Starting your blog or website to make money online and pursue your passion has become easy. But with so much noise in the internet world, driving traffic to your posts and articles can be challenging. But no worries, I’ve got you covered on how to get traffic to your blog with proven methods in this article.
In this article, you’ll explore and learn several methods to increase blog traffic. All these ways are free as long as you don’t outsource services for following them.
These methods and strategies helped me reach 250K Visits per month to my websites according to Similarweb. and the number is increasing every single month.
Without further ado, let’s get started!
How to Get Traffic to Your Blog for Free
Once you set up your blog, it’s time to increase blog traffic for free. After getting a substantial boost in traffic, you can use paid methods to increase your blog’s traffic as well.
Create & Understand Your Users’ Persona
Whenever I start my blogs, I always create and then understand the personas of my potential readers. It’s important to understand your blog’s users to create a strategy to fulfill their needs. Only then can you bring in traffic.
While it sounds daunting to create your users’ persona, it isn’t. All you need is to answer the following questions:
- Who is your target audience?
- What’s the target age group?
- What are the problems of your audience?
- How will your potential users find a solution, and where?
- How much do they already know about a particular topic or problem?
The more questions you’ll answer, the better understanding you’ll develop. After that, use the information to help your blog’s users solve a problem.
Start Grabbing Email Subscribers
If you’re new to blogging, you are likely to spend your time only driving new users to your website. And that is a big mistake! Why? Because 70% of your users leaving your blog will never return.
Then why bother getting the traffic in the first place? My recommendation is to build your email list even if your blog is new. Once you start collecting your users’ email addresses, start sending emails to bring traffic to your blog.
Here is a screenshot of my ConvertKit Email Marketing Dashboard:
I think you noticed that I have a Good Open and Click Through Rate! Do you want to know the secret?
It's about keeping your List active and fresh. Every month, I delete all inactive users, and I ensure only interested people are on my list.
So if you like to stay on my List! Please be ACTIVE ????
Make Use of Editorial Calendar
After doing the keyword research, you must have tons of post ideas to share on your blog. But honestly, it can be overwhelming to deal with a large list of keywords. Organizing makes things easy and practical.
So, create an editorial calendar to keep track of all the posts. This way, you’ll stick with your content plan and thrive in the long-run. Otherwise, most people quit after writing two to three blog posts only. The choice is yours!
Be consistent but don’t be too hard on yourself. Start with a post each week, and rock!
???? Tip: you can use Notion to organize not only your Blog, but Your Life too!
Relish the Power of Push Notification
Whenever you visit a website, you usually view a push notification asking you to get notified of new content. It’s a wonderful way to generate traffic to your blog seamlessly. I like it because I can engage with my visitors after they’ve left my blog.
I use OneSignal here on my blog, and I think you noticed the popup the first time you visited my blog. Till the day I am writing these words I have around 8K Subscribers in my Push notification list, which is really a great source of traffic whenever I publish a new post.
Here is a screenshot from my last couple of push notifications I sent lately:
You can see I got around 567 clicks, Not Bad, haa ????
Create Useful Content Using Images, Charts, Videos, & More
Create a valuable piece of content for your blog’s users, the most important way to increase blog traffic. And it’s my favorite! Write on the topics your users cannot resist reading it. Create as many pillar articles and blog posts as possible.
Add images, charts, videos, infographics, tables, and every other thing which adds value to your users. Go in-depth about the subject you’re writing about. Prove your authority in your niche, and you will bring in a lot of traffic to your blog.
???? Tip: One of my favorite tools that I use almost every day to create graphics, posts, banners, and design everything is Canva. And what's nice is that you can use it Totally for free!
Make Your Content Extremely Skimmable for Your Readers
Search engines love long pieces of content. But your blog’s users may or may not love them. Make your blog posts and articles extremely readable for your users. Most of the time, they don’t read but skim your content.
Your readers don’t want to get impressed by your top-notch vocabulary. They want a solution to their problem. All you need is to help them understand the subject so that their life gets easier than before. That’s just it!
Bonus:
- Use simple words, write short sentences and paragraphs.
- Use headings, subheadings, bullets, and numbering.
- Improve the typography of your blog or website.
Write Killer Headlines to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
When users of a search engine find your blog post in search results, they will see its headline. They’ll click on your post only if the headline is attractive. Your titles should not be clickbait but click-worthy. Period.
A killer headline causes some emotional response and offers reward or value. You should be creative enough to encourage a click to your article or post and still add your target keywords.
???? Tip: you can use MonsterInsights. A free WordPress Plugin that will help you write better headlines with the Free Headline analyzer that is built in with this Plugin.
Automate Sharing Your Blog Posts
Social sharing can be a powerful way to drive traffic to your blog and website. But you need to share posts to attract social media users regularly. There are tons of tools you can use to automate sharing your blog posts on social media.
I use Content Studio, which helped me automate almost every single post on my social profile. you can give it a try if you want!
How to Get Traffic to Your Blog Using Q&A Sites Like Quora
Question and answer sites like Quora help bring in a lot of traffic to your website or blog.
Let me give you a few reasons to participate in Q&A sites. Firstly, these websites have impressive domain authority.
Secondly, there’s a large audience for you to target. Keep adding value with your answers, and people will get back to your blog. I don’t recommend going to these sites and spamming links to your blog.
Here is a screenshot from my Quora analytics, hope it gives you some motivation!
Repurpose Your Content
Repurposing content refers to changing the existing content for other platforms and formats. For example, if you have a blog post, turn it into an infographic. Repurpose an article to a social media post.
