Google defines duplicate content as the content that appears in more than one place on the internet. Identifying duplicate content is way more complex than it sounds. The content doesn't always need to be identical; similar content can be considered duplicate too.

Search engine crawlers identify duplicate content by tracking a webpage's source code. Substantive blocks of duplicate content can exist both within and across domains. Though duplicate content is often considered malicious, it is mostly not. A few examples of non-malicious duplicate content are:

1. Products on an eCommerce portal shown on different web pages or interlinked with multiple distinct URLs
2. Pages generated by discussion forums intended for regular desktop use and a more simplified version for mobile devices
3. Web page versions created only for printers

If you need to maintain identical content across different web pages for a better user experience, you should mention your preferred URL to Google. It is known as canonicalization.

However, sometimes marketers deliberately copy the content that's ranking on top and publish it as their own. They also often add some of their own content to it to manipulate search engines. It's malpractice; it may lead to poor user experience and a Google penalty.

Google seeks distinct, fresh information and has zero tolerance for deceptive practices. According to a Google Search Central document, the search engine filters and chooses one of the pages if your site has a "printer" and a "regular" version of a webpage, which you haven't blocked using a noindex tag.

Google penalizes websites that deliberately use duplicate content to manipulate search engines by downgrading their ranking. In more severe cases, it may remove the site entirely from the Google index. In that case, the site will no longer show on search results.

How to Fix Duplicate Content?

To fix instances of duplicate content, you can take the following steps:

1. Use 301s: You can use 301 redirects in the *.htaccess file on all the pages with duplicate content to divert the traffic to the desired pages. It will also redirect Google crawlers to ensure that the search engine doesn't index that page.

2. Manage internal linking: Sometimes, website builders and developers erroneously or deliberately create several versions of the same page to build internal links. However, Google recommends that your internal links should point to a web page's main version. Therefore, you need to streamline internal linking and keep it consistent.

Internal links help users to navigate between relevant pages. Internal links that point to irrelevant or duplicate pages confuse search engines and may affect rankings and traffic on the main page. Efficiently managing them becomes even more critical when you have a big website with hundreds of pages.

3. Use top-level domains: To make Google use a web page or a document's most appropriate version, you should use top-level domains, especially if you manage websites with country-specific content.

The domain Amazon.de is the German version of Amazon's eCommerce portal. It uses *.de as a "top-level domain" to reflect a website that is region and language-focused.

On the flip side, domains like http://de.xyz.com are the subdomains of the main site xyz.com and don't reflect whether it is the website's country-specific version. Similarly, http://www.xyz.com/de is a subdirectory, it doesn't clearly indicate that it's a country-specific website.

Using a Hreflang tag in the website code (i.e., rel=" alternate" hreflang=" x") is the best way to tell Google that you're using a specific language on that page, so it can show the page on SERPs when users perform a search in that particular region or use that language.

4. Be cautious while syndicating content: Google shows the most appropriate web page version as per the search query during content syndication. But it may or may not be the page you want.

You can add a canonical tag to the syndicated page to suggest Google the right page to index. Here is an example of how a canonical tag looks like. You can insert the target URL inside the quotes:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://xyz.com/wordpress/seo-plugin/" />

Google wants you to provide the original article's link on each site that you're using for content syndication. Should anyone seek your permission to syndicate your content, you can add instructions using the noindex tag. It will help prevent Google from indexing the version used by third parties. So, even if other sites syndicate your content, Google SERPs will show your original version.

5. Avoid content repetition: When you need to include lengthy copyright text, terms and conditions, product features, and benefits on every page, add a summary and then link it to the page where the user can find detailed information.

‍6. Manage URL parameters: Developers use URL parameters for a better user experience, but multiple parameter combinations can create numerous URL variations with the same content. It can be an SEO nightmare. To manage URL parameters efficiently, use the Parameter Handling Tool. It will suggest Google bots the right way to treat URL parameters.

7. Understand your content management system: It's crucial to know how your website content is displayed. Different website templates for blogs, forums, and related networks often show the same content in various places. For example, a newly published blog may appear on your home page, in the archive, or some other page. But Google won't consider it as duplicate content.

‍8. Avoid similar content: If you have many pages with similar content, you can:

A. Expand each page, so it appears unique

B. Consolidate all the pages into one page

For instance, if you have a fitness website with separate pages for similar workouts, you can either merge them or add fresh content to each page to create several unique pages.

Should You Block Crawler Access to Certain Web Pages?

Google doesn't like it when website owners use robots.txt files or some other code to block crawler access to web pages with duplicate content. It can lead to indexing issues.

Instead of blocking the bots, Google recommends using the rel="canonical" code to mark duplicate pages. You can also use the URL parameter handling tool or 301 redirects.

If there are numerous pages on your website with duplicate content, you can adjust it by changing the Googlebot crawl rate.

When Does Duplicate Content Not Hurt Your Website?

Duplicate content hurts a website's ranking if search engines perceive that it's used to manipulate search results. However, if you have created several versions of the same page unintentionally when structuring your website, you need not worry about it. Google usually does an excellent job of filtering the best version of a web page to display on their SERPs (search engine results pages).

What if Someone Else Copies Your Content?

Though it's rare, however, if you find a site copying your content without your permission, you can:

1. Contact the webmaster and request its removal.
2. File a report under the Copyright Act. Google removes all content that infringes copyright laws from its search results.

Conclusion

Duplicate content can be a major issue for your website if used to manipulate search engine results. In most other cases, it won't harm your site's rankings or indexing. However, it can significantly diminish the user experience. Therefore, you must work proactively to ensure that your website is free of duplicate content.

