5 Best Ways to Get (More) Traffic to Your Blog (And Keep It)

How do you get more blog traffic?

This is a question that we’re consistently asked, but that doesn’t have one simple answer.

Blogging takes a lot of work, and while you might have started out just wanting to teach yourself some new skills and learn a bit more about the industry, inevitably you’ll want to start seeing some return for all your effort.

So what’s the best way to get more blog views?

There are three main ways to get traffic to your blog

• Social Media
• Search Engines
• Email lists

The first two are the fastest and easiest to generate traffic from, but if you can nail the last one then it’ll give you a great boost as well, and it won’t be affected by changing algorithms like the others. Plus, an email list is gold if you want to consider selling to your audience.

Why do you want traffic?

You don’t want to write for no one!

While setting up a website and populating it with content can be a beneficial learning experience all on its own, at the end of the day if no one sees it then it’s a little deflating.

And then the next reason you might want more traffic is to earn money. If your goal is a business rather than just a blog then traffic is going to be key. That’s not to say that you need super high traffic volumes to make money.

It’s all about how you intend to earn and the audience you’re targeting. If you have the right subject matter you can even earn from a small traffic volume if they are really invested.

So let’s get to how to can get more traffic to your blog!

5 Ways to Get More Blog Traffic

Create Good content

The first step to gaining traffic is having good content that people will want to consume. There are quite a lot of aspects to what makes “good” content, and of course, it’s a bit subjective too, but here are some key points:

• Write for your audience: Consider who it is you’re targeting and write with them in mind
• Have clear messaging and structure: Layout your content in a logical and thoughtful manner with titles and subheadings
• Evergreen content: Depending on your niche, I think it’s better to write content that is considered “evergreen”. This means it continues to be relevant and can lead to more consistent traffic.
• Post consistently: There is no magic number of posts you need to get traffic, it all depends on the subject matter and the audience targeted, but having a plan for your content and posting consistently to keep up with your ideas and to link more posts together.
• Backlinks – Building backlinks is a whole topic on its own but the first idea is that if you have good content people will want to link to it.
• Visual content like photos and video: Include visuals in your blog posts to make it more interesting and more visually appealing.

Utilise Social Media

Social Media is a great way to gain traffic to your website, but it can also be a bit tricky. For one, the traffic is often inconsistent as it relies on your sharing a post which results in a spike but then that traffic drops off.

Secondly, the premise behind social media is community, so building a community on social is important when you want to share your content. Just dropping links to your website isn’t likely to gain you a lot of traction.

You can read more of our social media tips for bloggers here, but here are some central points about using social media to gain blog traffic:

• Build a community interested in your posts: To make the most of social media to gain traffic you’ll want to build a community. Start a separate Facebook page for your website and work on growing it through posting relevant and interesting content, not just always links to your website.
• Share in relevant Facebook groups: Facebook has groups for everything! Look for groups that allow post sharing and have already established communities where you can share your posts.
• Share old posts as well as new: Remember to recycle old posts. Not everyone sees them first time around!
• Consider paid ads and boosting posts for more traffic: Paid ads and boosts can be a really valuable way to gain traffic, but they can also be a black hole to put your money into if you don’t know how to do it right. You can target particular audiences who will be interested in your post with ads, and boost posts that are already doing well to gain further traction.

A note on Pinterest: Pinterest is often lumped into the category of social media platforms, but it’s actually more of a visual search engine. It can lead to more consistent traffic if you have pins that do well on the platform but it requires you to create visual content for the platform and then have a strategy to get them out there.

Write for Search Engines

Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Duck Duck Go are the most consistent way to get more traffic for your blog. Google is the biggest of all of these and generally considered as the benchmark that people base their efforts on.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the best way to gain higher traffic volumes that are more consistent. This is because you can tailor your article to what people are searching for, and optimise it to appear in front of as many people when they search for it as possible.

You’re aiming for a high ranking, which is ideally page one and the top spot if possible!

Here are the biggest points related to gaining more traffic from search engines:

• Keyword researched posts: You should research more specific keywords to base your posts around, rather than just writing whatever you think. For example, you might find that the keyword “2 days in New York” has more people searching it each month and is less competitive than “5 days in New York” so you write a three day itinerary instead. There’s a lot more to this so I’ll write a full post soon!
• Create content silos: Instead of writing one post on a topic and then jumping to another, plan groups of related content that can be linked together and prop each other up.
• Keep track of stats and continue to edit and adjust posts over time: You can always edit posts to include more relevant information or to try and increase their search engine ranking. Keeping track of stats will help you see the movement in your posts on search pages.

This doesn’t mean you should never write a post that you don’t think you can rank for. Having a well-rounded website is important for attracting repeat readers and brands, and people will hopefully click through to further posts too.

Have an Email List

Email marketing is a whole beast of its own! It can be a really powerful tool because you own that email list and can always access it, whereas algorithms can change and send your posts plummeting down the Google ranks or give your less reach on social.

Here are some tips for gaining traffic through email lists:

• Capture emails from the get-go but then use them: You’ll want to have a strategy for your email list. Think about the content you can send out, not just a basic email of your latest posts but something of a bit more value to your subscribers.
• Use a lead-magnet: A lead-magnet is a tool that can be used to gain subscribers. It’s where you offer something of value in return for people signing up to your list. You can then email them further.

Evaluate Your Website Design

The design of your website itself can help lead to more blog traffic because people will stick around longer, and come back again. Consider whether your site design is clear and easy to navigate.

Even simple things like font size and colour can make a huge difference. Text that’s tiny and a strange colour is going to put people off.

A few more tips:

• Mobile optimised: Choose a mobile-friendly theme! So important to have now.
• Interlink: Link through to other related posts with clear calls to action.
• Site Speed: Site speed is actually a factor that’s taken into account by Google when ranking your website and posts. Choose a lightweight theme, resize your photos to smaller file sizes, and consider installing something like Cloudflare to help with site speed.

There is so much more information and detail I could go into about each one of these points!

Sonja x