How to increase traffic to your blog

How to increase traffic to your blog?

What is Blog Traffic - Blog Traffic or Website traffic is an important metric for any website. In simple terms, blog traffic is the number of web users visiting your blog and is measured in page views, visits, or sessions. This metric is sometimes used as one of the measures of the success of your website. However, these days there are many other important factors that are accounted for, along with the page views like how long did the users stay on the page, bounce rate, whether a purchase was made, the number of returning visitors, and many more.

Good traffic to a website helps to obtain leads, and in turn, result in conversions, generating better sales and revenue. Better the traffic, the greater the chance for blog monetization.

There are millions of blogs online and only a few thousands are able to get numerous readers and loyal followers. Building a big audience of readers does not happen overnight. It may take months and sometimes years of work. If your readership and follower base does not grow at the pace you expect, do not be disheartened. Work on the strategies to generate good content and build traffic. That should help make a difference.

There is no magic formula that works for all and one can only try and see what works for each of them. The strategies in this post are from various sources and research on the internet. They have helped improve the traffic to my site to a large extent and there are some others that I am yet to implement.

What are the different types of blog traffic?

A recent study states, Google drives 8 times more traffic than all social media networks combined. This tells you how important it is for your content to be picked up by their algorithms and be ranked higher, so you show up in the SERP(search engine result page) and thereby help drive traffic to your site.

The traffic that comes from search engines can be Organic or Paid. Organic traffic is generated naturally and can be grouped under search, referral, or direct. Organic search traffic is produced when users search for a word or topic and click on the link from the SERP (search engine result page). For example, if you type "broken rice pudding matta rice payasam" on the Google search bar, you will find the link from Inspiresn in the SERP (search engine results page). This type of organic traffic is said to be generated by search traffic.

Organic traffic can be generated from referral traffic too. This happens when some other website shares your link. The traffic is driven from their site (referral site) and their visitors click on the link to your site.

There is also what is called direct traffic, which is organic. Here the user directly types your URL in the search bar and visits your site. Direct traffic can also come from clicks on links to your site sent through email marketing when readers subscribe to email lists from your site.

Paid traffic as the name suggests is straightforward, you pay to rank higher up on the search engine results page. This can be done through sponsored ads like Google Adwords, Facebook advertisements, and the like. This can sometimes help beginners get a head start to obtain traffic but comes with a price and is not free.

Organic traffic is crucial and will help in your long-term marketing strategy and one must pay attention to it for better results. I have been focusing on building organic traffic recently by using some strategies mentioned in the post below. Being a self-taught blogger, the strategies I learned in the course of blogging have helped to improve the page views of my site. There are many others like paid ads that I am yet to implement. Here are some of the free simple strategies that any beginners can apply to their site.

How to increase traffic to your blog?

Here are some helpful strategies to increase your website traffic.

Write quality content

Search engines like Google can easily determine great content with their algorithms and they are exceptionally good at it. Content is the king as the saying goes. If your content centers on what readers are looking for and has a solution to their problems, you have nailed it. It is highly likely your post will be clicked, read, and shared. The content should help serve the reader's purposes. It should focus on how it can help solve their problems. There are applications like Google Trends that help find trending topics in your niche. They help find what users are searching for in general.

Visually appealing content

Have compelling visual images, infographics, and videos in your post when possible. The readers are sure to stay on your site longer and revisit if they find it engaging. Ensure the images are optimized and do not take forever to load by investing in good hosting services, themes, and plugins. Even if you do not have images that you captured yourself, you can find plenty of relevant free stock images that can be used.

Creating Videos is a great way to get organic traffic to your site and Youtube is a great resource for doing the same as we all know it is definitely a popular search engine. The videos should have links to your blog and you could get great exposure to your content.

