Top 20 ways to Draw Traffic to Your Blog

Increasing blog traffic is every blogger’s aim. Whether his main concern is to reach out to a wide audience, or make some money out of his blog, he needs more traffic for his blog to be of any use. Blogs take time, hard work and dedication to build. But without traffic, it will just be a lonely uphill struggle.

So, you’ve got your blog up and running, but you are waking up day after day to find you have no traffic? What‘s going wrong? This is a common bloggers’ problem. And today, we will show you some of the ways, big and small, in which you can increase your blog/website audience.

There are a lot of blogs out there that can give you similar information. But we will take you sequentially and step by step from choosing a platform to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tips.

Starting off

1.  Choosing your platform

OK. Most of you might be past this step. But for those who have yet to start anew, or merely want to create another blog, this step is important. Understand that no blogging platform is perfect. You have to choose a platform that’s right for your blog, since every blog has different requirements. Professional bloggers might make their own blogging environment and CMSs (Content Management Systems). But for new bloggers, platforms like WordPress and Blogger (etc) will do just fine, since they are free. You might want to consider the functionality these platforms offer, because once your blog starts growing sizably, such factors kick into play.

                      

You can take a look at these links which will help you in deciding what platform is right for you

• 6 Reasons Why Blogger Overshines WordPress
• Top Ten Things I Hate About Blogger

2.  Choose The Right Title

Title is everything. It is the first thing a visitor looks at in your post. So it must be catchy, and must grasp the visitor’s attention. Phrases like “How To…..” catch the readers’ attention. Similarly, use phrases like “Top 5”, “Top 10”, “Top 101” etc. Numbers catch the eye. And give the reader a general idea of how long the post is going to be.

Another thing to be kept in mind is keywords. They are very important. Keywords are what people enter into their search engines. So your title must contain keywords relevant to your content. Use the Google Keyword Tool to check what keywords would be most suitable for your posts

While writing posts…

Here are a few things you need to keep in mind while writing a post

3.  Pay attention to typography, content layout and visuals

Visuals are extremely important to your posts. Your readers’ time is precious! That’s why many tend to skim rather than read the whole post. So create a keyword rich opening paragraph that captures the gist of your post, and also retains the readers’ attention.

Write short, to the point paragraphs. Use bullets and numbering when appropriate, because that way, it’s easier to read and catch the main points.

4.  Add images and videos

Images are vital to your posts. They make your posts more interesting. Always add an image to your introductory paragraph and extra images where necessary.

Make videos related to your posts if relevant. Or find relative videos on the internet and put them on your post. That way, people can watch the video and get the gist if they don’t want to read the whole post.

Also add Alt Tags to your images. People search as much for images as for words. So having keywords in your image Alt Tag will increase the chances of your image showing up on someone’s search results. Hence, it will increase your traffic. To learn how to tag images, click here.

About the post itself….

5.  Create quality content

Google and other search engines evaluate the content on a website and use the quality and length to help determine a page’s ranking. Of course the higher the ranking, the more traffic you get. Hence it’s crucial that you write quality content on your blog. Do some research on the topic you want to write about. It takes time to gather quality content, but then again, success comes before work only in a dictionary :). Check out our post on How To Create Better Quality Content In Lesser Time.

6.  Discuss Popular Culture

This is a very vital, yet underestimated way of increasing traffic. People want to talk about most recent stuff!! Nobody will bother reading or commenting on old news! So always refer to what’s happening out there right now! This will give an up-to-date feel to your blog, and people will be more interested.

 7.  Show your authority

When writing about something, always write it in a way that says you know about the topic well. Be passionate about it. For example if your blog is about cars, talk about some pros and cons of a particular car. Do some research and give your own review about. That way, even if you haven’t driven that car, people would think otherwise. But be careful! Don’t brag or over exaggerate. Or dish out wrong information. Because then you will be in trouble with your viewership.

8.  Talk natural, talk humble

When writing, keep your tone as natural as possible. As if you were communicating with people face to face. Keep your expressions natural and say whatever comes in your mind. But don’t be impolite in the process. People will respect an author who interacts with them in a humble manner and does not brag or insult them in any way. Keep out any jokes that might hurts the sentiments of any group of people.

9.  Create and maintain some suspense

It’s often a good idea to create some level of curiosity and suspense among your readers. For example, if you are giving out some tutorials, then you can say something like “Stay tuned for the next post because we are going to show you how to do (such and such thing)”. This will spark the interest of the readers, and they may come back again for your next post. Hence, this strategy will generate a somewhat regular audience.

