Increase Blog Traffic: In this article we look at how to increase blog traffic: below, you’ll find 10 really simple steps you can take to generate a MUCH larger readership for your posts.
10 Quick Steps to Increase Blog Traffic
1) Find the right writer!At the heart of getting your blog noticed, and driving lots of traffic to it, is writing really great content – and that content is going to be much better if the person writing it is both knowledgeable and passionate about what they are writing about.
Posts that are written from the heart — and not by a content farm — are far more likely to be the posts that interest people and crucially, get shared.
BUT: it might be the case that you personally are not the best person to write the posts for your site. Perhaps you’re not a great writer; perhaps you don’t have time to devote to blogging.
If either of those statements sounds like it might apply to you, consider hiring a writer who is capable of creating truly great blog posts and putting in the hours to do so.
Whoever ends up writing the posts on your website, their personality has to shine through. Readers identify with writers because there is much to like (or even dislike) about their personality, mouthiness or tone of voice.
If a reader likes YOU as a writer — and not just the quality of the content you are producing — you are far more likely to attract a dedicated following.
So, make sure your personality comes across in your posts; this helps you form a rapport with your readers, who may be more inclined as a result to come back to your blog simply because they like you as an individual.
2) Use keyword research to identify good topics to blog aboutIt’s really easy to sit down and write blog posts which cover, in considerable depth, topics that nobody is particularly interested in.
Similarly, it’s easy to write a blog post covering an area that people are really interested in, but to give it a title containing keywords that nobody ever searches for.
Keyword research is your friend here: you can use a wide range of keyword research tools such as Semrush or Ahrefs to discover the number of monthly searches for particular keywords, and find out how difficult it would be to rank for particular search phrases.
3) Focus on producing long-form contentStudies show that ‘long-form content’ performs better in search results than short or ‘thin’ posts. Long-from content refers to posts with high word counts that go into HUGE depth on a particular topic.
There are a couple of reasons why long-form content helps to generate higher positions in search results.
First, longer posts will naturally be more keyword-rich and therefore more likely to crop up as results for ‘long tail’ keyword searches.
Second (and perhaps more importantly), the in-depth nature of a long post is more likely to satisfy readers who come across it — it will be more likely to answer your visitor’s query, or solve their problem. As a result, the post is more likely to get shared on social media or get linked to from other sites — with very positive implications for traffic.
4) Keep your content fresh by updating existing postsIf you do any online research into blogging or SEO, you’ll come across loads of articles which stress how important it is to create ‘fresh’ content in order to generate good search results and traffic to your site.
However, I’d caution against interpreting this as an instruction to constantly produce new posts.
With my own content, I’ve found it much more useful to focus on quality over quantity; and rather than blogging every day just for the sake of it, I prefer to invest my time in keeping my existing content as strong (and as in-depth) as possible.
I do this by continuously reviewing older posts and enhancing them with the most up-to-date information available.
5) Accompany your blog with fabulous imagesIt’s REALLY important to use good images in any blog posts you publish.
There are four main reasons for this.
First, it helps readers get a sense of what you are writing about (this is particularly important if you are exploring difficult concepts – visual aids can really help simplify matters).
Second, the main picture accompanying your post will usually show up whenever your visitors share one of your posts on social media, and if it is a dull picture, it’s far less likely to generate clickthroughs to your site.
6) Optimize your blog posts for search enginesThere are a series of technical steps — known as ‘on-page SEO‘ that you should take to give your blog posts the best chance of performing well in search.
You should always:
create blog post titles which reflect your keyword research, and accurately describe what you are writing about
include keywords in each post’s URL that reflect the content
use keyword-rich headings (H1, H2, H3 etc.) to break up content
use keyword rich alt text and file names for your images.
7) Capture email addressesOnce you’ve attracted a visitor to your blog, you should always attempt to capture their email address. This allows you to notify visitors via e-newsletter of new blog posts, which can result in more traffic and shares.
To do this, you need to ensure that there is a data capture form on your blog post, not just on a ‘sign up to our mailing list’ page on your site. You can do this using a sidebar, pop-up box or a simple text call-to-action to encourage people to join your mailing list.*
When creating this sign-up form, remember to spell out the benefits of joining the list — the value that your a site visitor will get out of becoming a subscriber.
8) Encourage social sharingActively encourage your readers to share your blog posts — be explicit with your requests for people to post your content on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.
If they follow these encouragements, not only should you see a rise in traffic to your posts, but you may also be sending subtle ‘signals’ to search engines regarding the popularity and quality of your posts (the jury is out on whether social sharing has a direct impact on search results, but there does seem to be a correlation of sorts).
9) Encourage comments and user engagementEncourage people (yes, even trolls!) to add their own views at the bottom of your posts. There are three reasons why this is beneficial:
It creates more keyword-rich content on your website
It can help encourage return visits to your blog, as discussions take hold on your comments section
Some SEO experts believe that Google treats blog posts which generate a lot of community discussion preferentially to those without any comments — possibly because it increases ‘dwell time’ on the post.
10) Build backlinks to your postsAt the very simplest level, there are two key ingredients to ensuring a blog post ranks in search:
First, your post has to contain quality content.
Second, it has to have a lot of backlinks — links from other sites — pointing to it.
We’ve covered the ‘quality content’ bit earlier: you basically need to focus on producing long-form posts which cover the topic you’re writing about clearly, and in considerable depth. Always aim to satisfy a reader’s query; to solve their problem.
Getting backlinks is often a much harder task, as it involves reaching out to other bloggers / website owners, and asking them to include a link to your content on their posts. This is a time consuming affair, but it’s absolutely essential, and if you take a thorough approach to it, it can prove very fruitful.
Any questions on how to increase blog traffic?
We hope you’ve enjoyed our tips on how to increase blog traffic! If you have any questions about increasing traffic to your blog, we’d love to hear them — just leave your query in the comments below
