Stefan Smulders January 20, 2022 To drive desirable results using Search Engine Optimization, creating timeless, relevant, and accurate content is an indispensable practice. Without such content, search engines wouldn’t really have the information needed to index the pages on your website.
When you upload the right content, the chances of your website traffic increasing are higher. Consequently, this increase often becomes beneficial in the form of increased links and conversions.
But before you can even narrow down to the preferred format of your content or create an outline for your article, the one thing that can truly help increase your click rate is the theme/topic that your content circles.
If your users are not interested in reading the topics you are publishing, getting them to your website will be a huge task. This is where keeping up with the trends (and not just Kardashians!) becomes relevant and important.
The more you talk about the current events and trending topics, provided they are relevant to your niche, the more curious readers you will attract to your website. This is especially a good practice to start building backlinks for a new website.
Moreover, talking about what’s hot also improves the chances of the content on your website being shareable, clickable, and even linkable.
Without further ado, let’s jump right into how you can use the trending topics to give a boost to your website traffic and build high-quality links.
Keep up with the trends.
The first step to using trending topics for your website content is to be aware of them. Staying ahead of trends will help you ensure you are not left behind in riding the wave.
Reading about your industry and its current events will make it easier for you to cover the stories as soon as they happen. Getting late in reaching the final game will only result in diminishing website traffic and a waste of your time as well as effort.
Owing to the excellent advancements in technology, keeping up with the trends has become easier. There are certain tools that you can use to stay on top of new stories, events, pop culture, and more. These include:
- Social Media: Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, are among the top channels to get an insight into what’s happening around in your industry.
On Facebook, you can find groups that are relevant to your niche and industry. More often than not, you will find such groups discussing topics that are currently in the news. This will keep your content niche-specific, topic-specific, and also allow you to share your content with those discussing it already.
As for Twitter, it is perhaps one platform where news travel faster than light, be it fake or a true story. This platform is dedicated to literally all the domains one can think of, ranging from politics to food, from the film industry to advertising.
To find trending topics on Twitter, you can follow other brands related to you/your industry, follow public figures, or visit the hashtags that are trending. The trending section will help you identify what’s hot online.
- Google Trends
Google Trends is a tool that is a blessing in disguise, especially from the SEO point of view. Google Trends is used to figure out the top searches that are looked for by your users related to your keywords and industry. It is also a useful tool to keep a track of the increase in traffic (if any).
- Reddit/Quora
One of the most underrated yet most important ways to find what’s trending is by browsing through ‘Subreddit’ on Reddit. This platform is not only best for finding content that is the topic of discussion in the current times but is also an excellent tool to promote one’s content.
Lastly, Quora is where you can find all the recently asked questions upvotes, and follow-up questions on one spot, for all kinds of topics you can imagine.
Keep an eye out for opportunities.
Opportunities are everywhere. All you need is the eye to scout for the ones that will bring you the most benefits. Once you know what’s trending, looking for opportunities to create exemplary is not as challenging.
This is the point where you can use your creative bent of mind and be as imaginative as you can be. You don’t always have to settle for the skyscraper technique for your article. So how do you reach this point? By utilizing what you already know and have i.e. your brand.
For instance, take a look at this creative video on Mental Health Day that showcased the collaboration between CALM ((the Campaign Against Living Miserably), Dave, and Murdock London Barbers.
If you already have a set of rules, brand guidelines with regards to tone, language, and message, and your target audience is used to what you publish, perhaps sticking to the same tangent will be a lot easier than starting from the bottom.
To start with, you can create a list of questions and try to find their answers.
- What does my audience want in the current situation? You don’t have always have to assume. You can take your audience’s help, ask them this question, and create content circling that issue.
- What topics or themes have worked for YOUR brand in the past? Before you create new pieces of content, look for a particular style or format of content that has worked for you in the past. Then, try to fathom if you can add a contemporary touch to it and use it for the trending subjects.
- Are others missing out on something? This is where you do thorough research to pull out the gaps in what they are covering. Look for perspectives, aspects, or subtopics that no one is talking about. This fresh take can sometimes offer food for thought to your audience.
- What type of content do others in your niche prefer? The main reason to find an answer to this question is to figure out what type of content is linkable. This is purely from the SEO point of view, hence, it is best to search for keywords that are performing well.
One small piece of advice that we can give here is to not start out without doing your proper research. You must offer your audience what they are looking for, covering trending topics just because everyone else is doing can sometimes do more harm than good.
Keep the content aligned with your industry.
Continuing with what we said earlier, you don’t always have to cover every trend or every current event. This type of moment marketing, when not done right, can lead to your brand getting a lot of criticism, just because it wasn’t something that aligned with your brand, or your audience.
The topic of your content, its format, and its gist should align with your brand and the niche.
