How to create, optimize, and promote content to increase website traffic

Content marketing remains one of the most effective tools for promoting a business online. However, writing articles is a process that requires time, effort, and resources. It is important not only to create interesting and useful content, but also to promote it to attract the audience and increase your website’s position in search engines. If you are thinking about creating articles for your project, you need to answer a few key questions and organize your work properly.

Is it worth writing articles?

Promotion through content makes sense if you have a stable budget for copywriting services or you have the ability to regularly write articles yourself.

If not, you should think about it and answer three questions:

1. Can your site’s topic attract significant traffic from information queries? You can check it in Wordstat.
   
2. Are you ready to spend up to two hours on the preparation of each article (drawing up a technical task, checking the written content)?
   
3. Do you have the opportunity to invest in link building to promote the best articles to the top or are you sure that the competition for relevant queries is low and your materials will easily get into the top 10 with minimal effort?

If you answered “yes” to all the questions, you can safely move on to the next stage.

Select topics and queries for content

When choosing topics, there are several important points to consider:

• Give preference to queries with low or medium competition, as promotion for highly competitive queries can be very costly. The only exception may be those materials that are aimed at warming up the audience and help to increase conversion.
  
• Study demand so as not to waste time writing content for outdated requests that no longer bring traffic.
  
• Analytics services such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google AdWords Keyword Planner will help you find keywords easier. First of all, pay attention to keywords with low competition, but at the same time a great potential for traffic attraction.
  
• When you find a keyword phrase, optimize your content for a whole range of similar queries to rank not only for the main one but also for narrower queries.
  
• Check the search results for similar queries, as some of them may be useful for your site.
• If you have chosen a topic that can bring significant traffic, you should consider posting an article not only on your site (especially if it is not yet very popular), but also on a well-known platform in the format of a guest post with a link to your resource.

Prepare ToR for the performer

The clearer and more thoughtful the tasks are, the better the materials will be. It will also help you save money on choosing a copywriter.

The article’s ToR should include:

1. Publishing location – if it is your site, whether a new page will be created or the material will be posted on an existing one (do not forget to indicate what to do with the text that is already there).
2. Topic and approximate text length – usually, the average size for articles is about 8000 characters.
   
3. Benefit for the audience – why this information is important and how it can help readers.
   
4. Outline with headings and thesis – the structure that should be followed.
   
5. The required uniqueness of the text – as a rule, it is 90% or more. The more complex the material is in terms of terminology, the lower the requirements may be.
   
6. Key words and phrases that must be in the text.

Check and optimize the content

Before approving the text, review your terms of reference once again: does the finished material meet all the requirements? Make sure that all the important points are taken into account and that the text itself is useful to your readers. You can use tools like languagetool to improve readability, uniqueness, and literacy.

When you publish an article, don’t forget to pay attention to such important points as:

• Page URL;
• Title (page title);
• Description;
• Open Graph tags for correct display in social networks.

Now the text looks more natural and reader-oriented.

Promote published articles

The most convenient way to raise an article to the top of search results is to use rented links. Choose sites that are similar in topic to your content and rent several links to them through special services. When the article has already reached the top, the links can be gradually removed to avoid a sharp drop in positions.

Monitor website metrics and adjust your promotion strategy

Regularly analyze the effectiveness of your articles: how much traffic they bring, how they affect conversions, whether your site is growing in search results. You can track these and other indicators using the free Google Analytics service.

This way, you can understand which materials are better received and which keywords should be added to your texts. Based on the data, you can also update your existing content for even better results.

Here’s a useful list of services:

• LinksSape
• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• Google AdWords Keyword Planner
• Google Analytics
• Title
• Description
• Alt
• Open Graph – A micromarkup standard for creating text-graphic announcements

Writing articles and promoting through content is a powerful tool for driving traffic and growing your business. However, to succeed, you need to carefully select topics, use keywords effectively, and constantly analyze the results. If you have the time and resources, articles will be a great way to expand your brand’s online presence.