“The unending
battle for internet traffic is still about delivering content”
There
is a Trillion dollars of equity value in online content. Yes, with a T;the
total equity value of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Ted.com, 9gag, and
Redtube alone is enough to pay for the annual budget of most countries. That
alone clearly shows the monetary value attached to the internet content
industry.
There
are plenty of websites that provide an actual service such as amazon, ebay,
airbnb,paypal,skype, and literally thousands of others. Some of them are, in
their own right, Billion dollar companies; but these companies provide a
service that we have been doing before the digital age.
However,
there is dollar value in online content hosting and delivery. It doesn’t matter
if the content is original, syndicated, hosted, or user generated. It doesn’t
matter if the content is in prose, images, or videos. The plain simple fact is, there is equity
value in user traffic, and sustainable organic user traffic comes from content.
It’s obvious that in order to succeed in the
fiercely competitive cyberspace real estate, any website will need to provide
fresh and relevant content. It doesn’t matter if it’s about the ramifications
of Chinese cyber-attacks on US Civilian infrastructure or the latest Kardashian
antics. It’s about information delivery, it is about something the newspaper
industry has always known, that people will pay money to receive timely
information.
It is
a well-known fact that search engines score heavily based on relevancy and
amount of information in a website. SEO professionals know that fresh data are
scored even higher. Internet Marketing professionals know that consistent
delivery of fresh engaging information is scored even better.
Regardless
of the product or service you are promoting over the net, if you have no
traffic, it’s the same as you don’t exist. Traffic comes from content;after
all, it’s idiotic to pay for click traffic just to be heard, then you have
nothing to say.
So
have relevant content in your website. If you don’t have any, make them. If you
don’t know how to demonstrate expertise in your business, you’re in the wrong
industry. Write articles, make videos, create something for people to be
interested in you and your website.
If
you do not have the skill set to do this, outsource it. Get your marketing
people to start copywriting. Hire part timers in freelancer.com, upwork, or
craigslist to provide content for you.
If
that is still resource consuming then host them, there are plenty of relevant information on any topic already online that authors would appreciate
being promoted for free. Good contentcuration tools such as trap.it, scoop.it, and feedly can help automate
rummaging through all the fresh daily content for inspiration or sharing.
There
is a magic balance between original and 3rd party content that you
can host on your site for maximum conversion effect, this varies depending on
your industry. There are also budget constraints especially with video hosting.
So spread the love around, use social media sites as hosts, have different
information available there, your self-hosted pages, and other third party
hosts. If you can get gather enough interests in your own content and shares,
Organic user traffic is sure to follow.
