When we talk about blogging, what do you expect in return? Are you writing for the sake of writing? Or are you looking for a way to generate income?
If you are the first type, then you just need to keep writing anything you’d love to and you’re good to go. You probably don’t need any technique to boost your blog traffic.
But if you are the second one who is looking for a way to generate income, then traffic is your strength. And you need to a bit of strategy to achieve that.
Keep on reading this article.
Well in fact, I am not a high profile blogger. I started blogging because I like to write and love to share knowledge and experience I have to anyone who need it.
So, you can guess, I do it in my spare time and didn’t expect anything in return. Not money, not fame. Consider me as the first type of blogger I mentioned above.
Though I was happy about it, but it started to build up curiousity. How if I want to get more traffic? What should I do?
I know a big number of blogger out there, are struggling to increase their traffic too.
The reason is obvious. More traffic means more money.
Now, let’s go back to my blog.
If I put on the list, these are what I usually do. Nothing much, really.
- My blog posts are averagely 500 characters.
- Have images on all of the posts..
- Share them to social media.
What I didn’t do:
- I didn’t update content frequently.
- Never really thought about keywords.
- Didn’t do paid advertising for the blog.
I don’t think what I’ve done could skyrocket my blog’s traffic.
To find the answer, there’s nothing better than to fire up Google and start researching. These results are what I am going to share with you.
If you have been searching ups and downs to increase traffic of your blog, then this post is the right one for you. Just keep on reading.
1. Your blog post needs to have value.
Yes, valuable posts are the very first thing you need to gain traffic. The logic is pretty simple. When your blog posts are useful, people would love to read them and share them. The more they share, the more traffic you get.
And it gets better when they bookmark your site and subscribe to your email.
2. You need to narrow down your topic.
Of course, you can always write about anything and everything. But usually, these types of blog aren’t going to be that successful.
That’s because many people goes to the internet to look for information and solutions. And a successful blog is often the one that provide solution.
By setting up your blog to cover various topic won’t make it sound like the right place to find specific answer to their specific problem.
Let’s say, if you want to stay updated with information about SEO, you will follow and bookmark SEO blogs, because these specific blogs can solve your specific problems regarding search engine.
Creating niche content probably won’t earn you wide demography of audiences, but you will get loyal readers who keep coming back to your blogs.
3. You need to create evergreen contents.
Though blog is one type of digital publishing and can be considered a media too, but remember, you are not a news portal, unless if you want to become one.
But in the topic that you read here, I am absolutely talking about blog that is handled by one person. I know some of you may have more than one writer on the back though, but you get my point.
News based contents, could be easier in getting traffic by reporting happening events and trending news, but the contents are very short in term of life cycle.
The problem is, as a blogger, you don’t have time and energy to write that much in one day, especially when you’re still on a daily job.
So, focusing on evergreen contents is what you should do, because they have longer life cycle, and your blog post can still be useful to your audiences for years to come.
4. You need to blog consistently.
There are two reasons why you need to write consistently, to improve search engine optimization (SEO) and to fulfill your reader expectation.
Let’s talk about the first one, to improve SEO.
Search engine like Google has algorithm to crawl and index websites around the globe. These web crawlers travel the web space to check and record various information on each website. Some of these information can be found in Google Analytics.
These robots will continuously come to look for new content on every websites, including your blog.
When you update your blog with new content more frequently, search engine will crawl and index your site more frequently too. It will give your blog greater weight which eventually rank it higher in search results.
Now, let’s talk about the second one, reader expectations.
Considering that you have certain numbers of reader that bookmark and subscribe to your blog. These are loyal readers that you can’t afford to miss.
The main reason they bookmark and subscribe is to stay updated with your future updates, because they think your content benefits them.
When you consistently update your blog, you fulfill the expectation of your readers for fresh content.
Besides, there are other advantages you could get, such as improve your personal branding and grow your digital presence.
5. Share your blog post to social media.
This is a no-brainer. So, I wouldn’t need to talk too much about sharing your content to social media. More share means more view, which also means more traffic. It’s as easy as that. Let’s move on!
6. Re-share your old content.
Have you ever noticed that many contents circulated over Facebook, Twitter and other social media are actually old contents?
This is also one of the benefits of evergreen contents. You can re-share past blog posts on a regular basis.
If you are using self-hosted wordpress as backend, then you can find some plugins to do this job automatically. I’m using Revive Old Post by ReviveSocial by the way.
7. You need to create infographics.
They said, pictures speak louder than words. I said, infographics speak louder than text-based contents.
Keep in mind that it is much better to create your own than using infographics created by other people, because you can put your blog name and URL into the picture.
Imagine if it is shared by your audiences, to their social media or into their website, of course with attribution link, isn’t it going to bring traffic to your blog?
But to create a good infographic, you can’t just mixing some pictures and text. In order to make it sharable, you need to follow these rules:
- Find the information you wish to use.
Make sure they are as credible and trustable as possible. One good way to do this is, find reliable blogs and websites that offer these information, write down the data and also its sources. - Find a tool to design your infographic.
If you are a visual designer, you might want to use common tool like Photoshop. But if you are not, Canva can be a great tool. - Promote your infographic
Beside publishing your infographic to a variety of social media platforms, you can also submit it to infographic directory, such as SubmitInfographics.com.
8. Create video contents.
Ok, pictures might speak louder than words, but videos speak louder than pictures.
Video has became an important part of content now. If you are browsing the newsfeed of your social media, you will find a lot of videos being shared online.
Many of the popular blogs are using videos to spread their contents too, because it can increase engagement higher than the other type of contents.
You can read more about video content at:
10 Engaging Types of Video Content for Your Content Marketing Strategy.
Conclusion
These 8 tips are the most important strategies you should use to increase traffic. If you use these techniques, you will notice the difference very soon.
There is a reason why I place valuable content as the first technique. It is simply because it is the most important among all of them.
There’s no use to implement the other 7 tactics if you don’t have contents that is useful for readers.
Again, people goes to internet to solve their problems. Even seeking for entertaining information is considered as to look for solution too. The problem is in the urge of looking for entertainment.
If you find this blog post useful, you have to try them in order to increase your traffic. Feel free to let me know if you have.
Also, another request, you can help others by helping me share this post.
Wahidin Wong is a digital marketer at Adkomu.com and an editor at Tobeeko.com. He is also a jazz and bossa lover.
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