You’ve found a great niche, create a beautiful website, and started your first blog–that was the easy part! Now you’re thinking every day, “I need to get more traffic to my blog!”
I’ve been in your exact spot and want to share with you the 7 best tips that I found to drive traffic to my websites. Keep reading to check them out!
Create Quality Content Regularly
Visitors come to your site for information–the solution to a problem, a helpful tip, a review of a product they’re interested in, details about something they’re passionate about or interested in, and so on. The first goal of your site is to give them this information!
To do that you need to publish quality posts on a regular basis at least 2-3 times per week. When your visitors see that there is new, interesting, and helpful information, they will return again and again. They’re also much more likely to refer your site to friends who have shared interests.
Another advantage of posting regularly is that the search engines will take notice and visit your site more often. Google especially will crawl your blog to check for new content more when it sees new information added and start to trust it more.
Can you post 5 times a week instead of 2 or 3? As long as you don’t sacrifice quality for quantity, kicking your posting schedule up a notch will definitely help you see results in your traffic numbers.
Creating content regularly will also help identify your blog as an authority in your niche. There’s a reason that you’ve probably heard the expression “Content is King!”–because it’s true!
Do Keyword Research To Get Top Ranking
When the search engines find your content, you need to show them where it fits in their search results for ranking. You do that by making sure to use good keywords in your posts.
A keyword is a phrase that someone types into a search engine to find relevant websites. When you write your posts, you want to target a keyword that is very relevant to the topic. Then when someone types that keyword into a search engine, your post shows up–hopefully, on the first page!
So how do you choose a keyword? The best way is by using a keyword tool, and my #1 recommendation is Jaaxy.
Jaaxy is a comprehensive tool that gives you the monthly searches, competition, chance of getting on the first page, the actual traffic to expect if on the first page, and other features.
For example, suppose I had a website with small kitchen appliances as my niche, and I wanted to write a post about convection microwaves. So I search Jaaxy for the keyword “convection microwave”. Here are the top results:
I’m looking for a keyword with more than 100 average searches per month (Avg), competition under 50 (QSR), the likelihood of getting on page one over 90, and that makes sense grammatically.
The highlighted keyword is the most promising–“best convection microwave”. But I want to see if I can find one with a little better stats, so I put that keyword into Jaaxy and do another search:
The keyword “best convection microwave oven” looks great, and that is the one I’d target in this particular post. The great thing is that I’ll also likely get ranked for keywords such as:
- convection microwaves–443
- best convection microwave–313
- convection microwave ovens–333
- convection microwave oven reviews–272
Add all the potential traffic from these keywords as well as the one I will target in my post, and I’ve got possible traffic of up to 1560 visitors just from this one post!
When you write your content, be sure that you don’t use it too often unless it flows naturally in the conversational tone of your post.
The best guide is to use it in your title, once in the introduction, and once in the last paragraph. Don’t worry about peppering it all over the article. It’s not necessary, and Google will penalize you for it.
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Guest Post On Popular Sites In Your Niche
A great way to gain more exposure for your site is by writing guest posts for popular sites in your niche.
Many affiliate marketers and bloggers are happy to have quality content to add to their site, and you will be featured as the author with a link to your blog.
You can make a request to the owner of the site to have one of your posts published. They will likely ensure that the material is right for their blog, work with you about the topic of the article, and you’ll have to submit it for approval.
Any post that is low quality, not grammatically correct, or just a sales pitch filled with affiliate links is not going to be accepted.
You will have to write content that is high quality, informative, interesting, and relevant to the blogger’s target audience to have it accepted.
Many times you will be asked to pay a fee in order to have your post published on someone else’s website. This is called a sponsored post, and that fact will be disclosed at the beginning of your article.
The price will usually depend upon how popular the site is and how much traffic your post will be exposed to. If you have a budget to work with and a quality site has high traffic with your target audience, paying for a sponsored post could be a great way to get visitors to your site!
Use Social Media
Social media is a great way to get exposure to your blog. Some of the most common ones are:
- Google+
- Snapchat
I recommend that you pick 1 or 2 platforms to start with at first, then you can add more as you go along.
