There are over 600 million blogs on the internet. One thing that they all have in common is that they probably wouldn’t mind increasing their traffic.
Without traffic, there probably isn’t much point in blogging, even if you’re blogging for fun and don’t want to monetize your blog. But, there are so many blogs that are struggling to get traffic, so today, we’re going to take a look at 9 free, yet effective ways to increase your blog traffic.
Hopefully, you will be able to take some of these tips and increase your own traffic.
9 Free and Yet Effective Ways to Increase Your Blog Traffic
Here is an overview of the 9 ways to increase your blog traffic we are going to cover:
- Improve Your Old Posts (And, their Meta Titles!)
- Reader-Retention
- Guest Post
- Be Clever About Posting On Social Media
- Do Better Keyword Research
- Engage, Engage & Engage!
- Facebook Groups & Other Groups
- Create Evergreen Content
- Be Patient & Stay Consistent
So, let’s take a look!
1. Improve Your Old Posts (and Meta Titles)!
The first way to increase your blog traffic is by improving your old posts and your meta titles.
Take a look at which of your posts are ranking, improve the content, and try to add some related keywords too.
This will give you a much better chance of ranking for that keyword and other keywords too.
And, also don’t forget to improve the meta title as this can increase your CTR (Click through Rate).
If your CTR improves, then more people are clicking on your website meaning you are getting more traffic.
Although CTR is apparently not a direct ranking factor, it can cause your rankings to rise for indirect reasons.
Personally, I think CTR is probably even a direct ranking factor, despite Google saying otherwise.
2. Reader Retention
What I mean by reader retention is the ability to retain your readers. Are they coming to your blog and leaving forever? Or, are they actually coming back? It’s probably quite hard to grow a massive blog if your readers never come back.
So, how do you keep them? Well, everyone has their own little strategy, but here are some ways that could definitely help:
Email Marketing
Firstly, we have email marketing. You probably are already using email marketing, but if not, then you should definitely start.
Not only can it increase your sales, but you can also send out your new blog posts and make your readers return.
Push Notifications
Some people love them, some people hate them. Push notifications can be a little annoying, but they can also work extremely well.
If your post has a great title that makes people want to click, then sending out a push notification can bring you a ton of traffic.
Now, if you do this on every post, in the long term, you will get much more traffic than if you didn’t. But, it also depends on your blog, if you have a team of writers and post multiple times per day, you probably don’t want to send out a notification each time.
Posting Schedule
If you have a posting schedule, then your readers are going to know when you post meaning, they are more likely to remember to come back.
Strictly post on the days of your posting schedule, but posting more is not a problem.
Then, your readers will know that you, for example, post every Sunday, so they will come and check on most Sundays.
Responding and Providing Value
Respond to comments & provide your readers with as much value as you possibly can.
This is a tip for smaller bloggers, if you have (100’s of) thousands of comments, it would probably be pretty hard. But, if you have a blog where you aren’t getting a crazy number of readers when people comment then you should respond to them.
This will make those readers comment, engage, and return to your future articles!
3. Guest Post
My third tip is guest posting.
Guest posting can definitely help you put yourself in front of your target audience (assuming the blog you are guest posting on is relevant to what you do). Not only that, but it can also help with your Google rankings through building backlinks.
However, make sure you’re not just guest blogging for links, as you can quickly find yourself with a penalty.
If you guest blog, make the articles high-quality and make sure you are only doing so on high-quality blogs. As long as you follow those guidelines and don’t start sacrificing the quality, you should be fine.
4. Be Clever About Posting on Social Media
Social media is a great way of getting traffic, and you’re probably already using it to promote your blog.
But, are you being clever about it?
For example, when posting your article on Twitter, don’t just post it once. Twitter is a platform where everyone tweets a lot, you could bury a dead body in a tweet from 3 weeks ago and nobody would notice.
So, chances are, when you are posting your blog post on Twitter, a small percentage of your followers seen the post and even fewer people clicked on it.
By tweeting out your post multiple times, you can get multiple chances to get traffic and also hit different timezones, again resulting in more traffic.
Social Media Titles
Your social media titles are not the meta title. If you’re creating the same piece of content as a video or maybe as a Pin on Pinterest to promote your article, then you don’t need to use the meta title you used for
You can use a title that will get people to click and depending on the social media platform, it will probably go and suggest that post or video to thousands of new users.
Using a title that will encourage a high CTR, can help bring a lot more readers to your blog.
Tip: This can also work for push notifications!
5. Do Better Keyword Research
Most bloggers have a phase where they create so much content, but the time put into keyword research suffers.
In this situation, if you just take a step back and put some more of that time into keyword research, instead of just creating a crazy amount of content, you can often get more traffic.
Look for some keywords that you can rank for, check out the competitors, and create something much better.
Doing this, you will get much more traffic and grow your blog way quicker.
6. Engage, Engage, Engage!
My next tip is to engage, engage, and engage.
This is another tip for smaller and newer blogs, but it can also work for more established blogs by engaging with even bigger blogs in your industry.
By frequently engaging and commenting on other people’s blogs, chances are, they will check out yours too.
If they like your content, they will probably visit it more often, share it, and even link to it.
This will then help you get more traffic and can increase your rankings, again resulting in more traffic.
7. Facebook and Other Groups
Facebook groups and other types of groups can still work in your favor when growing a blog. Great content combined with a great group will grow your blog and also help with reader retention.
Also, try to make the group grow on its own, but when people join it, they should quickly be introduced to your blog.
A great way to do this is by putting something in the group that people may use to refer other members to the group.
For example, you could have a couple of videos making a mini-course, or you could even host live streams inside the group.
You have to put a little more thought into it so that people actually refer more people. Ideally, it’s something that your audience would talk about to others who are not in the group.
This can be quite hard, but when done correctly it can work great.
8. Create Evergreen Content
The next tip is to create evergreen content.
By creating evergreen content, in the long run, your old posts are going to get more traffic, while your new posts are getting traffic.
It’s the perfect example of a snowball effect, as the traffic will just keep building up.
A simple tip, but it can definitely help you increase your blog traffic, especially in the long run.
9. Be Patient and Stay Consistent
Lastly, we have another tip for beginning bloggers.
Be patient, but stay consistent. It takes time to build up authority and it takes time to get your blog to where you want it to be.
In the beginning, things are always going to be slow, you just need to be patient and stay consistent. Otherwise, you might never reach the level of growth that you would have.
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