How to get more traffic to your Blog

A blog is the best way (tool) to generate traffic for a website. Besides, if you do everything yourself – it’s really completely free.

Also, if you use third-party services – looking at the costs in the long term, the price is close to “free”, because as soon as you publish the article, it starts driving visitors to your website and does so as long as it can be found in Internet search engines.

This article is written because there is a lot of misleading information on the Internet about how to improve traffic with blogs, and the pieces of advice are often given by “Gurus” who themselves manage low-traffic sites.

Every second article promises that if you follow their content marketing tips, your blog’s traffic will increase by 100,000 visitors or more per month in the shortest possible time.

All of these tips are based either on individual success stories or on the “average temperature in the hospital.” The bottom line is this: if most blogs with high traffic do something like this, then this is the right way to do it and if you do the same, the number of visitors to your blog will grow just as fast.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

While it’s true that you can learn from the growth of other companies, you can’t create another Facebook, Drobox, Amazon, Alibaba or Google just by repeating the actions of their founders step by step.

To beat your competitors, you have to do something better or differently.

Everything written below should be taken only in the context of increasing the flow of visitors to your blog/ website. If the goal is different, then your comments are likely to be different too.

How do visitors get to your blog?

To understand how to increase traffic, you must first understand how/from where visitors get to your site. There are several options (data stream sources):

• Direct traffic – in Google Analytics appears when it is not known where the visitor is coming from, for example, when he visits your website for the first time by entering your website address (URL) in the browser;
• Organic traffic – when a user enters a query in a search engine (e.g., Google) and comes to your website by clicking a link on the search result page;
• Referred traffic – when a visitor comes to your website by clicking on a link in another website;
• Paid traffic – when a visitor visits your site by clicking on a paid advertisement;
• Email traffic – when a visitor comes to your website by clicking the link in one of your emails;
• Social traffic – when a visitor visits your website from a link in one of your social networks. 

The goal of blogs is usually to generate organic traffic to the site, because these visitors are already actively searching for related information, and therefore there is a greater chance that your content will be useful and interesting to them, that they will “friend” you.

And, as a result, they will also buy something from you.

The average conversion (purchase) rate for e-commerce sites in 2022 was 2.1 percent, but the number of visits to the site before making a purchase varies from about 2 to 4 times.

The average conversion rate (purchases) for e-commerce sites in 2022 was 2.1 percent, and the number of site visits before making a purchase varies from about 2 to 4 times.

That is, on average, every 50th visitor of the site buys, and before buying, he visited the site at least 2 times. This is the task of the blog – to bring and attract the maximum number of interested visitors to the site. 

Strategies that will not lead to a significant increase in traffic to your blog

As already mentioned, there are many different myths about how best to increase the number of blog visitors, and this is not the case when the actions described below do not create a flow of visitors.

Create, but:

• This is not a significant increase;
• These moves take time, which can be spent much more valuable.

Commenting

If you comment on articles on other blogs or posts on social networks with the aim of “turning” some of their visitors in the direction of your blog – well, good luck to you.

Even if your comment is better than the text you are commenting on, it will not direct a significant flow of visitors to your blog.

Yes, there will be some, but is the time spent on it worth a few or a few dozen visits?

Guest articles

In order to significantly increase the traffic to your blog, you will have to write a lot of articles, as well as negotiate with the owners of other sites about their publication.

It will take a lot of time, and if you spend most of your time writing for others, will you have enough time to develop your blog?

But if someone offers you to post good-quality articles on your blog – be sure to agree – you will receive free content and, possibly, also a stream of readers from the advertising activities of the invited author.

Presentations at conferences

Although this strategy can help you strengthen your personal credibility and increase the number of subscribers on social networks the reach is limited. Even if you will have thousands of new subscribers (which is unlikely), only a few dozen, maybe hundreds, will really be interested in what you want to say.

The rest will be inactive because what they are really interested in is elsewhere.

