10 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Blog
Being a blogger can be a rewarding experience, especially when you are able to help others find answers to life’s problems. Blogging is also a great outlet to express your personal interests and expertise on topics that you’re knowledgeable on. It’s relatively easy to start your own blog; however, it takes some time to build your online presence and readership base. With awesome content being published on your blog, what good is it if nobody is reading it? Bloggers are always wondering how they can drive traffic to their blog, so we put together a list of ten ways to build your blogs audience.
The key to being a successful blogger is putting in the effort to grow your blog. You have to find ways to be creative. Bloggers that have a poor work ethic will find it difficult to grow their audience. Our tips are designed to provide you the basic ways to drive traffic to your blog while your creativity and hard work is ultimately what will determine whether or not your blog will become successful.
Quality Content
There are a lot of content farms that will sell new bloggers articles to help fill their new blog. These articles will usually fail the readership test. They will be of poor quality and the articles may not even make sense. Your best bet is to write quality articles. Think quality, not quantity when writing posts for your blog. You should also make sure your blog stays relatively fresh. No one wants to visit a blog day after day and see the same posts. This doesn’t mean you have to write a blog post everyday (although this is ideal), it simply means you post articles frequently, and hopefully consistently. Try writing two blog posts every week and publish them on the same day so your readers know when to expect new posts.
Guest Blogging
Hopefully you started a blog that interests you. If you aren’t interested in the topic of the blog or know enough about the subject matter, it’s going to be difficult to keep writing articles. The most successful bloggers guest post on blogs in their niche or on popular sites (e.g. Huffington Post) to help market their own blog and showcase their expertise in that field. This helps drive traffic to your blog as your new visitors understand you have a lot of good things to share on the topic. This form of “free” marketing is important towards building your blog audience.
Social Media
The social network landscape continues to change. It used to be relatively easy to post a link to your site on your Facebook page and get found. Now the algorithms for social media sites are more sophisticated, so you might not even show up in the newsfeed for all those that like your page. You have to be creative to get found these days. Don’t spam your Facebook page or Twitter feed with links that don’t engage your audience. Keep your fans engaged. Ask questions that solicit responses. Posts polls. Offer rewards (e.g. $10 gift card) for liking your page. Keep in mind that what you find successful with social media today, may not be successful tomorrow. Stay up-to-date on all the changes in the social media landscape to help be successful at social media marketing.
Go Viral
There is no secret formula for making your blog posts or YouTube videos go viral. It does, however, help to start by talking to friends, family and even strangers about your blog. Hand out business cards that feature your blog URL. If you can get a small group of folks to share your content, you never know when it might go viral. Once viral, it doesn’t mean that you have reached success. This audience might be short-lived, so make sure you are creating quality content that helps keep that viral traffic coming back.
Mailing Lists & Newsletter
Readers can easily subscribe to your RSS feed and receive updates about new content, but you should invest some time in creating a weekly newsletter. Be creative so that when your subscribers receive the newsletter in their inbox, they click links that bring them back to your blog. Look into free email services from Mail Chimp or try something like Constant Contact. Remember to be consistent when you send out newsletter and try to avoid spamming your subscribers inbox (i.e. sending out newsletters multiple times each day).
Search Engines
If your blog is not indexed by search engines (e.g. Bing, Yahoo & Google), you are going to have difficulties realizing traffic to your blog. Ranking well for popular search keywords in your niche will be a huge help towards driving traffic to your blog. Submit your website to Google Search Console and Bing Webmasters. Keep in mind that blog posts are usually ranked well for a few days (maybe weeks) after it is published and to continue ranking well you have to put in the SEO work to help keep it in the first few search results pages.
Join Forums
Seek out forums that cover topics similar to your blog. If members of those forums are asking questions that you can answer, you can show your expertise on the subject matter by sharing your thoughts. Many forums allow you to post a link to your blog in the signature or profile, which allows those that you helped the opportunity to find your blog.
Blog Comments
It definitely helps if you respond to comments on your own blog articles, but what can really benefit you is to join discussions on other blogs. Don’t be a stranger to other bloggers in your niche. Read their articles and comment on their blogs when possible. Many blogs allow you to post a link to your website, so those that read their blog might click through to your site. Make sure your comment not only adds to the article topics discussion, but is relevant to that topic.
Search Engine Optimization
Whatever you write, make sure you have a few relevant keywords that you focus on. You might want to consider about three to ten percent keyword density to rank well, although the search engines are smart in that they can detect when the focus of the article is solely about keyword density. Make sure you research popular keywords in your niche before you go crazy focusing your efforts on SEO.
Social Bookmarking
It is good to post to social bookmarking sites (e.g. StumbleUpon) so members of those sites can discover your blog articles. Be sure you don’t overdo it. Only sharing your own blog articles will get noticed by the algorithms these sites use. These sites will be ineffective if your links are considered spam.
These tips for driving traffic to your blog should be used as the starting point in growing your audience. To give yourself an opportunity to become a successful blogger, make sure you put in the effort, find creative channels to market your blog and keep your quality content coming.
Do you have any additional tips to help drive traffic to your blog? Share your tips and advice with our readers in the comments section below.
