, Jack.

      These are perfect. Gearhead car blogs may also be one to add to the list. There are hundreds of them πŸ™‚

      1. Thanks Brian! I will add them to the list.

  13. Hi Brian,
    Thanks for a this timely article. If I understand it correctly, are you saying that we would better be off looking at market data in our niche and make an article of that for influencers to share rather than actionable tips that the target clients would be interested in? Shouldn’t there be a double strategy – articles for the influencers to share and articles for the users to enjoy?
    Thanks, Joss

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Joss.

      GREAT question. Here’s the deal: in most cases you can create content that appeals to influencers and potential clients. But if that’s not possible, you need to put the influencer’s first.

      1. Robbin Avatar Robbinsays:

        Why put the influencers first as they are not the target audience?

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Robbin, simply because they’re the only people that can share and link to your content. Without their backing your content will be invisible to your target audience.

  14. Hi Brian,
    Thank you for these ideas for getting your articles, and therefore your name, put out into the wider world. I need to come up with better ideas and ways to turn feature points into infographics – a real weak point in my efforts at the moment. I’m glad to have discovered this source of valuable information.
    Regards,
    Steven Lucas

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Steven.

  15. Influencers: Blogging blogs, SEO blogs, online marketers, social media experts.

    Topics: WordPress, social media, online marketing, and seo tips.

    Thanks for the great content Brian. Just finishing up my first post, and this article helped me a lot!

    Keep up the good work

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      That’s perfect, Jeff. You nailed it.

  16. Marshall Keller Avatar Marshall Kellersays:

    Hunting and outdoors blogs and journalist
    Topics: Tips for hunting and fishing, survival, and gear reviews.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Rock on Marshall. It’s clear you know your niche well. As long as you cover those topics and add your in-depth knowledge, you’ll be good to go.

  17. Thiago Sales Avatar Thiago Salessays:

    Great content Brian!
    I am from Brazil, and my niche is internet marketing.
    Topics: anyone can works with internet marketing; internet marketing it’s not an easy job; there is no easy money in internet marketing.

    Thanks for sharing your tips and ideas!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Thiago.

      I like that angle. Most people (ie. shady people) say making money with IM is easy. You’re saying the opposite.

  18. Kevin Kaiser Avatar Kevin Kaisersays:

    Great info, as always, Brian.
    Influencers: creative entrepreneurs, authors, musicians, photographers
    Topics: productivity hacks, making money from creative work, marketing

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Kevin. Perfect! Now it’s time for step #3 πŸ™‚

  19. Hi Brian,
    Love your material. Some of THE BEST…
    I have no problem creating great content for my key niche. But as a single, busy dad, my challenge is “time” to do all the promotion/amplification tasks after it is created. I’d love to find someone, or a team, to outsource things to. Do you have any recommendations?
    Thanks for everything,
    Joey

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Joey.

      The secret to outsourcing ANYTHING (including content promo) is to have insanely detailed step-by-step guides that you can hand to them. You still
      need good people. But in my experience, those detailed processes make or break outsourcing.

      1. That would be a powerful next post and/or PDF – “The guide to blog content amplification OUTSOURCING”. …yes, no?

  20. Rosemary Avatar Rosemarysays:

    Oh my word Brian. It sounds like I am staring off in the exact same spot you were many years ago.

    I am a qualified dietitian who has two years clinical experience and have started a nutrition weight lose site – slimandtrimmeals.com.

    So influences would be; nutrition and food blogs, even influential dietitians or nutritionists and doctors.

    Topics, the low carb high fat debate, vegan, vegetarian or gluten free diets are hot at the moment as well has the whole, is fat bad for you, debate.

    But wow am I finding it hard to get backlinks from other sites.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Wow, that is really similar Rosemary…especially because you’re an RD.

      Those are great topics and the influencers are definitely spot on. When in doubt, I go with the hot topic. So gluten free seems like a great topic to start
      with.

      1. Shane Avatar Shanesays:

        A related topic to explore for influencers is the tie-in to fitness: paleo, clean eating, crossfit, etc.

    1. Hi Rosemary. I too have a healthy living site maybe we should work together, help each other out? What do you think?

  21. The point about writing for influencers is HUGE – one of those “doh!” moments for me:) Thanks for making this point!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Mike πŸ™‚

      I had the same reaction. It was like swallowing the red pill in the Matrix.

