10 Lessons Learned from 50 Million Visitors
Creating high-quality content is essential for any business looking to increase website traffic and make money online. It’s not just about writing a blog post and hoping for the best—successful content creation requires time, effort, energy, resources, and knowledge. At IncomeDiary, we have formulated a blueprint for content creation that has consistently yielded positive results. By following our approach, you can learn how to be successful in creating engaging and effective content for your audience. We hope you find it helpful!
The most important thing when creating content: create amazing content that no one has read before, centred around a high-traffic keyword.
Why content creation should be all about trending topics
For most topics, even with a huge budget and the best content, you won’t rank high in search engines (Google, YouTube, etc.) because those you are competing against have been working on their content for much longer, which means they have a lot more links (other websites and social media likes). Links are the most important ranking factor (more on this later).
So, you should focus on topics on which no one has created content yet has a large audience. What I am talking about are, of course, trending topics.
What we talk about, what is relevant is always changing. Only a few years ago TikTok started which means there was no competition for search terms related to TikTok, if you created content about it, you could rank high and continue to rank high long term. So, when it comes to content, it’s important to be on the lookout for new trends shaking up your industry. Just last week, YouTube announced three-minute-long shorts. No one has created content on this yet, so it’s a way to get ahead. You see?
What I am saying is to avoid chasing what has already been and focus instead on the now.
What content to create if you want the most attention
If you search for content, you will realise that it’s nearly always recommending the same websites or creators. The reason isn’t because they have been around the longest or have the highest budgets. It’s because they know how to deliver content. It’s a skill and a skill you must learn.
There is no substitution for great content. And there is no way to trick the system anymore.
Search engines and social media know what is good content because they know how long someone engages with it. The higher the engagement (time someone spends on your website or watches your video), the higher you will rank.
My biggest recommendation right now for content creation is if you take a day to create an article or video, instead, take a week. Why? Because how much better will it be after a week? That is the only way to compete. Be the best. Nothing else will be good enough.
Now, assuming you agree to that, below are my recommendations for creating the best content!
How to create content that gets lots of traffic and everyones attention
1. Create content that someone wants to read
Obvious I know! The thing is, most people are creating content to look good for search engines, forgetting that one of the most important factors in deciding what rankings high in Google is how long some spends reading your article or watching your video. Also links are important and you will only get websites linking to you if they like the content you are creating.
When creating content, ask these questions:
a) Who is your audience?
b) What do they need to know?
c) What can you tell them that no one else can?
d) What is your unique talent? (we all have at least one)
e) In one sentence what is the biggest lesson in life you have learned so far?
f) What was your biggest mistake and what did you learn from it? (Those who succeed the most also tend to fail the most!)
And most importantly of all with Content Creation:
How does your content benefit the reader?
Will what you are about to write improve the lives of your readers?
The most successful bloggers succeed because what they write adds value to the lives of their readers
Why you should have a content creation strategy
A content creation strategy involves planning and creating valuable, relevant content to attract and engage a target audience. Examples of content creation strategies include developing a content calendar, conducting keyword research for SEO optimization, creating engaging visuals such as infographics or videos, and establishing a consistent brand voice.
To achieve this, you must understand your target audience, set clear goals for your content, utilize analytics to measure success and stay updated on industry trends.
An example of our content creation strategy
Let’s say you want to boost traffic to your blog or a service you offer. One of the best ways to accomplish this, in our experience, is to create content. Say I am releasing a new service directed at selling SEO services; I would create ten articles over a month to promote this service while also being informative for my reader; it would look something like this:
- 2025 SEO Trends
- E-commerce SEO Guide
- Content Creation Article
- How To Rank Number 1 In Google
- How To Get Backlinks
- How To Conduct An SEO Audit
- Keyword Research Guide
- Best SEO Tools
- Article Headline Examples
- Ultimate Guide To SEO
Each article links to each other with the keywords, so for example, when linking to this article, I would use the text “content creation”.
Each article would also be used to sell my SEO services, “save time, hire me”.
I would also tell readers when the next article in the series would be available so that they would be waiting to see it. Maybe I would also offer a prize, consisting of SEO services, to one reader who left a comment or shared the article just to create more traction.
2. Work out what you want to achieve with your content creation
You don’t create content just to get traffic.
It could be to:
- Make more money
- Get more subscribers
- To get more back-links
- To entertain
- To build your brand
Or it could be to simply improve a part of your business.
Using this post as an example, we get dozens of writers contact us every week, asking to publish guest posts.
We want content but it has to be amazing if we are going to accept it.
Writing this article means that we can better help guest posters write better content so that we can accept more posts and get more traffic.
3. Research Keywords When Creating Content
Once you have decided on your topic, you next have to work out what you want to rank in search engines for. If you guess, often you will over estimate how popular the search term is.
We recommend you use a free tool called SEMrush for your keyword research. With a free account, you are able to check 10 keywords a day.
