How to Write Trending Posts That Earn More

That faithful morning, I got a congratulatory message from Google.

One of your pages is trending in Search for https://www.....

Is this kind of Google message familiar?

If not, you're not yet a winner in the content writing and marketing world. Or better put, you're not competitive with your content yet.

Before you beat yourself up for not being where you want to be yet, ask yourself if you'd known what you needed to, to be where I am today.

I've been doing this before some of you and some have been doing this before me.

What makes the difference are the little things. They're the underrated blogging basics.

They're what makes a post go trending or viral

A caution at using the word "viral"!

This word is usually used for content that gets millions of social shares instead of natural/organic traffic.

My success in the referred trending post (above) was not a result of social shares. In fact, the post only got 30 shares at the time of this writing. 

Though that's on-page shares, I may not be able to account for direct copy and paste shares which I assume is very rare today.

When Google congratulated me with a trophy of success, the message contained more information than you might think of at a glance.

Imagine a post, with an average daily click (14.04.21 - 16.04.21). Imagine a post with an increment of more than 1,000% over the usual daily average of 57.7 clicks.

So, how did I get here?

This post will show you my tricks and why I got this massive natural traffic. But first the background.

Trending Content Shouldn't Be Limited to One Post

Even though Google was only able to congratulate me for my success for the referred post, my blog had more than 50% content ranking usually on page one of search queries for my targeted keywords.

This shows that my overall success was not limited to that one post. Other posts were and are still contributing immensely to my earnings and the overall success of the blog. After all, I applied the same writing knowledge and blogging tactics in other posts. They should be doing fine as well.

And they are!

Therefore, you don't have to concentrate your creative efforts on a particular post because you want it to trend. You have to share the energy among all your posts. And if you see a few already doing well, put more effort specifically into those.

Trending Posts Don't Come Within a Year

It's easy to fool yourself into thinking you can just write a post now and get to the milestone I achieved in just one or twelve months. 

That can't be far from self-deceit.

A few posts, covered on this blog, had emphasized the need to wait for the right time.

Check:

1. How Google Truly Ranks Posts Up to No. 1 Position
2. How Soon Should I Expect Organic Traffic to New Blog/Post?
3. How Many Posts Does My Blog Need To Succeed: Per Day, Week, or Month?

The trended post in question was first published on 2018/09/02. The trophy came two and a half years after hitting the first publishing button.

This shows that the waiting period is worth it if you truly believe in what you'd put down.

Most Trending Posts are Season Dependent

In the next few months, this trending post won't be among the most trending of my posts because, for real, it's its season to flex.

This is the period when there will be more queries for the covered keywords. It may retain this position for about two months after which it may need to go low until the same time next year.

Therefore, we can't underestimate the effects seasons will have on whether your posts will wear the trending crown or otherwise.

How I Wrote the Trending Posts that Earn More

First, let me open up on how I earn with the blog that contains the post in the discourse.

Adsense!

Just the Adsense for now.

I'm sure if you've not used Adsense before or you'd lost to it, you would be wondering how much could someone earn with only Adsense.

Well, you may be right. Just as a friend once asked me, "are people still making money with Adsense?

Recommended: Types of Content that Generates Money and Those That Don't

Obviously, he's not a part of the system. He wasn't part of us.

To give you a clue to how I got pumped up in earnings within the period of this trend. For two consecutive months, I was able to earn 100% more than in recent months. And that's about a 500% increase in Adsense earnings compared to the same period last year.

Having got those out of the way, below were the tricks and touches that crown my post, the "Your page is trending up" award.

1. Say-It-All Approach to Writing

It's not uncommon to see publishers trying to save readers' time by summarizing their stories. 

Why do you have to keep a few parts to yourself when you truly want to pass as many messages as possible?

Readers don't complain about the length of posts. Or have you ever seen someone commenting below your posts, " your post is too long"?

