According to Hubspot, marketers who prioritize blogging are 13 times more likely to see a positive return on investment.
Well, blogging is an indispensable part of your business and that is why you have it. There are many factors that determine the success of a blog.
With this, you may face numerous challenges. If you have just started, you need to be patient first and then focus on other things.
How do you attract more traffic?
That's the million dollar question!
You can spend hours trying different tactics, but it never seems to work out in the end.
Don’t worry! We are here to help you increase the number of visitors on your blog by providing all the best tips, tricks, strategies, and more that will make it easier for you to bring in targeted traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
In this guide, we have shared detailed tips and tricks to boost your blog traffic using various methods and most importantly SEO.
Why blog?
You are probably wondering what is the point of blogging. There could be so many reasons why you should blog, here we have listed some common ones:
Blogging helps in building your brand and reputation as a blogger. If people read about your content on blogs they would know more about you, which will help them trust you or buy from your store if it's related to that article.
Blogging can bring new opportunities for online marketing techniques. You can use blogging as a promotional method to gain traffic from search engines.
It is an excellent and handy way of educating people about your product or service and it helps in increasing brand influence among the customers.
That said, Blogging can dramatically increase the number of people visiting your site. If you blog, that could be good for business as well.
Here are some actionable tips to increase blog traffic using SEO:
1. Create content for targeted audience
The first step is to understand your target audience. Every blogger has a different audience depending on the niche. If you are a fitness blog, your target audience would be fitness enthusiasts and those who want to improve their health or lose weight.
Board bloggers might have a broader range of readers than online marketers for example. The same goes for any other type of business that can benefit from blogging in the long run such as restaurants, marketing companies, and more!
There is no one size fits all formula here but usually, blogs should be created for the most specific audience that you can think of.
There are few questions that you can ask yourself:
- Who is your target audience?
- What problems are they facing that you can help solve?
- What kind of content are they looking for?
- How would they ideally try to find the answers to their questions?
To further find about them, know about their age, interests, geographical location, and more.
2. Use proper headlines to get more clicks
When creating headlines, it is important to make them enticing. Headlines should not only be catchy but also guarantee that their readers will find the content relevant and useful.
Your headline must contain your target keyword with regards to SEO perspective.
Some even suggest that your headline is more important than your actual post!
Do not stick to just one headline. Try experimenting with different headlines if you are not getting the clicks but only a good number of impressions.
Don't be afraid to try different headlines. Try sharing your post multiple times with different headlines and see what works best for you. It is one of the best practices to include power words and number value in your page title.
3. Organize your content: Make it readable
Some topics are harder to read than others, it is important that you utilize the space in your posts wisely so they can be readable.
You need to use paragraphs, subheadlines, and bullet points in your posts so that people will be able to scan them quickly.
By making posts more readable you are increasing your chances to be seen.
In the example below, notice how we have skimmed the content dividing it into different subheadings.
With more headings and sub-headings and simple sentences, your content looks clean and easy to read.
That said, focus on improving the readability to reduce the bounce rate.
Furthermore, the bullet points make your content more scannable. Mostly bloggers create content with 3-4 short paragraphs or bullet points for single subheads.
4. Create evergreen content
Evergreen content is content that is always relevant and fresh in the mind of your readers. You can create such content by adding new posts regularly to your blog. This will keep your blog relevant and fresh in the minds of your readers.
Evergreen content helps you keep improving the quality of your site for years after it was published, so you have an advantage over other sites that lack this strategy in their SEO.
Thus, an evergreen piece of content is one that gets more valuable the longer it remains online, while other content on your site can be dated and become less useful over time.
Some examples are how-to guides, tips, and tutorials, or some list blog content.
Tutorials can be very helpful for people to learn about a topic. People will spend more time reading them than other types of articles because they go into detail and teach you how to do something in more detail.
5. Create user-generated content
User-generated content is the best way to bring your website and blog to the top of search engines. In marketing, user-generated content refers to things people create about your brand that are not official representatives of the company.
User-generated content is the best way to bring your website and blog to the top of search engines. It means that you will have more people who are interested in your site, thus generating traffic for it.
For example, customer reviews, podcasts, interviews, or testimonials can prove to be good user-generated content.
6. Make editorial calendar and blog consistently
An editorial calendar is a list of events and tasks you need to accomplish every week. It will help you organize your time, plan your blog posts and be more productive. With an editorial calendar, you can make sure that your blog posts are always scheduled in the right time slots.
