Building a new website, forum, or community is exciting and allows you to share your thoughts or even inventions with the world. However, so many webmasters and site administrators with the greatest of ideas struggle to convince people to read, watch, or share their content. Perhaps it is due to the overwhelming number of websites sprouting up on the web each day, or maybe they are doing something wrong in their marketing efforts. Whatever the reasons for your challenges may be, there is one extremely effective way to counteract some of the most common issues you might face when it comes to promoting your website. With timeless and useful content, you can provide stronger reasons for people around the world to bookmark, share, and cherish your content.
What are Online Resources?
Of course, I am talking about creating online resources for your website. If this concept boggles your mind, fear not - There are plenty of examples of online resources for pretty much every single niche. From service reviews and top 10 lists to compilation videos on YouTube, there is so much content out there that you can "piggyback off of" to increase your site's usefulness and traffic. For example, a website about technology can offer reviews or tutorials. A forum community can embrace polling to offer short and sweet articles that discuss the original poll question and results. A service or product can display comparisons between their own offerings and similar companies. I remember creating a video that compared two gaming mods. I discussed the pros and cons of each, showed the viewers how each in-game addon worked and was installed, and encouraged some healthy debate in the comments. I did not think much of this video, as it only took an hour to record, edit and upload. At the time I did not know it, but I had created an online resource. Since uploading the video, I received over 75,000 unique views on YouTube, earned over $80, and more importantly drove traffic from the video to my website.
I could write for hours about all of the online resources I have created over time, but I would like to simply emphasize how simple and easy it can truly be. You do not even need to spend an hour creating a unique video like mine. A simple breakdown of 5 similar services or products that relate to your website can be an incredible article, and if you're a true webmaster that is invested in your site's niche then that article should be quite simple to write. The content you create is not intended to advertise your own site. It's simply meant to sit there alongside your content as a gateway to get more visitors to your site. If you are managing a forum or blog, no matter how large or small, you may have noticed that individual thread/article links are more commonly shared on social networks than links to your main site. Think about it this way: When you're on Facebook, do you see links that go straight to Medium or CNN? No, you are much more likely to see a specific link that goes to one of their recent articles. Do your friends often link you to YouTube.com, or are they sending you a direct URL to an interesting video? Most likely the latter. Simply put, if you are hoping for people to directly link to your site's homepage or forum section display, you are probably wishing for the wrong thing. What you really want is a wide variety of content (articles, videos, polls, guides, etc) that is much more likely to be shared.
Rules to Follow for High Traffic Content
Hopefully by now you have begun to understand the benefits of creating online resources, but you may still be struggling to decide what exactly you should create. For one, you know that the content needs to be unique and high quality. It must be useful and hopefully able to answer a question that potential visitors have in their mind, or even on their Google search bar. Secondly, you should aim to focus on a topic that isn't widely covered. Do we really need another article comparing XenForo and vBulletin if neither software has released a new version? Perhaps a better article would compare two similar XenForo plugins to help administrators improve their own communities. The question your content answers or topic should be somewhat widespread for maximum effectiveness, but obscure enough to not be drowned out by the millions of other websites you're competing with. Let me give you an example of when I created an online resource page to answer a question, but made the mistake of being overly specific with a question hardly searched for by the general public.
Obscure Content - Not Nonexistent
I created a tutorial titled "How to fix bug error X in Visual Studio Version Y". I put some time into it because I had experienced the bug myself and spent over an hour searching the web for an answer. It was an obscure question with little to zero online resources to help programmers discover the fix. Going by our rules for creating online resources to drive traffic, my bug fix tutorial could have been extremely effective. However, the topic was not nearly widespread enough. My content was only relevant to people using Windows 10, the specific version of Visual Studio I was using, and only when a certain module was required for the project. Although I have received some words of gratitude from other coders looking for the fix, the content didn't bring in any noticeable traffic to my content and could be considered somewhat of a fail. This brings me to my final point: creating online resources can be a lot like fishing. You may cast a lot of lines out into the sea of potential site visitors, but once you discover the right bait or methods, your time creating highly shareable content will be a lot easier.
Persistent & High Effort
Whether it's your exact wording for SEO purposes, the topics you pick, or your marketing strategies that are causing your content to go unnoticed, I can promise you this... If you keep trying, you will figure out what your ideal audience wants, and what content you need to create to see massive traffic improvements on your website. If you follow the rule of promoting content that is obscure enough to offer little competition, but widespread enough to be searched for, you will have a huge advantage over writers or webmasters who focus on the most famous and overdone topics. If you can answer a question or offer insight into a topic, you are proving your website as useful to every visitor. And if you can do all of this at a high level of ability to showcase your skills, you will soar above your competition. Remember, people hardly share links to homepages and category listings (ex: forums, WordPress category page). It's the individual videos and articles being shared, so it's your job to create them. There is no excuse for leaving your website barren with only a blog or forum installation. The promise of a community being great isn't enough anymore. You need to cast your lines out if you expect to catch a fish. In modern times, having a landing page or website statistics and a welcome message displayed simply isn't enough. Put in the work and you can reap the benefits.
