MackCollier.com

by

How I Increased My Website Traffic By 52% In One Year

Last year was a rough one for me, just as I’m sure it was for many of you.

Faced with less work, and more time on my hands than usual, I decided to reinvest my time in growing my website traffic. My guess was that most people would be spending more time at home, for work and casual, and that would mean more time spent reading blogs.

So starting on August 31st, 2020, I decided to get serious about growing my blog’s traffic. Here’s what I did.

I Needed More Content

From January-August of last year, I wrote and published a grand total of 17 new posts. That’s roughly 2 posts a month. It’s almost impossible to sustain, much less grow your blog traffic if you only post once every 2 weeks.

So the first step I took to increase my website traffic was to create more content. Originally, my goal was to create 6 new posts a week here. That proved unattainable within the first month or so.

I decided to scale back and settle for at least 2 new posts a week here. I’ve been able to stick to that schedule more often than not. Moving forward, I want to get back to doing Monday’s Marketing Minute every Monday, and then publish new posts every Tuesday-Thursday. This will give me 4 new posts a week, and I think that will be enough new content to continue to grow the traffic here.

In August of 2020, I published one new post.  Last month, I published nine new posts. That alone shows you how much my content creation increased in just one year’s time. This made a huge impact on increasing my website traffic, but it wasn’t the only factor.

I Needed to Improve My Existing Content

In addition to creating more new content, I also focused on optimizing and improving my existing content. This was the second step I took to increase my traffic.

I am a huge believer in going back and optimizing your older content. My pal Andy Crestodina also believes strongly in revisiting and improving older content. You can learn a ton about this process from reading his blog.

What I did was go back and target posts I had written on the core topics I want to be known for. I then looked to optimize these posts.

I focused first on SEO.  I used the Yoast SEO plugin to make sure I had the proper keywords targeted and that the post was optimized for the selected phrase.

I then edited the post to make sure it had relevant, and recent information. If there were any new research studies or news stories I could add to the post, I did so. I also made sure images and visual content was correct and on point for the topic.

Finally, I linked to any new content I had created on the same topic, that might be beneficial.

I started this process in April. On average, posts that I optimized saw a 20% lift in search traffic within the first 2 weeks of being optimized. Not bad.

Here’s the results: I increased my website traffic by 52% in one year:

website traffic

That’s from Google Analytics, my August 2020 traffic vs August 2021 traffic. An increase of 52.46% in website traffic.

On August 31st of last year I committed to growing my blog’s traffic here. I talked yesterday about how you had to build a platform before you can sell a product. That was a big part of my reasoning for wanting to blog more here, I needed to build and grow my platform if I wanted to sell more products and services.

Thankfully, the results of the hard work are starting to show. There’s one thing I wanted to point out: For the first 4-6 months of this push to increase traffic here, I saw marginal improvement at best. And that was frustrating, because for the first 6 weeks or so, I was publishing up to 6 new posts a week.

But for the last 4-6 months, I’ve seen accelerated growth. As late as February or March of this year, 75 visitors in a day was considered average. I hit that many visitors today by 10 am. The point is, when it comes to increasing traffic, growth is rarely linear. I saw a 52% increase in traffic after one year of this strategy. Yet, if I stick to this same strategy for another year, I could easily see another 100% or 200% increase in traffic for next year.

Let’s see if I can do it. Thanks for reading and I look forward to giving you a lot more valuable content to read over the next year.

 

PS: Want me to design a strategy for your blog that will help you achieve an increase in traffic? Fill out the form below and let’s set up a call to discuss your needs.

by

How Do You Create a Content Strategy For a B2C Company?

I am an introvert, and introverts tend to want order and structure in their lives. So it shouldn’t surprise you that I love helping companies develop content strategies.

A strategy is simply a plan of action for achieving a desired outcome. Strategies are important, because they help you focus your time and attention. In business, time is money. So the more time spent on executing your strategy, the more productive and profitable your business will be.

What is a content strategy?

Let’s back up and make sure everyone understands what we mean by strategy, because it can get confusing. As I said earlier, a strategy is simply a plan of action for achieving a desired outcome.

What’s the strategy for a football team? The desired outcome is to win the game. So the strategy would be to create a plan that would allow the team to win the game. Makes sense, right?

