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One of the biggest challenges many new bloggers face is how to increase blog traffic.
That is, without spending money on ads or promotions.
Spending money on paid ads to grow your blog is a great way to increase your traffic if you know what you’re doing.
But many new bloggers don’t have the extra money to spend or aren’t familiar enough with setting up paid ads to really make it worth their time.
I won’t lie, growing blog traffic organically is not easy.
It isn’t something that happens overnight. Increasing your blog traffic requires time + patience.
I know it’s incredibly frustrating to spend so much time + effort on your blog and then feel like nobody is reading it.
While growing your blog is a process that will take you some time and quite a bit of work, there are actionable steps you can take to grow your blog traffic faster.
Me telling you that it requires “time and effort” to grow your blog is not really helpful, and I get that.
I want to share with you several real + actionable things you can do to start growing your blog traffic.
Taking these steps will not increase your traffic overnight, and I won’t waste either of our time by telling you that they will.
But I will promise that if you do even just a few things on this list, you will begin to see growth.
The important thing to remember is that not every strategy will work for everyone.
Growing your blog is not a one size fits all strategy.
You are going to have to experiment a bit and figure out what works for you.
In this post, I’m sharing everything I know about how to grow your blog organically + ways to increase blog traffic that are a little outside the box.
Focus on the Right Numbers
Before you start thinking about increasing your blog traffic, I want to make sure you’re focusing on the right numbers in your traffic reports.
You need to have a good understanding of where your traffic comes from, how to diversify it, and how to use Google Analytics to grow your blog.
Growing your blog traffic is more than just increasing your monthly page views.
Pageviews are important, but they aren’t the best metric to track how users are finding and interacting with your blog.
You want to get more page views, yes- but you also want to focus on some other important factors when it comes to your traffic numbers.
– Sessions (the browsing session of each individual user on your blog)
– Bounce Rate (percentage of single page visits- users who closed out of your blog without exploring any pages other than the one they landed on)
– Session Duration (average length of time a user spent on your blog)
Spend some time getting familiar with Google Analytics studying how readers are finding your website and how they’re interacting with it.
If you plan to make money with your blog and want to be successful, you have to pay attention to more than just your monthly page views.
Elite ad networks and sponsors are going to want to see diversified traffic, low bounce rates, and longer session duration.
So while your goal is to increase blog traffic, I want you to also keep in mind these other important factors.
Now let’s get down to it.
How to Increase Blog Traffic
Duh, right?
The worst thing you can do for your traffic is to write a blog post and then sit back and wait for people to find it.
Like a baby bird, you need to push your blog post out into the world and force it to get its wings.
People are not going to just magically find your blog, you have to let us know that it exists and that we want to or need to read it.
You do this by first writing excellent and helpful content, and then sharing it with the world using social media posts, Pinterest pins, etc.
There are many places to share your blog posts to help increase your traffic. Remember, you don’t have to use every single one of these platforms.
Get familiar with a few of them, find out where your audience hangs out, and start interacting with them there.
Here are 13 Places to Share Your Blog Posts to Increase Traffic
Social Media
– Snapchat
– YouTube
Email List
If you don’t have an email list yet, save this tip for later.
Once you start getting some email subscribers, it’s important to keep them updated on your latest blog posts.
These people subscribed to your blog for a reason- they like what you bring to the table.
So chances are, they want to hear from you!
Every time you publish a new post, send out an email to your subscribers letting them know about it and how it can help them.
Other Places to Share Your Blog Posts
– Bloglovin’
– Triberr
– Mix
– Quora
– Scoop.it
Use Influencer Networks
An Influencer Network is a place where bloggers and influencers can find sponsored posts.
Think of them sort of like online marketplaces where bloggers and brands can find each other + collaborate on projects to promote a certain product or service.
Influencer Networks are not only a great way to find sponsored posts and make money with your blog, they can also be a tool for increasing your blog traffic.
Think about it this way: a company is willing to pay you to review or promote their product, but they’re also giving you a way to reach a broader audience and engage with your current audience in a new way.
Promoting products for a company, if done the right way, helps you engage your audience and build trust.
By recommending products or services that you know and love, you help your readers discover new things that they might fall in love with too, or might help them achieve a certain goal.
This helps you build trust and will keep people coming back to your blog for more helpful advice + recommendations.
You can also use sponsored posts to help you reach a wider audience + increase your blog traffic.
Once you write your sponsored post, you now have new material to share with the world. You can reach new audiences that are interested in that product, who might not have known your blog existed before.
The added bonus is that you are making money and/or earning free products!
Here are my favorite Influencer Networks:
If you’re looking for even more influencer networks, here is a great blog post that lists 47 influencer networks!
Get Rid of Popups
Here’s a universal truth that not every blogger wants to admit: everyone hates popups.
If I come to your blog to read your post and have to close out of a bunch of windows popping up in my face, chances are I am going to close out of your website completely.
That’s true for most people, I think.
One of your goals when increasing your blog traffic is to keep people on your site longer. Having annoying popup ads or offers is a surefire way to kill those numbers.
Having a banner at the top of your site is a great alternative. It doesn’t get in the way of your great blog post, but is still obvious enough to grab attention.
Increase Your Font Size
Another great way to keep people on your website longer is to increase the font size across your website.
This also makes your user experience better. Having a great user experience is key to bringing people to your website and keeping them there longer.