You can also manage the amount of time you spend on your blog posts and how often you publish new content.
You have to work hard at creating quality content for individual blogs and this is important so that you maintain consistency with other sites on a consistent day-to-day basis over time.
The best practice is to hire a good content writing agency. As an alternative, you can also make use of AI writing tools and assistant for creating high-quality content.
You can use Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, or even a simple spreadsheet. A regular blog plan and an editorial calendar would enhance your content marketing efforts keeping you ahead of competitors.
7. Make your content SEO-friendly
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process that involves optimizing a web page or site in order to increase its search engine visibility, rank higher on search engines, and get more traffic from searches.
You can improve your blog traffic by creating a website with great content. You need to make your content SEO-friendly and then submit it to search engines.
Blogs are usually used for sharing information, and search engines want to find the most relevant content for their visitors. A well-written blog post will make your website more visible in search results.
Publishing good quality content is a must. However, the keyword density of your blog posts should also be appropriate for SEO purposes.
Make sure to check our blog on the on-page SEO checklist.
Here are some of the most important On-Page SEO factors:
- Use keywords in title, description, and H1 tags
- Create SEO-friendly URL
- Use keywords in the first 100 words
- Make your design responsive
- Improve your page loading speed
- Create long and original content
- Optimize images with SEO attributes (ALT tags)
- Use external links with quality and relevancy
Also, make sure that the content is not over-optimized. Lastly, there are a number of guides that you can read on SEO.
8. Do keywords research before you write
Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of SEO.
Before you write a blog post, you should do keyword research. It will help you to identify the keywords that are going to be more effective for your blog post. You can use these keywords in your title, and in the body of your post.
So, can you do keyword stuffing in the content? Absolutely, No.
Once you have the best keywords, you can add them to the title and in the body of your post. You can't rely on free tools like Google keyword planner for your keyword ideas.
Besides the target keywords, it is the keyword variations, LSI keywords, and longtail keywords that need your attention. Use keyword research tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, or Spyfu to find all the relevant keywords.
Why Do Long-Tail Keywords Matter?
Short-tail keywords are also important. The search engines use the "most popular" terms for their algorithms and this is a good way to rank higher in Google. But, long-tail keywords can be even more effective because they have been used by more people than short-tail ones.
Long-tail keyword phrases usually have many words, which makes them easy to target with PPC advertising campaigns and cheaper when compared to the other methods of ad targeting available at your company.
9. Create an appealing website design
A website is not just a means to deliver your content, but it is also a marketing tool. You can use the design of your website to attract more visitors. You can also make your blog appealing by using attractive designs and visuals.
Your website design should be appealing and easy to use. You should have a clear, uncluttered layout with a navigation bar that is easy to use.
Your blog's images should be high-resolution and relevant to your topic. It is important to have a site that visitors can easily find and access.
A blog post with pictures, titles, and captions that are relevant to your blog post is also helpful.
Because it is all about the first impression and it takes only 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression.
You can use a WordPress theme and customize it as per your needs. You can also use a drag and drop builder like Beaver Builder to create a simple website in just a few minutes.
10. Make sure it is responsive
A responsive website is one that can adapt to all screen sizes from desktop, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Responsive layouts adjust the layout of a site for different devices.
It makes it easier for users to navigate through your website on any device.
You can make use of Google Analytics or Google Search Console to see how your mobile responsiveness. Google analytics would also give you a detail about how many visitors on your site are desktop users and how many were smartphone users.
Many web developers use wireframing tools to create web layout and check the responsiveness on different screen resolutions.
11. Add visuals to your content (images, infographics, charts, etc.)
Visuals are a must-have element in modern websites. Imagine a page comprised of texts with no images to visualize or explain.
Images help your visitors to understand the concept of what you are talking about more clearly and quickly than text alone can do.
Adding visuals to your content is one of the best ways to increase blog traffic.
Images, infographics, charts, and other visual elements can help you improve the readability of your content. Images can also help people remember your content more easily.
When people read an article with an image, they are more likely to remember it and share it with their friends.
It converts website visitors into loyal readers by providing them with the information they want, at the time that is most appropriate for them.
You can include infographics, charts, videos, and even GIFs to add more visual content to your blog posts.
12. Add descriptions to your images
Images are very important for the blog because it's the only way to convey information to the visitors. However, many bloggers do not include descriptions in their images.