What are Online Resources?
Of course, I am talking about creating online resources for your website. If this concept boggles your mind, fear not - There are plenty of examples of online resources for pretty much every single niche. From service reviews and top 10 lists to compilation videos on YouTube, there is so much content out there that you can "piggyback off of" to increase your site's usefulness and traffic. For example, a website about technology can offer reviews or tutorials. A forum community can embrace polling to offer short and sweet articles that discuss the original poll question and results. A service or product can display comparisons between their own offerings and similar companies. I remember creating a video that compared two gaming mods. I discussed the pros and cons of each, showed the viewers how each in-game addon worked and was installed, and encouraged some healthy debate in the comments. I did not think much of this video, as it only took an hour to record, edit and upload. At the time I did not know it, but I had created an online resource. Since uploading the video, I received over 75,000 unique views on YouTube, earned over $80, and more importantly drove traffic from the video to my website.
I could write for hours about all of the online resources I have created over time, but I would like to simply emphasize how simple and easy it can truly be. You do not even need to spend an hour creating a unique video like mine. A simple breakdown of 5 similar services or products that relate to your website can be an incredible article, and if you're a true webmaster that is invested in your site's niche then that article should be quite simple to write. The content you create is not intended to advertise your own site. It's simply meant to sit there alongside your content as a gateway to get more visitors to your site. If you are managing a forum or blog, no matter how large or small, you may have noticed that individual thread/article links are more commonly shared on social networks than links to your main site. Think about it this way: When you're on Facebook, do you see links that go straight to Medium or CNN? No, you are much more likely to see a specific link that goes to one of their recent articles. Do your friends often link you to YouTube.com, or are they sending you a direct URL to an interesting video? Most likely the latter. Simply put, if you are hoping for people to directly link to your site's homepage or forum section display, you are probably wishing for the wrong thing. What you really want is a wide variety of content (articles, videos, polls, guides, etc) that is much more likely to be shared.
Rules to Follow for High Traffic Content
Hopefully by now you have begun to understand the benefits of creating online resources, but you may still be struggling to decide what exactly you should create. For one, you know that the content needs to be unique and high quality. It must be useful and hopefully able to answer a question that potential visitors have in their mind, or even on their Google search bar. Secondly, you should aim to focus on a topic that isn't widely covered. Do we really need another article comparing XenForo and vBulletin if neither software has released a new version? Perhaps a better article would compare two similar XenForo plugins to help administrators improve their own communities. The question your content answers or topic should be somewhat widespread for maximum effectiveness, but obscure enough to not be drowned out by the millions of other websites you're competing with. Let me give you an example of when I created an online resource page to answer a question, but made the mistake of being overly specific with a question hardly searched for by the general public.
Obscure Content - Not Nonexistent
I created a tutorial titled "How to fix bug error X in Visual Studio Version Y". I put some time into it because I had experienced the bug myself and spent over an hour searching the web for an answer. It was an obscure question with little to zero online resources to help programmers discover the fix. Going by our rules for creating online resources to drive traffic, my bug fix tutorial could have been extremely effective. However, the topic was not nearly widespread enough. My content was only relevant to people using Windows 10, the specific version of Visual Studio I was using, and only when a certain module was required for the project. Although I have received some words of gratitude from other coders looking for the fix, the content didn't bring in any noticeable traffic to my content and could be considered somewhat of a fail. This brings me to my final point: creating online resources can be a lot like fishing. You may cast a lot of lines out into the sea of potential site visitors, but once you discover the right bait or methods, your time creating highly shareable content will be a lot easier.
Persistent & High Effort
Whether it's your exact wording for SEO purposes, the topics you pick, or your marketing strategies that are causing your content to go unnoticed, I can promise you this... If you keep trying, you will figure out what your ideal audience wants, and what content you need to create to see massive traffic improvements on your website. If you follow the rule of promoting content that is obscure enough to offer little competition, but widespread enough to be searched for, you will have a huge advantage over writers or webmasters who focus on the most famous and overdone topics. If you can answer a question or offer insight into a topic, you are proving your website as useful to every visitor. And if you can do all of this at a high level of ability to showcase your skills, you will soar above your competition. Remember, people hardly share links to homepages and category listings (ex: forums, WordPress category page). It's the individual videos and articles being shared, so it's your job to create them. There is no excuse for leaving your website barren with only a blog or forum installation. The promise of a community being great isn't enough anymore. You need to cast your lines out if you expect to catch a fish. In modern times, having a landing page or website statistics and a welcome message displayed simply isn't enough. Put in the work and you can reap the benefits.
Last edited:
