If you're like most marketers, you spend a good deal of your day figuring out how to drive more traffic to your website. After all, more traffic means more prospects, and more prospects mean more customers.
But driving people to your website isn't always as easy as it looks. The good news is that, while there's an art to getting more traffic, there's also a science. And one of the greatest practitioners of that science is Neil Patel, who has been called one of the top 10 online marketers by Forbes, has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, and has been recognized by President Obama as one of the nation's top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30.
Not long ago, I sat down with Neil to discuss some of the techniques he uses to drive hundreds of thousands of visitors a month to his websites:
If you'd like to read through some of his top suggestions, check them out here:
- Facebook Drives Engagement More Than Twitter or LinkedIn: Facebook doesn't make up the majority of Neil's social shares or even traffic, but it is creating the most engagement. For every 500 Twitter visitors to one of his blogs, he receives 3 comments. For every 500 LinkedIn visitors, he receives 5 comments. And for every 500 Facebook visitors, he receives 8 comments.
- Google Likes Longer Posts: Neil's research has indicated that posts that are 2,000 words or longer are more likely to rank on page one of Google than posts of fewer than 2,000 words.
- Don't Publish Everything You Write: Some of your posts are going to be underwhelming, and that's okay. When you write a bad post, trash it rather than hitting publish.
- Let People Fail With You: When you fail at something, let the world know about it. They'll appreciate your transparency and will see you as more trustworthy and human as a result.
- Great Content Leads to Great Engagement: Neil gets about 100 comments per post on his Neil Patel blog (one of five he manages). How does he do that? By writing in-depth, fact-filled articles and then engaging people with additional insights in the comments section.
- Keep Headlines Under 65 Characters: If your headlines are too long, they'll get cut off within Google's search results. Try to keep them to fewer than 65 characters.
- Use Odd Numbers in Headlines: People tend to click through on blog posts with odd numbers in them. Why is that? Because nature is not symmetrical, it's asymmetrical, so in a sense, odd numbers feel more natural and real to people who are skimming headlines.
As you can see, Neil has a ton of great insights about digital marketing that are totally worth reading. But don't stop now - take a listen to the whole interview.
About the Author: Jamie Turner is an internationally-recognized author, speaker, and CEO. His podcast, The Jamie Turner Show, was recently given New and Noteworthy recognition by iTunes.