But if you are not adding descriptions to your images, then your blog is less effective. Descriptions help the readers to understand what they are looking at and they also help them in deciding whether or not to click on a link.
To help search engines to understand the objective of your image, you can use the target keywords in your image alt tag. Use keyword variations and longtail keywords in your Image Alt tag to boost image SEO.
13. Share funny images/videos on social networks
Many bloggers do not share their funny content, but it's one of the best ways to increase traffic.
If you want to attract viral traffic from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest especially if that particular picture goes viral on these social channels (e .g. Justin Bieber), then you can share it on your blog, too.
By sharing a funny image on social media channels like Twitter or Facebook, your audience finds the content engaging and they are more likely to engage with you. Remember, business is all about building relationships.
14. Create a blog post for every social media channel
Many bloggers out there create posts in one social network and then move to the next, but that is not the best strategy anymore.
A good way of building your brand on multiple platforms would be creating content for each platform separately and sharing it on all these channels at once.
Different kinds of people may use different social media platforms. It's good to focus more on social media platforms that your target audience is more active on. But, you should always share content on other social media platforms which are less popular in the niche.
You never know, what's there ahead for you!
15. Interlink your content between each other
Internal linking is one of the most important parts of SEO.
Google uses internal links to learn more about your website and see how articles relate to each other. This is a ranking factor for them since they use the data that you publish on your site as an input into their search results.
Internal links, when placed strategically and in context, can help you increase page views and reduce bounce rate.
By passing the link juice from one page to another, you will be able to create a better link farm within your website. If you have a silo blog, you can read various guides on internal linking.
16. Add social share buttons to your content
Social media is an easy way to promote blog content and you need to include social buttons with all of your content so people can share it on social networks. That would help them find out about this site too, which makes sense for a marketing purpose as well.
Social share buttons can help increase your reach on social media and let users know that you are a reputable website.
You can place sharing buttons anywhere you want but they should be in the middle or bottom of the page to maximize exposure and traffic from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
17. Include a link to your site on all your web profiles
You need to include a link to your site on all your web profiles, social media accounts, and other platforms. Including a link to your site on all these platforms will increase the number of visitors that come to your blog.
Your blog is more likely to be found by people who are searching for information on similar topics. The more your blog is linked to other websites, the more traffic it will get.
The best practice is to include your link in the email signature.
You can also add the link for all your websites to the author bio of the websites that you are contributing to. If you are an influencer or have a large social media following, it is always a good practice to keep sharing your blog posts from time to time.
18. Ask and answer questions on Q&A websites
Most Google searches are mostly questions related. Thus, questions and answers are a great way to increase blog traffic.
Various sites like Quora.com, TripAdvisor, StackExchange offer questions and answers sections. In these Q&A websites, you can get noticed easily as people tend to post questions related to your blog topic, or they will ask you a question on that website.
You can create an account by creating a free user profile on any of these websites. The best practice is to join the sites that have a large number of users and answer questions related to your blog topic or niche.
You can try to find topics that are related to your niche and be active in those areas. This will help you get your name out there and build authority with people who care about similar things as you do.
19. Comment and interact on other blogs
Commenting on other relevant blogs is a great way to build relationships with top bloggers within your niche. You can find them by researching the web and commenting on their newest post.
It will help you build up an audience for yourself and give your opinions more weight with people who read about it in magazines like this one, which has many followers all over the world.
You can also help other bloggers by posting your thoughts and experiences on their blogs. You can also ask them for tips and tricks.
You can also promote the insights from your own content that attracts the author of the article. Commenting on blogs will help you develop your writing skills, increase traffic to your blog and make a good impression with the people who visit it.
20. Engage your readers into commenting
When you ask your readers to comment on a blog, it will help you build up engagement with the blog owner. If they reply back and thank the person for their comments, then this can become a relationship between them and the reader who commented.
This is an effective way of building relationships with top bloggers in your niche that could lead to future collaborations or work opportunities if done correctly.
Create content that engages your readers to comment. User-generated content includes blog commenting as one of the most important aspects.
The best way to get user comments is by asking for them.
For example, at the end of an article, you should ask readers what they think about your content or encourage them to ask questions.
For example, most bloggers use the phrase- "Please leave a comment below or ask your questions in case of doubts". You can also ask for suggestions through comments.
This builds the search engine's trust and helps in organic rankings.
