5 Effective Strategies to Increase Your Blog Traffic

Hello! Today, I have a great post from my friend Addi. Addi runs two successful blogs and is going to show how you can do the same. Enjoy!

Hi, I am Addi from Frugal Fanatic and Simply Blogging Along. Today, I wanted to share with you 5 effective strategies to increase your blog traffic.

Before I get into my proven methods I wanted to give you a quick background and tell you about my blogging journey so that you can understand why and how I have built a profitable blog. I started blogging in 2011 as a hobby. I was only looking for a place to share how my family and I were saving money.

I was clueless. I had no idea that you could even earn an income from a blog, but I jumped right in and started figuring it all out.  My first two years of blogging are kind of a blur. I did not do much with my blog Frugal Fanatic nor was I really providing any kind of value to my readers.

I decided it was time to make some changes. I told myself that I would commit my time and dedicate myself to see what blogging was all about. I quickly became obsessed and learned that I was truly passionate about it. I made a few changes and quickly saw results.

Within 3 months I went from 10,000 pageviews to over 100,000 pageviews. This was my ‘ah-ha’ moment. I started to see that I could reach a larger audience and provide them with meaningful content that they would truly enjoy reading.

Side note from Michelle: Blogging is how I make a living and just a few years ago I never thought it would be possible. I made over $320,000 last year by blogging and I’m hoping to double that in 2016. You can create your own blog here with my easy-to-use tutorial. You can start your blog for as low as $3.49 per month plus you get a free domain if you sign-up through my tutorial.

Since then, I never looked back. Last year, I was able to double my traffic and hit 600,000 monthly visitors. My readers became more engaged and my audience is now filled with the right readers.

I  have earned a lot through my own successes and failures the last few years. Below you will see 5 of my proven strategies to help you increase your blog traffic.

5 Effective Strategies to Increase Your Blog Traffic:

1 – High-Quality Content

Your content is the core of your blog so you need to make sure that you are always providing meaningful content for your ideal reader. Building your traffic relies heavily on the value that you provide to your audience.

If someone new lands on your blog and feels like they are reading information that they can find anywhere else online then more than likely they will not return. You want them to be intrigued so that they not only read the post, but share it with their friends and become a loyal reader.

The key to providing valuable content is quality over quantity.

Making this change had big results for my blog. Once I started to step-up my content and provide actionable advice my audience started to consistently grow.

I began writing longer posts that had more value. Instead of focusing on just throwing up an article to have something new I started writing posts anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 words.

I then added more information by providing my readers with content upgrades, which is normally a free worksheet or download. This was my way of giving them something of value that they could print and use.

Not sure what to write that would be valuable to your readers? Here are 3 tips to get you started on writing high-quality content:

• Answer your audience’s questions -This may seem so simple, but it is often times overlooked. If you are struggling to come up with post ideas then just start listening to your audience. See what kinds of questions they are leaving on your blog, or even on other websites. Think of the questions you are frequently asked over and over again. By answering your reader’s questions, you are tapping into their needs and providing meaningful content that they will enjoy.
• Provide content that is actionable – Valuable content always encourages your reader’s to take action. You want them to read your post and be compelled to make changes or try something new in their life depending on your topic. Providing some kind of actionable takeaway is what will keep them coming back to your blog. Your post needs to benefit your reader.
• Always think about your reader – As much as you may think that your blog is about you, it isn’t. It is about your ideal reader. When creating content, you need to be fulfilling their needs and solving their problems within your post. You still want to infuse your unique voice, outlook, and experiences but the content needs to be relevant and valuable to their lives.

2 – Guest Posting

Guest posting is a great strategy to increase your blog traffic if done right. It can help you to get in front of a new audience who will potentially become loyal readers.

The first thing you want to do is find blogs within your niche that will allow you to write a guest post. Just because a blog has a large audience it does not necessarily mean you should guest post on their site. You want to get in front of your ideal reader so find bloggers within your niche or have a similar audience to yours.

In order to build your community and increase your traffic with guest posting, you want to provide your best content. Check out the blog you are going to write on and find a topic that they have not covered yet. Think of how you can provide their audience with value so that they will click over to your blog.