The reason for this is it can become very time consuming trying to manage learning how to optimize your site on a lot of different platforms. It’s too easy to get sidetracked from creating content in favor of spending time on your favorite social media sites!
No matter which social media platforms you choose, you’ll need to consistently post to them. Just like with content to your site, regular activity on social media is the best way to start gaining followers. The more followers you have, the more traffic will start heading to your site.
Keep in mind that there are very strict rules on many of these platforms about the use of affiliate links in your posts. You can link to your site, but not directly to a merchant site.
In addition to posting your content on social media, it’s a good idea to follow successful people in your niche, and to comment on their posts and videos–but no spamming by leaving affiliate links!
Don’t Underestimate YouTube
Did you know that YouTube is one of the biggest search engines out there today? We all know it as a video sharing site, but it has also become the second largest search engine on the internet!
People are visual by nature and want to be shown things, not just told about them. So using videos in your posts is a great way to drive more traffic.
You can find relevant videos on YouTube and share them by clicking the Share button on the bottom right of the video. Then you can choose to embed the video on your website or post it on social media.
You can also create your own videos! In addition to a live recording of you, there are many options for the type of video you can make, such as screen recordings, animated, and whiteboard animated recordings.
Screencast-O-Matic, Renderforest, Content Samurai, Videoscribe, Camtasia, Windows Movie Maker, and YouTube editing are all programs that can help you create any kind of video you want for your blog.
Want more information on how important YouTube can be for your blog? Check out this great post that’s still relevant today by fellow marketer, Kim Wolfe, 6 YouTube Trends 2018–Which Ones Do You Know?
Paid Traffic
All the ways listed above to help you drive more traffic to your blog have come from free sources, with the exception if there is a fee for guest posting. Every one of them are great tools that will increasingly work more and more effective over time.
If you have a budget and want to get traffic rolling to your site faster, you can also use paid traffic. Basically paid traffic is visitors that have come to your site from some sort of paid advertisement.
There are many good options to start getting paid traffic, such as:
- Bing Ads
- Google Adwords
- Solo Ads
- Facebook Ads
- Boosting posts in social media
- Banner Ads
Be prepared to spend money trying out different ad copy and different platforms to see what works. Once you see the type of ad that converts well, you can tailor your paid marketing campaign more efficiently.
Beginners should start small and be sure that your budget is what you can afford. The costs can add up quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing.
In order to convert well, always be sure that your ads target a specific audience and that your landing page is relevant to the information they are looking for.
It makes no sense to pay to send visitors to your site if you don’t provide them with the answers or help that they need. Remember–relevance, relevance, relevance!
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Email Marketing Campaign
A great way to get repeat traffic back to your blog is to start an email marketing campaign. It’s fairly simple to set up, and then you’ll have an email list where you can send newsletters, promotions, and special offers to.
The best way to start an email list is to offer something of value that your visitors will download by entering their email address. This item can be anything related to your niche that you can give away for free, such as an eBook.
You will need to subscribe to an email marketing service autoresponder, but there are some great ones that are free to get started, like SendPulse for the first 2500 subscribers.
People love to get things for free and will be happy give you their email if they see value in it. Even in 2020, email marketing is still the most successful marketing technique, so it will be a good idea to get started!
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Start Increasing Your Traffic Today!
It will take time and effort, but you can definitely start driving more traffic to your blog. If you implement these 7 tips, you will have a quality website that will rank well in the search engines and keep visitors coming back.
If you are struggling to make money with your blog and would like more training on how to make it profitable, you can check out the program that I use. The training, web-hosting, and great community of marketers all helped me learn how to start and be successful with my online business.
You can read my full review here, and check out the quick video below to give you an overview of what they have to offer:
I recommend checking out their Starter Membership. Not only will you receive 2 free websites on a world-class hosting platform, but you’ll get the first 10 lessons of training and access to the awesome community–all with no credit card required!
Do you have any great tips for increasing the traffic to your blog? We’d love to hear about them in the comments below!
