Traffic is a direct indication of a blog’s success. If a blog receives little-to-no traffic, it’s not going to gain any momentum for its respective niche. But how exactly do you encourage people to visit and engage themselves on your blog?
Share Posts on Social Media
One of the easiest ways to boost your blog’s traffic is to share new posts on social media. Whenever you publish a new post, log into your Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ profiles and link back to it. Assuming you have a decent number of followers, this will give your new posts an initial burst of traffic. And in some cases it may even create a viral effect in which users share your links with their followers, whom then share it with their followers.
Syndicate Your Blog Posts
Another easy way to boost your blog’s traffic is to syndicate new posts on various third-party websites. This is done by submitting the URL for your blog’s RSS feed to directories, at which point these directories publish “snippets” of your posts. Whether or not there’s any SEO value in RSS directories is up for discussion. However, there’s no denying the fact that RSS directories — when used correctly — can be useful for driving new traffic to a blog or website. For a complete list of RSS directories, check out http://www.toprankblog.com/rss-blog-directories/.
Optimize Your Posts
Are you optimizing each post on your blog? If not, you should be. Taking the time to properly optimize your posts will encourage higher search rankings, which subsequently means more traffic. Optimization includes setting the title, meta description, shrinking your images, and including relevant keywords within your content. Doing these otherwise simple tasks will go a long ways in encouraging higher search rankings for your posts. Learn more about why your SEO strategies might be failing.
Link to Other Websites
Don’t underestimate the importance of including external links in your blog posts. When you link back to another website, send the webmaster an email notifying him or her of the link. In doing so, they may return the favor by linking to your blog. It’s kind of like a you-scratch-my-back-and-I-scratch-yours kind of deal. Just remember to avoid linking to a direct competitor, as you don’t want to send them your clients and customers.
Buy Traffic
Last but not least, you can always purchase traffic for your blog if you have the necessary budget. Google Adwords and Bing Ads are two widely popular advertising platforms in which advertisers bid on keywords to have their ads displayed. Whenever someone searches for a keyword on which you are bidding, your ad will be displayed. Facebook has a similar advertising platform called Facebook Ads. Check out these programs if you are looking to increase your blog’s traffic and attract more visitors.
Have any other blogging tips that you would like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments section below!
Image attribution: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ullrich/
This info is just what I needed. I just started my first blog and I’m trying to figure out how to get traffic now. I’m not necessarily looking to make money, but to reach a particular niche of people who may have interest in my blog.
When you share your posts on social media, don’t be afraid to ask your connections to share it. You’d be surprised how many people will share if you just ask.
Remember that it will take a little time to get traffic, but don’t get discouraged. It took me longer than I initially expected, but I eventually gained momentum.