If you're a manager or a business owner handling your social accounts, you must have often wondered about the best times to post on social media.

Recency is a significant ranking factor used by both Facebook and Instagram algorithms. So, the best time to post your content is when most of your followers are online.

But it is easier said than done. There's no unique or universal "best time to post" as it changes drastically across different platforms and demographics. So, it's better to use analytics and the right tools to figure out.

Here we share a few tips to help you find your own best time to post on various social media platforms for maximum reach and visibility.

Facebook

You should use your posts' past performance and follower activity to find the best time to post on FB.

Source: Hootsuite's Social Team

According to the heatmaps of Hootsuite Analytics tools, most of HootSuite's Facebook followers are available around 3 PM EST every weekday. However, according to another metric past post-performance the best time to post on Facebook is 6:20 AM and 12:20 PM PST during weekdays. These posting times can be considered the best as they highlight the widest gaps in the routine of HootSuite's social media followers when they spend time scrolling through their social media feeds.

For better decision-making, you can refer to Facebook statistics.

Instagram

According to the Hootsuite social media team, the best time slots for publishing content on Instagram are:

1. 11:00 AM-3:00 PM EST
2. 7:00-8:00 PM EST

The first slot is during mid-morning when people go to offices in New York or evening when they log off from their workstations and check social feeds on their smartphones. For more in-depth insights, you can check out Instagram statistics.

Since Instagram's algorithm works a lot like Facebook's, recency is a primary ranking factor here too. So, to increase your click-throughs, ensure that the content you publish in these slots is fresh and engaging.

Understanding user behavior is essential in social media marketing. Let's have a look at an Instagram-generated heatmap.

Source: Hootsuite's Social Team

When formulating a posting strategy, you can't just rely on a single factor, which is online behavior in this case. You should also consider the past performance of your posts and experiment with different time slots.

Twitter

According to the Hootsuite social media team, the best time to tweet is between 9 AM and 12 PM EST on weekdays. Click-through rate is the most crucial metric on Twitter for engagement. The 9 AM to 12 PM slot receives the highest click-throughs since it coincides with the office hours in the UK and the East Coast.

Though the morning hours on weekends are the busiest, marketers prefer to schedule posts a bit later to avoid the social media rush hour.

However, using the best time to post metric is not suitable when your audience is spread across the globe in different time zones. According to Nick Martin, Global Social Engagement Specialist at HootSuite, you should tweet content round the clock in small intervals for most traction.

Tip: There is no best time to post on Twitter because of its global audience. Schedule tweets round the clock, preferably every hour. You should do the same when running ad campaigns. Target people according to their time zone. For comprehensive Twitter stats for 2021, you should refer to Twitter statistics.

Linkedin

According to the Hootsuite social media team, the best time to post on LinkedIn is between 11 AM and 2 PM EST during weekdays.

According to Iain Beable, Hootsuite's Social Marketing Strategist, people are usually more active on LinkedIn during mornings, lunch hours, and evenings, but the pandemic has changed this. Now, the pattern is more scattered and spread over irregular intervals.

During the pandemic, users have been active even on weekends, especially Sunday evenings. Therefore, your LinkedIn strategy must be more data-driven and based on past performance. Also, keep experimenting to know what works.

Unlike Facebook and Instagram, recency is not as crucial on LinkedIn. Factors such as relevance, quality, and trending content matter a lot more.

To know more LinkedIn facts and stats, visit LinkedIn statistics in 2021 and LinkedIn demographics.

How to Find the Best Time to Post on Social Media?

1. Research When Your Audience is Most Active Online

Though most social media algorithms consider recency when determining organic ranking, you must know when your audience is online on Facebook and Instagram for better reach.

Twitter and LinkedIn are less transparent; they don't reveal too much information about their user activity. Therefore, you should use third-party tools to research audience behavior on these platforms.

Tip: Popular social media tool Hootsuite offers a built-in feature, The Best Time to Publish, which provides hour-by-hour user activity through heatmaps. It will fetch your posting history and help you figure out the optimal times to post that you haven't experimented with in the past few weeks.

2. Study Your Best Performing Posts

You need to use a data-driven approach to meet your social media performance goals. Learn how to use various social media analytics tools to maximize your engagement and reach on different platforms. You should focus on your most successful posts and study all the critical metrics. You can create a social media report to find the top-performing posts.

Use the following metrics to assess your best performing social posts:

• Awareness (consider the number of impressions)
• Engagement (posts with high engagement rates)
• Sales and traffic (posts with highest click-throughs)

Analytics for Social Platforms

A. Facebook Analytics

Facebook provides three analytics tools:

• Facebook Page Insights: It contains information about page and post engagement, post and story reach, video views, and recommendations. It also provides data about follower growth, orders and revenue, and when your audience is online.
• Facebook Audience Insights: It tracks your audience’s demographics such as gender, age, job title, and relationship status.
• Facebook Ad Center: It covers information about ad spend, post engagement, audience reached, and click-throughs.

B. Twitter Analytics

Twitter analytics is also divided into three parts:

• Account home overview: Gives information on monthly highlights and the best performing content
• The tweet activity dashboard: Tracks your tweet’s engagement and impressions for a selected period
• The campaign dashboard: Tracks your Twitter ads so you can measure important metrics such as impressions, reach, engagement rate, and cost per action

C. Instagram Analytics

Instagram insights can also be divided into three significant sections:

• Content: Helps you track the performance of your posts and Stories.
• Activity: This allows you to track the audience’s response to your posts and Stories.
• Audience: Gives information about your audience’s demographics and user-behavior by assessing when they are most likely to be online.
  