21. Guest post on other blogs
Guest blogging is one of the best ways to increase blog traffic. Guest posting on other blogs gives you a chance to share your articles and gain an audience for your blog. By sharing other people's blog posts, you can also increase your blog traffic.
Due to increased spam, Google disregards guest posting a black hat but you can always reach out to the bloggers or a business blog to share your ideas.
Some bloggers may even charge for your guest posting but that it is always a good idea to get links naturally.
22. Share your content with fellow bloggers and ask for links
If you are new to blogging, you might want to focus on building your brand and your audience. You can start by sharing your content with fellow bloggers and asking for links.
This is an effective way to get quality backlinks to your blog.
Google has often denied the use of link building as a ranking factor but recent studies suggest that link juice from the sites with high domain authority is always lucrative in the long run.
23. Join Online Forums and Communities
Online forums and communities are great places to connect with other bloggers.
Join online groups, participate in discussions, answer questions on the site or post your articles.
You can also create an account on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter so that you can share content easily with your friends there.
It is not always a legit practice to drop your links in almost every thread. When you start on any online community, make sure to start a thread without thinking of creating links on them.
Ask a question, share insights or create a topic that is close to your expertise. You can find smaller communities on Reddit, LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, YouTube communities, and more.
24. Optimize Website Speed to Load Your Pages Faster
Page Speed is one of the most crucial factors in SEO. Google counts Page speed as a vital factor for ranking the pages on SERPs.
The faster your website loads, the more visitors you will get. So to increase blog traffic, you need to optimize your website speed.
By optimizing the web page, the visitor will get a better experience. There are many ways to optimize your website speed.
You can use some tools and methods to improve your website speed. For example, you can use the Google Page Speed Insights tool to check your website speed. You can also use some simple tips and tricks to improve your website speed.
Google uses the following metrics to calculate the page speed and rank pages in search results based on it:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This is the time taken by the page to show the most critical content on the screen. Google uses LCP on the content that comes without scrolling.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): It is the unexpected shifting of the page elements while it is still loading.
- First Input Delay (FIP): First Input Delay (FIP) is the time it takes to read and process a single HTTP request. The higher the FIP, the longer it takes for the browser to start rendering a page.
- First Contentful Paint (FCP): First Contentful Paint (FCP) is when the browser renders the first bit of content from the DOM, providing the first feedback to the user that the page is loading.
You can use various tools and tips to optimize your page and improve page speed.
25. Collaborate with other bloggers
Working with other bloggers is always a good choice, but you should not confuse it with networking. Networking involves making new connections and forming relationships with others.
You can't reach beyond your potential when you don't work on establishing strong connections with authority blog writers.
You can leverage the collaboration in various forms like inviting on a podcast or writing an eBook together, doing industry research, and publishing a book.
You can also reciprocate the guest posts and exchange links but make sure it looks natural.
Outreach a blogger or an influencer from your niche and let them know how frequent reader you are, share some great insights and see if they are interested further.
For example, if you have a blog about food, you can create a blog about fashion and post on the same platform. If your blog is about blogging tips, you can also collaborate with other bloggers who write about blogging tips. If your blog is about fashion, you can also collaborate with other bloggers who write about fashion.
You can also participate in group blogs and guest blogs. In this way, your blog will be more visible in the blogosphere.
Collaborating with other bloggers can give you high-quality content to your readers, which will help increase traffic and sales of your products or services.
It is also a way to establish trust in others by sharing ideas because it gives them an opportunity to understand what you are doing and gain insight into how they work.
Collaboration helps build relationships that expand beyond just one person's network through communication.
26. Start Your Email List Right Away
So, how do you know that the readers are liking your post and returning to you?
More than 70% of the readers leaving your website will never return. That said, Money is in the email list.
One of the most efficient ways and cost-effective ways is to leverage email marketing. You can use a tool like MailChimp to start your email list.
On the first day of launching your blog, your focus should be on your subscriber's email address.
To have success with your blog, you need to start building a list. Whenever you publish a blog post, make sure to share it with your email subscribers.
That said, you need to keep your incoming visitors stick to you.
When you create emails, make sure to use a captivating email subject line and the email content should sound natural and personal to the readers.
If it's an offer or some discounts, it is good practice to create an enticing call-to-action button throughout the email.
