When was the last time you took a good look at your blog and determined how much value it offers your audience?
When you create a blog, it’s essential to keep up with its content to ensure it serves your audience over time. What you published a year ago may not serve your readers today, and things change within industries. You want to make sure it educates, entertains, and provides solutions so people keep coming back.
Studies show that 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog. This type of content drives organic traffic, grows your email list, retains customers, and much more. People love accessible, free content that teaches them something new. If your blog is outdated, it’s time for a full revamp so you reach your marketing objectives.
Let’s look at a few ways you can update your blog content to increase the organic traffic driven to your website.
Build Internal Links
If you don’t already have an internal linking strategy, then you’re missing out on opportunities to drive organic traffic to your website. When Google indexes your website, it looks at how its content is structured to understand its relevance and value. Simply put, the more you build internal links in your posts, the better your search engine ranking will be.
If you have blog posts similar in topics, use them to link to each other so users understand that they’re topically related. When visitors read your content, they can click to similar content that prolongs their engagement. You can also add a section on your site with similar posts so users can pick and choose which blog posts to read next.
Additionally, you want to make sure your posts have no dead or obsolete links that lead to nowhere. Otherwise, you’re sending visitors to 404 error pages that disrupt the user experience and ruin engagement.
Turn Content into Lead Magnets
You might have blog posts that offer value but aren’t doing much to improve the conversions on your website. If you have content that isn’t getting engagement or views, it may work better as a lead magnet.
Rather than let a blog post sit stale on your website, you can use the opportunity to turn it into a freebie for your audience that collects their information. When you offer valuable content for free, it drives traffic to your site while simultaneously building your email list.
There are several types of lead magnets you can use, including but not limited to:
- Ebooks
- Templates
- Guides
- Checklists
- Cheatsheets
- Whitepapers
Create Evergreen Content
Evergreen content stays relevant and useful for long periods because its information stays the same. It performs well on blogs because its information stays accurate over time and is easy to refer back to. You can use it to grow your site traffic and position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
Examples of evergreen content include how-to posts, tips, product reviews, cornerstone content, and more.
Here are a few tips for creating valuable evergreen blog posts:
Write for beginners. In most cases, evergreen posts cater to beginners. Many people who search for evergreen content are learning about a specific topic or industry for the first time, so it’s important to use plain terms and conversational language anyone can understand.
Choose relevant, industry-related keywords. If any content on your blog lacks basic SEO practices, it won’t rank high in search engines and won’t bring your website traffic.
Include research. It’s true that statistics and findings change over time, but that doesn’t mean you can’t include them in your evergreen posts. They strengthen your claims and convince readers of the point you’re making. However, make sure they’re recent studies and you can relate them to the past and future so they’re more relevant.
Make it easy to digest. Use bullet points, lists, and other formatting to break up text and create whitespace. Anything that’s difficult to read will result in a high bounce rate, especially for users on mobile.
Add an Optin Form to Every Post
If you want to ensure that you stay connected to those reading your blog content, make sure you add signup forms to each post. Users aren’t prone to taking action unless you tell them so, so adding optins is essential to boost conversions and keep them coming back.
Depending on what features you’re looking for, you’ll want to choose a form plugin that brings you closer to achieving your goals. Gravity Forms makes it easy to create optimized forms that are easy for your audience to fill out. If it’s not in your budget, however, you can always browse Gravity Forms alternatives that better suit your needs.
Improve your contact form conversions by:
- Only asking for necessary information
- Placing the optin throughout the blog post instead of only at the end
- Clearly stating why you’re collecting user information
- Optimizing for mobile users
- Monitoring your forms’ conversions over time
- Using A/B testing to see which versions work best with visitors
Over to You
There are many ways to go about auditing your blog so it offers only the best, most valuable content for your readers. The more knowledge you offer, the quicker you’ll boost conversions by driving more traffic to your site. How will you revamp your blog content to reach your goals?
Syed Balkhi is an award-winning entrepreneur and online marketing expert. He is the co-founder of OptinMonster, WPBeginner, MonsterInsights, and WPForms.