3. Get Competitor Insights

To get competitor insights:

1. Scroll through the feed of your major competitors
2. Find out their best-performing posts; assess the number of likes and shares
3. Do a competitive analysis to study the patterns
4. Reverse-engineer the strategies that led them to succeed; apply them to suit your specific needs

You can also try social listening to decide what kind of content you should post and when you should post it.

4. Post According to Your Audience's Time Zone

When you target a global audience, make sure to schedule your posts according to their time zone. Or else, publish round the clock. Use a social media scheduler to do it efficiently.

How to use a social media scheduler like HeroPost?

HeroPost helps schedule posts for all social platforms from a single dashboard. It allows you to publish posts directly or schedule them for posting at a later date. It has many valuable built-in features such as ‘Geolocation’ and ‘First Comment to Post.’ HeroPost facilitates unlimited scheduling for months ahead.

5. Test and Optimize

Even after due diligence, you would need routine A/B tests to achieve the desired results. Post the same content at different time slots to see when you get the best response.

According to Nick Martin, testing should be a continuous process. You should test for multiple variables such as the images used, the post's copy, and the posting time.

6. Keep Monitoring and Experimenting

Social media is constantly evolving, and so is the user behavior on these platforms. For instance, businesses resorted to remote work in 2020 following the coronavirus outbreak. It led to increased social media use. Earlier, people checked their feeds during lunch hours, but when they started working from home, they checked it even during their zoom meetings. When user habits shift so drastically, your social media strategy should also follow.

Conclusion

There's no standard or global best hour to post on social channels, especially when time is a variable factor. The ideal time to post may vary according to your audience's social behavior and the platforms you choose. However, a data-driven approach with continuous A/B testing and experimentation will help you get the best results possible and improve your ROI. You need to assess your past post-performance across all social channels. But for Instagram and Facebook, also consider when your audience is online.

An email's subject line plays a vital role in determining whether the recipient will open it. Most people scroll through their inboxes looking for relevant emails based on the subject lines.

As a marketer, you must ensure that your subscribers read your emails. To write attention-grabbing subject lines, you can draw inspiration from some of the best email subject lines used by businesses and organizations.

You must have seen the typical promotional headlines in your inbox, such as "how she got a $700 writing client in one week (!!!)" and "these are some great BONUSES!" Readers ignore such hyperbolic emails and move to the next without wasting time.

So, what kind of email subject line should you write? Here are 15 examples that will inspire you to craft attention-grabbing subject lines:

1: "unmotivated? these 2 steps fix it"

Marie Forleo, who Oprah named a thought leader for the next generation, is a motivational speaker and business coach. She creates quality content on her blog and inspires her audiences through the weekly YouTube show MARIETV.

2020 was full of challenges and difficulties, with most people staying inside homes during the lockdown. We also saw a dramatic upsurge in the work-from-home culture. It was a tough time, and millions worldwide struggled financially, physically, and psychologically.

Forleo uses intelligently-crafted subject lines to draw her audience's attention without sounding overly promotional. A relevant case study is: "unmotivated? these 2 steps fix it." Written in lowercase, the message has a casual tone, yet it addresses a much bigger problem ā how to bring your life back on track after a global pandemic? The subject line was researched carefully to echo the global public sentiment.

2: "What Did You Think? Write a Review."

People receive these kinds of messages from eCommerce sites, usually within a fortnight of buying a product. It is the perfect way to ask your customers how they feel about the purchase. Reviews from satisfied customers help website visitors make a buying decision. However, it's important to note that they are not forced into writing a good review. Honest feedback is of paramount importance. It encourages strong relationships and transparency with customers. Consumers feel empowered and valued when they are offered an opportunity to express their opinion.

3: "Your prescription is expiring"

It works as an email alert when your prescription for medication or eyeglasses is nearing its expiry date. A subject line's power lies in its timing. It prompts the user to engage with an email because it is highly personalized and suggests urgency.

4: "Best of Groupon: The Deals That Make Us Proud (Unlike Our Nephew, Steve)"

Groupon uses humor expertly in its marketing messages. For example, "unlike our nephew Steve.ā  It makes us laugh. Because it imbues an element of fun in an otherwise serious-sounding message, the sheer contrast compels the user to open the email.

5: "Free (Cool!) Clothes Alert" (Gift emojis)

Clover used emojis in its subject line to evoke specific and vivid responses. The content's visual nature arouses curiosity and invites the reader to see the information.

6: "The timer is going off on your shopping cart"

King Arthur Flour used this subject line as a reminder, signaling urgency. Warning customers that they would likely miss out on the products if they don't act immediately almost always works. It also effectively conveys the implied message that the stock may soon run out.

FOMO, or fear of missing out, is a proven sales technique. If a customer has had a particular product on their wishlist for some time, such messages can push them into making the purchase.

7: "Important Weather Advisory"

People take weather advisory seriously as it impacts their daily routine. It influences their ability to leave the house, travel, and go to work. Businesses with products or services susceptible to the weather are more likely to send such messages to their customers. For example, before an impending hail storm or power outage, the businesses selling internet services might email a weather advisory to their customers.

8: "3750 reward points for you. A lovely gift for your partner."

Specific numbers compel you to open an email, especially when personalized. Usually, banks, airlines, financial services, and superstores send such messages to their loyal customers to show that the company cares. It helps businesses nurture their brand value and build long-term relationships with customers.