Almost everyone has attended at least a few conferences – how many speakers can you remember? And if you remember – what exactly did they say? Was something said that significantly helped you to improve your competence or professional performance?

How many of them do you follow on social networks? Have you visited the websites of the speakers or the organizations they represent more than once?

In principle, the situation is similar to preparing articles for publication on other sites, with the only difference that, compared to an article (which can potentially be read by thousands or even millions of people worldwide), your audience at conferences will always be limited to the number of conference visitors – a few hundred people at most.

In addition, preparing public speeches can be even more time-consuming than preparing an article.

Public speaking can help the development of your blog if you are already the author of a well-known and reputable blog. People already know you, have read your articles, and attend your presentations because they are really interested in what you say – then each presentation really contributes to the growth of your blog.

However, the regular creation of interesting articles and presentations at conferences takes a lot of time. Unless, of course, that’s the only thing you’re doing.

Focusing on social networks

There are a lot of people who post something on social media almost every day, and some of them post really interesting things.

However, if you are not a Hollywood, fitness, etc. star or a well-known politician, your social network account probably won’t have a hundred thousand or more subscribers.

And even so, what do you get?

Only a part of your account subscribers will notice your posts. They will remember them for a few days, maybe a little longer. They may remember your message, but will they remember who posted it?

The flow of information on social networks is huge, and your posts are quickly “buried” by new ones.

But don’t get us wrong.

We are not saying that you should not use social networks. Social networks can be an important source of traffic to your site, especially at the beginning, when your site has not yet become widely known.

We say that primary attention should be paid to your blog and only then to social networks, because if you don’t have valuable content to share on social networks – why should anyone follow you there?

Be strategic about content development and marketing. Don’t develop content just for social media.

In addition, social network accounts are sometimes blocked. If this happens to your account, all the content of your account will disappear, but you most likely have complete control over your blog.

Creating great content

What one person considers outstanding, another may consider mediocre, and vice versa.

That is, it is subjective.

The frequently used phrase “Create great content and visitors will come” does not correspond to reality, unfortunately.

Look at the first 3 Google search results and compare them with the articles on the second and third pages. Despite the fact that in most cases Google is really able to find content that matches your search query, it is often unclear how an article in the first positions of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) differs from articles, for example, on the second page.

The development of high-quality content is a prerequisite, otherwise, why would anyone read it? But high-quality content by itself cannot generate a huge flow of visitors.

If links to your content do not appear on the first pages of search engines, no one will know about its greatness anyway.

Accordingly, you should invest at least in SEO, email marketing, and online advertising.

Creating unique content, good titles and meta descriptions, writing “for people, not search engines”, creating content according to search intent, using internal links, content calendar, etc.

All these are very good tips, but so basic that is insignificant. Just like – a car needs wheels to drive.

As mentioned above, the difference between the first and tenth results, for example, in Google search results, in most cases is not significant.

If you want to stand out “from the crowd” – you need something more.

In addition, Google already generates about 40% of the descriptions in the search results. Some SEO experts even recommend not to create meta descriptions at all, because Google can often do it better.

Outsourcing of content creation

There is nothing wrong with ordering articles from third parties.

Only one thing – hired writers rarely write better than you, because no one can know the topic and pain points of your target audience better than you.

As a result, the quality of your blog articles deteriorates.

People read your blog because of you, if you’re not there – what’s the point of visiting your site?

If you run a corporate blog, hire industry experts to write articles, because they understand the topic.

Don’t order articles from journalists who are good at linking words and compiling texts found on the Internet, but don’t really understand what exactly they are talking about.

Fluency in the language and perfect grammar will not help you attract more visitors or improve sales results. This can only be done by added value – what you have, but what your competitors do not have.

Nowadays, almost anyone can create content on any topic (copy, compile, etc., the texts already written by someone else). The availability of information has become greater than ever before.

