Everyone is rushing out content because they want traffic instantly, but does that actually work? The short answer is a resounding no. You might get lucky with viral content, but that’s not representative of your true traffic. Meanwhile, although publishing content can be a great way to generate traffic, it takes time before you’ll see results. How long it takes depends on a number of factors:
- SEO
- Keywords
- Competition
- Quality of content
- Social media shares
- Inbound links
While we aren’t going over each individual factor in depth, we have in the past and so you can find tons of content right here on The Content Group.
Let’s Be Real:
Unless you create content that goes viral, you aren’t going to gain a lot of traffic overnight. Even if you have something go viral, your traffic is going to fall off almost as fast as it arrived. That’s why remaining consistent with your well-constructed content is a key to success.
If you are going to create a blog, vlog, or something in between, be willing to invest two years or so before you are happy with the results. Yes, it is realistically going to take that long to accomplish what you are probably envisioning in your head. If this seems daunting to you, that’s because it is. It’s the reason why so many people are outsourcing their content marketing to companies like ours. But if you are one of the ones who signs on and willing to do the work, you will see the rewards.
Don’t forget though, everybody in the NBA wants to be better than LeBron James but very few are going to put in the effort to be better than him. On the other hand, the same is true with online bloggers like Neil Patel. If you are measuring yourself against someone who produces content 15 times a day and has a fully-staffed team, you’ll likely never reach your goals. They will forever be out of reach and that is a surefire way to lose both passion and drive.
Not All Content Is Equal:
This is simply the truth of the matter. When you Google a keyword or phrase, like “maple trees,” pages worth of websites are provided for you. What do you see the most of though? Perhaps you see some sponsored offers to buy trees, but you probably noticed that nearly every link takes you to a written article or blog post. Unless you physically type in that you are looking for pictures or videos of your keyword, this is going to remain true.
If you haven’t noticed by now, text, more than any other form of content, ranks better on Google. While everyone is trying to figure out how to squeeze the most SEO from YouTube videos or photo metadata, written content still remains king and likely always will.
In most circumstances, the articles and posts on Google’s first page are well written. It’s not the NY Times bestsellers list where any crud can make it as long as you have a strong push; Google’s first page is normally quite exclusive. So try to publish the most helpful and well-written content you can muster. It will probably take longer than just throwing together something in an hour or two, but it’s worth it in the end.
Getting Content in Front of Readers:
Just like I will never be able to outrun Olympian Usain Bolt, you probably aren’t going to write a blog post and within the next month, or even two months, start getting rankings and traffic. It just doesn’t work like that.
If you are relatively unknown in the motor vehicle parts and accessories industry, you aren’t going to outrank businesses like Pep Boys, Autozone, and Advanced Auto Parts. But that doesn’t mean you should stop trying. It takes a long time to rank a post on Google, but you can skip a beginning step by going to Google Search Console and indexing your blog post faster using the “Fetch as Google” tool. This speeds things up marginally for those that don’t like to wait.
The best way to get content in front of your audience is by focusing on what is important:
- How detailed is your content?
- Does your audience have to go elsewhere to find the answer to their question?
- Are you covering all of the right pain points?
- Are you keeping your audience on your site?
- Do you have other relevant information on your website that the reader may find useful (internal linking)?
- Is your content written in a way where it’s likely to be shared on social media?
- While not the be-all and end-all measuring tool, you can see which content is hitting the right notes by social shares.
- Is your content also appealing to professionals?
- By gaining more inbound links, it means you are becoming the authority on a subject. This helps immensely.
Everything I mentioned happens naturally – including how detailed your content is. Think about how many new pieces of information you learned over the past couple of months. Now read back through that post you wrote two years ago. Notice any glaring holes or rooms for improvement? You can add new content to your old posts to keep it fresh and relevant.
Likewise, as your content gets older, it starts doing better. As these metrics improve over time, so will your rankings. If you are going to get into content marketing, just try to keep in mind the time commitment you are signing up for. When you feel like you are sinking all of your time and effort into something not yielding results, remember the two year mark. Your most consistent traffic is going to be from search engines and it takes roughly two years to have consistent traffic from Google.
