Blogs are one of the most important forms of content marketing techniques that have been utilized by many industries in the contemporary world. Although bloggers write great content, not every blog goes viral. With how vast the world wide web really is, grasping the attention of audiences is not all that easy.
Our topic today is going to address the need to increase blog traffic.
Famous American author, Thomas Harris once said, “Problem solving is hunting. It is savage pleasure and we are all born to do it.”
Here are ten ways to increase traffic to your blog:-
Post Real Quality Content [OFTEN]
Quality here has a broader definition. It includes your headline, data, facts, the number of words etc. 80% of the readers say, that they choose to read a particular article only because of its title. So what does this imply? Spend the right amount of time developing eye-catching titles for each blog article. Your article should range between, 3000-10000 words to be among one of the most shared posts. To sum it all up, exciting content should be posted twice in a week, to increase traffic to your blog.
Use Photos
Not many people realize that using photos can help to increase blog traffic. It’s very simple. People like articles with pictures. Well, you should like pictures too if you want to succeed. Besides, there are more positives than negatives in using photos. Photos don’t just make an article look better and more interesting, they serve an even more useful purpose. Keywords can be attached to them, which in turn boost the SEO and increase blog traffic.
Note: Please don’t use pictures from Google as most of them are subject to copyright issues. Try other websites or you can even use your own pictures. The same thing applies to videos as well.
Link To Websites
To increase blog traffic, always link another website or web page that is mentioned in your article. Think of it simply as, helping out a friend. You are providing a kind of promotion service for them for free. You may hope, someday they someone would return this good gesture.But just like that’s one reason, there is a more ‘profitable’ one, to say the least. Google likes it when you link other websites (outbound) and thereby gives you a boost in the SEO rankings.
Stick To Social Sharing
Make it easy for people to share your blog posts. Humans are social creatures. So use the social connections that we are good at making. Allow your readers, to share your content on popular social media websites, like, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.
Entice Audience
Conduct exciting events on a weekly basis like contests and quizzes to keep the readers glued. Nobody says no to free things. It would be a nice idea if some kind of a give-away could be distributed on a weekly or monthly basis. Getting your readers to participate, will only enhance your relationship with them. Short on funds? Still, no problem. Look out for sponsors or such people who can contribute a little for these gifts.
Drive Interaction
Get interactive with your readers. You want to have a good relationship with them so the onus is on you to make the first move. Invite them to leave comments. Make it easy for them to subscribe to you. Reply to them as soon as possible, they should not be kept waiting for too long. Surprisingly, hospitality does matter, even for blogs.
Reach Out
Reach out to potential readers easily. How? If you already have a contact list, things aren’t that hard. Send an e-mail, if you don’t have an e-newsletter to all on your contact list, with a link to your blog. Since they are already your customers, they already like your work. So why not, give them more of your work? Don’t be scared to share some of your work, with esteemed organizations that work in your line.
Note: This tip is for the more professional bloggers. However, home bloggers can also make use of this but they will need to purchase some kind of a database. Since they won’t necessarily be their customers, it’s not very useful.
Schedule Posts
Twitter accounts are actually useful. But it’s not that easy maintaining one. You can use automation websites like HootSuite to help you handle, not just twitter but even Facebook. It is important to follow and unfollow regularly, to increase awareness. Repeatedly tweet articles from your blog, thereby providing them access to your blog. However, it is important to continue this process for some time and also retweet the old tweets as well. Don’t be too ashamed to ask for things like retweets, everyone does it.
Interact With Groups
LinkedIn is not too far away from Twitter when it comes to strategizing for an increase in blog traffic. It is in fact, equally important. The best thing about LinkedIn is that it lets you join up to 50 groups in total. Each group has hundreds and thousands of people. Thereby, making your reach unimaginable, in many ways. Occasional posts with a link to your blog will definitely make a difference.
Long Tail Keywords
Use long-tail keywords to increase blog traffic organically. This has become much more useful for the implementation of Panda in 2011. To be honest, the statistics are actually scary. 78% increase in organic traffic after the optimization for long-tail keywords.
