How to Combine Native Advertising with Content Marketing to Maximize Your Traffic

Despite the proven effectiveness of native advertising, it’s a concept that remains a little murky for many marketers.

Copyblogger performed a study on native advertising, asking people whether they knew what it was and how knowledgeable they were about it.

Here are the results:

Clearly, it’s still an ambiguous concept to many.

Simply, native advertising is a tactic that blends promotional content with the rest of the content—native content—of a page.

Here’s a good example:

When compared to more traditional advertisements such as banner ads, native ads tend to be more effective:

consumers interact with native ads 20% to 60% more than they do with standard banner ads.

That’s probably because they don’t stand out like a sore thumb.

Furthermore, we’re seeing significant growth in the use of this strategy:

In the US, the native ad market is expected to grow to $53 billion by 2020.

More and more marketers are catching on and seeing the potential of this approach.

The problem with content distribution

An interesting phenomenon is taking place in regards to content marketing.

More and more content is being created, but it isn’t translating into audience growth.

This image visualizing data from a Nielsen and BI Intelligence study puts things into perspective:

Notice how the amount of content being produced has grown significantly while the audience size has basically plateaued.

The reason for this, of course, is that there is a far bigger supply than demand for content.

There aren’t enough people to consume all the content being created.

Just look at what happens every single minute:

And that’s just on four major social networks. This doesn’t take into account blog posts, articles, infographics and so on.

This means that it’s no longer enough to simply create great content.

You need an effective means of distribution, enabling you to reach your audience on a larger scale.

This tweet from former BuzzFeed Vice President Jonathan Perelman hits the nail on the head:

Native advertising is the perfect solution to this problem.

It’s an excellent way to distribute your content and extend its reach by leveraging the exposure and brand equity of other publishers.

It’s also one of the smartest ways to connect with consumers and get them to engage with your brand.

And if you play your cards right, you can use it to drive a huge volume of traffic to your site.

In this post, let me offer some basic strategies for using native advertising in tandem with content marketing.

Do extensive research

For this tactic to work, your content must fit in perfectly with the style, tone, theme, etc. of the publisher’s site.

It needs to be seamless.

To ensure it flows smoothly, you need to understand the publisher inside and out.

Here are a few questions to answer to help you with that:

• who’s their target audience?
• what kind of themes and subject matter do they cover?
• what type of content does their audience respond to?
• what kind of editorial style do they use?

The native advertising platform you choose should have a creative team to assist you with this and provide you with direction.

But I recommend putting in the extra effort so that you know precisely what type of content to create and how to create it.

The more knowledge you have, the better your odds of having success will be.

Align your content

Once you have a firm grasp of the publisher’s site, you’ll want to base your content around it.

Keep in mind that today’s Internet users are incredibly adept at sniffing out promotional content and dodging it.

That’s why native advertising is becoming so popular.

It’s able to get much higher click-through rates (CTRs) than standard display ads.

According to Marketing Land,

the average CTRs for display ads have fallen over time to 0.17%.

However,

the average CTR for native ads on Adnow is 1.5%.

But CTR this high doesn’t just happen on its own.

Your content must align perfectly with the publisher’s site.

How do you do this?

It’s simple.

Create high-quality content matching the publisher’s, based on the research you performed.

Center it around a topic their average visitor is interested in, and style it accordingly.

Just treat it as if you’re guest-posting, keeping in mind that it’s essential that your content conforms to the publisher’s style and guidelines.

Here’s an example of Dell pulling this off perfectly:

They wrote an article in The New York Times regarding millennials and their collective distaste for the traditional 9 to 5 lifestyle.

Read through it, and you’ll notice that it uses the same style and tone of pretty much everything you’ll read in The New York Times.

An untrained eye would have a hard time detecting this was an advertisement.

And that’s a good thing.

When you think about it, the ultimate goal of native advertising is to advertise without people even realizing they are looking at an advertisement.

I like to look at it as just content marketing as usual.

It relies on the same concept of creating high-quality content for a specific audience.

The only difference is you’re paying to have your content featured on a publisher’s website.

It’s a quicker, more efficient means of distribution so you can reach a larger audience in less time.