27. Create a Newsletter To Showcase Your Best Blog Posts
Most people are not going to read your previous blog posts, so you need to use other methods that bring traffic to your newer as well as the existing posts.
Once you get your email subscribers, it is important to keep them updated.
If you are a blogger who publishes new content on a regular basis, here is an effective way to have people stay up-to-date with the latest blog posts and news in their niche: Start creating newsletters for your readers.
Once you have collected all of your contacts, you can send them weekly or monthly emails featuring your best posts from the past.
There are several benefits of having a newsletter.
You can use the newsletter to share valuable content with your followers. This helps you in increasing your blog traffic.
You can also use it to offer freebies and discounts to your followers. Provide coupons, information about upcoming events, and other details using newsletters.
28. Automatically Share Your Blog Posts
Social share is one of the best ways to increase blog traffic.
One of the best ways to increase blog traffic is to automatically share your blog posts on your social media profiles.
While you are busy with your content marketing strategy and business plans, social media should also be taken care of. Social media has a large potential to bring in new visitors to your blogs and boost ROI.
The best way to do this is to create a post and then use a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule the post for later in the day.
Once the post is scheduled, you can choose whether or not you want it to be shared on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and other social media platforms.
Also, make sure to write compelling social media posts. Different social media posts may have different character lengths and audiences. If you are not sure of how to create social media posts, you can use social media generator tools.
29. Update your old existing articles
Many bloggers have been there before, and it's one of the reasons why they feel like their blog is getting stale.
We've all had those articles that we wrote a while ago which sound outdated - nothing has changed in our industry since then, or even if something has happened, the article just doesn't work anymore because of how things are now.
So what do you do? Well you could write an entirely new article but that could take a lot of your time and if you are already struggling with content management, it's not the best idea.
The better option would be updating those old articles that were written years ago - but here is something that most people don't realize, even though it might seem like an easy task for some bloggers, in reality, there are many things going on behind the scenes when you do this.
The first step is to use a free SEO tool like Google Search Console and check the pages that are getting the most traffic. Furthermore, use tools like Ahrefs to check the traffic potential of your ranking keywords.
Once done, drop your articles on Scalenut SEO Assistant. Make sure to use as many NLP terms as possible. Using SEO assistant, you can also analyze the competition and check for any content gaps.
Use relevant headings and subheadings and structure your content to organize it better. Also, make sure to use the correct format for your web pages.
30. Share your posts on Twitter
Twitter is a great way for you to promote your blog posts. It's even better if it's being shared by other influential people and celebrities so that all of your followers see it first.
You can use Twitter Cards to make sure that the images or video don't break in smaller viewports - this means that they will still be able to see them when their device doesn't have as much space available (mobile devices).
Furthermore, vernacular tweets are great for driving traffic to your blog.
31. Share on Instagram
Instagram is the best way to get your blog posts in front of a wider audience.
Some people might think that Instagram is only for pictures, but it actually has quite a lot going on. You can use hashtags and create different types of stories - all designed with social media marketing in mind!
You can post a new image to your profile that may interest people in reading the entire article. Don’t forget to include a link to your website when editing Instagram profile info.
32. Share on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a powerful social media platform that is used by many professionals and business owners to increase their online presence. LinkedIn allows you to share your articles, images, videos, and other content on the platform, thereby increasing your blog traffic.
You can share on LinkedIn by adding a short summary of your blog post. You can also share your content on your Facebook page and Twitter profile.
33. Post YouTube videos
Video marketing is one of the best ways to get your audience to understand your brand. By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic.
Thus, if you are new to blogging, start focusing on posting video content. Start your YouTube channel right from the beginning.
Use referral links or your blog links to drive traffic from your YouTube channel to the blog.
In Conclusion
These were the most effective tips for driving organic search traffic to your blog. There are various tools to leverage for boosting site traffic.
Scalenut AI helps in creating user-generated content that is curated for search engines as well as your target audience.
With Scalenut SEO Assistant you can focus on various SEO factors as well as increase social media followers and improve email to get subscribers.
You can use Scalenut SEO Assistant for:
- Writing headlines and meta descriptions.
- Finding the keywords and related terms to increase content relevancy.
- Create email subject and body to improve email content.
- Create social media posts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Quora.
- Generate replies to user reviews and comments.
- Get Blog ideas for your target keyword.
- Generate video descriptions and video hooks.
In case you need help with creating the content, Scalenut content marketplace is the right choice for you.
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