9: "Rock the color of the year"

It uses intrigue and mystery to stimulate you into opening an email. Etsy, an eCommerce marketplace, once promoted a product highlighting a single feature: color. They generated curiosity by using the phrase "color of the year." A message like this builds interest enough to make users click on the email.

10: "Black Friday shoppers are the worst customers"

LinkedIn used this subject line to promote an article published on Pulse, its publishing platform. Although the subject line is facetious, bold, and judgemental, it is a cultural observation. And since LinkedIn doesn't sell anything on Black Friday, it does not cause any direct harm.

11: "Don't open this email"

A subject line like this exploits human psychology. We experience a strong desire to do something when asked to refrain from it. Brands leverage this human tendency, known as reactance, and use it to boost the open rate.

12: "I got Botoxā& THIS is what it looked like"

Used by Refinery29, this subject line uses a personal story to create intrigue. People are naturally curious about personal anecdotes. When you include a strong human story in your email, it is more likely to be well-received.

13: "What can you afford?"

Affordability is a significant factor when consumers explore the market for a product or service. When an email tells you that something is within your means, you feel compelled to check out the prices.

14: "As you wish"

It is a popular dialogue from the movie "The Princess Bride." The brand UncommonGoods used it effectively to target the film's fans. It was a simple strategy, but it worked because the brand sent it to a predisposed user base.

15: "Not cool guys"

BuzzFeed's excellent copywriting also reflects in its emails. They engage the reader with catchy and engaging subject lines. It delights their customers and improves the open rate for their emails.

Conclusion

We have discussed just a few examples and ideas you can use when working on the subject line for your emails. The objective is to craft a message that evokes an immediate response. Prior research about your target user goes a long way in creating exciting subject lines. However. there is no magic formula to succeed. Users may click on an email today and be completely turned off by it at another time. The best strategy is to be receptive to innovative ideas. The most effective subject lines entertain, educate, and offer value.

The traffic that a website attracts is crucial; it can be both the cause and the effect of a thriving business. Impressive website traffic helps entrepreneurs achieve their ultimate objectiveābusiness expansion and an ever-increasing customer base.

Optimizing SEO is an effective way to boost website traffic and rankings. However, it is not the only way. As a business owner, you should know how to diversify the incoming traffic. Relying on SEO alone is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket. So, if something goes wrong or Google rolls out an unpredicted algorithm update, your primary source of traffic, which is a search engine, in this case, may ditch you. It could also spell doom for your business.

Therefore, in this blog, we discuss various ways and practices that you can use to improve your website traffic without relying too heavily on SEO. Here we share 15 useful and mostly free tactics to boost your website traffic.

1. Use Schema Markup to Highlight Information on SERPs

Schema Markup is a code that you insert into your website to help the search engines return explanatory results for searchers. Adding it doesn't directly increase traffic to your website, but it makes search engine crawlers find and index your web pages. As a result, you get better search engine visibility and traffic. It also creates rich site snippets to bolster your click-through rate.

Here's an example of a website, Cute Calendar, that used Schema Markup on its events calendar page. The search result on Google looks like this:

Here is how you can use Schema Markup for SEO:

Go to Google's Structured Data Markup Helper to mark up elements on your page so Google can understand the data on the page.

1. Select the type of data: Choose one of the content formats such as articles, book reviews, and events from the several listed options.

 
• Select Content Format
• Paste the URL to markup
• Select the elements
   

2. Continue adding markup items: Highlight the other things on your page to populate your markup list.  ‍

3. Create the HTML: Click on Create HTMLā once you're done.  ‍

4. Add Schema Markup to your site: Open your CMS or the source code and add the highlighted snippets at the right places.    ‍

5. Test your schema: Use the Structured Data Testing Tool to see how the result will look on the SERPs.  

2. Add Internal Links

Adding internal links is a healthy SEO practice; they are as important as backlinks or external links. You must interlink your website's pillar content for the best user experience. It will make navigation easier and improve metrics such as "time spent on page" and "time spent on the website."

Image courtesy:  Media Search Group

3. Interview Experts, Industry Influencers, and Thought Leaders

The objective of content marketing is to bring fresh content that offers value. You should invite people who can offer useful and fascinating inputs. Interesting interviews work across all major content formatsāblogs, YouTube channels, and podcasts.

It's even better if you can call over experts, industry influencers, and thought leaders for interviews. Popular names establish an instant connection, add to your credibility, and increase traffic. Celebs also share such interviews on their social handles, further enhancing your content's reach. It is an excellent exercise in giving a boost to personal branding and mutual promotion.

4. Use Email Marketing

Most businesses overly rely on content marketing and SEO these days. However, many other streams, such as paid social and email marketing, are equally effective, and you should not ignore them.

When done right, they can have a great reach and impact. Even a moderately successful email campaign can result in an instant spike in traffic. But make sure that you don't bombard your audience with frequent and unimportant messages. Instead, use emails to give them gentle reminders about your latest products and services.

5. Make Sure Your Site is Responsive

80% of netizens used a mobile device to search the internet in 2019. Therefore, it's crucial that you optimize your website for mobile devices and tablets for a smooth user experience. An unresponsive website can result in a massive spike in the bounce rate. You don't want visitors to leave your website in no time; it will nullify all your marketing efforts.

