Boosting traffic: top strategies for increasing visitors to your blog

For years, top search engine optimization experts have suggested content as a way to build an online business. It helps build links, get included in search results, and boosts traffic to one’s site. Of course, it’s not as simple as pushing the publish button, so here is a list of top strategies for getting visitors to the blog.

 

Develop Personas

Do the same people who read the NY Times also take interest in your blog? Is your blog something a mother of four would read versus a single gay male? These are questions related to developing personas. Create three to five personas to represent a larger sample of people who would read your blog. Identifying types of readers helps you in developing a content calendar.

 

Optimize Your Blog’s Content

Do you use keywords when composing a blog post? SEO experts suggest aligning one keyword or user intent with each blog post. For example, you may write about sneakers, wanting to provide tips on keeping new pairs free of stains. A key term could be “keeping new sneakers clean.” For SEO purposes, you want to use that phrase in the blog post title as well as ensure your post makes due on its promise. Otherwise, a range of other SEO-related implementations help ensure a page is present in the search results.

 

Get the Word Out

Imagine if each blogger just wrote posts and hit publish. How would people know about the content? You need to get the word out through social media and outreach. Don’t be shy to follow influencers on social media, read blog posts of others and make comments, as well as email particular personalities to see if they would mind reading and subsequently sharing your content. Such online public relations helps spread awareness and build traffic.

 

Increase the CTR

The click-through rate or CTR of a given page matters. Pages with poor rates get moved down in the search results, thus worsening the percentage rate. Bloggers can improve upon a page’s meta title and description to improve CTRs. Also, it’s beneficial to pay attention to other surrounding results. In some cases, a term or phrase is poorly targeted or is being complicated by conflicting search results (For example, a product and a movie title share the same name.)

 

Use Content Tools

Of course, it’s silly to reinvent the wheel. You could take a look at what content is popular and attempt to emulate or appeal to the same parties. BuzzSumo enables users to see popular posts shared on several social media sites depending on keyword, website, author, and more. Other content tools, such as the Yoast plugin, help analyze elements on a page and provide feedback regarding correct optimization.

 

Invite Guest Authors

You may have a small following online. It makes it difficult to gain traction to the blog and build traffic. Therefore, it could be beneficial to invite another person to write a post, record a podcast, or shoot a video. That way, their followers will become aware of what they did and hopefully go to your post and keep coming back to the website. You could also provide a guest post and have it placed on an authority site to boost traffic to your own.

 

View Google Analytics

With a bit of DIY effort and installing Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see how visitors behave on your site, where they come from, how long they stay on each page, etc. All of this information could be relevant in boosting blog traffic. For example, if you’re writing long pieces and noticing the average person spends one minute on a page, you know you’re not keeping the attention of readers. If you find that most of your traffic comes from one place, you may want to explore an affiliate relationship.

 

Do Keyword Research

As mentioned, a blog post should be aligned with a user’s intent. For example, people may want to know the reason for leap years. But how many people per month want to know? If you run a science-related blog, you may want to pay attention to the number of searches performed for such questions. It’s all a part of keyword research. Paid tools are good for the effort yet free Google tools, such as the Keyword Planner, help too.

 

Link Out to Other Bloggers

Bloggers often exercise a give and receive mentality. For example, if you provide a link in your content to another’s post, they may notice and do the same for you in the future. Be wary, however, of reciprocal link scams. You don’t want to exchange links with another. You want the links to be mutually beneficial to readers; the quality of an incoming link matters. Low-level links won’t help boost a page’s position in the search results or raise traffic to the page.


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