As part of your inbound marketing strategy, the goal of publishing blogs is to generate traffic; however, generating traffic through a blog channel can be quite challenging if your blogs are not catching your readers’ attention. It is crucial to understand your target audience and what interests them in order to give them a blog worth reading. Here are six types of blogs that give you the best chance at generating traffic:

Blogs that have worked for you already

Using your own key performance indicators and metrics of success, you should be able to see which of your previous blogs have performed better than others. Once you have established which of your blogs generate the most traffic, give yourself a list of topics to emulate. Producing blogs related to those topics, follow up blogs, or blogs that go more in depth on a certain section of previous blogs can help you create content you know your readers are already interested in.

Blogs that work for your competitors

It is not a crime to look for inspiration from those that surround you in your industry. Looking at other companies’ blog channels can spark ideas in your mind for similar blog topics that will do well. Your competitors became competitors by targeting the same audience, so posts that do well for them, will most likely do well for you as well.

Blogs that keep up with the trends

Things are trending for a reason, and that is because people are talking about these topics, and want to read about these topics. By keeping up with daily trends, you give yourself the opportunity to produce content that you already know your audience will be interested in. Following daily trends on Google, social media, the App Store, and more, you are able to remain up to date and ultimately produce timely content.

Blogs that incorporate popular keywords

Your blog channel relies heavily on search engine optimization to generate traffic. By using the right keywords in your blog titles and links, you are able to increase your rankings and have a better chance of being seen. Using tools like Keyword Planner in Google AdWords, which show you popular searches on any topic you input, you can see which words you need to include in your SEO strategy. Along with Keyword Planner, you can look at your audience’s pain points and frequently asked questions in order to make sure your blogs get ranked in Google search.

Blogs that coincide with what your audience is talking about

Joining your audience’s social media sphere is vastly beneficial in finding out what content they are interacting with and what they are interested in. You can see which platform your audience is liking, commenting, and sharing content on, which will give you a better idea of what grabs their attention. This also enables you to brainstorm ideas on blog topics based on content they have already expressed interested in. When you post a blog, it’s always a bonus if you can get your audience members to engage with your work. By knowing what types of content your audience already responds to on their social media channels, you give your content further direction.

There is no sure-fire way to create a blog that will automatically gain popularity, but by knowing what works for you, what works for your competitors, what is relevant to trends, how to use keywords, and your audience’s interests, you give yourself the best opportunity at generating traffic. Blogs serve as a way to demonstrate your expertise and entice consumers to your site, so you need to make sure your blogs have the highest probability at being seen. Which of your blogs have generated the most traffic? Let us know in the comments!