Look beyond articles

When considering which type of content format to feature on a publisher’s site, the first thing that probably comes to most people’s minds is a conventional article.

It’s the obvious choice, right?

I can definitely see why this would be the popular choice.

And quite frankly, it tends to make the most sense when you’re testing the waters with native advertising.

But gaining any real traction can be difficult when you’re doing what everyone else is doing.

It’s harder to stand out that way.

Fortunately, you’re by no means limited to conventional articles. You have a buffet of options to choose from.

Just take a look at some of the top B2B content marketing tactics:

Now, I’m not saying you should create off the wall content just for the sake of being different.

What’s most important is that you base it around what resonates most with your audience.

For example, here’s a breakdown of the consumption habits of consumers, depending on their ages:

If you were trying to reach a younger demographic of 18-24-year-olds, videos and infographics would be potential choices.

Optimize your landing page as well

Let’s say you nailed your research, figured out the perfect style to use and created brilliant content that visitors to the publisher’s site absolutely ate up.

That’s great, and you’re likely to see a great CTR.

But your job isn’t done yet.

You still need to ensure that your leads are arriving on a well-designed landing page poised for conversions:

Just think about it.

It won’t do you much good if you do everything else right but fall short with your landing page.

You’re just throwing money away.

Now, landing page optimization is a whole other topic in and of itself and one that I’ve covered extensively in the past.

I’m not going to explain all the details here, but to learn pretty much everything you need to know about it, check out this guide.

Let me just point out that it should be designed with the purpose of moving prospects deeper through the sales funnel post-click.

Ideally, it will build upon the content that prospects just digested and provide them with additional information to encourage them to buy.

Don’t forget to do A/B testing

I won’t go on a rant about the importance of A/B testing.

I’ve already mentioned before that only 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates.

Considering that this is a practice you want to implement into many other areas of marketing, it only makes sense that it should be done with native advertising as well.

There are several different elements you can test, including:

• type of content
• positioning on the publisher’s site
• headlines
• images

Let’s be honest.

It’s not realistic to nail it the first time around. You’ll need a fair amount of experimentation to get it right.

A/B testing is the best way to quickly optimize your efforts and work out the kinks.

Conclusion

Native advertising gets real results but isn’t necessarily on the radar of every content marketer.

But it should be!

It’s the perfect way to solve the ongoing distribution problem many content marketers are facing.

It can be a godsend if you’re a new brand hungry for exposure.

By combining native advertising with content marketing, you’re speeding up the process of reaching your audience.

But like with any other marketing tactic, you need to follow best practices, which primarily involves researching the publisher, aligning your content with their website and tailoring your content around the preferences of your core audience.

If you can do that, you can expect a rock solid CTR and plenty of targeted traffic to your site.

For information on potential native advertising platforms to use, check out this post from Entrepreneur.

Have you experimented with native advertising?

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Should You Be Worried About The Next Google Algorithm Change?

“Everything changes and nothing stands still.”

In this quote, Heraclitus of Ephesus was referring to life and the fundamental order of the cosmos.

But he might as well be referring to Google’s chronic algorithm updates, even if he was a few centuries early.

See, Google makes roughly 500 – 600 changes each year.

Some are major, some are minor.

Some are confirmed, some are unconfirmed.

But Google is cranking them out left and right.

Even on the low end of 500 changes each year, this means 1.36 changes occur every single day.

Google is basically tweaking its algorithm all the time.

Here’s a chart that highlights some of the more serious changes of the past six years:

Of course, only a fraction of algorithm changes create any real stir.

Most of you don’t even know they happen.

But this constant flux is enough to put a lot of marketers on edge.

Even if you reach a top ranking position for a great keyword, there’s no guarantee you’ll stay there.

A single update could send you plummeting into no man’s land.

I understand this can be a little unnerving.

But is this fear really justified?

Should you be worried about the next Google algorithm change?

In this post, I offer my input on this topic and explain how you can protect your site from incurring Google’s wrath.

The frequency of major updates

Okay, so we’ve established that Google is constantly making adjustments.

It’s how it continues to dominate the search engine market:

If it remained stagnant, a competitor would inevitably overtake it.