6. Work on Your Site's Loading Speed

Poor site loading speed hurts user experience and may lead to many other severe consequences such as:

A. Google can penalize your website

B. Your rankings may drop overnight

C. Bounce rate may increase

D. Disappointed visitors may never return and even share their bad experience on social media  

To resolve these issues, you should:

A. Technically optimize all your website pages

B. Optimize image file size

C. Improve your page structure

D. Control the functionality of third-party plugins for optimal user experience

7. Be Active on Social Media

No user can spam any group or account for self-promotion on social media. However, even if your end goal is self-promotion, you need to participate with the online community and use relevant hashtags to provide context to your posts and conversations.

If your followers leave comments on your Facebook or Instagram business page, you should respond proactively and answer their queries. Don't use social media as your broadcast channel. It is meant for interaction, so engage with your audiences on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms.

Tip: It will do well to remember Megan O'Neill's wise words when using social media for business: Before you sell on social media, interact, inspire, educate, entertain, and engage.

8. Use Videos

Videos are much more effective and entertaining than text-based content. Also, it is far easier to retain the information you consume via video. If you want to make your website engaging and attract new visitors, you should create high-quality videos that inform, educate, and entertain.

9. Host Webinars

A webinar is an effective way to share your experience and knowledge with an interested audience. Webinars should be an integral part of your digital marketing and social promotion campaigns. They will generate traffic and lucrative leads that you can nurture carefully through content marketing and personal interaction.

To make your webinar successful, send out a reminder email before the scheduled time to your subscribers and website visitors and use paid advertising to promote it. You should also send reminders and alerts with messages such as "last chance to register" 24 hours before the webinar.

It's a good practice to make your webinar content available after it's over through downloadable audio files and promote it on social media. To learn more on how to conduct a webinar, click here.

10. Advertise

Paid advertising is a great way to promote your website among untapped audiences. You can tweak paid strategies according to your business objectives. But study an advertising platform's pros and cons carefully before selecting it.

If you want your website traffic to translate into more sales, you should target keywords with "high purchase intent" when creating paid campaigns. These keywords and search terms may be costly, but the rewards will outweigh your spending.

11. Experiment with Your Content

To succeed at content marketing, you should experiment with different content formats and sizes. Content repurposing is a great option if you have a team working on your blogs. You can break your content into small chunks and convert it into picture messages, infographics, and videos for maximum impact.

Famous entrepreneur and internet personality GaryVee, for example, experiments with different content formats, especially "micro-content," which he creates from his event videos and long-form posts. He says he constantly creates and posts as much content as possible. However, he makes sure that each piece is specific to the platform he's posting it on.

GaryVee publishes a new episode of his popular GaryVee Video Experience every day and distributes it on his YouTube channel, Facebook Watch Page, and IGTV. Apart from that, he continually creates "micro-content" and shares it on his Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Quora, and other social handles.

To know how Gary Vaynerchuk makes 30+ pieces of content from a single keynote or event, visit the GaryVee Content Model.

12. Write Compelling Headlines

The writers at Buzzfeed experiment with more than 20 different headlines before arriving at the one they publish. Headlines are crucial to attracting traffic. If you have a dull headline, most readers will bounce off and go elsewhere. Writing a compelling headline is an art that you need to master for successful marketing. You can try the blog topic headline generator to see what works. You can also read this post to learn how to write attractive headlines. Here's more about how Buzzfeed headlines work.

13. Make Use of On-Page SEO

Search engines rank optimized content on top, and SEO is still as relevant as ever. Make sure to add alt text to your images and create internal links in every post you publish. Don't ignore meta descriptions and meta tags. Optimizing your website for on-page SEO is a proven method to increase organic traffic and website visibility and rank on various keywords.

14. Target Long-Tail Keywords

Once you are done researching high-intent keywords and popular keywords in your niche, you need to experiment with long-tail keywords. It is the secret formula to attract enormous traffic to a website.

Once a website starts ranking on long-tail keywords, it becomes visible on search engines and starts ranking on other keywords too. Long-tail keywords are used the most in web searches; if you are not targeting them, you're missing out on traffic and opportunities to rank on top of SERPs.

15. Start Guest Blogging

Guest blogging for a high-domain authority site is a surefire way to increase traffic to your site. It also helps build your brand.

Google doesn't like users manipulating its results by overusing/misusing guest posting. Therefore, you need to stay away from spammy tactics and approach guest posting with caution.

Conclusion

This is an exhaustive list of the tactics you can try to ensure a consistent increase in your website traffic. Most of these strategies don't require any investment and can be implemented easily. If you've also got a list of proven tips that helped increase traffic to your website, please feel free to share them in the comments.

Content marketing has come a long way since its early days when it was primarily about blogs and keywords. Now, you need to understand “content strategy” and its various elements to get it right.

Here we discuss all content marketing essentials that can help both beginners and seasoned marketers. However, if you are already familiar with it, feel free to look at the contents first and jump to the relevant sections.

Table of Contents

• What is Content Marketing
• Elements of Content Marketing
• Content Creation
• Content Distribution
• Customer Retention
• Active Sales Funnel
• Types of Content Marketing
• Blogs and Articles
• Infographics
• eBooks and White Papers
• How to Create an Effective Content Marketing Strategy
• Set Goals
• Identify Your Target Buyer Persona
• Audit Your Existing Content
• Research Top-Performing Content Across Industry
• Create a Distribution Plan
• Implement
• Measure and Tweak Your Strategy  
• Content Marketing Essentials
• SEO Tools for Keyword Research
• Content Research Tool
• Editorial Calendar
• Writing
• Distribution
• Analytics

Let’s start with a fantastic example of what content marketing can accomplish when done right.