With the creation of content, we are now in the same situation as in the Middle Ages with the rewriting of the Bible – each subsequent compilation of the text is slightly different. The facts are not verified, and after a while, the content is already significantly different from the original source.

This is how myths are born.

Therefore, the Internet is flooded with low-quality articles.

Therefore, in order to stand out and demonstrate competence, articles should be written by people who work in a particular industry and know the topic perfectly.

Using AI to generate blog content

There are a number of tools for creating articles based on Al that promise fast and “effortless” content development. Using such tools, you can temporarily increase traffic, but in the end, most likely, you will lose.

Why?

Because, although the generated articles are actually correct, on the same topic they are very similar to each other.

Accordingly, if someone else asks you to write an article on the same topic as you, the article will be very similar, and Google may regard your content as a duplicate or plagiarism.

In addition, machine learning allows you to determine whether a particular content was created by artificial intelligence or by a person.

Delivering high-quality content relevant to the search query is Google’s business, but the content created by AI, although correct, is neither unique nor particularly high-quality. Google will make changes to its search algorithms and AI-generated content will not appear on the first pages of search results.

Do you really believe that the Al tools created by small companies will be able to “fool” the Al tools created by Google, behind which are giant data centers and an army of Google engineers whose sole task is to prevent manipulation of search results?

Strategies that can help significantly increase traffic to your blog

Now we have come to the most interesting part – what and how to do in order to increase the traffic to your blog significantly and consequently – the number of purchases. 

Creating content that meets business goals

If the content of your blog (the topics you write about) doesn’t meet your business goals – you’re just wasting your time and resources because it won’t help improve business results.

If you are, for example, a tile dealer, post on your blog only articles on topics related to tiles (design, selection, properties, installation, etc.).

But if you are a creator of corporate events, about topics related to the planning and management of such events. 

Find a niche that you like

Yes, the one that you are really interested in and not the one in which there are fewer competitors, which corresponds to your current activity, which is unique, which your beloved woman likes, etc.

Because only real passion can help you find something new and interesting, something that has not yet been described from A to Z in all the articles, links to which appear on the first page of search results.

We are talking about creating authority, and it is difficult to create it in several areas at the same time.

If we look at successful blogs (which have hundreds of thousands or more visitors per month), we will see that their authors are considered authorities in one particular area.

Therefore, do not try to write about “everything that is under the sun”, but choose a topic that is close to you and stick to it.

And the more you share something new, interesting, and/or useful on your blog, the more interesting you will become for visitors to your blog.

The first priority should always be “quality” and then “quantity”

Creating content that drives sales takes a lot of time. An article that demonstrates your competence/superiority cannot be written in an hour or two.

You can’t build authority by distributing mediocre content – what kind of expert are you if you can’t say/write something meaningful and truly useful to your readers?

It’s not easy. If you regularly write on the same topic, sooner or later you will face a “creative crisis”. Take it positively, because it “forces” you to look for and find new ideas.

How to create high-quality and interesting content:

• Write it yourself or hire industry experts for the job.
• Demonstrate your competence by writing simply and clearly to everyone – about simple (but smart and witty) solutions that can “improve life”.
• To ensure regularity, content development must be planned. Create a content calendar and stick to it.
• Constantly measure the performance of your content. It’s the only way to know what works and what doesn’t.
• Follow popular blogs and social network accounts in your niche – this will help you find new ideas and inspiration.
• Before you start writing, do some keyword research.

Write regularly or don’t write at all

Regularity and consistency when creating a blog are especially important:

• Regularity – Ideally, you should publish at least two articles per week. Well, at least one article a week. With this, you, firstly, do not let your readers “forget” about you, and secondly, the number of articles grows relatively quickly, and your blog turns from a website with a few interesting articles into a “repository of knowledge”.
• Consistency – from choosing topics to how you talk/write about them. Creating a blog is challenging not only because you have to find time for it but also because, at first, there is no visible return on the work you have invested (at least during the first year). It takes self-belief and willpower to continue and not start doubting the correctness of the chosen topic/path.