  22. Thanks Brian
    I need to get busy and find the influencers in my niche. I have tried some of your previous suggestions by going to alltop.com. Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

    Thank you for everything you’ve already done for me!
    robert

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      No problem, Robert. Alltop can definitely help, but it doesn’t work for every niche. A lot of times you have to be creative and think “who would want to read my site but doesn’t know about it yet.”

  23. Hi Brian, really enjoyed reading this post. Though it leaves a lot of unanswered questions, which i’m sure you will address in the coming weeks.

    One of my clients is a plastic surgeon and it got me thinking who the influencers might be in this niche. The obvious answer will be to say it’s bloggers in this niche but I fear it may not be so simple.

    Do you have any tips for identifying influencers in a niche?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Pavel. Yup, I’ve got a lot more coming up.

      In that case you may want to look at beauty blogs. See what they’re saying about plastic surgery (both good and bad).

      1. Thanks Brian! I will give it a try

  24. hi,
    Thanks for a great post and an amazing blog.
    My question is: How do you identify influencers if you are promoting a company renting out office space? I am having a hard time figuring out content that possible office tenants and influencers could care about πŸ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Adam.

      Short answer: you want to look at niches that are related to that space. Obviously there aren’t any “office space rental” blogs out there. But there are plenty of real estate and small business blogs that cover office-related topics.

  25. Patrik Adamčiak Avatar Patrik Adamčiaksays:

    Influencers: Liptov.sk, visitliptov.sk and some local sites about region Iam writting and big group of accomodations
    Topics: weather, turist attractions, Where to go…

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds like you had some specific sites in mind already, Patrik. That’s great. I’d just study more specifically what the people behind those sites care about.

  26. Florencio Martinez Avatar Florencio Martinezsays:

    Hi Brian,

    First, I want to congratulate you for this post. You make me ashamed sometimes, because what you say seems so obvious that I do not know how I did not realize it.

    Well, my target audience are freelancers who are just starting and want to have more and better income than they can achieve by selling their time.

    Influencers: Blogging blogs, entrepreneurship blogs and magazines, marketing and social media blogs…

    Topics: How to start a business, how to create a blog, how to make money with a blog, how to sell on the internet, how to create information products, how to generate traffic that converts, etc.

    I’ll be back πŸ˜‰

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Florencio. Don’t beat yourself up: it took my years to put the pieces together.

      Solid list you’ve got there. Looks like step #3 is waiting for you πŸ™‚

  27. Carah Counts Avatar Carah Countssays:

    Influencers: HR professionals/associations, medical blogs/professionals

    Topics: healthy/happy employees, saving money on healthcare costs, direct primary care

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      That’s awesome, Carah. Sounds like you’re ready to rock!

  28. Good read Dean,
    I couldn’t help noticing one technique that you’ve learn from your “nutrition website” days.
    You mentioned in step 1 that “in depth” articles with links to scientific research studies get more shares than short posts.
    And you are applying same technique here, mentioning “The Dynamics of Viral Marketing” research.
    Such tricks for sure improve authority of backlinko in general . I hope to see more about this in your SEO That Works program. In particular: How to find such materials?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks. It’s not really applying the technique. It’s more just telling the story of how I figured this stuff out πŸ™‚

      To answer your question: you can head over to places like Pubmed and Google Scholar. It takes A LOT of time to go through studies. But there are lots of golden nuggets in there.

      1. For sure add that strategy to your program. There is value here, and its actionable. Can’t be better than that!
        PS Wow! it took me 3 seconds on Google scholar to find that article on viral marketing – just typed in “viral Marketing” and there it was! outstanding. Will keep this in my piggybank πŸ™‚

  29. Very good insights. I need to mull this over in order to apply this to my world — industrial B2B. The audience & group of influencers is much smaller.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Doug. In some niches you may have to dig for a while to find your influencers. But if you’re creative it’s definitely doable. Let me know how it goes.

  30. The Cub Avatar The Cubsays:

    Thanks a lot Brian! Yes, I’ll make sure of that – got some really exciting experiments to share!

    But it’d be sacrificial for a new blog not to throw some “skyscrapering” mix πŸ™‚

  31. So I am from an architecture firm in India. How do I get to know the influencers in my field are? I have not seen too much of SMM amongst the architect fraternity

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Jyoti, you may want to look outside architecture. Who else writes about architecture? Travel bloggers, local bloggers and journalists etc. Those are just off the top of my head. But with some digging I’m sure you can find more.