In the 19th century, when the automobile industry was in its nascent stage, there were only 3000 cars in France. André Jules Michelin and Édouard Michelin sold tires for vehicles but were thwarted by insufficient demand. The only way for them to push sales was by getting more cars on the road. It involved inspiring and educating people to travel by car more frequently and make it a part of their daily life.

The Michelin brothers came out with an innovative strategy. They started promoting tourism instead of tires and published a travel guide for France’s vehicle owners and travelers. The guide mentioned the best restaurants, motels, and hotels in France’s various locations. However, it offered a lot more than a regular directory. It shared road maps to help the drivers navigate, listed various repair shops and gas stations, provided tire repair and replacement instructions, and introduced star ratings for listed businesses. The brothers named it the Michelin Guide; it is one of the first recorded examples of content marketing in history.

The Michelin Guide is not just one guidebook. It’s a series of guidebooks that the French tire company has been publishing annually for the last 120 years. The first edition was published in 1900, and it sold nearly 35000 copies. Today, it is widely considered the oldest travel guide for Europe. It is also among the most popular restaurant rating systems globally. The guide accords eateries ratings between 1 to 3 Michelin stars depending on their level of excellence. It is so definitive and influential in Europe that a variation of just one star can significantly impact a restaurant’s success. To get a Michelin star is a matter of great pride for every restaurant. If a place gets three stars, it means they offer exceptional, world-class food.

That's what effective content marketing can do.

Despite the complexity involved, content marketing is pretty simple if you stick to the basics. All you need to do is consistently create and distribute relevant and educational content for your target audience.

In essence, content marketing should:

1. Solve your audience’s problems
2. Add some sort of value to their life
3. Build trust and authority

Elements of Content Marketing

It is the easiest and yet the most powerful way to help a potential customer navigate the buyer's journey. Effective content marketing makes it easier for them to trust your brand and make a purchase decision. Here are four key elements you should consider when creating content marketing strategies to boost sales:

1. Content Creation

You can't expect great results from content marketing quickly. It is most effective when you regularly post and publish relevant content to forge strong relationships with your audience.

Your marketing approach should address your prospective buyers' problems. You need to educate them about the possible solutions. More than closing sales, it should be about making life easier for your audience. However, you need to go through trial and error to learn the different aspects of content marketing.

2. Content Distribution

With information overload and almost 3 million blogs published every day, you need a robust content distribution system to target your core audience. Social media is a powerful medium to distribute your content to a diverse audience. Therefore, make sure your content is easy to share.

Consider using a social media management platform to help you streamline your content marketing processes, analyze your performance, and manage all your social media accounts in just one place.

You can also try content syndication. While syndicating, you will republish your content on third-party websites in your niche to reach a wider audience.

An example of article syndication. The original article was published on LinkedIn.

3. Customer Retention

Knowing your audience’s buyer persona is crucial in creating relevant content. However, to deliver the right kind of content at the right time, you should also be familiar with:

1. The sales process
2. The key factors buyers consider when making a purchase decision
3. Your audience’s problems and pain points

This information is incredibly useful in creating content that resonates with your audiences. Sales is not a one-time activity. Your job is not done after you've closed the first sale. Instead, it is only the beginning of a long relationship with your customer.

Tip: Your ability to generate relevant and valuable content will decide how long your customers will stay with you. You can also use content to provide after-sales support.

4. Active Sales Funnel

Content marketing offers many benefits but its core objective is to educate and nurture leads, move them across the sales funnel, and help the potential customer make a purchase decision. To achieve this end goal, a content marketer uses well-conceived, data-driven, and original content.

Google algorithms are constantly updating themselves to find the most useful content for online searchers. So, the more useful content you create, the higher your chances of ranking on top. Once you start ranking high on search engines, you will attract more visitors to your site, resulting in increased sales. It also means more people in your sales funnel, whom you can nurture with good content and personal interactions. Creating high-quality content for a sales funnel's various stages is an essential part of content marketing.

Tip: Well-written, data-driven, and original content will help you achieve your business goals. The more useful content you create, the higher you will rank in search engine results.

Types of Content Marketing

1. Blogs and Articles

Text-based content, such as blogs, is quick to read and easy to understand. It is also the least expensive to produce as compared to videos and podcasts that need costly editing software. But since text-based content is visually less appealing and engaging than videos, you must find creative ways to make it more interesting.

Tip: Break complex ideas into bite-sized chunks for easier understanding.Ā

Here are a few tips to help you write engaging blogs:

1. Share your stories
2. Provide useful content
3. Experiment with your topics
4. Use compelling headlines
5. Get to the point quickly
6. Write short sentences
7. Focus on flow
8. Promote your posts

Tip: Readers love blogs that are readable, skimmable, and easy to navigate. Use lists, subheadings, tips, graphics, data, and visual elements to create unique content.

2. Infographics

Infographics and picture messages are three times more popular than any other type of content for likes and shares. Their visual appeal catches the attention of the reader instantly. Graphics make complex information easy to process and learn from. You can combine several infographics into an animated GIF to make it even more exciting and useful.

Apart from the design, it’s crucial how you present information in an infographic. It will be much more impactful if you show infographics in easily digestible chunks or in a story format. Your infographic should:

1. Be easy to understand
2. Be visually appealing
3. Be clutter-free
4. Provide digestible information
5. Use storytelling to explain complex concepts

3. eBooks and White Papers

They help develop an in-depth understanding of the product or service. The tone and approach of eBooks and white papers differ from a regular blog or video; they are created mainly for research and analysis.

