13 Data-Driven Content Marketing Techniques That Boost Rankings

Source: Neil Patel

Content marketing is a tricky thing to navigate in today’s world.

There are so many different techniques out in the ether that it’s almost impossible to know what works and what doesn’t.

New, fancy growth hacks that promise you 100000% boosts in sales and conversions are almost always lying.

Do you blog? Do you create infographics? How about video content?

Sometimes, sticking to proven methods is the best strategy there is.

So, what works and what doesn’t?

That’s what I’m here to share, with only data-backed methods.

Here are 19 data-driven techniques to use in your content marketing strategy to boost your rankings.

1. Set content goals

Before diving into content marketing with the intent to boost rankings, leads, and traffic, you have to set goals.

Understanding what content types to pick will often stem from your own business goals and where your clients are.

The only way to create actionable content that drives rankings and links is to segment by funnel stage and separate by your goals.

Before creating content, ask the following question:

Why are you creating this content, what market does it appeal to and what purpose will it serve?

Creating content just to create more content is a strategy that will burn through your budget and your time.

Instead, you should have a purpose behind each piece you create.

For example, I recently wrote an in-depth blog post on Google’s mobile-first index:

I did this because I wanted to capture more people interested in mobile marketing and mobile SEO back to my blog.

If I didn’t want that traffic, I wouldn’t have bothered to write about it.

With anything you do in marketing, hedge your risks by analyzing the why behind your actions.

2. Blog more often than you think you should

Blogging is a great way to bring in new, organic visitors to your site.

And most people are blogging right now, especially in the B2B space.

But, they aren’t doing it optimally.

Blogging a few times per month can get you some amazing leads and much more traffic than ignoring blogging as a whole.

But if you’re interested in more leads and more traffic (which you are), then you have to blog more often.

2017 HubSpot research found that posting 0-2 times per month on your blog will generate an average of 100 new visits.

But companies blogging 16 times or more per month are more than tripling that number.

While that number isn’t feasible for every company, it’s a target that you can work up to.

No matter if you’re a B2B or B2C company, blogging can bring in more traffic:

On top of more traffic, companies that blog more times each month generate more inbound leads:

If you are only bringing in 100 leads right now with a few posts, just imagine the amount you can bring in with 16+ blog posts.

The key takeaway is this:

Companies of any size in the B2B and B2C space can benefit from posting more, high-quality blog posts each month.

Pro tip: Just remember to keep the quality high. Each post should be long-form and actionable.

3. Create link-magnet content

The more links you have, the better.

According to Google, the top two ranking factors are content and links.

A supplementary study by Backlinko found this to be true, with the data showing that more external backlinks had a direct correlation to higher rankings:

The problem is, backlinks are becoming harder and harder to come by.

It takes a perfect piece of content and tons of social shares to land a few basic links.

You really have to campaign for them when it comes to your site and blog.

But, you can combat the typical struggle of link building by creating link-magnet content.

Link-magnet content is simply content that generates links easily.

For example, infographics. When building Kissmetrics from the ground up, I used infographics to generate 2,512,596 visitors and over 40,000 backlinks.

Why do infographics work? Because 65% of people are visual learners:

Other types of link-magnet content include:

• E-books
• Whitepapers
• Outlier case studies
• Videos

These content types are known to get more shares than your standard blog post.

Try using them to get more links faster to boost rankings and social shares.

4. Test your headlines

Headlines are a tricky, yet powerful piece of any content marketing plan.

Creating amazing content but promoting it with a boring, sub-par headline can lead to underperforming results that leave you confused and discouraged.

But the converse is also true:

Writing a thought-provoking headline can increase your click-through rate and improve your content virality.

Plus, CTR is an indirect ranking factor. While it doesn’t directly impact rankings, it only makes sense that Google would place the most popular content higher in the results.

The problem is that writing headlines is tough. It’s hard to know what appeals to your users and what doesn’t.

For that reason, I love using CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer:

Simply enter your headline into the analyzer, and you’ll get a score out of 100 on its success:

Breaking down your headlines using power words and emotion, this headline tool is amazing for perfecting your approach.

It will tell you what your content lacks and requires to be more successful.

Try using it to test your different headlines and see which ones appeal to your customers.

5. Supplement your content strategy with social posting (but not how you do it now)

After publishing a post on your blog, or a new video on YouTube, what’s your first step for promotion?

Commonly, people share content on every social channel possible.

And this strategy is a great start. Sharing on social has helped me gain tons of traffic, shares and ultimately links.

The more users that read my content, the better.

Not only do I get more traffic, but I likely will gain more links because I’ve helped more people who might reference it later.

But often, posting strategies on social platforms don’t work.

Why? Well, currently on platforms like Facebook, organic reach is declining.

It has been for the past six years.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to use social platforms to gain links and traffic.

It just means we have to adapt and change our gameplans.

The standard share and spam method doesn’t work anymore. You can’t post the same content over and over, or post ten times a day.

Instead, follow Buffer’s Facebook posting strategy to drive more engagement. To combat a decline in organic reach, they tried posting less often on Facebook:

At the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, they started posting only one to two times per day.

As a result, they saw a 30x increase in organic engagement. Fascinating.

They were heavily rewarded for posting better content less often.

Their organic reach started to skyrocket:

On top of reach, even their average daily engagement increased on days when they didn’t post:

With social platforms, try posting only your best content marketing pieces.

If you keep posting every small action on social, you won’t see strong results.

Posting less can increase your reach and engagement, resulting in more traffic and more links.

6. Repurpose content

Everybody wants more content to drive traffic and sales, but nobody wants to spend the time creating it.

Content creation is a labor-intensive tactic. According to OrbitMedia, a simple blog post takes an average of 3 hours and 16 minutes.

And that’s based on a 1,000-word blog post.

Meaning that if you’re writing 2,000-word blog posts, you could…

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