You already know content is at the heart of your SEO strategy.

In the past, due to many SEO loopholes, it was commonplace to optimize a page with very low quality, filler content and still manage to get it ranking high.

I think everyone will agree with me it’s harder to do that now.

Here are a few facts regarding SEO that are cause for concern:

1. Google owns a monopoly on search (some say as much as 90% of all searches are done through Google). So if you put all your eggs in the SEO basket, you’re basically putting ALL of them in the Google basket. One company controls all your traffic and that one company can take it away.

2. Google is aggressively penalizing sites for link building practices that manipulate their algorithm (which is most all link building just for the sake of building links). So if you manufacture the majority of the links coming to your site expect to see your rankings drop as they get more sophisticated at figuring this out.

Solutions

Here are another set of things to think about that will lead to a solution for BOTH these major issues:

Links on Highly Trafficked Sites Bring You Traffic

Make no mistake, there are plenty of sites online receiving an absolute ton of traffic. Many of these sites actively link out to other sites.

You can wind up with a lot of direct traffic if they link back to your site.

As proof, many blogging experts recommend you guest blog your heart out to get links like these. That way you’ll get a link and you’ll get some traffic too.

Guest blogging is fine (it definitely works when done right).

But the reality is guest blogging means you need A LOT of high quality content.

And you have to give it away. 

This is content you might like to keep for your site, but to get a link from the site with all the traffic, you have to let them have it.

In the end, you have to produce a lot of content to get traffic from this method. You still need some content for your own site (to keep your own readers happy) and you need a lot of really good content for other people’s sites (to get readers in the first place).

It works, but here are a couple of things to think about …

• What if you could get links from sites like these without needing to write a special piece of content just for them?
• What if you could get highly trafficked sites to link right to content on your site?

As you can imagine, that’s a pretty big short-cut.

Here’s another thing to think about …

Visitors Will Share Good Content

Visitors will help spread the word about your content (and your site) if they like it.

This is called word-of-mouth or referral marketing and it’s been around forever.

The nice thing is it’s even easier to share stuff now that social media has taken hold. People with a Facebook or Twitter account can

spread the word about your content with just a click of a button.

Magnetic Content = Visitor Sharing + Links on Highly Trafficked Sites

There are certain types of content I call Magnetic Content that results in sites with traffic linking to yours and results in more sharing from your visitors.

If you can accomplish this that means you get direct traffic outside the search engines.

This is major.

Your traffic is now coming from other sites linking to you. It also comes from visitors passing around links to your content.

Now you’re not just getting traffic from Google, you’re getting traffic from outside sources too.

You’ve diversified.

Creating Magnetic Content makes issue #1 less of a big deal. Again problem number one is that Google currently owns a monopoly on search. If you’ve got good rankings and a ton of traffic coming in through Google and they pull the plug on those rankings all your

traffic will vanish.

You don’t want that.

You want to build a steady stream of traffic that is not reliant on one source. So diversifying is crucial.

It’s hard to learn PPC marketing, PPV marketing, video marketing, banner advertising, and all these other  traffic generation methods.

But with Magnetic Content we can optimize content for the search engines and we can gain traffic from other sources too (other sites with traffic to share and visitor referrals).

That’s all with one piece of content. That content is working hard for us and helps diversify our traffic without forcing us to learn new, traffic tactics in order to get traffic from outside the search engines.

Magnetic Content also takes care of issue # 2. That’s where Google has gotten crazy busting people for what they consider “bad” link building.  If you’ve got great, useful content on your site that others are linking to you don’t need to pay for links. You don’t need to spend your time on tactics Google doesn’t want you doing (plus it costs a small fortune and is mind numbingly boring).

Instead, you produce Magnetic Content and that helps you attract links.

Again, these aren’t just manufactured links from a blog network with no real visitors that will do absolutely nothing for your traffic.

These are real links from real sites who have visitors to share.  You’ll gain traffic directly from these links. Plus you’re building the best links you can (by any search engine’s standards).

These are links given by merit.  Links that are given because you actually have something relevant and cool on your site.

So this is the ultimate shortcut. The ultimate way to leverage your time.

There’s actually one other benefit. Magnetic Content encourages action from your readers. You’re giving them awesome free stuff and that elevates you above competitors who don’t know how to create worthwhile content.

That means your visitors will be more likely to sign up to your email newsletters, to buy your products and services, and to see you as a trusted resource. This is an incredible bonus for the creation of a single piece of Magnetic Content.

What if all the content you publish is Magnetic? Can you imagine the steady stream of traffic you would create for your online business and what that means for your income?

It’s possible to phase out the low quality, relatively useless content you may have been creating in the past and only focus on the production of Magnetic Content. In that case it’s likely you’ll find yourself spending the same amount of time (or money if you’re hiring freelance writers) and see better results with far less content.

Contrasting Method …

You create low quality, sub-par, or average content that doesn’t solve your visitors real problems.  You optimize it just right for keyphrases people are searching for. You then go out and manufacture a bunch of links to that content. These links don’t bring in any traffic, but after enough of them, they do boost your rankings.

So you wind up with traffic from the search engines.

Google adjusts their algorithm or you get a manual penalty (because it takes a member of Google’s web spam team about 5 seconds to see that you’ve got marginal content on your site that is only ranking high because you faked their algorithm out with manufactured links) and you lose most of your rankings along with your traffic..

Let’s take stock of what you have:

• You now have a site with next to no traffic.
• You have a bunch of low quality articles that no one wants to link to or share.

Where do you even go from there?

Basically you have to start over. The articles are worthless. The site is worthless.

The links you got are worse than worthless. In fact, they’ve damaged your rankings (which was your ONLY source of traffic). You’d have to actually do work to get rid of those links.  After you remove the links manually, use the Google disavow tool, or buy a new domain you can start over.

Completely. From. Scratch.

And if you don’t change how you do things, you can probably expect the cycle to repeat itself.

If I’ve hit home with this I’m not saying it’s fair, but it’s reality now.  It’s just how it works.  From where I sit there’s no point crying about it, but there is a point in doing something about it.

The Alternative …

You write Magnetic Content.

You optimize it for the search engines around keyphrases people search for. You tell sites in your market about your content.

• Some of them tell their readers about it by linking to it. You get direct traffic from them sharing your interesting content.
• Some of their readers share it. You get direct traffic from them referring it.

You also get a boost in your search engine rankings from the links.

Google updates their algorithm. In all likelihood, you still keep your rankings because you were not ranking based on a loophole in the algorithm.

Let’s take stock of what you have:

• You have awesome, useful content that will keep working for you through visitor referrals; month after month, year after year.
• You have links from sites with real traffic that will keep bringing you traffic; month after month, year after year.
• You have high search engine rankings.

No one can guarantee high search engine rankings forever, but you have a better chance of keeping them with this strategy. If you did lose those rankings, you still have traffic coming in from other sources.

Plus you’ve really impressed your visitors, many of whom want to hear more from you so they sign up to your newsletter or any social media platforms you’re a part of to stay in touch.

Now you have another source of traffic (your list and your social media platforms).

Things to think about.