I will write in several different keywords until I find one that both fits my topic, but also provides plenty of traffic.
Example keywords for this post:
- How to write a blog post (4000 visitors)
- Blog Post Layout (90 visitors)
- Blog Format (600 visitors)
- Content Creation (5000 visitors)
- Creating Content (230 visitors)
Based on this information, I chose content creation as my keyword. Not only does it get more traffic than the others, but it’s broader than “How to write a blog post.” It also has what we call ‘buyer intent’: Someone searching for content creation may want to hire content writers, which allows me to recommend services and AI content creation tools.
In the screenshot above, you can see that the global search volume is 5000 and that I will need in the region of 26 back-links from other websites to rank in the top 10.
The SEMrush app will show you a lot more than that though – and if you are serious about online marketing and SEO this tool is the one to use. It displays the top 10 websites that rank for a search term, plus how much traffic they get and what other keywords that page ranks for.
The keyword you decide to go with, should be what you name your blog post URL, so for example, IncomeDiary.com/content-creation.
4. Deliver content in a way that the reader or watcher wants
OK, you know your topic and you know the keyword’s you wish to focus on – how long should your blog post be?
The average article on the first page of Google is over 2000 words.
For this reason, I would suggest, always aiming to hit this number. It is not a hard and fast rule – sometimes I go well over and sometimes it is closer to 1500 words. But it is a fact in blogging that the highest ranking posts are often some of the longest.
Choosing a category for your post should be simple enough, as for tags, I usually choose two tags per post. It’s important that no post, category or tag should be named the same. So for example, if my keyword for this post is content creation, I shouldn’t have a category or tag called content creation. Only one page on your site can rank for a keyword and you don’t want pages completing.
The more content you create, the more traffic you get and the more money you make. For this reason, we outsource a lot of our content creation. Using the strategy I have shared with you in this article, purchase content creation from FatJoe and then sit back and watch the traffic to your website increase. Just so you know, we have bought maybe 300 articles for our blogs. That’s how much I value services such as FatJoe.
If you want to save some time and money by not writing articles yourself or hiring someone to write them for you, try ContentShake AI. It’s a new artificial intelligence tool; all you have to do is choose a content idea, and it generates a full article optimized for readability and search engines.
As for writing your article, check out: 17 Writing Tips For Bloggers Who Think They Can’t Write!
5. How to Display Content For Readability
Two blog posts can have the same content, but one gets read and the other is closed within seconds. This is often down to how easy it is to skim read.
Here is how we layout our content:
Headline (h1)
Introduction
Image
Headline (h2)
Headline (h3)
Content
Headline (h3)
Content
Headline (h3)
Content
And so on…
Of course, you may also add images in, but as a general outline, this is what we go with. You can see an example of it in this very post.
Other suggestions include:
Mistakes to avoid:
- Repeating headlines.
- Starting three sentences in a row with the same word.
6. Create amazing thumbnails for your content (to get more clicks)
Images are very important. We like to use three different styles of images:
The screenshot, the photo and the illustration.
Personally, I think all post images should be the same width, centered and shouldn’t link to anywhere.
7. Optimize Your Content for Search Engines
Still, the best traffic source and most targeted traffic source is search engines. It all starts with your keyword, which is what you want someone in Google to search for to find this article.
Let’s look at this article for an example. My keyword is content creation. The article headline begins with the words ‘content creation’, and the URL is /content-creation/. The headlines and text have this keyword throughout, which tells search engines very clearly what our content is about.
Using Yoast SEO Tool, which is a free plugin, you will see exactly how well your articles are optimized for search engines. These include:
- Keyword should be in post title
- Keyword should be in at least 1 other headline
- Keyword should be in first 100 words.
Optimize Images For SEO
Well optimized images tell Google what your blog post is about and helps rank the page higher.
- Name one image the same as your target keyword.
- Name all other images related to keyword.
- Add alt tags.
- Compress images.
We have written a lot about SEO in the past – check out this article about the best ways to increase your search engine rankings.
Add Internal and External Links
Linking in your post is important. It’s another way of telling Google what your blog post is about.
You should add a few links to external authority websites talking about a similar subject.
You should add a few links to internal pages on your site about similar subjects, using their specific keywords (like we have done throughout this article).
8. How to track keywords to improve content creation
One of the best ways to improve content and increase search engine traffic is to track your search terms.
Go to SEMrush and look at your domain’s organic reach; this will display all the keywords you rank in Google for. Now, filter by position and choose to see rankings between 10 and 50. These will show you the search terms for which you are not getting much, if any, traffic. Now, you will be able to edit your content and add relevant information to fit these keywords, which will help increase traffic and make your content more useful to your readers because they are clearly looking for this information.
