15 Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Blog
Not as easy to get your blog off the ground as you thought it would be? Here are 15 useful tips for driving traffic to your blog.
Image: Pixabay
One of the biggest challenges bloggers face today is driving traffic to their blogs or website. There are many tried and tested methods today, but some are far more useful than others in increasing traffic.
If you’re looking for proven methods that can help increase your blog traffic, then you’ve come to the right place. Instead of listing every single method, here are just 15 of the most effective tips you should implement for effectively driving traffic to your blog. They are easily done and absolutely essential.
15 proven ways to increase traffic to your blog or website
- Draft blogs that perfectly align with Google web search intent (or from any other web browser’s search engine)
- Learn about link building and how backlinks are crucial to help your blog grow
- Create unique content by writing blogs that you know people are actively searching for
- Use internal links from your website/blog to help bolster your key posts
- Recycle: edit any outdated content that isn’t working and then republish your newly invigorated writing
- Create titles/headlines that are almost guaranteed to be clicked
- Don’t forget that paid-for advertising can also return instant results
- Subtly get your blog noticed within major established online communities without being spammy in any way
- Reach out to the right people to try and get your blog noticed in other leading niche newsletters
- Try and get your content on Reddit – there’s a huge skill involved in this, and you have to be careful
- Try and build relationships with some of the people you mentioned in your blog by actively trying to get in touch with them
- Create unique studies and carry out your own research to find the latest relevant data and statistics
- Get more exposure by repurposing popular blogs into threads on Twitter
- Make sure you have a healthy list of email addresses you can send newsletters to, and then always try and build on that list
- Use unique and carefully crafted images that can be shared (they don’t have to be complex or time-consuming), as they can be helpful
There are lots of other tried and tested methods that can help with driving traffic to your blog, some of which work better for some than they do for others. However, before trying any other techniques or strategies, you may want to start by paying closer attention to the 15 practical tips mentioned above. Let’s take a closer look at them right here.
1. Create blogs that most align with Google search intent
Search engines today, such as Google, try to return the most relevant results when people are undertaking a search online. If your goal is to generate more traffic from web searches and appear higher in the Google rankings, you must come up with blog entries, articles, how-to guides, or even newsworthy items that are relevant to the search intent.
One of the ways you can do this is by carrying out Google searches of your target keyword and then closely scrutinizing the highest-ranked pages to understand exactly what kind of content works and, more importantly, what doesn’t work.
2. Link building
Understanding backlinks and how to build links is also crucial to help drive traffic to your blog, especially with regard to ranking highly in the Google search engine. It’s a great way to generate organic traffic but be prepared to be patient because it doesn’t happen overnight.
It’s a time-consuming process that’s never-ending. You can employ multiple link-building strategies, and one of the most effective ways for some is guest blogging on other people’s blogs. You just need to find suitable domains where you will feel safe and secure providing content. You can also watch plenty of videos about guest blogging on YouTube and other trusted video streaming platforms.
3. Come up with unique content that you know people search for
It’s easy to create blog posts covering specific niches that you are particularly fond of, which could be about the latest Match 3 games, the latest movie releases, the latest headlines from around the world or just discussing a hot topic such as cryptocurrencies or the economy. However, these blogs don’t tend to stay relevant for long.
To begin with, you will probably notice an upward trend in people viewing your blog, but as soon as the topic you discussed is no longer in the headlines or relevant, the surge in traffic will decrease just as quickly as it increased. Therefore, try to craft topics with consistent interest and search demand over time (these are known as evergreen topics).
4. Use internal links from your personal blog/website to bolster your main posts
An internal link (hyperlink or link) is an item such as a word or button that points to another location within the same website, and it can be used in your blogs to help strengthen their rankings when people perform web searches. It can often help to include a few internal links with relevant anchor text in just one blog.
5. It’s ok to repurpose old content that may be out of date
If something you posted in the past hasn’t panned out well by increasing traffic for you, don’t forget that there’s absolutely no harm in republishing it. Take time to change phrases. Take out bits you feel aren’t necessary and change them to something you think might work.
Find out which older posts aren’t working, and then carefully reword bits before republishing your blog. Make sure that there are enough changes because you don’t want to republish duplicate content that only has one or two changes because Google can punish you for this.
