You’ve probably heard the expression “content is king” for attracting web traffic and pertaining to how to advertise small business online. Providing high-quality content that your target audience wants and can’t easily acquire elsewhere is a powerful way to bring attention to your brand through both search engines and social networks.
It’s easy to assume that more content would equate to more web traffic which leads to more business. According to Hubspot, 69% of B2C and 70% of B2B marketers are producing more content this year than last year. However, more content doesn’t mean more traffic once you’ve reached the peak amount of content your audience is capable of consuming.
The law of diminishing returns hits hard when you have too much content. Actually, producing too much content can draw attention away from higher quality content and have a negative traffic impact. It’s not uncommon for a small business site to see a handful of content items getting the lion’s share of web traffic while the rest of the site content combined only gets a small percentage of traffic.
Producing too much content can spread your promotional capabilities thin. Instead of focusing on promoting your strong content on Facebook, you’ll waste time and effort promoting content that not many people care about. Additionally, the abundance of lesser quality content can crowd your site which takes attention away from the good content and harms traffic.
The goal is to find that sweet spot where you can produce the least amount of content that produces the largest traffic return. This might sound like doing the least amount of work possible, but it’s not about eliminating work: it’s about reallocating time and effort into the content that works best. If you find that your business gets a better return on three high quality content items a day over one high quality and nine low-quality content items, adjust your work load to turn those nine lower quality content items into three high quality content items.
Use your site’s traffic measurement tools or third-party services like Google Analytics to examine your site performance. Audit your content to see what people are viewing and what they care about. Look at where people are coming from to view content to see which content does well through searches and which content does well through social media sharing. Examine your star-performing content and establish what makes that content stand out above the rest to provide insight into what kind of content you should be creating.
For a simpler approach, check out how many content items generate a substantial amount of traffic on average each day and aim to go a little higher than this number. It’s okay to overproduce a little bit especially if you have great content ideas. It’s a balance between not missing out on traffic opportunities and optimally focusing content creation time on the better content.
Using the traffic stats, you can start planning ahead to release new content over time instead of taking a “post it when it’s done approach.” Consistent and reliable content creation patterns help establish repeat visiting trends with your audience and can dramatically improve interest in your brand. Also keep up with breaking and trending news related to your industry for opportunities to release more content when there’s an increased interest in the type of content your business produces. When the topic is on the public’s mind, desire for relevant content is going to outweigh the supply and people will be looking for any new information nuggets they can get.
Writer Bio: Dan S is a former news journalist turned web developer and freelance writer. He has a penchant for all things tech and believes the person using the machine is the most important element.