Increasing your font size keeps people on your site longer by forcing them to read more slowly. Think about it, most people are using their phones to read blog posts these days right?
If your font is just a little bit larger, they are forced to keep scrolling in order to read the full blog post.
Don’t make it so big that it’s obnoxious, just increase it slightly while making sure the overall look of your blog is still appealing.
Implement SEO
This one seems broad and super obvious, I know.
Every blogger knows that SEO is important and has the potential to have a huge impact on their traffic.
Figuring out SEO and building authority with search engines can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re going into it with no previous knowledge.
You don’t have to be a marketing pro to use SEO to increase your blog traffic.
I highly encourage you to learn as much as possible about SEO if you want to start seeing your blog grow. There are a ton of free resources out there to get started learning about search engine optimization.
SEO traffic is especially important for when you want to start monetizing your blog, because a lot of ad networks and sponsors will want to see that you have diverse traffic.
That is, traffic that comes from more than just social media or a few viral posts.
Super Simple Strategies: SEO for Bloggers is a great place to start.
This e-book is packed with everything you need to know about SEO as a blogger.
If you’re struggling to understand SEO and how to use it to increase your blog traffic, I can’t recommend this book enough.
I promise you will walk away with so much more knowledge, and the resources and tools you need to start implementing SEO for your blog right away.
3 Simple Ways to Improve your SEO Right Now
– Install Yoast Plugin
Yoast is a WordPress plugin that helps you make sure your blog is SEO friendly.
If you are using WordPress self-hosted, I highly recommend installing this plugin.
It checks your post for SEO + readability and gives you detailed suggestions on how to improve.
– Check Your Site Map
Your site map is how Google crawls and indexes the content on your website, which is how it knows to show your content on the search results page.
If you have the Yoast plugin, you can send your site map to Google from within the plugin.
Here is a great article from Google about making sure your site index is set up properly:
– Update Old Blog Posts
Updating old content is a good way to boost your SEO, especially if you’ve recently learned new strategies on how to properly implement SEO.
I know personally, I wrote a lot of blog posts before I knew much about SEO. After I studied and learned how to do SEO the right way, I had to go back and update all of that old content.
Updating old posts can help your SEO by allowing you to:
– Update photos (don’t forget that alt title + description!)
– Check for errors
– Build Links
– Insert keywords
– Add any new information and/or sources
Guest Posting + Networking
Networking with other bloggers is a great way to learn and grow as a blogger.
In general, I’ve found that the blogging community is full of incredibly helpful and nice people.
You can learn so much from bloggers who have been in your shoes. My favorite way to learn how to improve as a blogger is from bloggers who have been there, done that, and found success.
Social media is a great way to connect with fellow bloggers. But don’t forget to also start connecting by sharing and commenting on blog posts that you find helpful or inspiring.
Networking with other bloggers can also help you find opportunities to write guest posts or find guest writers for your blog.
Guest posts are a great way to increase blog traffic because you are opening up your blog to a whole new audience- the audience of your guest blogger.
I am currently accepting applications for guest posts, so if you’re interested in guest posting on morganktylka.com I would love to hear from you!
Offer Freebies + Host Giveaways
Who doesn’t love free stuff?
A lot of Instagram influencers use giveaways as a way to gain new followers, and it’s pretty damn effective.
People love giveaways, but as a blogger, you can also offer freebies to help increase your traffic + grow your email list.
There are many things you can offer as freebies on your blog. Planners, Templates, Resources, Checklists… it really depends on your niche and audience.
If you’re a finance blogger, you might offer free budget worksheets or planners. If you’re in the parenting niche, you could offer free checklists or printables for kids.
Offering freebies is a good way to build trust with your readers as well. Giving your readers something that is helpful to them, and doing it for free, instills trust and builds authority.
Just remember… steer clear of those popups 😉
Content is King
There’s no doubt that the content that gets shared over and over again is incredibly useful, thorough, interesting and well-written.
Focus on writing content that is thorough and helps solve a problem for your readers.
People will come back to your blog again and again if you start to build a reputation for being a trustworthy source.
Readers will also share your blog post if they find it exceptionally helpful or interesting, which will help you increase your traffic exponentially.
You want to make it as easy as possible for readers to share your blog post.
That means having social share icons that are attractive, work properly, and are easily identifiable.
My favorite plugins for this are Sassy Social Share + Pinterest Pin It Buttons.
You can customize your social share icons to match your blog’s theme colors if you want, but you don’t necessarily have to.
You just want to make sure that you make it as simple as possible (one click) to share your blog post on social media.
Another way to increase social shares is to have really great, shareable images within your post.
If you want readers to share your content on Pinterest, they are going to need a pin friendly image to share, right?
You want to include a good featured photo, at least one Pinnable image, and any other photos relevant to the post.
Wow- that turned into a monster of a post! I hope that you’ve taken something useful away from this post.
Growing blog traffic is probably the number one goal of any blogger, as it is how we build our audience + make money with our blogs.
The most crucial piece of advice I can offer is this: be patient + work hard. I think that if you really put the work in, and give it some time you will start to see your blog traffic grow.
Just don’t give up too early. Many new bloggers don’t start to see their traffic growing for a few months.
Let me know if you tried any of these and how they helped you increase your blog traffic!
XO, M
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