So the head coach, would work with his offensive, defensive and special teams coordinators to come up with a strategy for winning the game. This would be similar to how a CEO might work with his CMO, CIO, CTO and CFO to create a business strategy. There will be a strategy for the offense, another for the defense, and one for the special teams. But these three strategies will all support the larger strategy for the team; Winning the football game. Each different area of the team will play its part in supporting that larger strategy and achieving the desired outcome of winning the game.

A content strategy is a plan that uses the creation, development and management of content as a tactic to support your larger business goals. Notice I used the word ‘tactic’ to describe content. Many people get confused about the terms strategy and tactics. Tactics are what you use to execute a strategy.

Going back to the football example above, our strategy is to win the game. Running the ball could be a tactic we use to execute that strategy. We could also have a running strategy. Maybe our strategy is to run between the tackles to avoid the speed rush of the ends on defense. Likewise, content can be a tactic we use to execute a larger business strategy, but we can still have a content strategy that guides how we use that tactic.

Why have a content strategy?

Confession time, I stole a lot of Andy Crestodina’s ideas for structuring and writing this blog post from this article of his. I used his ideas while writing this post, and it greatly helped me clarify my thinking and bring order to the chaos of creating this post.

Why did it make writing this post easier? Because Andy’s advice helped me better organize the writing of the post. It made the process more efficient because it helped me focus on the desired outcome from the post.

This is why strategies are so important, they focus your actions on the desired outcome. When you have a strategy in place guiding your efforts, you accomplish more, in less time.

By creating a content strategy, you focus your content efforts only on the areas that are relevant to your desired outcomes. Think of all the places where you could create content. Your blog, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, Clubhouse. So many other options, it can be incredibly overwhelming!

A content strategy helps you narrow your content creation focus to only the tools and channels necessary to achieve your business’ desired outcomes. This saves your business time, money, and it saves your content team an awful lot of stress!

How do you create a B2C content strategy?

The first consideration when creating a content strategy for your B2C company is figuring out your desired outcomes. There are two considerations you want to address with your content strategy:

1 – Who are you trying to reach with your content?

2 – What action do you want them to take?

 

Before we dig into answering those two questions, let’s back up for a minute and talk about content, especially digital content. Digital content has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to helping a business reach its goals.

In general, digital content can do a wonderful job of helping your company build awareness. On the other hand, digital content doesn’t perform as well at closing sales.

Considering both of these factors, you want to focus on creating a content strategy for your B2C company that enters potential customers into the top of your sales funnel, and pushes them to the middle. Let’s think about this in terms of the Buyer’s Journey:

Content Strategy

As mentioned earlier, digital content does a great job of building awareness. So your content strategy should focus on building awareness and making your target audience slightly aware of who your company is, and how your products and services can fit into their lives. If your B2C sells relatively inexpensive items, then once your content has moved a customer to the slightly aware stage, they can usually complete the purchase on their own. If your products are relatively inexpensive, that leads to little or no time spend on the research stage (Interested) and the customer can typically go close the sale themselves.

For more expensive items, let’s say a new car, your customer will want to do further research before completing the sale, in most cases. So for more expensive products, a good content strategy could target customers who are Unaware, move them to Slightly Aware, then when they become Interested, they could move to your website or interact directly with your company to get more detailed information on the products you sell.

Either way, a successful content strategy for most B2C companies focuses on building awareness with new customers, and helping them understand how the products and services your company sells can fit into their daily lives.

How is a B2C content strategy different?

Since most B2C content strategies focus on building awareness, that means creating content that focuses on the customer. In fact, when you are creating content to gain the awareness of customers, that content should focus almost entirely on the customer. Content that focuses on the customer is interesting and more relatable to the customer. This helps gain the customer’s attention, and that encourages them to learn more about your company.

It’s important to note that when you are creating content to build awareness, do NOT sell to the customer. Selling to a customer who is unaware of what your company sells, is a complete disconnect for the customer. So the content strategy is to gain the awareness of the customer, help them understand how your products fit into their lives, then once they are interested, you can create content that sells. Most companies want to create content that sells to the customer as soon as they enter the sales funnel, instead of selling to them at the bottom of the funnel, when the customer is interested in buying.

