Looking for ways to drive traffic to your blog? If you’re like most bloggers, learning how to generate more traffic to your website on a continuous basis is a dream come true. More likely than not, you are already employing tactics to build and increase traffic. You’re probably working hard on writing awesome content, spending a lot time refining blog post titles, optimizing social media sharing, and engaging in blogger outreach.
Why, then, isn’t your blog receiving as much traffic as you expect? Perhaps it is because you’ve overlooked some practices that can increase traffic drastically and yet are often taken for granted. When used on top of the more common methods, these tips and best practices can give you the traffic that you want – not only in spurts, but on a long-term basis.
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How To Drive Traffic To Your Blog and Grow Your Visitors
If you want to build a high-traffic blog, then read the following tips to learn about the easiest ways to drive visitors and readers to your website. From higher search engine rankings for organic traffic to direct visitors that become loyal readers, these traffic generation strategies will help you grow your blog and make more money online!
Understand Your Content’s Image-To-Word Ratio
Posts that have images receive 94% more views than those that do not. Every blogger knows the critical role images play, but how do you make the most out of them so that you actually get traffic?
You’ve read enough articles telling you to break up text with images, but have you ever thought of exactly how often you should insert photos in a post or how many images you should use?
Based on a study done by BuzzSumo, it’s not about the number of photos. It’s all about how many images you have in relation to the number of words in a post. Without delving into the methodology of the study, we can distill their findings to a single action: use one image for every 75 to 100 words.
But that’s not all. The relevancy of the images you use is just as important as the ratio. Don’t just tack on whatever photo, screenshot, or chart you find to follow the image to word ratio principle. Nielsen’s study on how people read on the web shows that readers ignore images that don’t provide information. As such, put some thought in looking for images that will support the message conveyed by the text.
Link To Authority Websites in Your Niche
Linking to external websites is good practice on its own even without directly thinking of its effects on traffic. By linking to sites that you use as sources or that provide additional information, you are making the lives of your readers easier. This helps in converting them into repeat visitors.
There are a couple more advantages to linking to authority websites.
One, Google will send you more traffic in the long run. This is because Google places high value on high-quality linking and topical rankings, and with PageRank being dead and gone, the metric of importance is now trust flow.
Created by Majestic SEO, trust flow essentially is a number that defines the quality of a site based on its links with other sites in the same niche. The higher the trust flow, the higher the ranking, and one way of increasing your trust flow is to link to sites that Google already trusts. You won’t get a traffic explosion overnight, but you’ll build authority as you go along.
Two, you get to build relationships, which can lead to more social shares. Linking out to established bloggers in your niche not only tells Google you’re getting information from reputable sources. It also is a foundation to building relationships, and good relationships can introduce your blog to a wider audience.
When you link to a blog post, let the blogger know you’ve done so. More likely than not, they will share your post, and your content will be read by people who may otherwise never discover you.
Use Long Tail Keywords
If you want to attract the right kind of audience – those who are looking for what you have to offer – then use keywords that are as specific as possible. Long tail keywords.
These keywords are usually comprised of three to four words, as opposed to the one or two words. Long tail means you are narrowing down your target audience, but by doing so, you get two benefits.
One, there is less competition. Your chances of ranking for long tail keywords are much higher since shorter keywords are more popular and competitive.
Two, the traffic you get is relevant. People who find you on Google via your long tail keywords are probably looking for exactly what you’re offering. The chances of turning one-time visitors to regular readers are then higher.
Reach Out To Influencers
Influencer marketing involves reaching out to individuals who are popular and considered experts in your niche and getting them to be advocates for your blog. You don’t have to ask an influencer to write a blog post about you, or to tweet to his followers that he thinks you’re great.
A more practical, sedate (but effective) way to go about it is to invite influencers for an interview. You can set up an audio or video interview, or you can simply conduct the interview via email.
What’s vital is the message that you send across when you snag an interview with an authority in your niche. By having an influencer as a guest, you get his endorsement, and his audience will buy into that.
Imagine hosting an interview with Jeff Bullas. Now imagine him sharing your post on his social media accounts. Can you see your traffic go off the charts?
You might not get the likes of Jeff Bullas as an interviewee right now, but there surely are other influencers within reach. How do you find them? Use an influencer discovery tool like GroupHigh, Traackr, or BuzzSumo. You just need to determine the keywords you want to target and enter them via the tool. The result will be a list of people who are popular related to those keywords.
Participate in Q&A Platforms – Quora Marketing
Why were forums so popular? Why do platforms like Reddit and Quora continue to flourish?
Because people have questions, they want answers, and these platforms meet their needs.
Now, if you think about it, that’s what you are doing with your blog: you are providing answers to your readers’ questions. However, your blog does not have the same reach as the above platforms. Herein lies a big opportunity to get more eyeballs.
Get active on Quora. Answer questions and increase establish your credibility. Not only will this put you name out there, it also gives you a chance to share links to your blog posts.
However, it’s important to realize that Q&A platforms do not exist to serve as a place to drop links for the sake of dropping links. People go to them to find practical solutions to real life problems – factual answers, useful advice, and actionable tips.
It doesn’t matter if you answer 100 questions. If your input is not useful, and you post just to drop your links, your reputation will quickly go down the drain. You might as well not spend time on the platform at all.
So, how do you drive traffic to your blog using Quora?
Take Wishpond’s example. Quora is their second biggest social referrer, with 23,000+ views in a month. How can you do the same? Here are steps to use Quora to bring in traffic.
- Pick an article you want to drive traffic to.
- Search for that topic on Quora. Start with an umbrella topic. Say you run a fitness blog, your initial search can be “how to lose weight”.
- Go through the results and mark questions that are new, have at least 1,000 views a month, have lots of answers and comments, and that your article can answer very well.
- Spend time writing your answer. Write as if you are writing a blog post, albeit a shorter one. Add a link to the post you want to drive traffic to, in such a way that it provides further information that will answer the question. In this example, you can write something along the lines of “for an in-depth weight loss strategy, you can read this guide I wrote…”. Also add links to other relevant sources other than yours.
- Find new questions related to your blog and repeat the process consistently.
A sudden spike in traffic can happen overnight if you get lucky, but it is more beneficial to look at the big picture and aim for constant traffic month by month. If you want to achieve this, try the above tips. Start by picking one or two and giving it your all.