The best way to do this is to keep your target audience at the center of every decision you are making. Once you have the topic that’s trending, think about what your audience prefers.
Indeed, blogs and long-form articles are often the forms of content that most gravitate towards. However, if you have an audience that appreciates your efforts, you can try to identify different forms of content that might work for you.
Can a short video perform better than simple text? Or, can you use an infographic or a comic strip?
The possibilities of creating content that attracts your audience, or maybe even expands it, are endless. In fact, sometimes, a different form of content can also turn out to be among the top outreach ideas because it allows other bloggers to embrace and share diversity in their content.
Make your content legible and interesting.
One thing you must understand is that formats of content are plenty and long-form blog posts on trending topics are not the only form of content that attracts links or readers.
If you provide a long blog post without any space to breathe, chances are your bounce rate will be much higher regardless of the topic you are covering. Instead, you should aim to make your content more interesting. Understand that just the written text is not the only way you can communicate with your readers.
Spice up your blog posts and other website content by using relevant images, short videos, or even GIFs. This will allow your users to skim through your content, add more breaks to your content, and ensure your piece does not get too much or too boring for your readers.
Furthermore, more often than not, using fewer words to put forth what you want to say can perform a lot better than a 3000-words worth of an article. This is where you can get to the bottom of the topic and try to figure out if you can use formats like infographics or graphs to deliver the information.
Your audience is real human beings with a very short attention span. The easier you make for them to consume your content, the more likely they are to engage with it and maybe even share it.
Don’t leave out web optimization
Once you know the trending topic and the format you want to share that in, do not leave an important aspect of digital marketing behind i.e. search engine optimization.
Let’s be honest.
The main reason for publishing content on a website is to bring your brand to the first page of the SERPs. This helps bring traffic to your website and increases the chances of your website getting high-quality backlinks.
So, even if it’s a trending topic, you must insert the relevant keywords, keep your meta descriptions and titles SEO-ready, and conduct all the best SEO practices to make sure your web page is optimized for search.
If you are not well-versed with SEO or its other aspects, you can always take help from a professional digital marketer or a content marketer.
But if you are not fully ready to optimize your content or if your website is not optimized yet, you don’t have to worry. The main goal with any and every trending topic is to market it across different platforms as quickly as possible. This often brings links for a short period of time that can give your website an initial boost.
You can always just come back to the piece of content and optimize it for the search engine later.
Develop engaging content (especially blogs).
We know it is pretty obvious but yet, there are pieces of content out there that simply fail to keep up with others in the market.
We have already discussed how you can make your content skimmable, legible, and how you can spice it up. But that might not be enough. This is especially true if you are working on blogs or other long-form content.
If you want your readers to reach the end of your blog on the trending topic you are covering, there are a few tips to keep in mind. These include:
- Be precise. Only add information that is relevant to the topic. Keep your blog short and to the point.
- Use listicle. It is best to convert your blog into small headers and sub-headers to improve readability.
- Embrace storytelling. Ever since childhood, most humans are used to listening to or reading stories. Try to write in a manner that invokes emotions. This will help you outshine others who are covering the same topic as you.
- Add a call to action. Like, share, subscribe. Always end your content piece with a call to action that you want your audience to perform. Make sure you add a relevant link to the same.
- Edit your piece. Give your piece to an editor. It can help you avoid any grammatical or syntax errors, and might even help you find better ways to put forth your ideas and thoughts.
Repurpose your content.
Lastly, develop a strategy around the distribution of your content piece.
Content written on trending topics is often short-lived. It will gain traction the moment it’s hot, but as soon as there is another breaking news, it tends to lose its value. Hence, it is best to be very careful about how, where, and when you market your content.
This also entails that just sharing a post on Facebook is not going to be enough to bring in the traffic and links you desire. Here are a few ways you can repurpose your content.
- Leverage social media. You can add images related to your articles on your Instagram story and provide your users with a link, leverage Facebook groups to share your content, or run a promotion/contest to increase the number of shares of your content.
- Use emails. You can run an email campaign with a link to your article, outreach others to get links on your infographic or article, or connect with influencers over email to promote your content.
- Convert it into video. You can even convert your content into video format. If it’s a blog, turn it into a slide, add a voice-over, and share it on your social media channels including Instagram and YouTube.
Conclusion
To wrap it up, working on trending topics is perhaps an excellent way to give your website a boost. But this is only true if your content is in the right format and is promoted well.
Keep your target audience in mind when trying to figure out if the trending topic aligns with your brand vision or not. This will also help you narrow down the format of the content.
To promote it, you can make use of your email list and social media. You can even leverage video marketing, which is the most common and popular form of content today.
It is true that content on current issues is short-lived, but it can help your new website get the traction you desire while keeping the existing popular brands in the limelight with every news they publish.
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