Blogging is not hard, keeping up is.
You can write anything, it’s your blog but when it comes to traffic, the ball moves to your audience’s court.
If you want your blog to be flooded with traffic, you need to get into action now.
Here are some of the best actionable tips and tricks to drive huge traffic to your blog.
If you think writing awesome content alone is important to get readers glued, let me tell you, your content will be called “awesome” only when people read it and that is why this post on
how to get those people to read your blog is crucial. So read mindfully.
When it comes to increasing blog traffic there are millions of creative ways to increase blog traffic. And I am here to show you some sure shot methods to get the ball rolling. At the end of each point, I will point out some awesome actionable tips which will help you double or triple your traffic.
1) Let Alexa bring you traffic:
We all bloggers are well aware of Alexa. Alexa ranking is measured by people who visited your site, but with alexa toolbar installed in their browser.
I am not here asking you to improve alexa but saying you to perform a site query of your site on alexa. For this, go to http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo , where you replace my domain with yours.
On opening the page, you will find the top queries that send organic traffic to your blog. Usually, these are the ones not clearly defined by Google analytics.
It’s your turn now, go and write the posts in a more detailed way and optimize them with thebest on-page and off-page SEO.
Actionable tips:
1) Perform a site analysis on Alexa.
2) Optimize your posts or write completely new ones around the keywords you are ranking for.
2) Write evergreen posts:
Moz describes evergreen content as the ones that have continued and evergreen success. Most evergreen posts are based on long-term topics which generate decent traffic throughout the years for several years after publishing.
Evergreen lists posts are the ones that usually have higher ranks in the SERPs. For writing evergreen posts, I would suggest you to use the following techniques.
- Go to Reddit: Type your keyword in the search box; go to a sub-reddit if there is one. Check the threads to get keyword ideas from queries people have been consistently asking. Go write a post on it.
- Write list posts on commonly used tools in your niche. If you are a flower blogger, write about top 50 flower species that grow year round. If you are a movie blogger, write about [N] movies that are based on sci-fi thriller, where N is any number.
3) Publish the hell out of your blog posts: When we are talking about evergreen posts, our promotional strategies should also be evergreen. You should promote your evergreen posts almost every month. If you are like me too busy, then follow my time-saving trick:
Sign up to hootsuite and then schedule all your posts in advance. This feature will help you to save all your efforts while promotion of your blog posts will be on automation.
Actionable tips:
- Go and search for keyword groups people are querying almost every day.
- Write well defined and meaty list posts on them.
- Automate your promotion by using hootsuite.
3) Do guest blogging:
Did you know ace bloggers like Jon Morrow were guest bloggers long before they had a blog for themselves? Yes, guest blogging has always worked for them. If they could use guest blogging to create a buzz around a non-existent blog and then launched their blogs with a bang, why not you.
Caution: I am not saying you to indulge in spammy link building through guest blogging, but I am saying you can always do it legitimately in order to make it work.
Actionable tips:
- Look for guest post opportunity on high authority blogs on similar niche as yours.
- Use these Guest blogging tips for higher exposure
- Even if they don’t allow you link, it will help you build an authority and people will Google your name to get to your blog.
4) Target long tail keywords:
Long tail keywords are the keyword phrases consisting of 3 or more words and generally tend to have low competition. It is, therefore, easy to rank your pages built around long tail keywords. Rankings are directly proportional to the traffic.
When you target on a keyword like “apartments in Los Angeles”, you will get search result of at least 201 million pages, while if you perform a search for “2 bedroom apartments for rent in los Angeles under $800” your competitor number will shrink to a noticeable 2 million. This difference matters a lot in getting a search ranking.
Actionable tips:
- Go to Google auto-suggest to get long tail keyword ideas or use Tools like LongTailPro
- Use those keywords in the search box to filter further similar keywords.
- Rinse and repeat.
- Write a blog post on everything that a reader looking for that query would expect from you.
5) Cover trending topics:
Sometimes a mixture of trending topics along with evergreen posts can bring a hell lot of traffic to your blog. Write about topics that have affected your industry conventions.
Actionable tips:
- You can go to slideshare and find out all the awesome and trending presentations. Then you can pick a few of them and create an awesome post on each topic. As it is already so popular, you are going to get loads of traffic.