  32. Hi Brian, Recently I have a doubt about the niche. My website is in spanish and I cover like 4 or 5 topics but I was wonder if is better make post about just one niche. What do you think ?
    Pd: Sorry for my english.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Jaime, I’d definitely stick to 1 topic for a while until you’ve established expertise in that area.

  33. Ebony Avatar Ebonysays:

    Thanks Brian for that great suggestion! You actually just sparked an idea to make myself standout from my competition. Going to test this tomorrow.

  34. JanM Avatar JanMsays:

    Yep and sometimes it’s just being a little creative. I’ve started a little blog on seo/wordpress just for fun actually… no great content on it like here though… but because the competition is so tough in these niches I decided to take another approach. I created a few WordPress plugins that users can download for free from wordpress.org… and of course these link to my site so this gets me visitors each day.

    For my Adsense plugin which you can get here https://wordpress.org/plugins/adsense-made-easy-best-simple-ad-inserter/ I’ve created a PRO version (https://www.seo101.net/adsense-made-easy-pro/) that is available to those that sign up for my mailing list. It’s not much but it gets me 5 to 6 subscibers a day. And best of all I know exactly what my subscribers are interested in… WordPress and Adsense:)

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      That’s a good example of being creative, Jan.

  35. Patrick McCoy Avatar Patrick McCoysays:

    You have for sure given me some food for thought. I am not even sure who are influencers in my niche. I want to make a computer repair resource for people with broke computers. I’m going to have to spend sometime finding people who dominate that niche and seeing what they talk about.

    You have for sure flipped it. In the beginning I was only focused on the customer….now I am going to have to take a really hard look at the influencers.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad to hear that, Patrick. You can definitely create content for your customer (nothing wrong with that). But, yeah, your influencers are important to. That’s the only way your customers will see all that content you created for them πŸ™‚

  36. Michael Avatar Michaelsays:

    Sorry, new to all of this…. I’m sure these are dumb questions but others new may be wondering the same…

    Can you give more examples of who influences are? Are they people with blogs, or heads of companies or content news sources, etc?

    Depending on who they are, why or how do they share your article…don’t they write for themselves and don’t republish or share other work? Just confused on how, why or what these influences share.

    Thank you!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      No worries, Michael. Those definitely aren’t dumb questions. I’d review some of the comments here. Lots of examples of influencers from all sorts of different niches.

      1. Michael Avatar Michaelsays:

        Thank you… I just don’t understand why a blogger who writes their own blog would share your blog post instead of one of their own? Like, they write a blog post about your blog post?

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Michael, they can simply link to your post.

  37. Brian, I’ve drunk your Kool aid! Thank you for honesty and transparency – it really gives me hope. Quick question: I am beyond passionate about a niche (UFOs, extraterrestrials, free energy) and know in my bones that an authority site is a long term opportunity. The problem today is that not many products are attached to this niche and so it becomes a subscriber / info product play. However, after 25+ years as an entrepreneur with a financial background and marketing MBA, am I Internet naive to believe that my passion and creativity will win profitability in the end? The target audience is highly passionate too. Feedback?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Lisa πŸ™‚

      Without knowing that space it’s hard for me to give you an educated answer. Because you know so much about the topic, I’m sure you could do really well in terms of traffic, but you may have to be creative with monetization.

  38. Loz James Avatar Loz Jamessays:

    Great post again Brian
    There was a piece missing for me though until I read your reply to Joss’ comment above, in which you said ‘in most cases you can create content that appeals to influencers and potential clients’.
    On that basis – are you saying that the massive reach you’ll get from influencers sharing/linking to your stuff – both from social media and organic search – will help actual customers find your content in higher numbers – and this in turn then provides the increased conversions?
    Many thanks!
    Loz

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Loz.

      Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Not only will the shares help more people find The Right Content, but the backlinks you get to The Right Content will boost the rankings of your customer-focused landing pages.

      1. Loz James Avatar Loz Jamessays:

        Excellent – that’s what I thought πŸ™‚
        You’re turning the usual old marketing advice on its head here Brian – which is why this is such a great, thought-provoking blog.
        I’m just looking up to watch the ball sail past as you hit another home run πŸ™‚
        Cheers!
        Loz

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Thanks for your support, Loz. You rock.

  39. Cyla Panin Avatar Cyla Paninsays:

    Thanks for the post, Brian. As a content writer and social media manager, my influencers are digital strategists and content marketers (including you!). Their topics range from SEO to social media marketing. One of my biggest questions is how to get my content in front of influencers in order for it to have the opportunity to be shared.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Cyla. I’d drill down further into those topics. For example, with social, what’s big right now. A network like Snapchat? A new tool? Measuring ROI. Once you have that in place you’ll get awesome results when you do get that content in front of them.