A great example of how we used this technique for our blog is our article about who owns Facebook. We saw that readers were also looking for search terms such as who created Facebook, how Facebook was made, and who owns Meta. So, we added this information to the article, increasing the keywords we ranked for in search engines. So, if you haven’t got a SEMrush account, make sure to sign up for a free 14-day trial today and check out all your search ranks like we just showed you.
9. How to monetize content
For many websites, the point of creating content is to increase traffic and make money. We will shortly discuss marketing, so for now, let’s talk about monetizing a blog post.
There are 15 main ways to make money online. When it comes to blog posts, though, I always think the approach that works best is affiliate marketing. By affiliate marketing, I mean promoting something another company sells and receiving a commission in exchange when you make the sale.
Monetization comes before anything else; it’s part of the keyword research stage. Let’s assume, though, that you have written some great content, it’s getting traffic, and you want to monetize it. Ask yourself, what would these readers want to buy? I will give you some examples we have had:
Top Earning Blogs—We realized that these visitors wanted to become like the bloggers they were reading about, so we promoted an eBook about making money blogging.
Another example is an article we wrote about how to see how much traffic a website gets. We realized from looking at Google Analytics that a lot of readers clicked on these links to the tools we were talking about, so we went to Google and searched “tool name + affiliate” and discovered their affiliate programs. We then changed the links in the article to affiliate links. This worked very well. So, sometimes, monetizing content is about just paying attention.
Lastly, the best way I know to make money from content is from building an email list. You can collect and send emails using tools such as ConvertKit or Moosend. I have made more money from my email list than anything else. It’s also my second biggest traffic source.
10. Marketing your content using SEO and social media
One of the main ways Google decides where your page should rank in their search engine, is by counting links going to it.
The better your post, the more links you will get.
To get links, you need to get people to read your post.
To get people to visit your post, you need to name your post something people want to click.
Marketing a blog post is a lot more than getting as many links to your post as possible. It’s also about presenting your content in a way that people want to click.
This comes down to headline, description and featured images.
SEO Headline:
Part of your marketing strategy should be deciding on a post headline that people will click on social media sites and in search engines. But at the same time, it has to be targeting your keyword.
If you were to focus on SEO, you might name your post, Blog Post Content Creation Guide.
If you were to name it for readers, you may write, Best Article Ever Written About Content Creation
What I recommend is you meet in the middle and write for both, Blog Content Creation Guidelines For High Traffic Websites.
SEO Description:
Search engine traffic isn’t just about getting number 1 rankings, it’s about getting as many people as you can to click through to your website.
Your blog post meta description should again be written for SEO and for readers.
Featured Image
When you see a featured image on social media, a blog homepage or in the related posts section, you either notice it and want to click, or you scroll right past it.
What format of content should you be creating (articles or video)
The first 50 million visitors to my websites came from reading articles. Creating articles is the easiest and quickest way to create content. HOWEVER, over the last few years, content creation has changed, and what consumers want is not to read as much but to watch. What I’m saying is that you need to be creating videos. Articles now account for less than 20% of content consumed online, with most consumers preferring to watch videos instead.
My advice going forward is to focus on both. Videos take far longer to create, so there are benefits and drawbacks. Also, by creating articles first, you now have a script for your video, which is useful. You can see from the image below how tastes on the format of content have changed over the last few years:
We hired someone on the jobs board OnlineJobs a few months back to create videos for us. It costs about $25 each, or about $500 a month. After using this service, I wouldn’t recommend any other tool or service to hire someone to create videos or for any freelancing needs. That’s how successful it’s been for me.
Here is a video tutorial of how we are creating our shorts, you could follow it yourself or hire someone to create videos like this for you:
Content creation tools we use and recommend
- SEMRush: if you create content, you must know if someone is searching for it. This tool tells you how many monthly searches a search term has. If you are thinking about creating a video about tech billionaires, simply type that into SEMRush, and it will tell you everything you need to know, as well as similar search terms and questions asked related to that search. A must-have tool!
- Grammarly: I’m writing this article right now using Grammarly. It checks my spelling and grammar as I go and makes recommendations to make me sound smarter. One thing that I think is not used enough is the ‘Write with generative AI’ tool; it’s actually really good.
- Speechify: We create faceless videos for YouTube and use this tool to convert our script into audio. It works really well, and there are a lot of different voices to choose from, again, a must-have. If it’s too expensive for you, you could use MurfAI instead.
- AI Content Creation Tools: There are a lot of tools, and they are all quite similar, so I will just listen to a few of the most popular: ContentShake, SurferSEO and Frase.
Final Thoughts on Content Creation…
Still struggling to know what to write about?
Try this:
a) Look at the ‘long tail’ of website search activity on your website. What questions are real people using to find your website?
Then you answer those questions in your content!
b) Check your social media (Twitter and Facebook in particular) and see if people are asking questions or making comments you can use for content creation. Another option is to check publishing tools on your business Facebook page – to see which subjects have the greatest reach, get the most clicks and write a follow-up to that.