I’m quite new to the online marketing world and have a 3 month old website but I’m yet to see any traffic so I found your article particularly helpful, Jaaxy is a great tool for finding perfect keywords for your blogs but I may need to lower my QSR, do you recommend under 50 for a new site? I’ve been happy under 100 but most in the 90’s but as I said no traffic yet, do you think this could be why?
I think finding long tail keywords that have a QSR under 50 is imperative for a new site. A 3 month old site is still looked at by Google as being too young to have any real authority. It’s natural to not have traffic at this point, especially for any keyword that has much competition.
Once your site gets closer to 6 months old and you’re adding new content regularly, you’ll start to get ranked for those long tail keywords. This traffic will be targeted better for your content and should start developing good stats for bounce rate, time on page, etc. This will show Google that visitors are finding valuable information on your site and your rankings will continue to climb.
If you use those keywords with low QSR, add relevant content, and give your site more time, I have no doubt that you’re going to start getting the results you want!
These are really great tips. There is usually that excitement of getting started with a website and soon dies down when you realize you have to have content, and great content at that. I really love your explanation of how to use Jaaxy. This is a really simple and excellent example. I have been using Jaaxy for a while now and I sometimes get overwhelmed and wonder if the Keyword I am picking is the right one.You really have great insights. Page bookmarked!
I’m so glad you found it helpful–good luck with your website, and I wish you every success!
Thanks for sharing your top 7 tips for getting more traffic to the blog. Being a regular poster of quality content is a huge step towards this goal. How do you find it’s best to share the content once it’s ready (email marketing, video marketing, social media mentions, RSS feeds, offline tactics)? It can be a challenge to know where it’s best to spend your time on marketing, so I’d love any help to figure out how to prioritize the best ways to get more traffic! Thanks so much!!
Everything you mentioned is a great way to get more traffic. From my experience and from what I see other affiliate marketers doing, I think social media and YouTube are the best ways to utilize your time getting your content out there.
YouTube has much less competition, so it’s easier to get your videos ranked than it is for your content. Be sure to use SEO the same as when you’re writing your content so your videos show up to your targeted audience. There are several good ways to create videos without expensive equipment and editing software, so it is cost effective too. Many people are intimidated by YouTube, but once they get started, they love it!
For social media, I’d try to make sure the platform you choose is the best one for your niche. For example, I have a website devoted to french door kitchen appliances. Pinterest has been great for me there because my target audience loves to see pictures of beautiful kitchens and how these appliances fit in with the overall design.
Email marketing is wonderful, and if you take the time to build up your email list and share helpful information regularly, your subscribers will come back to visit your site and refer you to others. I would use this strategy once you start getting regular traffic from your content, social media, and YouTube. Then your list will start to build and you can spend more time on your email marketing.
I hope this helps, and I’d love to have you share an update sometime–good luck!
For us who own websites and want to get money from our websites, there is no other thing that gives us joy than when we learn that we have tons of traffic on our website because we know that all this will eventually lead to making good money. For me, i use research to ran on the sea and thats been a very good way for me. I have not explored using social media yet but i will love to give it a try. Thank you for sharing. Cheers!
I definitely recommend trying social media! I was not very savvy with any of the social media platforms, so I just started with Facebook. Later on I started with Pinterest and Twitter, now I’m working on my YouTube channel. You don’t have to be a jack of all trades–use one platform that you enjoy and expand from there. Some marketers specialize in one social media platform only and get great results. Good luck!
There are so many different known ways to increase your traffic, i have seen many people use diverse ways to increase theirs, some of which you have explained here. I will personally like to increase the traffic on my own website so i want to know what you think about paid traffic, do you think it is legit and very effective?
I use paid traffic on one of my niche sites, and it can be very effective once you figure out what type of ads and ad content convert best. You have to be willing to spend some money though, which can get be expensive while you’re doing trial and error.
I recommend starting small with phrase or exact match keywords, a small budget, and be sure that the
blog post you link to in your ad is extremely relevant to the ad copy. Relevancy is key to getting visitors to convert and getting a low bid cost from Google and Microsoft. Good luck with your advertising!