Maintain and update existing content

Ensure the existing content of your posts is up to date and refreshed from time to time. This can be done by republishing the post with the changes. If the existing content includes some of your top-performing posts, try to re-use the same post and URL. Use the same keywords. If the post did not have keywords when posted originally, do keyword research and add it. Adding a note on the delta of changes to your original post will help your readers understand it better. This also makes it transparent to your audience. You can also boost the performance of a post by adding new visually appealing images or photos. Videos for recipes or tutorials, for example, will benefit readers. They are more likely to visit your site and this will help generate website traffic.

Blog on a regular basis

Write blog posts on a regular basis and frequently. To aim to post twice a week on average is ideal. This is something that may be difficult to keep up for most bloggers. I need to work on getting a schedule on that as well. However, it is okay to post weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly as well. Consistency is important. Stick with a schedule if you can.

It is also best to outsource to other writers if possible, to maintain the desired target. A lot of work can get done easily with a little help and you can focus on other aspects of blogging. Guest posting is another way to help with frequency as well. If you are able to find bloggers in your niche who are willing to guest post that would be great. It is said the search engines give priority to sites with fresh content. So you have benefits and a chance of ranking higher if you have a consistent schedule and blog regularly.

Promote your content

As mentioned in my earlier posts, you may have great content written and published, but it is not of any purpose if it does not reach your target audience. It is best if the content is promoted on social media platforms so it reaches a wider set of readers. Every post should have social sharing buttons for easy promotion. Social media has the most popular platforms and are great places for promotion. Earlier, platforms like Facebook were said to drive up a major percentage of all traffic to websites. A recent article says Facebook is said to promote 65% of all traffic when compared to other social media.

There are many Facebook groups you can join to promote content and increase the traffic to your site. They will require you to follow certain rules. Some of them have promotions to different social media channels on specific days of the week. You can read the description of the group and send a request to join if it meets your requirements. There are also communities like bloggerstrafficcommunity which is a dedicated group similar to Facebook groups to drive traffic to your site. Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and other social media platforms are also other great places to promote content.

Follow SEO strategies efficiently

It is important to follow SEO optimization methods. Find efficient keywords using keyword research, include keywords in the URL and post title, write lengthy posts, intriguing titles that draw curiosity, have a good site architecture, create quality backlinks with guest posts, blogger outreach, and round-up posts, create internal links, use optimized images, and maintain a fast website speed by using good hosting, themes, and plugins for your site.

Websites with slow speed, display, or interruptions with too many ads can make the readers frustrated and leave. They may also be hesitant to revisit your site. It is important to ensure they are engaged and intrigued to know more details and stay longer. Some of the SEO topics here have been posted earlier and can be found under the blogging tips section.

Build your audience

Capture Email addresses and have your readers subscribe to your blog for regular posts and email newsletters. Attractive signup forms or CTAs (Call to Action) on your website with some freebies can help folks easily sign up for your email list. There are more chances of the readers clicking on an email link and revisiting your blog when a newsletter is sent out or a post has been published.

User Engagement

User engagement with the audience is important. You can encourage your readers to share their views and write feedbacks and comments on your post. Make sure to take the time to reply to their queries and comments. This helps create a rapport and may help with increased returning visitors. Build relations with fellow bloggers in your niche as well. You can even request them to share your post on social media sites if they love your content and think that it will help others. This kind of promotion in turn helps build your blog. Likewise, do the needful and visit their site and comment on their posts and share their content and build relationships.

Participate in Question and Answer sites

There are many Question and answer sites like Quora, yahoo answers, Stackexchange. You can answer queries related to your niche and even link your blog posts and articles from your answers. This will help generate traffic from users looking for such information.

Last but not least, in the midst of striving to get maximum page views and blog traffic, do not forget to enjoy what you love most writing, researching, and generating content. It is important to try and do your best for your website and audience. The content should be of value and useful, which will go a long way.

Thanks for reading. If you have any tips to increase blog traffic that I missed, please add them in the comments below. Happy Blogging!

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