4 Advanced SEO Blog Tips to Quickly Generate Links, Shares and Traffic

In this post, I’m going to share four advanced SEO blog tips to earn you more backlinks, social shares, and traffic quickly. I used these tips on my second ever blog post to score over 100 social shares and two bonus backlinks in a matter of days. Today you’re going to learn how to use them and find out exactly why these SEO blog tips are so effective at scoring more links, shares, and traffic.

Keep reading.

Embed share triggers in your blog post

SEO Factors at play – Social Signals & Backlinks

Simply put, share triggers are psychological factors that encourage readers to share your post. When your post gets shared by others, it gives search engines like Google an early indication it’s popular. Here are 3 of my favorite share triggers you can use to boost social shares on your blog right now.

 

Ego Bait – This is where you create content that makes your readers look good.  To achieve this, you reinforce what your audience already believes. 

Here’s an example. Let’s say you run a blog about everything related to vegetarians. You’d then write a post on a topic you know your audience will agree with. It could be on ‘the health benefits of not eating meat’ or ‘8 reasons why a vegetarian diet is so great’.

An easy way to come up with ego bait topic ideas? Jump on any relevant forums or Facebook Groups related to your niche and ask them “what do you love most about being a vegetarian?” and now it’s just a matter of waiting for responses filled with some great blog ideas you know your target audience already agrees with.

Content length – This share trigger is pretty self-explanatory, you want to write at least 2000+ words in your next post for it to work. Why?

Well, when people see your in-depth post filled with great content, it triggers an emotional feeling of Awe.

SEO

Readers would think “Wow, this is one of the most detailed articles I’ve read on this topic. Impressive!”  And because you triggered an emotional response in your readers, they click the share button. Remember: Use this share trigger only when you’re able to maintain a high level of quality content that provides value to your readers.

Social Weight – This is super powerful, you literally hi-jack the huge audience influencers in your niche have. Here’s how you do it:

Include influencers in your next blog post, either by writing about them, linking out to a relevant article they wrote or directly ask them a question and add their response to your post.

Now it’s just a matter of contacting them to let them know you included them. I actually used this exact tactic in a recent post on link building tips for a new site and it quickly picked up over 100 social shares plus two bonus backlinks. Pretty impressive considering my blog is brand new and I have zero social following.

The reason social weight works is that when you involve influencers, they become an active contributor to your post and this encourages them to share it with their big network of followers.  A single share from the right influencer can result in a tonne of additional traffic visiting your post.

The best part? Because these readers are big fans of the influencer, they’re going to also want to share your post too. 

Write A Killer Blog Introduction

SEO Factors at play – Dwell Time & Bounce Rate

Most people spend the majority of their time writing a catchy headline. And yes, a good headline can boost click-through rates. But you have to think, what’s the point if you can’t keep them on the page? 

Here’s the deal. People have short attention spans, and it’s especially true online.  You literally have 2-3 seconds to spark your reader’s curiosity or they’re gone for good. That’s where a killer introduction comes in. So, here’s how to write an introduction that hooks your reader, lowers bounce rate and increases dwell time.

• Keep your introduction short – no more than 7-8 sentences and don’t be afraid to cut it back to 4 or 5.
• Make your sentences short too – aim for a 12 to 15-word limit.
• Write as if you’re having a conversation with the reader, this is not an English essay or academic paper!
• Include a call to action. For example, I used the call to action ‘Keep Reading’ in my introduction to this post.

Use Forum Marketing to Drive Traffic – SEO Blog Tips Personal Favourite

Forums and Facebook groups are a fantastic traffic source and probably my favorite of all the SEO blog tips on this list. Simply put, forum marketing is a great way to grow your fanbase especially when starting out. In fact, I used this exact technique on my first blog post to spike my sites traffic and pick up a handy do follow (DA 98) backlink from Reddit.

You can check out the Reddit post here.

Important: If you want forum marketing work, you need to use the right strategy. Why?

People in forums don’t like outsiders and will quickly call you out if they feel you’re not a genuine member of the group and get you blacklisted. So to make this work, follow these steps:

1. Sign-up to the forum/group at least one month before you plan to share your post.
2. Become an active community member (ask questions, share ideas and help solve people’s problems). You don’t have to go overboard with this, a couple of helpful answers here and there will do the trick.
3. If you followed steps 1 and 2, you’re now ready to share your post. Write a detailed summary of your original post in the forum itself and add a link back to the original letting everyone know if they want further details, they can check it out via the link.
4. Sit back and enjoy the praise you’ll receive from your fellow forum members.

Build round-up links

This is one of the SEO blog tips you should use after your post goes live. Look at it this way.

It makes sense you would naturally attract these type of links first, before other types of backlinks as bloggers post articles sharing the best blogs of the week, month etc. So make round-up links your first link building priority.

Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough on how to build round-up links: Use these search operators to find round-up style posts online.

“keyword” + “link roundup”
“keyword” + “best articles of the week”
“keyword” + “best articles of the month”
“keyword” + “Friday link roundup”

Tip: Remember to replace “keyword” with the topic of your blog post. For example, if you write about fitness then you’d want to make ‘fitness’ the keyword.

1. Contact the site owner of every round-up and send them a link to your post. Here’s an excellent article to improve email open rates.
2. Wait for the site owners to contact you with the good news of another backlink!

It’s that easy.

Final Thoughts

Now it’s your turn. Which of these SEO Blog Tips will you try first? Are you going to start using share triggers? Or maybe you’ll update your existing blog posts introduction to improve dwell time? Either way, I’d love to hear your opinion in the comments below.

 

About Jonathan Gorham

Jonathan Gorham owns a boutique Geelong SEO company called Engine Scout. He leads the teams business development and digital marketing efforts. Follow Jonathan on Twitter or Facebook.