How To Get Guaranteed Blog Traffic in 2024 By Reverse Engineering Top Content
Are you tired of spending countless hours creating original blog content only to have it fall flat? Do you wish there was a more reliable way to get traffic to your blog without leaving it up to chance?
Here‘s the secret that successful bloggers don‘t often share: most of their "hit" content isn‘t 100% original. In fact, an estimated 80% of top performing blog posts are inspired by content that has already been proven to work.
The process is called content reverse engineering. Rather than starting from a blank page, you find content that has already gotten great results in terms of traffic, engagement and rankings. Then you analyze what made that content successful and apply those elements to your own posts.
When done right, reverse engineering top content practically guarantees your blog will get more traffic. It takes the guesswork out of choosing topics, formats, headlines, promotion channels, and more.
So how exactly do you reverse engineer content the right way? Follow this step-by-step guide:
Step 1: Identify top performing content to inspire your posts
The first step is to find successful content that you can model your own posts after. Here are a few ways to uncover it:
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Check which content gets the most engagement on social media channels where your target audience hangs out. Tools like Buzzsumo make this easy.
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Search for your target keywords on Google and see what types of headlines and posts rank on the first page. Clearly Google sees those posts as high quality and highly relevant.
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Browse popular niche bookmarking sites and content aggregators like GrowthHackers, Designer News, Hacker News, and AllTop to see what gets upvoted.
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Look at which posts get the most traffic on competing blogs in your niche using a tool like Similarweb or SEMRush.
Add any posts that stand out to a spreadsheet along with key information like the headline, URL, and performance metrics. Aim to collect at least 10-20 examples.
Step 2: Analyze what makes the top content successful
Simply replicating another post wholesale won‘t be effective. You need to go deeper to understand the key elements that made each piece of content appealing, both to readers and algorithms.
Analyze each post you collected to identify:
Headline attributes: Note any power words, numbers, questions, curiosity elements, and headline structures used. Do you spot any patterns across multiple viral posts?
Content qualities: How long is the post? How readable and skimmable is it? What types of multimedia and visuals are included? Does the author use storytelling, data, humor, or other engaging elements?
Promotion channels: Where was the content shared? Which social networks? Did it earn backlinks from any major sites? Was it mentioned in the media or by influencers? What communities was it seeded to?
Step 3: Apply your insights to create new content primed for success
Armed with an understanding of what works for your target audience and niche, you can create your own content incorporating your top insights:
- Craft headlines using the high-performing power words and structures you identified.
- Aim to meet or exceed the benchmark metrics for elements like post length, number of images, reading level, etc.
- Promote your content in the same channels and communities that led to success for your model posts. If they liked a certain topic or style there, chances are they‘ll like yours too.
While this process leads to more reliable results than starting from zero, it doesn‘t mean you have to completely give up originality. The 80/20 rule is a good guideline – aim to have 80% of your posts follow proven topics and formats that have worked for others, and experiment with innovative or offbeat ideas for the other 20%.
Over time, you can incorporate more originality, especially as you grow your own engaged audience. But starting with a foundation of content that‘s highly likely to succeed will help you get more consistent traffic from the beginning.
The key is to always be learning and iterating. If a reverse engineered post falls flat, analyze why. If an experimental post takes off, try to understand what resonated. The more you learn about your unique audience, the easier it will be to create a traffic-driving content strategy over time.
Ultimately, success leaves clues. By making content reverse engineering a habit, you won‘t have to guess at what topics, formats, and promotion channels will be most effective. You‘ll have a wealth of insights to draw from that practically guarantee more eyes on your content – and more growth for your blog.