Another element of your content strategy that’s particularly important for a B2C company is to focus on storytelling. You want to create content that paints a story for the customer, where the customer can either see themselves as the main character, or they can see themselves playing a key role in the story’s development.

A classic example of creating compelling storytelling with content came from B2C brand Whole Foods in 2018. Whole Foods deleted all its Instagram posts, unfollowed everyone it was following, then posted a blank image. This immediately led to speculation over what had happened to Whole Foods’ Instagram feed. People believed that Whole Foods’ IG account had been hacked. Then, slowly, the brand began to follow a few celebrities who in some way had an attachment to the letter ‘B’ or the word Bee.

Finally, Whole Foods posted this update on Instagram:

The brand was using storytelling in its content to raise awareness of what would happen if there were no more honey bees. Whole Foods showed us some of the delicious foods we all love, that would no longer be available without pollination from honey bees. It was compelling storytelling that raised awareness of an issue that was relevant to the Whole Foods brand. In the process, it helped people understand how all parts of nature are related, and to also appreciate the quality of the foods that Whole Foods sells.

What if my content strategy isn’t working?

There will come a time in the life of every content strategy when you ask ‘What’s going on here?” For whatever reason, you aren’t seeing the results you want or need from your content strategy.

At this point, you need to back up and reassess. There’s some basic questions you should ask:

  • Have we set realistic goals for our content strategy? For instance, expecting a 50% increase in sales attributable to your content strategy after 3 months may not be realistic.
  • Have we adequately defined who our target audience is? Saying you are targeting adults age 18-55 is probably too broad. Creating a buyer persona for your content can help focus your efforts. More on this in a minute.
  • Have we set the proper KPIs for our content strategy? There’s an old business saying ‘What gets measured, gets managed”. You want to measure metrics associated with the desired outcomes for your content. For instance, if you are using content to drive awareness, then measure metrics that would signal an increase in awareness. Such as traffic to your content channels, engagement with your content, and an increase in UGC.

It’s a good idea to audit your content strategy at least once every 12 months. Review the previous year’s content performance, and see how well you met your content goals. If necessary, you can adjust your strategy and implement new goals and desired outcomes. You should always think of your content strategy as something that’s malleable, there’s nothing wrong with changing or adapting your content strategy. This is to be expected, as your customers and how they interact and consume content changes.

The value of a buyer persona

One of the most overlooked areas of content creation are buyer personas. A buyer persona is an abstract representation of your ideal customer. Why is a buyer persona so important? Think of buyer personas as a snapshot of the daily life of your ideal customer. Buyer personas help your content teams get a better sense of the person they are creating content for.

Here’s a sample buyer persona I created for a customer called ‘Sarah’:

Buyer Persona
If you need more help, I’ve written a detailed article on how to create buyer personas for your content strategy.

 

So there’s your framework for creating, developing and managing a content strategy for your B2C company. If you have more questions about creating a content strategy, please fill out the form below!

by

#ContentCircus 1-5-21 Recap: How to Audit Your Content

We had another fabulous #ContentCircus last night on the topic of How to Audit Your Content. The last two weeks have really taken off, I appreciate everyone’s participation and sharing their smartitude. Here’s a link to the transcript from Hashtracking. I wanted to highlight some of the great points made during the chat:

 

Readability is a big area to address when doing a content audit. Anything you can do to better organize your information and make it easier for the reader to understand key concepts, is a good thing. Honestly, a lot of this comes down to simple stuff that we can all do, and #ContentCircus participants had some great suggestions:

 

After I’ve addressed readability, I will then move on to editing the actual information in the post. Is any of it outdated and needs to be removed? Is there a new case study or research study I have found that I can add? Also keep in mind as I add or remove material, I am still addressing readability, that carries over throughout the entire process.

 

Next we moved onto discussing using the proper search keywords and phrases during your content audit. Luckily, #ContentCircus community had many helpful suggestions for keyword research tools!

 

Next, we covered adding visual elements to your audited content. Note that as we address things like font size for text, headings and subheadings, now adding visual elements, we are (hopefully) making it easier for the reader to process information. That’s what we want. The easier it is for our ideas to flow to the reader, the more likely they are to understand those ideas, and their impact.

 

Finally, we talked a bit about Calls to Action. Whenever you audit your content, you should add a Call to Action that encourages the reader to take some next step based on who they are, their intent, and what action you want them to take.