If you cannot maintain the regularity of publishing articles, the flow of visitors to your blog will not increase.

Blogging is not a sprint but a marathon that never ends. As long as you keep writing regularly, everything will be fine, but if you stop writing, the traffic will decrease.

Write clearly

By “understandable” we mean – understandable to everyone. Especially if you write about technical topics.

Remember that what seems obvious to you may not be so to the reader of the article. Think about whether it is necessary to include additional information and/or references so that the reader understands what is written clearly/correctly.

If you write how to do something, mention every single step because if the reader is unable to repeat the process you described, he will look for a solution elsewhere.

Respectively – write without foreign words, in simple language – so that even a fourth-grade student can understand what you say.

Follow the AIDA communication model

The AIDA model is based on the assumption that people go through a series of steps when deciding to buy and/or try something:

A – Attention. Something catches their attention.

I – Interest. Interest arises – they start researching/comparing.

D – Desire. If the result of the research is positive, there is a desire to acquire.

A – Action. A purchase is being made.

It can be applied to a blog article, for example, as follows:

• On the search results page, the reference to the blog article attracts attention with the title and description.
• There is an interest, a desire to read it or at least look at it/find out if it is what you are looking for.
• If the article is interesting to the visitor, they will want to read other articles by this author. If they are also perceived as competent and interesting – the authority of the author in the eyes of the reader grows (he knows what he is talking about or what and how to do it better).
• In cases where appropriate expertise or a product is required, a purchase (consultation/service or product) is made.

Follow Pareto’s Law

In this case, it could be rephrased as follows – Spend 20 per cent of your time developing content and 80 per cent – promoting it.

Remember that no matter how good your content is, you won’t benefit from it if no one knows about it.

Therefore, it should be actively promoted:

• Post links to it on your social media accounts;
• Send emails to your subscribers;
• Create a YouTube video on the same topic;
• Also, publish it as a Podcast;
• Convert it to an E-book;
• Advertise it on Google Search.

Accordingly, a content distribution strategy is also necessary – creating quality articles is only the beginning.

And don’t worry about repeating the same content in different formats – most people don’t remember what you posted on Facebook yesterday, let alone what you posted elsewhere.

And even if you remember – “repetition is the mother of knowledge”.

Increase your subscribers

Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing tools that provides the best return on investment.

In addition, the transaction is mutually beneficial – visitors leave their email addresses for you to receive information of interest to them, and you provide them with this information to demonstrate your competence and thus increase the possibility that they will turn to you in case of need, and not to someone else.

The more subscribers your blog will have, the less you will depend on such advertising platforms as Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, TikTok, etc., and your advertising expenses will also decrease.

Continually innovate and improve

Everything flows and changes. Also, the information mentioned in your articles is getting old – new trends, possibilities, and technologies appear …

Therefore, if you want to demonstrate competence, what has already been written must be regularly reviewed and supplemented. But you don’t want someone reading your articles to think that you “don’t keep up with the times”.

If you update your blog articles regularly, they will not lose their relevance and therefore will not lose their TOP positions in search engines.

Key takeaways

Blog best practices are a set of elementary actions that, of course, must be followed, but they, by themselves, will not lead to any significant increase in the number of visitors to the blog. If they do – there would be no weak and mediocre blogs.

Increasing blog traffic is not as simple as following 1.2.3 … best practices. It is a very difficult job, and not everyone succeeds.

Here is one example – within 15 months, only with free methods, 30,000 visits were achieved in 28 days from Google search (natural traffic). That’s a little over 1000 interested potential buyers a day.

However, as you can see, it did not happen quickly, and a lot of work is required as well (preparation of publications).

The success of a blog is directly proportional to the frequency of publications and a successful content distribution strategy.