But what we really need to know is just how many updates are major.

By major I mean resulting in a serious shakeup where hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of sites are affected.

According to Link Assistant, there have been nine major updates since 2011.

They are as follows:

1. Panda – 2/24/11
2. Penguin – 4/24/12
3. Pirate – 8/12
4. Hummingbird – 8/22/13
5. Pigeon – 7/24/14
6. Mobile-Friendly Update – 4/21/15
7. RankBrain – 10/26/15
8. Possum – 9/1/16
9. Fred – 3/8/17

That means we’ve had 1.5 major updates per year in the last six years.

This isn’t to say minor updates can’t or won’t impact you, but there are only about 1.5 a year that are cause for any real concern.

Average traffic that comes from Google

Kissmetrics performed a study on over 18,000 small to medium e-commerce sites.

They found that “30.5 percent of all traffic was coming from organic searches on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.”

Considering that Google has 77.43% of the search market, this means that roughly 23.6% of small to medium e-commerce sites’ traffic comes from Google.

In other words, just under a quarter of all traffic comes from Google.

I would say that’s significant.

Of course, this isn’t true for every website.

But this is what you can expect on average.

Should you worry?

Now we know the frequency of major updates and how much traffic Google sends to the average website.

But is this cause for alarm?

If Google decides to unleash a major update and you get penalized, would it put you in a full-on crisis situation?

Well, it depends.

The way I look at, there are three different factors you need to examine to determine your risk level.

Factor #1 – Your Google traffic

If your site is an outlier, where you get only a small percentage of your traffic from Google (say less than 10%), even the most brutal of algorithm changes shouldn’t have a major impact.

But if Google is your bread and butter, and you count on it to consistently send highly-qualified leads to your site, you could definitely be in trouble if you’re adversely hit with a big update.

This could send your traffic volume and sales plummeting.

It could look something like this:

Not good.

Factor #2 – User experience

At the end of the day, Google is interested in one thing: providing its users with the best experience possible.

If your website delivers a great user experience, you should be in pretty good shape.

No matter what Google throws at you, there should be a level of stability, and it’s unlikely that your rankings will see a dramatic drop.

Now, I realize that delivering “a great user experience “ is a wide umbrella open to plenty of interpretation.

But here are a few key elements that heavily contribute to it.

As we all know, Matt Cutts loves great content.

This should be your top priority over anything else.

You also don’t want to have any spammy or manipulative links or barrage visitors with obnoxious ads.

Next, there’s functionality, which includes:

• fast-loading pages
• mobile-friendliness
• intuitive navigation
• clean interface
• no disruptive popups

Factor #3 – “Schemey” SEO practices

It seems there’s always some “latest and greatest” SEO strategy popping up.

The promise is if you do X, you’ll be able to capitalize on some loophole and see a huge spike in your rankings.

While this approach may pay off initially, it often ends up hurting you in the long run.

I’m a firm believer in the “big picture SEO,” where you focus on the quality, user experience and fundamental SEO best practices rather than trying to game the system.

If you’re doing anything bordering on black-hat or even grey-hat SEO, it’s probably going to come back to haunt you.

But if you keep your nose clean and maintain your integrity, you should be good to go.

How to protect yourself

Here’s the deal.

The next big Google algorithm change is imminent.

It’s going to happen.

It’s not a matter of if but when.

So you need to make sure your site is protected when the next major update inevitably rolls out.

But how do you do this?

Well, you can never completely predict what Google’s going to do next (they’re about as secretive as the CIA), but there are several measures you can take to prevent unnecessary penalties.

Here’s what I suggest.

Diversify your traffic sources

First, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Digital marketing has evolved to a point where you now have a buffet of options to choose from.

Organic search traffic is huge, but there are plenty of other ways to generate high-quality traffic that’s primed to convert.

Here are just a few ideas:

• guest-posting
• social media
• videos
• slideshows
• podcasts
• Quora
• influencer marketing
• email newsletters
• PPC

Monitor your link profile

The links pointing to your site can make or break you.

Recent research suggests that “high-quality backlinks account for 30% of your overall page score in Google.”

I can’t stress enough how important it is to keep tabs on which sites are linking to you.