 

So that was our first #ContentCircus chat of 2021! We had a wonderful discussion on auditing content, and I hope you can join the next #ContentCircus, which is every Tuesday at 7pm Central, on Twitter! Just follow the #ContentCircus hashtag!

by

A Step-By-Step Guide to Performing a Content Audit That Increases Traffic and Conversions

I’ve been blogging for 15 years now, and in that time I’ve learned that the last two weeks of every year is when traffic to my site drops about 30-40%. Pretty much like clockwork, traffic begins to fall on the Friday before Christmas, it rises a bit the week after Christmas, then returns to normal levels the first week or so of January. Because of this, I typically don’t publish posts in that last 2 weeks of the year. I use that time to write posts for January, and I also use it to audit my content. So this year, I got the clever idea to do both; Audit my content, and as I am, write a post about my process!

So this is how I audit my content.

 

First, what is a content audit?

A content audit is the process of reviewing the content on your site, periodically. I know a lot of content creators hate auditing their content. Personally, I love auditing content, because I know that when I have finished auditing an individual post, it will be a better post. I know that every post I audit will be improved, so that’s why I enjoy the auditing process.

Now my process for auditing content is a bit different, which is why I wanted to talk about it. I go by the Greatest Hits model that I talk about in this post on the Rock Star’s Guide to Content Creation, Content Marketing and Promotion. I look to develop roughly 10 posts which will be my signature content or Greatest Hits. These will be the pieces of content that I want to be successful. This is the content I will continue to promote, and continue to audit and work to improve. These are the 10 posts I want to be known for, my Greatest Hits. Think about a rock star; When you go to their concert, you want to hear their Greatest Hits.

Keep in mind that these 10 Greatest Hits posts should ideally cover the same or very similar topics. If you have 10 posts covering 10 different topics, that’s a problem. But if you have 10 posts covering 3 related topics, that’s much better. Think of it this way; These 10 posts will be the content you want to be known for. Just like a rock star is known for their Greatest Hits. It’s the same thing here, this will be your signature content. So choose wisely.

 

A content audit sounds like a lot of work, is it worth it?

My experience is a resounding ‘Yes!’ Posts that I have audited and improved have seen up to a 300% increase in traffic! There are two keys to seeing an increase in traffic when you o a content audit.  The first is you much IMPROVE THE CONTENT. You have to make the post better. This post will walk you through the process for improving the post, but it must be improved upon. After you have improved the post, then change the date to make the post more recent. For instance, if you are auditing a post from 2017, and you significantly change and improve the post, then you can change the date to say 2020. Search engines want to refer users to relevant and recent content. Use your content audit to improve the quality of the content and to make it a more recent post by changing the date. Doing both of these things together will result in a nice improvement in traffic to your audited post.

 

How often should you do a content audit, and what’s included?

So every 6 months or so, I first audit my current 10 or so Greatest Hits posts. I look at how each is performing.  I track them through Google Analytics and maybe even with Webmaster Tools. So I get that list of my current 10 or so Greatest Hits posts, and set them aside for now.

Then I look at all my other posts, paying close attention to the posts I have published in the last 6 months or so. What I want to do is find at least one post I’ve written in the last 6 months that I can move into my group of 10 or so Greatest Hits posts. I want to keep my Greatest Hits fresh, plus I want to force myself to continue to create content that is good enough to be worthy of being included in my Greatest Hits.

But I also look at past posts as well. Who knows, there could be a post I wrote in 2015 that’s suddenly taken off in search results. I want to check and make sure my older posts aren’t showing signs of life. If any of them are, I then put them in my list of potentials for my Greatest Hits, along with any new posts I have written in the last 6 months.

I take my current 10 Greatest Hits posts. Then I take any potential posts written in the last 6 months that could be added to my Greatest Hits, as well as any former posts I’ve identified that could be included. That will likely give me a list of 12-15 posts that are candidates to be my 10 Greatest Hits posts.