My trending posts are the type that doesn't leave anything behind. They are the-pure-it-all-out.

I don't want to pretend as if readers may not get bored when reading posts. Yet, I know Google knows how to handle that better.

With the introduction of snippets in recent years by the big G, a visitor can easily be taken to the very parts of your posts that answer his or her questions.

Also, I don't necessarily wait to update my post with more details later. I give everything I know to it the day one. 

And if anything later comes to mind, I add up and hit the update button.

2. Keyword-Rich Approach to Writing

I don't have to tell you the importance of keywords in this very world if you've been here for a few months.

Even though Google has devised means to use intent to give results to queries, the importance of keywords, in determining the results, will never be underestimated by the search engines.

See, you need to be afraid of keywords. Yes, because there is the other side of it.

That's keyword stuffing!

It hurts search engines to keyword stuff. It hurts your readers more.

However, if you can naturally let your words flow, adopt synonyms where necessary, and similar other tricks as detailed in, "How to Repeat Keywords WITHOUT Stuffing", you will have nothing to worry about.

I always make sure I use long-tailed keywords and present those terms in the very ways my potential readers will key them into the search boxes.

Google and other search engines are left with no other choice than to show your content where a query is exactly what the visitor searches for.

3. Speak The Language of Your Visitors 

Similar to using exactly their keywords, you need to present your content in the very former or informal ways they're potentially going to fall in love with.

If you're a student of language you should understand this better.

If you're not, welcome to ENG 101.

I've learned, with time, that more people prefer to feel relaxed on their pages than to be taken seriously like in their HIS 304 lectures.

They want to be addressed much more informally. Although if the context is necessarily written formerly, you don't have any other choice.

I carefully like to pick my words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs to help my readers get the message better.

This is what they want. Give them!

4. Well-Linked Posts Within the Content

Of course, you already know how important it is to link your existing posts to the new ones and vice versa.

However, most publishers do it wrongly.

Before my post really trended, I had watched a few keywords related to it, on my Google Console. But when checked, other similar posts would rank instead of the dedicated one.

What I did was embed this very post in those posts ranking for its keywords. 

Often, when a reader finds himself on those other posts, he won't just bounce back when he can still find the links that take him to what he has come for.

This is how Google understands that the post is supposed to be ranked instead of those being ranked before.

With time, using this approach, individual posts will get their rightful places!

At the same time, on the post, I carefully only link posts that talk about nearly the same keywords to be sure I don't clickbait.

The more problems this post could solve, the better.

5. Descriptive Images Included in the Post

The contribution of the two images on the page is something to mention.

In a way, I had saved/named the images with the right keywords. And for the alt texts, the perfect keywords were used.

I don't resize the images myself - allowing my theme to choose the perfect sizes. Of course the bigger the size of the images on your pages, the slower and longer the loading time. Which, in turn, will affect your users' experience and ranking?

More importantly, the images are not just there for decoration and beautification, they were explained in steps. They are giving a vivid picture of how things would be for the readers.

6. Evergreen Content Will Trend Organically

Speaking of viral, as said earlier, your content may get a billion social shares and go viral even if it's not a post that lasts forever.

And that will be for a few months and such success may not be repeated next year.

For evergreen posts, you're not only going to get a natural trending record but also the success is more realistic to be repeated years after years.

As already noted, my trended post was about two to three years old before it got this landmark. That's how to measure the evergreen quality of your content.

If the topic and the content won't be needed continually, month after month or year after year, it may never see the light of the day, not to mention recording more than 1000% click increment.

Conclusion

It's only for the privacy reason, that I withheld the trended post link and its title. I could have let you see things yourself. Perhaps you will find other reasons it trended this much.

However, to the best of my practical experiences, in this post, you already have what I did well with a post that trended to not only achieve over 1000% CTR but also 100% earning contribution in Adsense.

Do you know of other ways to get your post trend naturally? Have you recorded the same success in the past? Share with us in the comment section below.