We write content for a wide array of different online businesses, from SaaS companies and eCommerce brands, to affiliate marketing websites, agencies and and local SEO clients.
We take great pride in the scope of our quality content writing services.
However, one of the ongoing challenges we face is how to grow blog traffic consistently?
How do we ensure the content we write for our customers ranks in the search engines?
Especially as there are no guarantees in SEO.
At Contentellect we have a simple objective – to write really great content and build super powerful links.
Here's a quick case study on how we grew blog traffic by over 50% in 7 days.
How To Grow Blog Traffic
The backstory
In September 2019 we wrote a blog post for a customer we just landed through Nathan Latka’s Deal or Bust show.
It was titled Screenshotting Instagram Stories: Does Instagram Notify The User?
Since then the post has steadily been moving it’s way up the search rankings to the point where this week (January 3rd 2021) it moved into the first spot on Google (featured snippets) for over 12 keywords amounting to a collective US monthly search volume of over 15,000.
This has resulted in the customer’s blog traffic growing by over 50% in one week!
In some cases the global search volume for a keyword is 2.5 times higher than the US only.
Interestingly this was all achieved without a single backlink pointing to the article.
Off-page SEO, for example in the form of link building, is considered to be one of the two core tenets of SEO.
It’s inextricably linked with on-page SEO.
However, with great content, there are always exceptions.
Although, in most cases where competition is high, you're going to need some links. So here's a little plug for those grey hat SEO's - check out our quality link building service.
How Did We Grow Blog Traffic?
We attribute the success in growing blog traffic to this article to 3 simple factors.
1. A Great Introduction
This is something that is very often overlooked. The introduction is the gateway to the article. If your introduction is not punchy and compelling, there is a good chance the visitor won’t read on.
Resulting in a short dwell time – one of Google’s SEO ranking factors. We recently published a post on how to write good blog introductions.
Google’s Chrome browser now has over 70% global market share, which amounts to one helluva lot of dwell time data Google is privy too.
Generally we try and keep our introductions under 150 words and also include a hook in the last paragraph of the introduction enticing the visitor to read on.
This article was written to answer the question of whether Instagram notifies the user when a screenshot is taken.
Matching search intent of the keyword to the article introduction is critical.
We ended the introduction with the following sentence, “So, let’s take a look into the exact instances in which someone will receive notifications when you screenshot content on Instagram.”
2. Content Quality
Before even thinking about on-page SEO, you should always be thinking how you can write the best piece of content on the internet on a given subject.
In this instance because we were writing an article to answer a simple question, we needed to answer that question as early on in the article as possible.
We did this in the 2nd paragraph after the introduction and put the answer in bold text so it would be easy for the reader to locate the answer.
We also made sure to ask the question in a header title and then directly answer the question in paragraph text. This is one of the key secrets to winning Google's featured snippet box, which we managed to do with this article.
After that we covered in a clear and concise way the instance where Instagram does notify a user when a screenshot has been taken – in a DM.
To ensure that we maintain a consistently high level of content quality throughout our articles we ascribe to a simple maxim of “brevity over verbosity”.
How can we write the best piece of content without using fluff and filler.
3. Structure
The optimal structure of an article for SEO has been evolving over the last few years.
Google now rewards content that is structured congruously with how users consume content in the modern era – mostly on mobile devices in small bite size chunks.
This means we take a mobile-first approach to how we structure our content. No paragraph should contain more than 4 lines of text when viewed on a desktop.
This translates to around 6-7 lines of text on a mobile device which is about the maximum amount of continuous text which allows for easy reading.
We also keep our articles very close to the search intent and don't waffle on about topics that aren't relevant.
Grow your blog!
As is apparent by the factors mentioned above, our primary focus when writing content does not revolve around strict on-page technical SEO elements.
We’re not saying that these aren't important. They most certainly are.
But they can be taken care of once an article has been completed.
With really handy SEO optimisation tools like Surfer or plugins like Yoast SEO, you can let the diagnostics guide you on what’s missing after you’ve finished writing an epic article.
This way you don’t let different technical SEO elements become prerequisites that end up adversely affecting the quality of your content.