  40. Lynn Cavanagh Avatar Lynn Cavanaghsays:

    Influences: Dog blogs, Dog book authors, TV Pet Shows
    Topics: Dog Health, Dog feeding, Dog training, Getting to know your dog,

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good, Lynn. Love your site name btw πŸ™‚

  41. Hi Brian,
    Thanks for this helpful article.
    I read carefully you article in order to try to increase my organic traffic. This article help to understand that maybe, I may change my type of content. My site (https://www.prettychef.fr) is a a french recipe site. We provide simple but good looking recipes.
    My influencers : French recipe sites, great french recipe bloggers
    My topic : easy recipes
    What I didn’t understand in this article is, how to go step 3 to step 4? How to be shared by influencers?
    I also didn’t understand what is concretely a share trigger? Can you please explain me more?
    Thanks a lot !

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Frederic, that’s an awesome start. I’ll cover steps #3 and #4 in training material that’s coming up.

  42. Hi Brian,
    Great post.. would love you take a quick look at my blog and see if I’m missing anything obvious…

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Marcus. I’m happy to help, but it does need to relate to what the post covered. Is there anything specific in there you have a question about?

  43. Visions is very good. I need to discuss this in more in order to apply this to my world – the industrial B2B. The public and a group of influential people much less.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      It’s OK if it’s a small group, Shahid. As long as there are SOME you’re set.

  44. The diversity of readers commenting here is a testament to the quality of your blog. Thanks for all the work you put into it. Here’s my input:

    Influencers: venture capital bloggers, journalists, high-profile investors

    Topics: Trends in venture capital and funding deals, startups, hot industries(IoT, healthcare, etc.), incubators, “why we did X” and “how to X” (the latter two are very broad but reflect a lot of the content shared widely)

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Emily, so true. The Backlinko community is awesome.

      Looks good. And you hit the nail on the head with looking for content that’s already shared. That’s usually the sign of a topic influencers care about.

  45. Thanks Brian.
    Did you use Google News to identify the topics that your influencers cared about? If so, what specific signals stood out when you were sifting through all the news articles?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Vin, that was one strategy. But I also asked my client what blogs he tended to read…and studied them.

  46. Great stuff! love what you are doing, just shared your website at a WordPress meetup gathering today here in Denmark πŸ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks for spreading the word, Morten πŸ™‚

  47. Brian S Avatar Brian Ssays:

    Great advice. I have never considered influencers when creating my content. Now I know I have been making a big mistake.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Brian. That was a huge mindset shift for me too.

  48. Joe Avatar Joesays:

    Hi Brian,
    What kind of advice would you give is your site is growing but seems to be attracting the wrong kind of traffic? My visitor numbers are going up but all other indicators such as bounce rate, time page, pages per visit seem to be developing in the wrong direction. Not sure if that’s to be expected or if there is something that I should be doing to counter that development?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Joe, that can also be a result of your site’s design, copywriting etc. Hard to say. If the traffic is coming from targeted keywords in Google, then the traffic is probably really good.

  49. Jeff Avatar Jeffsays:

    Influencers: Website optimization, seo, digital marketing, social media, consultants

    Topics: traffic increase, organic search, website optimization techniques, social media presence, conversion tracking

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      That’s perfect, Jeff. I’d drill down deep into 1-2 of those topics and start #3 with that topic in mind.

      1. Jeff Avatar Jeffsays:

        Thanks for the reply Brian. Love your work.

        When you say start with #3 with that topic in mind… do you mean pick two other topics then use #3 as follow up to those?

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          No problem. I meant start step #3 of this process with that topic πŸ™‚

  50. Rock solid post, once again, Brian. Keep it up.
    Will be trying this method (along with your other methods) and let you know what comes from it.
    Influencers: K-12 bloggers, authors and speakers
    Topics: BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), smartphones/tablets being used in school, how to teach kids effectively with tech.

    The problem is getting the right people to share. This post ( kwikboost.com/7-reasons-students-allowed-use-cell-phones-school/ ) is getting us a bunch of traffic but a majority of the users are students. What do you recommend we do to get this content in the hands of the administrators/principals of schools?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Peter. I’d recommend creating your next post on a topic that your influencers care about.

      1. Peter Avatar Petersays:

        Sounds good.

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