I agree! Keyword research is so important to any blog. I like the screenshots you showed using Jaaxy. Very helpful. “The best guide is to use it in your title, once in the introduction, and once in the last paragraph.” So very true! Not enough people actually know that. Personally, I’m no longer getting much success with FB. Since they’ve changed their algorithms my paid ads and posts exposure has been dismal. So no more FB for me. I still post on my FB pages but won’t give them another dime. Also, I was posting to Google+ for over three years but now that Google is taking it down, it will no longer exist shortly, wasn’t getting much of anything there anyway. Thanks for the great post and some of the details you put into it. 🙂
I definitely need to update my post due to Google+ being discontinued soon, thanks for the reminder and for taking the time to comment!
These are great tips for getting more traffic to your blog! I’ve definitely noticed that with my newest website the more detailed my content is, the faster it’s indexed. I doubt it’s a coincidence, but the ones that are indexed the fastest seem to be the articles that are 1500 words or more.
I’ve yet to get into YouTube videos yet, but it’s definitely something I want to consider because of the benefits it has for traffic. I mean, if you really think about it, it is a place with a lot of traffic because so many people are looking for entertainment or answers to questions. Since your content should be helpful anyway, it seems like an obvious choice for anyone serious about making money online.
YouTube is really an underused resource, and I need to embrace it more myself! If you aren’t comfortable talking onscreen, I recommend trying something like Renderforest.com, which is a platform where you can create animated videos. That’s what I used to start and had a lot of fun with it!
I went into this article expecting to see nothing I didn’t already know. But I had no idea YouTube is the second largest search engine. Thanks so much for this information! It’ll definitely affect how I try to get traffic to my website in the future. Such a useful thing to know.
So glad I could help, and good luck with your website!
I’m just starting out on my own website, so you have some really great tips here! I’m always on Instagram, so that will definitely be one of the ways that I will try to drive traffic to my Blog.
Youtube also seems like a fantastic option to explore – perhaps once I have my website running nice and smoothly. Thanks for your article – it has been very helpful.
Instagram can be terrific for getting traffic to your site, so if you’re really familiar with it, I’d definitely start there! I’m just getting into YouTube myself and have a long way to go, but I know many people who are utilizing it with great success. So that’s the next thing I’m going to master myself!
Good luck with your online business!
I absolutely love your article. i resonated with me immensely as I’m looking to increase traffic to my websites. It really pays to build out your content before you start sending folks to your sites.
For me, I have had incredible success with Pinterest. My niche on my site is health issues for older dogs and general pet well-being. i guess the Pinterest platform is a good fit for that topic. Point is…you need to know your audience and where they hang out.
I’ve just started dabbling on YouTube…and it is one powerful platform. I agree that you should learn how to leverage that outlet. Thanks for more awesome content!
I have just started in Pinterest and YouTube myself, and I can see an increase in my traffic. Good luck to you and thanks for taking the time to comment!
Question, you say that you should post content at least two to three time a week. Would that be 1000 words per blog times 3 a week? I want more visitors and more sales but is it possible to write that much bringing new fresh content each and every time. I guess the answer is yes when you really think about it. So I guess I need to get to work because I need to increase my writing mind set. Is using reviews from Amazon on a product ok or do I need to shop around and combine different reviews from many sources?
Writing posts 2-3 times a week can seem intimidating at first, at least it was for me! But the more I wrote, the easier it became. Trying to have at least 1000 words is the best for SEO. But a great post will be as long as it takes to fully explain the topic–maybe that’s 800 words or maybe it’s 2000.
As far as fresh content, one of the best places I get ideas is from social media, google, other sites in my niche and quora. Quora and social media are great for seeing what people are asking about, and then you can create posts that answer those questions. You can also get ideas from the type of content in other websites in your niche and by searching google. No matter what your niche, you’ll be able to find great topics to write about!
You can use reviews from Amazon as long as you don’t take a screenshot of them or copy the content. Using reviews from other sources can be very valuable as long as your post is still original content and you summarize or put snippets in quotes.
Thanks for stopping by and good luck!