So the final step is to whittle those 12-15 posts down to a group of 10. What’s my criteria for which posts I remove from Greatest Hits consideration? First, I look at the 10 posts I have as my current Greatest Hits. Are there any posts that aren’t performing as well as the rest of the group? Then I look at the 2-5 posts that are my candidates for adding to the Greatest Hits list. For these 2-5 posts, the first thing I look at is the topic. Are these posts covering a topic that isn’t well-represented in my current 10 Greatest Hits posts? If so, and if it is a topic that I want to be known for, then there’s a great chance I will move that post into my 10 Greatest Hits list.

 

I have my group of 10 Greatest Hits posts that I will audit, what now?

Ok, I’ve finally settled on my group of 10 posts that will be my Greatest Hits posts. Now I’m ready to begin the actual audit and improvement process for these 10 posts. Here’s what I want to review for each post:

  • Readability. Is the post easy to read? Clear takeaways. Can the reader easily find and understand the key lessons from the post?
  • Does the post have the latest information?
  • Search Keywords and Phrases. What are the target keywords and phrases for each post?
  • Visually appealing. Is there visual elements that are pleasing to the eye? No walls of text!
  • Clear calls to action. Is there a clear and obvious way to keep the reader engaged with my content?

 

Readability

The first area I look at for my 10 Greatest Hits posts when auditing them is readability. For me, that means first scanning the post quickly to see how pleasing it is to the eye. I don’t want to see a wall of text. I want to see smaller blocks of text, organized with headings and callouts to point the reader toward key points that I want them to understand. Also, I identify the key lessons I want the reader to take from reading this post. I make sure each lesson is clear and succinct. To be honest, a lot of brutal editing needs to happen to each post. You have to remember, every 6 months or so, I will do this process again. Every time a post is involved in that auditing process, it will likely have changes made to it, maybe additional text will be added. So if I’m not careful, I could end up with 10 posts that are bloated 5,000 word monstrosities! I have to add what makes sense, and take out what doesn’t. And if I only add, then I need to make sure that the post’s readability isn’t negatively impacted.

 

Does the post have the latest information?

This is where I can typically make the biggest positive impact on a post. I might write a post on a topic, then 3 months later come across a research study that confirms what I wrote. I can then go back and add the research to my post, to improve the quality of the post, and also give more credence to the claims I made in the post. I may also come across a case study that is an example that I can add to the post, which will also greatly improve the quality of the post. By the way, this is why I tend to avoid dated content like ‘Here’s Your 2020 Guide to Creating An Amazing Content Strategy’ in my Greatest Hits collection. I would rather write ‘Your Guide to Creating An Amazing Content Strategy’ and work to refine and improve that post every 6 months via my content audit.

 

What search keywords and phrases am I targeting?

This is important for two reasons. First, it helps me make sure I am focused on the right keywords and phrases, and throughout the post. In fact, as I was ending the previous paragraph, I changed it from ‘and work to refine and improve that post every 6 months’ to add ‘via my content audit’ at the end, simply to get the phrase ‘content audit’ in the post again to help search engines understand what this post is about.

Second, making sure I am targeting the right keywords and phrases also helps me with the overall structure and content of the post. Its almost like a double-check of all the other areas like readability, key takeaways, etc. Notice also that I purposely handle the other areas such as readability and latest research first, then keywords. I write for people first, search engines second.

 

Make every post visually appealing.

We love visuals. Pictures, video, anything visual catches our eye and refocuses our attention. Also, visuals help break up walls of text. In general, I try to add visual content from three different categories to my Greatest Hits posts; Images, Video, and Infographics or Callout boxes.

Images are self-explanatory, as are videos. In both cases, you want to choose images and/or videos that help illustrate your content’s key points and concepts. For instance, if I were doing a case study of a brand ambassador program that Chick Fil-A was doing, I might want to add a video of the company’s CMO talking about why the program is working for the brand. Keep in mind that if you can show key concepts using different formats (text, audio, video, etc), that it helps the reader learn those concepts.

Also, think about adding infographics or callout boxes to highlight and illustrate key takeaways and concepts. Tools like Canva and Thrive Architect (affiliate link) can help you create infographics and callout boxes.

 

Adding clear Calls to Action to your posts

This is where a lot of us falter. We fail to add good Calls to Action on our Greatest Hits posts. Which is really unfortunate, because our Greatest Hits posts will ideally be the posts that are our most popular. A lot of people will be reading these posts, and if they are arriving from a search engine, it will likely be the first time they are exposed to your content. So at a minimum, you want to make sure they know how to stay engaged with your content.

