7 Lessons From The Articles That Get The Most Traffic

People are always asking us… “How do you get so much traffic to your websites… so easily? And what type of articles get the most traffic?”

It’s really quite straight forward. Create the best content possible. That’s what people want.

People go to websites because they want something. It could be to buy something, to learn something, to be entertained by something, or any number of things. The better you are at giving people what they want, the more traffic you will get.

I don’t spend much time working on getting Facebook likes and getting top search engine rankings because it’s quite often the bi-product of great content.

Below I have outlined what you can learn from the 50 articles that send IncomeDiary the most traffic.

7 Things Articles That Get The Most Traffic Have In Common

1. The articles that get the most traffic are lists… Shock!

Out of my 50 top articles, 35 start with a number. When I write, I write in a way, I would like to read. Being dyslexic, I like to summarize things, make it easy on myself to consume information. That’s why I think I do such a good job with lists.

Here’s 5 examples of top lists:

1. 30 Most Influential People In Blogging
2. 100 Richest Internet Billionaires
3. 20 Health Experts To Follow on Instagram
4. 10 Reasons Why It Rocks To Be a Young Entrepreneur
5. 10 Best Christmas Gifts For Gamers

Here’s some examples of my favorite top list titles.

2. Mentioning famous people gets you traffic to your articles

9 out of 10 of our top articles mention people in some way.

Think about it this way:

If I wrote an article called: 10 Things Usain Bolt Does To Run Faster

I don’t need Bolt’s permission to write about him, but I get all of the benefits of having his name associated with mine and what it represents about what is written.

Usain is the fastest runner in the world. That means these tips must be the best tips in the world.

If I write about how to run faster, no one will want to listen.

3. Linking out can increase the time someone spends on your website

4 out of the top 5 articles on this website link out to over a dozen other websites. These articles also had noticeably longer visitor times.

Don’t be scared to link out and show some love. If you recommend something or someone and your reader likes where you sent them, then they will end up trusting you more.

4. The title can make or break an article

Something that is made really obvious when I look at my top 50 blog posts is… the title can really make or break an article.

First, you need to decide what keywords you want to rank in search engines. Your article headline needs a keyword to rank high in Google. Otherwise, you will get very little traffic.

Take, for example, this article. It used to be called:

7 Lessons From 50 Blog Posts That Send Me The Most Traffic

What is the keyword? There isn’t one, so it got no traffic from Google, even though it had great content. So, I changed it to:

7 Lessons From The Articles That Get The Most Traffic

What’s the keyword: Articles that get the most traffic.

When looking for keywords, use SEMrush’s free SEO keyword tool. Type in the keyword you are looking to rank for, and it will tell you similar keywords and how many searches they get. Alternatively, look at similar content from competitor websites. It will tell you what keywords they rank for and how much traffic the article is getting.

5. Motivational articles get more traffic then inspiration and instruction

8 out of the top 10 articles on IncomeDiary are motivational. Here’s the breakdown for the top 50 articles:

• Motivational: 24
• Tutorials: 17
• Inspirational: 9
• Reviews: 0
• News: 0
• Interviews: 0

Motivational, is the type of posts that make you take action and start working.

Tutorials, are articles showing you how to do something. These can often be monetized well by recommending products required to do what you instruct in the tutorial.

Inspirational, is the type of post that gives you ideas.

Reviews, we review products and mention them in our customer autoresponders.

News, often something I would shy away from because it’s not evergreen (always relevant) content. If it gives me a positive ROI, then I will publish them.

It seems people value motivation higher than anything else. It’s not often lacking the skills that holds us back, it’s our work rate. Motivational posts help us focus more on our goals.

Although Reviews and News are not featured in the top 50 posts, they are still a relevant part of my blogging strategy. I just prioritize.

6. Have a content plan for your articles

I’m a systems guy. I like to follow a blueprint when doing something because it’s tried and tested and proven to give the best results. I send a document called Contest Strategy to writers to ensure they have everything required to do the best job possible. The better job they can do, the more traffic I get, and the more money I make. 

Some of the information I provide when outsourcing content creation:

• Image sizes
• About the author
• Blog post template
• Post publish time & date
• Post title review
• Post titles swipe copy
• How to optimize post for search engines

7. Articles are worth paying for

A large percentage of articles published on IncomeDiary are paid for.

One of the highest-performing posts on IncomeDiary was published last year and received over 100k visitors since then. I paid $120 for that article. Imagine if you could pay just $10 for 10,000 website visitors, would you do it? Of course you would.

The simplest way to get people to write for you is to ask, that’s why we have a write for IncomeDiary page. If that doesn’t work, offering them compensation can be a game-changer. 

When it comes to buying articles, I recommend FatJoe. You tell them what you want the article to be written about, then choose word count, which could be 500 words or 5000 words, and you decide. Then, once it’s written, if you want it to start ranking high in search engines quickly, I recommend their backlink outreach service.

Another great option is to use AI content creation tools such as ContentShake. It’s able to create 100’s of articles a day, with headline, keywords, styling and images. The best bit about AI content creation is that Google seems not to care about it, as long as it’s unique.

Quick Advice To Writing Articles That Get The Most Traffic

To write articles that get lots of traffic, make sure to:

• Write it in a list form and number it.
• Mention people your readers will know, it will draw them in.
• Link out to other websites.
• Write the perfect name for your article. This should be thought about.
• Make sure your content is motivational.
• The more content the better (outsource writing via FatJoe article content creation service. Alternatively, use one of these AI content creation tools).

What type of blog posts are sending you the most traffic right now?

Read next: ‘How To Promote Your Blog – The Fastest Way To 1000 Visitors Per Day’