Any idea how many blog posts go live each day?
One million? No.
3 million? That’s not even close.
Well, bloggers publish an average of 7.5 million posts daily.
With this stiff competition, how can you stand out and increase blog traffic? It is tough, but not impossible. With a little effort and best practices, you can make your blog successful.
Today, we will share with you proven ways to increase blog traffic.
Table of Contents
1. Publish content customers are searching for regularly
Some topics will generate good traffic as soon as they go live. However, they have a short shelf life. For example, news, trend issues, pop culture fads, and seasonal content will only satisfy short-term search needs. At some point, you may not receive any traffic.
If you want consistent organic traffic, consider creating what people might be looking for all year round. In short, strive to provide evergreen content.
Finding the evergreen topics isn’t that challenging. There are invaluable tools like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer to simplify the process for you. They can give you great insights into what many web users ask, depending on specific search terms and phrases.
2. Frequently cite your posts
Yes, internal linking is equally important to increase blog traffic. The links point to pages on your blog with relevant anchor texts.
Internal links help establish site structure and improve page authority. They make it easier for readers to navigate your site. Since the links provide users with further related reading options, there’s a chance that they’ll stay longer on your site.
3. Refresh your old blog posts
As you work on creating and optimizing new content, don’t forget about your old blog posts. Outdated references, statistics, images, and broken links can hurt the rankings of your top-performing pages. Updating old blog posts can extend the life of your content and drive more organic traffic all year round.
4. Strategically comment on other blogs
Participating in other people’s blogs in your niche can go a long way in strengthening your brand and generating traffic to your blog.
Ideally, you should focus on adding value. Aim to give comments that back up whatever the content is about or add to it.
When you provide meaningful comments for the readers on other blogs, you may give them a reason to see what you offer on your site. If the post shares relevance with some pages on your blog, you can strategically mention that in your comments or replies.
5. Answer questions on Q&A Sites
Answering questions on Q&A sites like Quora and Answers.com is another practical way to increase blog traffic.
Quora alone boasts over 300 million monthly users. What’s more, the site ranks for millions of keywords in Google.
You can use Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool to find relevant keywords and questions with the most search traffic. However, it’s best to stick to answering questions related to the services or products you offer.
6. Promote your content on online social networking sites and communities
You can share your content in group discussions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit, and more. Please note these online platforms have rules that every user must follow. You won’t last long with spammy tactics.
There’s no trick to getting the most out of the community sites other than providing value. That way, you can build a relationship with users, make fans, and get them to click links to your site. Therefore, it’s best to learn how to do things right and understand the posts that perform well.
7. Incorporate shareable images in your content
Photos or graphics illustrations make it easier for your audience to digest and remember your content. You can easily create shareable images using tools, such as Canva or Easel.ly. Alternatively, you can hire a freelance designer to take care of this on your behalf.
8. Build links
Link building means acquiring backlinks or hyperlinks from pages of other domains to your specific posts or blog. If readers on those websites click on anchor texts linked to your site, they’ll land on your blog.
However, not any type of external link will make the cut. Google focuses on link quality. For high-quality links, consider websites with a high level of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (EAT).
The search engine spiders or bots use URLs or links to crawl the web. That’s how they discover new web pages. Links are also one of the signals to search engines that your blog is a quality resource, and it is worthy of reference.
Make sure to create great content, then other websites have a good reason to wanting to link back to your site.
9. Make your blog content SEO-friendly
Creating high-quality content that converts and optimizing it for search engines requires skill. There’s a lot involved in the process, including:
· Use keywords sparingly. Over-using keywords can severely hurt your SEO efforts. Make sure to include keywords variations in your content.
· Make your content compatible with all types of devices.
· Write catchy SEO titles under 60 characters. The headlines should tell readers what your blog post is about before they click through. Include keywords in the headlines and capitalize them correctly.
· Use a lot of headlines and sub-headers. Your audience is lazy to read walls of texts. Write in bold or use different font sizes to highlight important ideas.
· Determine the search intent and use the correct format. For example, informational formats include guides, tutorials, checklists, listicles, how-to, etc.
· Write short URLs and include the target keyword for each page. Use lowercase letters and separate the words with a hyphen.
· Improve your page speed. Web users will quickly skip a website that takes a long time to load information. The ideal load time is 2 to 5 seconds.
· Optimize your meta descriptions. It should be an appealing summary of your blog post, preferably 1-2 sentences long (approximately 140 to 160 characters). You need to include the target keyword in your Google snippet.
· Avoid duplicate content.
Increasing blog traffic takes a lot of effort, but it is worthwhile. Implementing these tips can put you on the right path to success. And once you see positive progress, you’ll need to think about conversions.
Sources
- https://letter.ly/how-many-blog-posts-are-published-per-day/
- https://martech.org/quora-introduces-broad-targeting-says-audience-hits-300-million-monthly-users/
- https://ahrefs.com/blog/increase-blog-traffic/#section11
- https://moz.com/blog/21-tactics-to-increase-blog-traffic-2012
- https://yoast.com/seo-friendly-blog-post/
- https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-to-create-seo-friendly-content-with-semrush/
