With blogs now numbering into the 100’s of Millions and daily blog posts in excess of 5M, there is no doubt that getting blog traffic is more challenging today than it was a few years ago. At the same time, not all blogs are made the same and many bloggers have little or no idea how to increase blog traffic so standing out from the crowd is completely within your reach even in the most competitive niches.
We continually get 100,000+ blog visits per month across dozens of blogs we own, so increasing blog traffic is something we know a thing or two about.
Tips on how we get our traffic, and even more important, how we convert that traffic into online sales and profit are all available from Info Marketer’s Zone – here are some tips you can use to get more blog traffic.
Let’s first remember, more important than increasing traffic to your blog is making sure that traffic is engaging by spending more than a few seconds reviewing your content, leaving comments and/or moving from blog visitor into subscriber and eventually buyers. I would take fewer visits to a higher conversion any day…so make sure you have a purpose for your blog and blog posts and that you measure the effectiveness of your content in relation to that purpose.
Here are 4 of the keys to increase your blog traffic
Know And Understand Your Audience
Many blogs start based on a personal interest, lifestyle or perhaps topic with little thought being given to the audience that you are trying to attract or that are attracted to your content.
As a result, you end up either with scattered content that does not consistently attract the same audience or you end up with a blog that really does not evolve with your audience – either way you shake it, this will impact the traffic to your blog in a negative way.
Put some thought into exactly who you are targeting, what the objective of your blog is and where you would like your blog to be in 3-months, 6-months or even 1-year time. When you begin to think of your blog as a communication, coaching or entertainment tool over the longer-term then it takes on a new perspective with different content ideas over time.
Grab Attention and Tap Into Interest
Once you have your audience defined and in mind, your main job becomes uncovering the frustrations, desires, questions and interests of that target audience. This is important, you can develop content all day long forever but if you miss the mark on tapping into what interests your prospects the most, your blog traffic will not budge.
Here are some of the places I like to visit regularly to stay on top of what my target markets are most interested in…
- Amazon – I watch top selling books, products and comments around products that target my audience.
- Top blogs and authority sites – here I have regular blogs and authority sites that target my audience learning what topics are working for them and then reverse engineering those topics to understand WHY they are working
- Reviewing top query sites (like question.com and quora for example) are incredibly valuable sites in helping tap into commonly asked questions, frustrations and desires of your market
- Reddit groups – another great place to study the conversations, questions, opinions, frustrations and desires of markets
- YouTube – watching which videos rise to the top and get the most engagement is fascinating not to mention useful in determining topics with the most interest and attention
- Social sites like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat also serve as great research tools to get an inside look into the minds of your marketplace
I have a saying…”he who knows his or her market best, wins the game…PERIOD!”
It doesn’t matter how good at generating content you are, if you cannot understand and read your market to uncover their interests, desires and know what gets their attention, your content will fail and your bid to increase your blog traffic will not be reached.
Post Regularly
I hope I don’t have to spend too much time on this one, after all keeping up a regular posting schedule should be a blog traffic 101 fundamental at this point. Finding ideas will be aided by mastering tips 1 and 2 above – now you should have no shortage of content ideas which makes regular blog posting that much easier.
When it comes to posting regularly, your schedule will need to become something you decide based on your ability, availability and the response you are getting over a 1-2 month time period (giving your content time to be found and momentum to build.)
For some of you, posting daily will be within reach and something that suits both your availability as well as skill level…for others it may be once each week. Whatever you decide on, make it consistent so that your audience has reason to come back to your blog and you are staying in front of your audience with fresh content. It’s ok to vary your schedule by posting more, but really try to not post less than once each week.
Actively Market Your Content
This one fools so many new (and more experienced) bloggers – your job is not finished when you post content…in fact, it is just starting.
You have produced attention-grabbing, interesting and engaging content so why not let the WORLD know about it?
At the very least you want to syndicate your content across different blog directories, socially bookmark your content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and post about it on social video and streaming profiles you should have setup with Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and others. (TIP** You must take these platforms seriously and actually build a following sharing multiple times each day so that when you do bookmark content from your blog or put on notice of an offer, your audience will pay attention)
Go even further by spending 15-minutes each day searching out other blogs in your area and commenting against those blogs (make the comments legitimate and useful) linking back to your content where appropriate (either in your comment header or in the body of the comment – though this will mean less of your blog comments will be approved…still if your linking is in context then go ahead)
There is nothing wrong with sharing your content multiple times each day, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have become increasingly busy so you want to give your audiences multiple times to see it each day. Finally, you may (and should) promote some of your Facebook or Instagram posts that bring more attention to specific pieces of content. Many promotions on these platforms focus on sending traffic back to landing pages or sales pages, you can do quite well spending $10 to bring 100’s of visitors back to a specific blog post where you can increase your blog traffic, attract new – loyal readers and achieve new sign-ups and sales right from your blog.
Believe it or not, you can still increase your blog traffic even though competition has become fierce. Using sound, fundamental online marketing techniques your blog will get more attention and stand out to become one of the top blogs in your market niche…it takes some work and dedication to get things rolling.
