You’ve been working hard on your blog. You feel established. Now it’s time to get serious about traffic. We’re right there with your friend – here are seven easy steps you can start taking to increase blog traffic!
Promotion needs to be a big part of your content strategy so that your hard-earned blog posts drive that traffic you so desperately desire! As an integral part of your marketing portfolio, it’s more important than ever to truly put some elbow grease into making your blog the best it can be. If you’ve already got the basics down, but you’re looking to take your blog to the next level, come join us!
Get along and have a look at what all we have for you –
Strategize your content
If you desire to increase your blog’s traffic, the best thing you can do is simply create better content. You’ve probably heard this before – the term “content is king” is thrown around more than a funnel at a frat party. But creating “better content” isn’t just about quality. It also means being more strategic with your content marketing efforts.
The most successful content is one of a kind that meets a specific or a particular need. Think about your audience and see what they have loved.
Content these days are almost categorized into two: cool and funny or useful and educational. Choose either, and you’re off to a good start. Everyone wants to create viral content, but most people fail. That’s because they don’t pay attention to the sites that successfully create viral posts, day in and day out.
The primary and most important of all is creating a good headline for your content. As a blogger, you should always ensure that you’re creating irresistibly awesome headlines. Your headline is what gets visitors to your site and captures their interest. 8/10 people search for keywords before visiting the website. That’s how the headlines attract the audience.
Some people even say that your headlines are more important than the actual content you write in the post. If you have a great piece of content but a shabby headline, your job will die a quick death. Showing off at the first impression is very necessary because this is what your audience wants. You can’t just go to your wedding wearing homesick clothes, the same way your content should also get a good cover.
You can undoubtedly share your post with different headlines and see which style works out the best for you.
You also need to design evergreen content for your blog post. Your content cannot be repetitive and boring; elsewhere, it should display some actions in the form of words.
Find Your Flock: Hunt Down Your Audience’s Nest
When it comes to promoting your blog, you must be strategic about where you spend your time. While it’s nice to establish your presence across a range of social networks, you’ll quickly burn out trying to excel with every social site. Dip your feet and see which social networks work best for you. Is your blog massive on the visuals? You’ll probably want to set your sights on LinkedIn. Is your blog catered more towards nerd culture? Find the right subreddits, and you could strike it big. To drive blog traffic, you need to go to where your flock hangs out. Know where to find your bird of a feather. Understanding your audience is also crucial for building strong referral links from relevant websites.
You can use Google Analytics to see which websites are driving the most traffic. Find the forums and sites your target audience visits, and get active on those. Engage in discussion and post links or blog comments. You need to be an actual person, and you cannot be spam here. Try to seek what your audience is looking for and try to answer these fundamental questions.
Once you have found the family, Go! Make your identified networks as your focal point. Then inculcate the social sharing buttons on the posting page. Sometimes we feel that a variety of social sharing options on the page may tempt the user. Still, the study has shown that individuals are happier with a few different options, so remember to limit the social sharing buttons and do not go on with the flow. Considering the limit, your social sharing selection makes the most leverage out of it.
You can’t fear your keywords.
If driving significant and real-time traffic on your blog is utmost to you, keywords and SEO needs to be part of your strategy. People get on their nerves when asked to do something on SEO, but you need to understand that Search engine optimization is good when executed well. It can create wonders for you. It helps you to get the targeted audience from google.
So we would suggest you go out and shout loud- “That Yes, I do care for the keywords.” Google drives billions of searches a day. Believe me, you want to use keywords to get a piece of that pie. Now you just need to practice some fundamental things to make it happen. You need to conceptualize your post and let the keywords influence your outline.
Using Long-tail keywords – Focusing on long-tail keywords is a great SEO tactic. Long-tail keywords are keywords or more specific key phrases – and usually longer – than more commonly searched for keywords. Long-tail keywords get less search traffic but will often have a higher conversion value, as they are more specific.
Generate your Ideas from Reviews
What do you feel about getting ideas from customers? You need to analyze what content your customers are looking for and what they are seeking out? Going through reviews is great for finding what’s essential for your customers. You can gain a better understanding of the language they use and their pain points. Sifting through reviews requires a smart strategy, though, and you should consider these key questions:
Who is my target audience?
What solutions do I believe they want from us? What are their goals?
What solutions might they be using today to achieve those goals?
This will get you through a different set of pooled mindsets while flocking from one review to another and gain insights from it.
Optimization of Mobile resource and Speed
Your visitors aren’t going to wait around for your blog to load. If your page isn’t coming up fast enough, they’ll hit the back button and move on to the next Google listing (i.e., your competitor) before you can flip a flapjack. So here, you just need to check your site speed? No problem! Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool will give you your speed score, as well as tips on what you can do to give your site the kick in the pants it might need.
Modern users spend nearly 3 hours a day on their tablets or mobile phones in the same vein. Going mobile is a no-brainer for bloggers. If you don’t think your current blog is up to snuff, consider checking out one of these exceptional WordPress plugins that help create a version of your blog that is optimized for mobile devices.
Smart Goals
SMART is an acronym that you can use to guide your goal setting.
SMART goals are:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound
Do you ever feel like you’re working hard but not getting anywhere? Maybe you see little improvement in your skills or achievements when you reflect on the last five or 10 years. Or perhaps you struggle to know how you’ll fulfill your ambitions during the next few years. So to overcome all these, your content marketing strategy should be created around SMART goals so that you can avoid fuzzy, unattainable objectives. SMART goals give you a clear path to success.
Setting SMART goals actually create a basic content marketing strategy. If you feel intimidated by creating a plan, just focus on setting SMART goals. That’ll get you started.
SMART is a useful tool that provides the clarity, focus, and motivation you need to achieve your goals. It can also improve your ability to reach them by encouraging you to define your objectives and set a completion date. SMART goals are also easy to use by anyone, anywhere, without the need for specialist tools or training.
Play Nice With the Other Kids in the Garden
Good manners not only go a long way in daily life but also online. If you’re looking to build blog traffic, you’ll want to establish good relationships with other bloggers in your niche. Sometimes you’ll even want to team up with your enemies, the same style as that of “Game of Thrones.”
Comment on other blogs and be active in various communities. Consider interviewing major industry loggers or including other bloggers in a “best of” post (for example, Top 10 Blogs Rocking Pinterest). Once you have a blogger cited or featured in one of your posts, tag them in a tweet to let them know. Chances are that bloggers will retweet and share a post mentioning them, getting more shares and more traffic as a result.
Linking to your own blog posts is great for SEO, but it’s essential to link to outside sources as well. This signals to Google that you’re not a spammer and helps build a positive relationship with the other blogs you’re linking to. Establishing good relationships with other bloggers also makes your featuring a little up.