Benefit? You don’t need to spend a lot of time and bucks to create content from scratch. Use the existing content as a framework for a new piece of content. This way, you also share your content with a completely new audience.
Increase Blog Traffic With Social Media
Remember when I told you to bring your visitors to your email list to get them back to your blog? Create your social media profiles. Add link back to your blog. Post regularly. And share valuable content. People will visit your blog more often. Again, you can automate all this with Social Media automation tools like Content Studio, Hootsuite, Buffer…
How to Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
Pinterest is a powerful search engine for visual content. It has over 459 million monthly active users in the world. Its Pins rank high for several keywords in search engine result pages (SERPs). Create Pins and link them to your blog posts.
Grow your followers on Pinterest to increase traffic substantially in the long-run. Don’t ignore SEO here. Always use relevant keywords in your Pins & Boards. Join other group boards to expose your content to more people.
Using Facebook to Increase Blog Traffic
With 2.8 billion users, Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world. With that said, you can use it to drive traffic to your blog. Create a Facebook Business Page for your blog and share images with catchy captions.
And Don't Forget to make use of Facebook Messenger Bot Marketing!
How to Use Instagram to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
Using Instagram to drive traffic is a challenge because the platform doesn’t allow links in the posts. But with a few tactics, you can generate traffic to your blog from Instagram. Add a link to your blog in your bio. Use a call to action. Include your blog in videos. and if you have 10K Followers or more, you can Start Attaching Links to your stories! believe it's a great source of traffic!
Explore Other Social Media Networks
I’m not telling you to be everywhere. But explore every social media network to know which one is right for your blog. For example, if your blog is about entrepreneurship, you may want to engage with LinkedIn users. For a fashion website, Instagram or Pinterest would be perfect.
Get Your Blog Noticed by Google
Getting your blog noticed by Google is important to bring in organic traffic. Here is a screenshot of my Google Search Console Showing my Organic Traffic:
Let’s see what you can do to improve your rankings on the search giant.
How to Get Traffic to Your Blog Using SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization. You optimize your blog according to the search engine, so it ranks it well. Use the best SEO practices to boost your blog traffic. Sprinkle keywords across your content naturally, add images, and do strong interlinking.
Choose the Right Keywords
Keywords are words and phrases people use to find a piece of information. Choosing the right keywords is important because only then can you target your users. These keywords have clear search intent and substantial volume opportunities. The keywords for your blog should sync with your blog’s mission.
Do the Strong Interlinking
Links are ranking signals in the search engines. While you cannot control backlinks, you have all the control over internal links. These are the links that point to a different blog post of the same website. Interlinking not only lessens your blog’s bounce rate but also boosts your overall ranking for a particular keyword.
Increase Your Blog’s Loading Speed
Your blog’s loading speed is also a ranking factor in search engines like Google. And it’s not just the search engines; a user cannot wait long for a website or blog to load. If your blog is slow, you are likely to lose your potential visitors. Make sure it loads fast. Use caching, optimized images, and possibly a CDN to increase your site speed.
How to Get MORE Traffic to Your Blog Now
Now that you have worked on increasing your blog traffic, you want more of it. Let me give you a few more ways to boost your blog traffic.
Keep Updating the Old Content
You must have got a lot of content by now. Share your old blog posts on social media, Q&A sites as well. Automate posting your old content using tools like Bugger, Old Posts, and Revive. These tools will automatically share your old posts according to your instructions.
Work on Your Blog’s Backlinks
A backlink is a link from another blog or website to your posts or articles. It is clearly a ranking signal on search engines like Google. Backlinks show your blog’s authority in your niche. The more quality backlinks you have, the better your ranking will be.
Bonus: Reach influencers, write guest posts, and create killer content to attract backlinks.
Improve Your Website Design (If Needed)
The design of your website plays an important role in creating user experience and brand image. Don’t fall for beautiful themes which are heavy and useless for your users. The design should be clean and functional yet catchy.
For My Sites I use Simple, Fast And Clean Themes:
- Astra
- Reco
- Breek
Engage With Your Email Subscribers
In the first section of this blog post, I asserted the importance of building an email list. Now is the time to engage with your email subscribers. Talk to them. Understand them. And create more useful content according to them.
Make Your Own Online Community for Your Superfans
It’s a terrific way to build a strong base for traffic to your blog. Turn regular visitors into superfans by building your own online community geared for your blog. Your community grows with your influence. The more influence you have, the more traffic you will enjoy.
Become Social Proof to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog
Humans are emotional beings. We love following the trend. And we want to make sure everyone enjoys the experience so that we also do the same. What you need to do is become social proof. Ask for feedback from your existing users, approach them for testimonials, and ask them to rate your posts.
Track Keywords, Monitor Social Media & Write More Content
After writing blog posts and articles on several keywords, you may know which ones did better in SERPs. Create more content according to those keywords. Also, monitor your social media and write content according to the feedback. It’s a powerful way to make your fans superfans.
Keep Exploring Marketing Strategies
Honestly, marketing and SEO practices change fast. Your users’ personas also change. What do you need to do? Keep an eye on trends and explore new marketing strategies. Find and try fresh ways to strategize your business.
TL;DR – How to Get Traffic to Your Blog in 2021
Driving traffic to your blog is a challenging task, without a doubt. But if you follow these proven methods and strategies, you’ll eventually succeed. You’ll learn new ways along the way. Be consistent, especially if your blog is new.