6. Create unique headlines/titles that you are certain people will click on
One of the things that can really help your item stand out from the crowd is the title/headline. If it’s not catchy or eye-grabbing, people could simply miss it without even giving your amazing blog a chance. It has to be something that instantly gets their attention if they are to click on it. In other words, try and make your headline ‘click-worthy.’
7. You may want to think about buying advertising
One of the most effective ways to instantly help increase visitors to your blog, which is often overlooked, is to pay a trusted platform to run ads for you. It’s not the cheapest way to drive traffic to your blog/website, but it can often guarantee rapid results. A growing number of today’s major platforms now enable you to run ads.
8. Try and get your blog/website noticed in established online communities
There’s a knack to doing this, and it involves not being too direct or spammy. Getting your content promoted in big online communities can massively help drive traffic to your blog, but it’s much easier said than done. You need to try and get in good standing with online communities by getting involved with hot topics and answering people’s questions, asking questions, leaving comments etc.
Getting on with others before sharing your content is key. You don’t want to get kicked out because you were overly aggressive with your self-promotion skills while trying to get your blog out there.
Instead, take a slower and more cautious approach. In other words, start by learning what type of things you can and can’t discuss/post and learn the rules of that community’s chat before you start posting. You can eventually encourage people or try and convince them to check out your blog without being too pushy.
9. Reach out to the right people who may be able to help promote your blog
It can also help to try and reach out to major publications or other famous bloggers to try and get your content included on their websites. Instead of just waiting and hoping for them to approach you, why not get in touch with them yourself? If you’re successful, an important article or blog that you wrote could be seen by far more traffic than you first anticipated just because you reached out to the right person. Building up solid relationships with the right people can be a massive help.
10. Get your blog noticed on Reddit
While it’s a lot easier said than done, getting your blog shared among the Reddit community can also be a massive benefit and can really help drive traffic. The best thing to do would be to read the Reddit community guideline rules before attempting to share your blog because there are so many strict regulations about what you can and can’t post.
11. Make an effort to get in touch with leading figures that you may have discussed in your blog
Occasionally, your blogs may have mentioned certain notable figures/bloggers/academics, etc. There’s no harm in trying to get in touch with those people just to connect with them and say that you mentioned them.
You may even find that the person is more than happy to share your item on their social media platforms, which could then also bring in a new source of high-quality traffic to your blog.
You don’t have to call them or pressure them in any way. Simply drop them an email if you have their contact info or leave them a message on their socials. Just try not to appear too needy.
12. Carry out your own research
Try not to use any old research, data, and statistics you come across on random websites. A lot of this information will be out of date, wrong or is something that everyone else is using.
If you can come up with your own ways to research things and carry out your own studies to find the most accurate and up-to-date information for your readers, it can also be a great tool for driving more traffic to your blog.
13. Mix up some of your important content by transforming it into a Twitter feed
Twitter is also a valuable tool for increasing your traffic. If you can get your Tweet noticed and it gains traction, it can be good news for your website/blog.
14. Try and build on your email list
Having a modest emailing list of less than a thousand people just isn’t going to cut it. When you send out your daily, weekly or monthly newsletter or blog, ideally, you want it sent out to as many relevant people as possible, so you should always be working on increasing your emailing list.
Getting people to subscribe is the best way to increase your mailing list, and then emailing your readers is one of the best ways to get in touch with them directly. If the people who subscribe to your blog like your content, they will keep coming back for more and hopefully spread the word for you about your blog.
15. Don’t forget that carefully crafted images can also be useful
If you can practice getting good at creating unique, eye-catching images that are easily shareable, and if your images can be engaging among the wider online community, those images can help drive traffic to your blog. As the saying goes, an image says a thousand words (or a picture/photo speaks a thousand words).
Key Takeaways
Some of these strategies will work much better for you than others, and they take time to execute, so if you’re serious about driving traffic to your blog or website, try and utilize as many of these tactics as is reasonably practicable.
Your main goal is to rank highly on Google and other search engines in as little time as possible, increase traffic, and get more people to subscribe to your mailing list. Your blog can become more successful than ever by implementing these tactics; they’re not as tricky as they may first appear. Just remember to be patient and that it’s a gradual process.
