No matter the purpose of your blog, or the type of content you post, you need visitors – also called traffic – to come and read what you have written. If you are like me, you want to implement effective ways to increase your blog traffic with interested readers who will want to stick around and keep reading your blog.
More traffic means your content has a better chance of finding its way to your ideal reader. Getting your blog in front of your ideal reader has long term benefits such as those readers turning into long-time fans and advocates of your content. This increase loyalty to your brand and message, and can increase sales and referrals.
Here are six ways to get your blog in front on the right audience and increase the traffic to your blog:
Method 1: Drive Traffic Through Social Media
Social media is great for blog traffic. People are increasingly using social media for nearly everything they do everyday, from keeping in touch with friends and reading the news, to finding blogs to read and products to buy.
Through social media you can interact with your audience directly and build relationships with your followers. This makes people more likely to check out your blog. You can also learn about your readers by following them, reading their posts, and checking out their profiles to get ideas for future blog content.
Tips for driving traffic to your blog using social media:
- Research which social media sites your target blog readers already use
- Optimize your social media pages and profiles with a link to your website, and add a short description of your site or blog that focuses on the value people will get from your content
- Promote each new blog post you create on your social media channels by sharing the link and writing an engaging caption
- Re-share old blog posts occasionally to get more traffic to them as well
Method 2: Drive Traffic Through Online Forums
Online forums are sites where people create profiles and discuss common interests with other users. All online forums are centered around common interests and there are forums for nearly any topic you can imagine.
Online forums generally generate less traffic than social media or guest blogging, but maintaining a presence on an online forum with a link to your site is a very easy thing to do that can bring a small stream of traffic.
Online forums and groups often are not for active promotion (although it depends on the forum) but adding your blog link to your profile and actively posting helpful comments or questions can generate some traffic to your blog.
Tips for using online forums to drive traffic to your blog:
- Look for forums where your ideal readers spend time
- Check the forum rules to see what kind of posts are allowed
- Find forums that have a large and active membership
- If a forum isn’t bringing in much traffic after some time, drop it and find another one
Method 3: Drive Traffic Through Guest Blogging
Guest blogging involves writing a blog post on someone else’s blog. Guest blogging is a great way to expand your audience because it gives you exposure to other blogger’s audiences, many of whom will read your post and find it interesting enough to come over to your blog.
Guest blogging should be an ongoing effort. Decided how many posts you can write per month, make a list of blogs where you can post, and stay on a regular schedule. Guest blogging usually brings a spike in traffic that will taper off as new content is posted on the blog. If you keep regularly posting on good blogs, you can sustain this traffic.
Tips for guest blogging:
- Find blogs to write on that share a similar audience with your own
- Promote a lead magnet (free download) for readers so they will be added to your email list
- Clearly point them to your blog in your article, or in the bio you include about yourself at the end of the article
- Respond to comments on the article thanking people for reading and answering questions
Method 4: Drive Traffic Through Email Marketing
If you interact with your audience through an email newsletter, you can also use this to drive traffic to your blog. Each time you update your blog with a new article, send your subscribers a message giving them a taste of what to expect and include a link to the article. They can click through to your blog and read the article.
If you don’t already have an email list, this is a good way to promote your online content. You can sign up for an email marketing service and then build a list of email subscribers.
The email marketing service will give you a sign-up form that you can put on your blog and other places on your website. You can then send content to your subscribers, including updates about new blog articles.
Method 5: Drive Traffic Through Blog Commenting
Blog commenting is a fairly quick and simple method for driving traffic to your blog posts. This involves reading and commenting on the blogs of other people.
When you comment, you are given the opportunity to add a link to your website in your profile. This makes your profile icon avatar clickable. If people like your comment, they may click on your profile to learn more about you. The key here is to comment on blogs that are related to your niche, widely read, and that allow you to include a link somewhere (usually in your profile).
Since blog comment sections get notoriously swamped with spam, here are some guidelines to follow as you incorporate blog commenting into your blog strategy:
- Leave comments that are interesting, helpful, or insightful and that are relevant to the content of the article
- Subscribe to the comments and check back so that you can response to followup questions or comments
- Subscribe to the blogs you like and read them as soon as they are updated so that you can be an early commenter
- Fill our your profile completely with an image and link to your website or blog
Method 6: Drive Traffic By Using SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, refers to things you can do on your website to improve its ranking in the search engine results pages. The main way this is done is through the use of keywords in your blog content.
Keywords are search terms that people enter when using search engines like Google. As a blog writer, you have to determine which keywords or phrases your potential readers are searching for in order to get more traffic from those searches.
Consider the following terms when choosing which keywords to use.
- Relevant – The keywords describe what your blog article is about and what the person using Google is searching for
- High Search Volume – This refers to how many people are searching for that term online; ideally you want to use keywords that many people are searching for which will mean more opportunities for traffic
- Low Competition – This means that the keyword isn’t already used extensively by a lot of other websites
To get started with using keywords on your blog, focus on relevance and look for keywords that have at least relatively high search volume.
Increase Your Blog Traffic
When deciding which methods to use to increase your blog traffic, it is best to start with one or two methods and expand your strategy from there. Experiment with a few methods to see what brings the most traffic to your blog. As you see what works well for you, you can implement those methods more often and watch your blog traffic grow!
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