Most such content is created in PDF format; data, graphics, and stats support it. You can also make this content available on your website in exchange for the readers' contacts using an opt-in page; readers are generally keen to consume free educational content. However, be mindful of the design layout and the presentation when creating this type of content.

Creating an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

To create an effective content marketing strategy:

1. Set Goals

Different businesses have varied business goals, and you should shape your content marketing strategy accordingly. A strategy that's data-driven, goal-oriented, and backed by proper market research will give you an edge over your competitors. Define your target market and focus on your competition. You can use several tools such as SpyFu, BuzzSumo, and SEMRush, for competition analysis.

2. Identify Your Target Buyer Persona

To identify who your real buyers are:

A. Pay attention to their demographics, pain points, job profile, income, lifestyle, buying behavior, and culture.
B. Map their buyer’s journey right from the awareness and introduction stage to the final conversion/purchase stage.
C. Use empathy to give correct information about your products or services across the sales funnel’s different stages.

3. Audit Your Existing Content

All types of content are not equally impactful. You need to perform an audit regularly to figure out which content is performing well. Your content's success will give you a foundation on which you can base future strategies. Apart from performance, audit your blogs to double-check format, layout, design, process, relevance, and the target audience. Use crucial metrics such as shares and page views to find the content that works the best for your website.

4. Research Top-Performing Content Across Industry

Competitor analysis is a great way to discover the kind of content you should create. Run audits across your niche and take insights from well-performing competitor blogs. It will help you shape your overall content strategy. You can find the best global content in your niche using the following steps:

1. Perform competitor analysis
2. Research the top keywords your competitors are focusing on
3. Figure out the keywords you want to rank for
4. Find the leading global content for those keywords
5. Study the factors that contribute to better-ranking content; apply them
6. Generate topics

5. Create a Distribution Plan

Content distribution is as important as its creation. Even the best quality content is of no use if it's not distributed properly and fails to reach the right audience. Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube are powerful distribution channels; use them. You can also make use of email marketing to distribute your content.

6. Implement

Once you have content topics, keywords, and a strategy, gather the necessary personnel (content strategists, writers, graphic designers) and marketing tools to implement your plans. The right people and effective content marketing and SEO tools will help you research, write, and present important information in an interesting way.

7. Measure and Tweak Your Strategy

You need to measure your content marketing performance and constantly tweak it to get the best results. The key metrics are conversion, social shares, traffic, brand interest, and built links. Continuous tweaking and optimization will help you create a laser-sharp strategy that can do wonders for your brand.

Content Marketing Essentials

The following can help you market your content effectively:

1. SEO Tools for Keyword Research

Finding the right keywords is the key to success in content marketing. To research the best keywords, you can use tools like MozPro, Ahrefs, WooRank, SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner, and Google Search Console.

2. Content Research Tools

To get fresh ideas to create new content, you need various metrics such as built links, page views, and social shares. You can get these insights through tools such as BuzzSumo and Ahrefs.

3. Editorial Calendar

Create an editorial calendar to plan content and schedule publishing. It will streamline your marketing, make it smooth and consistent, and help you achieve the best results from the content created to target the audiences at the sales funnel's various stages. It will also make it easy to edit, publish, promote, and update old content.

4. Writing

You can use Grammarly, WriterP, SEO writing assistant tool, Evernote, Milanote, and Ulysses to make your writing more impactful and engaging.

5. Distribution

Social distribution tools such as HootSuite, Buffer, and AgoraPulse will make using multiple accounts and social media platforms a breeze. You can use tools like MailChimp or Infusionsoft for email marketing.

6. Analytics

Google Analytics can give you insightful reports on how your website is performing. You can use it to analyze your website's traffic pattern, and measure the performance of your content marketing and SEO campaigns. You can also use metrics such as bounce rate, user engagement, page visits, clicks, and pageviews to formulate recommendations on your SEO and content marketing strategies.

YouTube is the world's second-largest search engine after Google; optimizing your videos for it can produce rich rewards when done right.

Although Google lists videos in its search results, search engine optimization for YouTube takes a customized approach and a unique set of skills.

Here are 15 hacks to help you rank your videos high on Google and YouTube search results:

1. Find the Right Keywords

Video marketing on YouTube is not only for professionals. YouTube is the world's second most visited site after Google, with 500 hours of video uploaded on it every minute.

Like Google search, the best way to get started with YouTube SEO is to find the right keywords. It is a crucial step in your bid to attract the right traffic to your channel. As YouTube videos also appear on Google search pages, you can target keywords for both.

Keyword research is crucial because it allows you to match your content with user queries and helps the audience understand the video's context and scope. It also enables you to find the exact phrases that generate traffic and separate them from other search terms.

You can use these two approaches to find the right keywords for your channel or video:

• Generate a list of keyword ideas: Look for keywords using YouTube's Search Suggestā  feature for the first bunch of YouTube SEO keyword ideas.
• Target low competition keywords: If you have recently created a YouTube channel and have few subscribers, you should focus on low competition keywords. Pursuing competitive keywords at this stage can often be counter-productive. To gain insight into your competition, click on the About Resultā  section on their channel. It usually contains keywords that aren't very competitive. Google Keyword Planner can be immensely helpful, especially in finding keywords around your particular niche.

2. Optimize the Video Title

Your job as a creator is not over after uploading the video. Even if your videos offer users value, they will not rank unless you optimize them.

Include the correct information and relevant keywords in your video title to attract the desired audiences. Use easy-to-remember, attention-grabbing titles and fill them with popular keywords. A video's title is crucial for search engine ranking and visitor traffic as it's the first thing that users and search engines look at.