How many of you have watched PBS during their famous ‘pledge weeks’ where they ask viewers for donations? Typically, during these pledge weeks, PBS offers its best programming. It will debut a new series by an acclaimed filmmaker like Ken Burns, or it will show a live concert by The Highwaymen, or other special events. PBS will show its best content, and during the airing of these shows, it will ask for money. It’s the same concept with your Greatest Hits content. These are your 10 best posts, so you’ve earned the right to ask for something from your readers. It can be as simple as asking for a comment, or asking for a subscription, or asking for a sale. The point is, your best content should have clear calls to action included.

So what type of call to action should your Greatest Hits posts include? Let’s go back to the Buyer’s Journey:

Buyer's Journey, Creating Better Content

When a visitor arrives at one of your Greatest Hits posts, you need to understand where they are in the Buyer’s Journey. That will help determine what type of call to action they should receive. For the purposes of your content audit, there are two main factors to consider when deciding where the visitor is on the Buyer’s Journey:

1 – The post itself. Which of the four groups above is the post aimed at? Whatever group it is aimed at, your call to action should be focused on moving the visitor to the next step in the process.

2 – Referral sources of traffic. If the post is getting a lot of traffic from search engines, that likely means those visitors will be arriving at your site for the first time. So your call to action would likely be focused on encouraging them to subscribe to your content, or download a white paper, or sign up for your newsletter. You want to extend the interactions with this person. On the other hand, if the primary sources of referrals for your post are sources like social media or email, that suggests that the visitors are familiar with you and your work. So your call to action would likely be further along the Buyer’s Journey.

 

So that wraps up our content audit, now let’s put it into action!

Originally. I had planned on ending this post here. We’re already over the 2,000 word mark, and I’ve covered all the key points I wanted to make. But, I think it would be helpful to see this process in action.  I want to now walk you through how I audit and improve one post.

Here’s the post; Great Customer Loyalty Programs Are Built On Offering Great Experiences.  This post has some potential, but it also needs a lot of work.  It has 1165 words, and one image, of a Ferrari. The main keyword phrase this post is targeting is ‘loyalty programs’. While this post needs work, I like the two hypothetical stories about the cereal loyalty program and the one for Ferrari. But the post doesn’t have much more than that. So I wanted to walk you through my process for improving the quality of this post.

 

First, let’s tackle readability. Let’s start with the title; “Great Customer Loyalty Programs Are Built on Offering Great Experiences”. We need to improve it, I like that the keyword phrase ‘customer loyalty programs’ is in the title, but we need to jazz it up a bit. The new title will be “Here’s How the Best Customer Loyalty Programs Create Happy Customers’. This makes the title more interesting, but it also means the title is now making a specific claim that the post has to back up. The post has to now show you how a customer loyalty program can create happy customers.

Let’s also add new information. Now I want to keep most of the post as it is, but I do want to add new content to support it. Specifically, I want to add content that explains and justifies the claim made in the title. So I want to show how offering great experiences leads to happy customers. I have some research to support that claim, so I will add it to the post. I will also add a couple examples of great customer loyalty programs that offer members great experiences as a reward Pairing these actual examples with the hypothetical ones the post already has, will help facilitate learning and retention of the post’s core concepts.

Revisit targeted keywords and phrases. Now I will review the post and make sure that I have focused on the correct keywords and phrases, and have them placed in the post in a way that will make sense to both the reader, and search engines which will be crawling the post. Also, note that I addressed readability for the READER first, then move to the search engines. Write for the humans first, then the machines.

Adding visual elements. For now, I want to add at least a screenshot of the new customer loyalty programs I am adding as examples. If I can find video of an executive at these companies talking about how their loyalty programs work, I may add that. If nothing else, the screenshots will help break up the text and give the reader visual information that supports the text.

Adding Calls to Action. For this post, I will add an email link so readers can contact me if they have questions about their own loyalty programs. I will also add links to other posts I have written on loyalty programs. The assumption is that over time, most of the traffic to this post will come from search engines, and those people will likely be first-time visitors to my site.

 

So that’s the process! You can view the audited post on Here’s How the Best Customer Loyalty Programs Create Happy Customers here.