10.  Link to other pages

Linking is extremely important. Make as many links as possible, both inside your blog and outside. If you are making a point about something that you already wrote about earlier, then link to that earlier post! This will increase your page views. Also link to external sources wherever needed. Notice how we have linked to some other sources that would help you better understand some points. This helps improve your page rank. And hence increases your traffic in the long run.

You should also tag your posts with appropriate keywords. In this way, your readers can easily access related posts within your blog. Hence, better page rank and increased page views.

11.  Table of contents helps

Having a table of contents on your blog and even in a long post (such as this) makes it easier for readers to navigate through the topics they want to cover. It also gives a general overview of what your blog contains.

After posting…

Once you are done with writing your post, there are many things you can do that would improve your long term traffic

12.  Make use of social media!

Social media is perhaps one of the best ways to driving traffic to your blog, since a lot of people use social media these days. The major Social Media sites that help a lot are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. As we already discussed, if you have a video backing your post, then a lot of traffic will come through the video’s host site, like YouTube.

Social networking sites also help. Create a home page of your blog on the major sites. You can then interact with people easily and provide them with posts on their host social media sites. This way, they won’t have to visit your blog all the time, since all the information and updates are available to them directly. Although this doesn’t increase traffic immediately, it does create a fan base. Those fans can promote your blog and hence, it will provide you with a steady viewership that increases over time.

13.  Guest Blogging

Invite other bloggers to write for you! And write posts for them in turn as a guest! This strategy is also quite effective, since people from other blogs will come to see your blog! It will also increase your post frequency and hence your page rank would improve.

14.  Interact on networks and forums

A large chunk of audience comes from this method. And it’s one of the best ways to get a new blog started, since nobody knows your blog at the very start. Once you participate in forums like Blogger forum, people will follow you to your blog. Add your blog URL as a signature so that whenever you post a comment, the URL will appear next to your name. And then people will click on the URL and hence land on your own blog.

Also share your posts on your personal social media pages, as well as on forums. Search for people who are asking for help related to something you know. Help them out by referring them to your blog. And it never hurts to ask your friends to spread your blog around 🙂

15.  Create Backlinks

Increase your backlinks! Backlinks are links on other websites to your own blog/website. You can increase them by participating in forums. There are other websites as well that can help you but you have to return the favor. So choose wisely what sites you link to on your blog, because your reputation depends on it. Check out some websites like linkreferral. You can also check how many backlinks you have on back link checker websites

16.  Use ads – carefully

We have seen many newbie bloggers placing ads after a few posts. This is a common mistake and do not do it! Not at the start at least. If you put up ads at the start, it hurts your blog’s reputation. People consider it as another amateur blog wanting to make some money. Hence, it hurts your traffic. What you should do is, wait for a decent amount of traffic. Then is a good time to put up ads. Good traffic results in good quality ads. And hence you will make more money that way, rather than starting advertising with a low traffic.

 17.  Post Frequency and Timing

Frequency is very important. The more frequency, the faster your blog will grow. At least 2 posts per day are recommended for most bloggers.

Timing is very crucial. You have to identify the time at which you get most amount of traffic. Then time your posts accordingly. For example if most of your views happen at 9am, then schedule your posts at around 8 30am. Otherwise, people will miss out your latest posts and hence lose interest in your blog.

18.  Brand your blog!

Yep. That’s right. Build your own brand! Personalize your blog, and create its unique identity! Create a logo or icon or some sort. That would give it a professional look and people will recognize your blog just by the icon. For example, who here can’t identify the Facebook logo? See the point? People will remember your blog that way and will visit again

19.  Learn and apply SEO

Yes, SEO takes time. It’s not even so much the application of it. It needs to be learned, then you need to stay on top of the latest changes and methods, as it isn’t something static with Google changing their ranking criteria at least a couple of times a year. This is essential to increase blog traffic.

This might mean optimizing graphics, titles and tags on your blog. Spend time researching each keyword up front for the best results. Use SEO plug-ins and URLs to aid your blog in getting found.

20.  Monitor your traffic

Note your most viewed articles. Improve upon them and update them. Also feature them on your blog and create links to them in other posts.

As mentioned earlier, time your posts. Publish more posts on days you get more traffic (weekends etc). And publish around the most viewing time.

This is in no way all there is to increasing traffic. But these are some of the most popular effective methods. Hopefully, you learned from them and will apply them to your own blog. And if there is any problem, feel free to ask. We will be obliged to help.