The title shouldn't be misleading; it should be relevant to the search query and the video content. Keep it jargon-free and straightforward. Make sure it is brief and helps the users find answers to their questions.

3. Optimize Tags

It is an integral part of a robust SEO strategy; however, different tags play various roles. Therefore, you must optimize your tags for better SEO results.

Each page on YouTube must have a unique meta description. You need to include relevant keywords to attract traffic but be careful not to over-use them, as it can prompt the search engine to divert traffic away from your videos.

For inspiration and insights, you can study the tags your competitors use by downloading YouTube Tags, a Chrome extension.Ā  Here is a screenshot from the tool, in which you can see the tags used in a video.

To increase your YT video's visibility and boost organic rankings, you should work on writing effective YouTube tags.

4. Have a Comment Section

YouTube algorithms rank videos that have lots of views and active audience engagement higher than others. To boost comment-based engagement for your videos:

1. Keep them interactive
2. Ask a question at the end to trigger a conversation
3. Encourage viewers to comment

5. Encourage Viewers to Subscribe

Channel subscription is a crucial factor that drives viewer engagement. Ask your visitors to subscribe to your channel in your opening statement or towards the video's end. The more subscribers you have, the more traffic you will receive whenever you upload a video.

6. Make an Attractive Thumbnail

You may call it the Instagram effect, but visual graphics and images go a long way in enhancing your visibility on any social media site, including YouTube. A unique and exciting thumbnail can quickly grab viewers' attention. Meanwhile, lousy typography, improper messaging, and poor graphics can instantly turn off visitors. Therefore, avoid creating irrelevant thumbnails that are misaligned with your video's theme and content. Resist the temptation of petty clickbait tactics.

7. Use Closed Captioning

Closed captions boost your video's SEO as search engines can read closed captions. They index them and consider them in search results. In contrast, search engines can't read open captions, so open captions don't offer any SEO value. YouTube does not support automatic captioning. Therefore, you can either edit the auto-generated captions or choose to create your own.

8. Build Links to Your Channel

Your YouTube SEO should promote your videos and your channel. Link-building can help your SEO in multiple ways. It drives referral traffic and increases your website's authority. There is no magic formula to explain how Google's algorithms work as they are complex and constantly evolving. But Google gives considerable weightage to backlinks when ranking a site for different keywords.

Link building is a popular SEO tactic because links send a signal to search engines that your site deserves attention, offers value, and is worthy of citation. Therefore, you'll find that most top-ranking sites have numerous backlinks. Building links can be difficult and tedious, but with more outreach, you can engineer better links.

Reach out to users who share your interests, and introduce them to your content. You can find potential subscribers on social media and third-party blogs. When your video content offers value to the viewers, they are more likely to subscribe to your channel.

9. Share on Social Media

You should not ignore the power of social media when framing your YouTube SEO strategy. With billions of active users worldwide, social media platforms have emerged as potent marketing tools. There are 3.5 billion daily active social media users worldwide, which makes up around 45% of the world population. According to an Emarketer report in 2019, around 90% of millennials, 78% of Gen X, and 48% of baby boomers use social media. So, sharing on social media is the best way to promote your content. You can promote your YouTube content to audiences from different generations using major social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

10. Embed Your YouTube Videos

Embedding your video is an effective way of directing attention to your YouTube videos, especially when you feature your content on news pages, blogs and e-commerce websites. Here's how you can embed your YouTube videos and playlists:

1. Open the YouTube video you want to embed
2. On the bottom right, click on Share
3. Click on Embed
4. Copy the HTML code from the pop-up box
5. Paste the code into your blog or website HTML.

11. Increase Your Video Watch Time

Video watch-time is an essential metric from an SEO perspective. Analytics like watch-time and audience retention report reports provide valuable insights into how audiences are consuming your content. Use them to identify red flags early and adapt for better results.

12. Develop Playlists

Most YouTube viewers often visit playlists for similar content by the same creator. If you follow digital marketing influencers like Rand Fishkin, Larry Kim, and Neil Patel and want to know the latest trends in paid advertising, the playlists on their channels are a great place to start. For example, in Moz's channel, you'll find many playlists such as Technical Tips, Daily SEO Fix, and SEO Strategy. They hook the viewers' attention, make navigation more manageable, and open them to newer content. Playlists also substantially shorten the search time.

13. Find the Optimal Length for Your Videos

It is difficult to determine the perfect video length, but the average duration of a popular video on YouTube is 4 minutes and 20 seconds. However, a video's size will depend on the type of content you are showcasing.

14. Upload a Transcript

A video transcript boosts your content's SEO value because it includes keywords that may lead viewers to your video. It also increases the video visibility and viewer focus.

15. Improve Your Content

Although SEO can help with your content's search engine rankings, your focus should be on giving your customers high-quality content through your videos. Here we give you a low-down on the three critical elements of quality content and a few tips on how to create it:

1. Quality: Learn to write well and make it visually appealing, so the readers or viewers wait for your content, be it text or videos.
2. Uniqueness: Make sure the content you create has a fresh, singular voice. So, even if it's curated, it should stand out. You can also offer more context and explore a different angle to make it unique.
3. Authority: Adopt a journalist's approach to add credibility to a story. Cite verifiable sources to support your points.

Get Ready to Boost the YouTube SEO

YouTube SEO helps you increase your videos' rankings, watch-time, and views. It also attracts new subscribers to your channel. Therefore, you must invest substantial time, effort, and resources on it using the tips and techniques discussed here.