One thing that works really well is to write a high-quality post and then link it back to a post on your site where you have some kind of content upgrade or freebie to download. Instead of just sending them to your homepage you want to link to a specific page or post on your blog.

Not only will this allow you to capture their email address, but it will be giving the reader an immediate takeaway from the post.

3 – Pinterest

I mentioned above how my blog went from 10K pageviews to over 100K pageviews in 3 months. This was all because of Pinterest. I call Pinterest a game-changer, because it truly was a game-changer for my blog.

Pinterest is an insanely powerful tool if used right. Here are five things you can do to increase your traffic from Pinterest.

Pinterest Profile – Use a personal image on your profile, not only do you want it to stand out when someone lands on your account, but is also shows up with the images you pin on the homepage. This can help to create brand awareness and get more people to follow your account.

Your profile bio needs to focus on the value you provide to your audience and should include some kind of call to action. 

Instead of just writing what your blog is about, tell people what they can expect and even give them something that is meaningful. You can see from the picture that I have a link to my free budget binder worksheets.

Pin-worthy Images – I am sure you know how important it is to use great images that are vertical and have an easy-to-ready overlay on Pinterest, but you need to take it a step further. A great image is not enough.

The picture will get people to repin it, but the description is what will get them to click through to your blog. Focus on writing better pin descriptions that use keywords and phrases. You want someone to be compelled to click the image and read your post. Not to mention that Pinterest is like a search engine so when someone types in the search bar you want your post to pop-up.

Group Boards – Getting onto group boards can be extremely beneficial, but the important part is finding boards that are relevant to your blog content. You do not want to get on every board that has a high follower count.

It needs to be specific to your niche so that you are getting in front of the right audience. To do this, you can type in keywords that relate to your content in the Pinterest search bar. Then, click ‘boards’ at the tops and look for boards with the people symbol in the right hand corner.

Before joining, check out the board and see how active it is. Also, look at the average amount of repins to make sure it is a high-quality board.

4 – SEO

You do not want to rely on one source of traffic for your blog. I made this mistake a few years ago. I relied heavily on Facebook, and then they changed their algorithms and my traffic plummeted.

Moral of the story, diversify. You never know when Pinterest, Twitter or any other social media platform will change. Ranking in search engines will help increase your traffic without having to rely on social media. Think of how many people search daily for your blog topics. If you can be in the top 10 results your blog will receive much more traffic that is highly targeted.

Search engines’ sole purpose is to provide people with the most relevant content when they are searching. When someone has a problem or question they are turning to Google for an answer. This goes back to providing high-quality content that helps your readers solve a problem. You want your blog to come up as a relevant search result for specific keywords.

Having a strategy will help you to do this. You want to structure your posts so that they are SEO-friendly. Here are a few tips for on-page SEO strategies:

• Include your keyword or phrase in the title
• Put the keyword or phrase in the post URL
• Make sure your meta-description is intriguing and also includes your keywords. This is the text that appears in search results below the title so the description needs to compel people to click over to your blog
• Use your keywords naturally throughout your content
• Interlink and provide your readers with other relevant content to read
• Optimize your images and use your keyword in the ‘alt-text’

People who come to your site from a search engine are a lot more specific than any other traffic source. They are more likely to stick around longer and sign-up for your email list because they specifically searched terms that led to your blog.

5 – Google Analytics

Another great way to increase your traffic is by utilizing your stats. One of the best parts of Google Analytics is that it will show you what is and is not working for your specific audience.

There are a lot of reports that will help you understand what your audience likes and does not like on your site.

To go back to strategically using Pinterest, you can use your reports to find out which posts are getting the most amount of traffic from Pinterest. To do this go to:

Acquisition > Social > Overview > Pinterest

Here you will see the top posts or pages that get the highest amount of traffic from Pinterest. Now that you can see your top 10 posts you can start writing more posts that have similar topics to those because you know that is what your audience is interested in.

You can also identify trends and either pin more of that same kind of content or pin those pins more frequently. I also recommend going into these tops posts and updating them. Make sure your content is valuable, your images are pinnable and you can even add in affiliate links.