Low quality, irrelevant or spammy sites can be the kiss of death.

One tool you can use to see who’s linking to you is SEMrush.

Just enter your site’s URL in the search bar:

Then click “Start now:”

Scroll down to the “Backlinks” section:

Click on “View full report” for more details:

You’ll then get a list that looks like this:

From there, you’ll want to browse through the list and check for anything questionable.

You can also use the Google Search Console for checking links, which you can learn about in this post.

If you need to eliminate any links, use the Google disavow tool. Learn more about the process of disavowing links here.

Create “future proof” content

Like I mentioned before, epic content is what Google is looking for when determining rankings.

If you can provide it, you’ll have a buffer against the impact of the next big algorithm change.

I realize this is easier said than done, but check out this post for 14 examples of truly epic content.

The basic recipe I use consists of the following:

• long-form content (at least 1,500 words)
• plenty of visuals
• plenty of data
• references to authoritative resources.

As long as your content hits its mark, there’s no need to live in perpetual anxiety of the next algorithm update.

For more on how to protect your site from Google penalties, I suggest reading this post from NeilPatel.com.

Conclusion

With so many brands heavily depending on Google for their traffic and ultimately sales, I see why so many people worry about algorithm changes.

The idea of your sales tanking because of an update is scary.

If you’re implementing the wrong approach and tactics, you’re putting yourself at risk, and there’s a strong likelihood your rankings will suffer at some point.

But if you understand Google’s logic and follow SEO best practices, there’s no reason to worry.

Sure, algorithm changes will come.

But you’ll be ready for them.

This way, you can keep things flowing and maintain a steady volume of traffic with minimal disruption.

What’s your experience with algorithm updates in the past? What do you do about algo updates now?

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How to Use Social Listening to Create Viral Content

Viral content is inherently unpredictable.

You could have two similar pieces of content—with one receiving thousands upon thousands of shares and the other languishing in obscurity.

In that regard, there’s no magic formula that will enable you to create viral content on command.

It’s not like you can just flip a switch and get mass exposure.

It doesn’t work like that.

But there are several things you can do to increase the chances of your content going viral.

That’s what I want to talk about in this post.

More specifically, I’m going to explain how you can use social listening to your advantage.

Social listening, defined as “the process of monitoring digital conversations to understand what customers are saying about a brand and industry online,” is most commonly used for evaluating customer feedback and identifying their pain points.

But I’ve also found it to be absolutely perfect for predicting what my audience is craving and what’s most likely to go viral.

The way I see it, social listening is perhaps the best way to predict virality.

Here is how you can utilize it to your advantage.

Effectively analyzing content

There’s a popular expression:

the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

Although this can be debatable, depending on the context in which it’s used, you’ll want to follow this line of thinking in this instance.

Like I said earlier, you can never say with 100% certainty that a particular piece of content will go viral.

But what you can do is see what’s resonating the most with your audience at the moment.

If you notice that a particular topic, angle, theme, etc. is completely killing it, there’s a good chance you’ll see favorable results if you cover it as well.

But how do you know what’s popular and what’s resonating with your audience?

That’s where social listening comes in.

The key to effective social listening is knowing which tools to use.

I’m going to cover a few of my favorites you can use to discover trends and identify topics that have the potential to go viral.

Google Trends

Let’s start from the top.

I use Google Trends quite frequently for market research and for gauging people’s interest in various topics.

But I find it can also be helpful for identifying the hottest topics at any given moment.

For starters, you can simply go to the Google Trends homepage.

Start scrolling down to see the top trending stories:

Sometimes, this can give you some potential ideas to work with.

Of course, the trending stories aren’t narrowed down by niche or topic, so you’re dealing with a wide variety of subject matter.

But sometimes that’s all it takes.

If you see something that interests you, click on it:

You’ll then get some of the most relevant articles, which should provide further clarification on what’s popular at the moment:

In this case, a lot of people are talking about Snapchat’s new “Snap Map” feature.

Therefore, this could be something I would want to investigate further and a potential topic I could cover.

Using Top Charts

Another useful feature is called “Top Charts.”

