What Should You Do If You Have a “Great” Article That’s Getting 0 Traffic?

Source: Neil Patel

You’ve just written an A+ article.

You’ve crossed your T’s and dotted your I’s and are certain that your article is going to crush it.

After much anticipation and preparation, you publish it.

You watch. You wait.

And it gets zero traffic!

What went wrong?

Well here’s the thing about content.

It’s not enough to simply produce it.

Content isn’t a “write, and they will come” type of deal.

Believe me on this.

I know from experience.

And I know from hard data.

A joint study from Moz and BuzzSumo that analyzed one million articles found, “50 percent of 100,000 randomly selected posts had two or less Twitter shares, two or less Facebook interactions, one or less Google+ shares, and zero LinkedIn shares.”

“75 percent of the posts had zero external links and one or less referring domain links.”

Yikes.

Here’s what that looks like visually.

In other words, nobody gives a rip about the vast majority of content that’s published.

There’s a tiny percentage of content that dominates, but most simply flounder and never gains traction.

In other words, if you’re just writing content and hoping that they come, you’re wasting your time and money!

I don’t care how good your article is. I don’t care how “viral” you think it could become.

Good content, and it doesn’t matter how good, will not automatically blow up and get traffic.

So how do drive traffic to your article? How do you get the links, the shares, the eyeballs, and the conversions that you crave?

It’s simple.

You need to aggressively promote it, especially if you’re new to the game.

And I realize that it’s kind of crazy if you think about it.

Content marketing is a means of promotion in and of itself.

But to really get results, you need to promote your content as well.

So in a sense, you’re promoting promotional content.

With that being said, I’m going to provide you with a methodology I’ve found useful for promoting my content.

Using this system for any article should get more eyeballs on it and ensure that your time and energy weren’t spent in vain.

I use this process, and it serves me well.

You can get success if you use this process as well.

Reach out to known “sharers”

You’d be amazed at how many people are willing to help you out if you just ask.

I know that reaching out to influencers has been a big help in getting me to where I am today.

I simply couldn’t have done it without all of the people who have helped me out along the way.

One of my most straightforward strategies involves identifying people who are sharing content that’s similar to your article and reaching out to them in hopes of getting them to share your article as well.

There are several ways to go about this, but BuzzSumo is a particular tool that I recommend because of the detailed information it provides and insightful metrics.

Here’s what you do.

For this example, I’m going to reference one of my more recent posts.

It’s one I wrote that discusses some of the top SEO plugins for WordPress.

So I’ll just use “WordPress SEO plugins” as my keyword phrase to search for similar content.

I simply go to BuzzSumo and enter this in the search box.

Click on “Search.”

Here are some of my results.

I know that there are some results from NeilPatel.com, but disregard them at this point.

What I want to do is target the post that received the most overall shares.

In this case, it’s this one from Social Media Examiner.

Now I understand that the article is on WordPress plugins for social media marketers.

But there’s a good chance that many of the people who shared this post would be interested in SEO plugins as well.

Here’s what I do now.

Click on “View Sharers.”

Now I get a list of everyone who shared this article along with some helpful metrics like their page authority, domain authority, number of Twitter followers, etc.

From there, I’ll scroll through this list and identify anyone I’m interested in reaching out to.

BuzzSumo will provide you with their Twitter info and website.

I personally prefer to reach out via email. A lot of times, people don’t notice their Twitter DMs. I try to find an email address or contact box on their website.

If all else fails, you can just contact them via Twitter.

From there, send them a personalized script where you explain that you have created similar content to the post they linked to and ask for them to link to you as well.

Here’s a good template to use.

Assuming your article is as good or better than the one they initially linked to, you’ve got a solid chance of getting a link.

However, it is a numbers game, so you’ll want to reach out to a minimum of five different people.

If you can get even a few influencers to link to you and share your content with their audience, you’re practically guaranteed to bring a surge of traffic to your article.

I should also note that Open Site Explorer is another tool that will tell you where articles are getting their links from.

It can be useful as well.

Use Klout to find influencers to quote

This is another tactic that leverages the power of influencers to boost your article.

It involves a four-step process.

1. You find influencers who are experts in the topic you’re writing about
2. You contact them and ask for a quote
3. You add their quote to your article
4. You ask them to share your article containing their quote

But how exactly do you go about this?

Here’s what I recommend.

First, go to Klout.

This is the tool you’ll use to find potential influencers.

Log in or create an account. (It’s free.)

Then you can explore topics.

What you want to do is enter a search phrase that’s relevant to your article.

Let’s just say that I wrote an article about content marketing.

I’ll just use “content marketing” as a keyword in the search box.

Then I’ll pick the topic that matches my article the closest.

Here’s what pops up.

On the left-hand side, there is a list of the top 10 experts to follow.

I can start with this list because these individuals/brands are at the top of the totem pole.

Or you can scroll through the list of articles and find an influencer that way.

Find an influencer you’re interested in, and click on their name.

I’ll just go with Neal Schaffer.

Here’s the information I get.

Just like that, I can see which areas he specializes in and instantly have links to his…

Click here to read more