- You can also use Google trends, to find what topics are in demand over the year. And craft a popular post out of it.
- Go to Pinterest, type the keyword of the niche you blog in, get through the most pinned post. Convert it into a blog post.
- Subscribe to your industry blogs, through your feed reader or through their newsletter; write a topic they are already getting loads of responses.
- Publish different types of content on your blog to drive more traffic.
6) Use Quora, not for asking questions but for answering them:
We all use quora, to ask questions, silly and funny ones and serious ones too. Okay, we also answer a few questions. We can use quora not only as an inspiration to remove off writer’s block, but also to drive free and quality traffic to our website.
Search for your related posts and find questions related to it. At the end or in the middle of the answer you can include a link of yours. I would say try to provide full value to the answer within quora itself and keep the link as a bonus for more information. This will increase your credibility and you can surely get a dedicated source of traffic for your blog.
Actionable tips:
- Read The Marketer’s Guide to Quora by Kristi Hines
- Use quora as a source for high-quality traffic.
- You will have less competitors there so do not spam yourself.
7) Hack social media benefits:
I am not saying you to hack a Facebook account, so keep calm. You should use social media to drive referral traffic to your blogs. I would say, you should perform a test on three or four or five social networks and find out what works for you. And then concentrate only on top three.
Post on social channels, get connected with clients, and conduct competitions for fans (you don’t need to give away huge cash, a small custom image with the fans name will do). In other words, increase engagement.
Actionable tips:
- Be active on social media.
- Bifurcate your posting strategy with posts of yours, posts of other blogs, and some facts and figures within your niche.
8) Steal your competitor’s audience:
Your competitors are great people and they should not be looked down. If they have an audience higher than yours, you should not hesitate to learn their strategies.
Through SEMRush you can know what posts and keywords they are ranking for. Once you know that, apply Brian Dean’s skyscraper technique and write more awesome content on that keyword. You are sure to get traffic.
You can also steal traffic from other popular competitors and like I said, with respect. All you have to do is be regular on their blogs and comment on their posts. As they are in your niche, you should attract the readers on their blog.
How do I do that with just commenting?
The answer is, write meaningful and relatable comments. No matter if it becomes lengthy. In fact, length matters a lot as if you have commented earlier you will find readers who have to pass your comment to write theirs. If your comment is meaty and unique the readers will visit your blog either through the commentluv link or your name.
See image to understand.
Actionable tips:
- Do a competitor analysis.
- Write better and in-depth posts around keywords your competitors are already ranking for.
- Comment and provide value to other blogs.
9) Do social bookmarking:
Social bookmarking has never gone off trends. You can bookmark your posts on blogging communities and other communities related to your niche. Just sign up for their services and use them as social networks. You can utilize social bookmarking for traffic boosts to your site.
Most converting social bookmarking sites have karma score and you should earn them by showing activities there. I am not saying to invest all your time but you can invest atleast an hour per week or hire a VA for this.
Most popular social bookmarking services include:
- BlogEngage – Engage with like-minded bloggers
- Dosplash – connect with other bloggers
- Kingged – Get traffic and networking right.
- Bizsugar – connect with industry leaders
- Viralcontentbuzz – Get influencers to promote your content.
Actionable tips:
- Join blogging communities.
- Bookmark your recent posts.
- Promote posts shared by other people there.
10) Start an email list ASAP
An email list is a must have for every blog. Most people don’t have one when they start but let me tell you these people repent the most. Neil Patel says he is happy to invest even $1500 per year on email expenses. You don’t need to do as much but can always use free services like MailChimp or small expense based GetResponse for email marketing.
Actionable tips:
- Build an email list, everyone starts with 1 subscriber.
- Use good autoresponder services like GetResponse
- Give an incentive say ebook
Over to you:
Now that you know so many tips for increasing website traffic for free. I would really want you to get into action. If you follow these tricks for getting more organic and referral traffic I am sure you can increase the readership of your blog. If you have noticed, the whole post was about better blogging, better marketing and better networking. So, I would conclude saying: blog traffic is all about proper blogging, proper networking and proper marketing.
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