From the Google Trends homepage, click here:

Then click on “Top Charts:”

Here’s what you’ll see:

Scroll down to look at all the different categories.

Or you can search for a relevant category by clicking on “All Categories” and choosing the one you’re looking for:

Once you’ve found your category, you can click on “More” for more detailed information:

The logic here is that you can use up-to-date data from Google to see what people are most interested in at the moment in your industry/niche.

Google Trends is by no means a be-all and end-all social listening tool, but it can serve as a nice starting point.

Inbound.org

This is only applicable to digital marketers like myself.

But if this is your area of focus, it can be a potential gold mine.

Here’s what you want to do.

Once you’re at the Inbound.org homepage, scroll all the way down to the bottom.

You’ll see this:

Click on whatever sub-category you’re interested in.

I’ll go with SEO:

Here’s what I get:

Scroll through the list, looking for ideas.

Inbound.org does most of the heavy lifting for you by curating the top stories.

Many have received a high volume of shares, so you know the interest it there.

Also note once you sign up, you can create your own feed to streamline the process even more.

This way the stories come right to you.

BuzzSumo

Now, let’s bring out the big guns.

BuzzSumo is a beast when it comes to finding out how much engagement content receives.

And since engagement (shares in particular) is the ultimate indicator of virality, this is one of the best ways to capitalize on trends and increase your odds of creating viral content.

Here’s what you want to do.

Type in a keyword you’re looking to base your content on in the search box of your dashboard.

I’ll use “SEO” as an example:

Now, set your filter date to a time that sounds right to you.

Because we want to capitalize on current trends, I recommend going back no further than six months.

However, the past month or week is ideal.

You can even set it to the last 24 hours, but you’ll usually have limited data.

I’ll set mine to the past week:

Once you do that, BuzzSumo will populate your screen with the top content according to total shares.

Here are the top results I got:

Now all I have to do is browse through the content and look for two things:

1. content that’s relevant to my industry/niche
2. content that’s received a significant number of total shares and/or links.

This post from Search Engine Land about testing accelerated mobile pages (AMP) for WordPress caught my attention:

Not only did it get 1.5k shares in the past week, it also got 41 backlinks.

This lets me know that my audience is obviously interested in this topic.

And if I created an article that was bigger, better and more epic, it would have a reasonable likelihood of going viral.

This is the formula you want to use with BuzzSumo.

It doesn’t matter what topic you’re covering.

Following these steps will let you know what people are responding to and give you very specific data to base your decisions on.

Let me say that the Pro version is ideal because it gives you a lot more data.

That’s what I used for this example.

However, you can do a limited search with the free version, which can still be useful.

Other tools

So far I’ve provided you with three different resources for social listening.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

There are several other tools you can experiment with, many of which are free.

Check out this list of the top 15 free social media monitoring tools from Brandwatch for info on other tools.

Taking what you’ve learned and running with it

At this point, you should have a pretty good idea of which topics are popular at the moment and what your audience is responding to.

That means you’re not basing your content on a hunch. You’re basing it on tangible data.

Your job now is to create the best content possible around that topic.

Now, I’m not saying you should blatantly rip someone off.

What you want to do is put your own spin on things.

Look for a way to expand on it.

And, of course, it needs to be awesome.

It needs to be epic.

Just think skyscraper technique.

Hitting the mark in terms of quality and value is absolutely essential if you expect for your content to go viral.

I’ve already covered this extensively in the past, so there’s no need to talk about it here.

But let me point you to a couple of articles I’ve written that should be helpful.

There’s this one from NeilPatel.com.

It’s a guide for writing epic content that will go viral.

And there’s this one from Quick Sprout, which is about the anatomy of virality.

Conclusion

Social listening is useful for many different aspects of marketing.

Using it to gauge your audience’s collective reaction to various topics will give you a good idea of what type of subject matter is most likely to go viral.

This gives you valuable knowledge to guide your content creation.

In turn, you can “scratch your audience’s itch” and give them what they’re looking for.

And just think of the competitive advantage this gives you over other brands that simply slap up content at random without giving it any real thought.

While there are never any guarantees that something will go viral, following this formula increases the chances significantly.

What do you think is the main contributing factor for content going viral?

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