How to Get More Traffic to Your Blog
You may be the best wordsmith in your niche. And you may have a knack for delivering complicated messages in a fun and relatable way people can’t get enough of, but you need more than top-notch writing skills to drive traffic to your blog.
It’s inevitable. At some point in the life of your blog, you are going to experience an ebb in the flow of visitors, and this may happen in spite of all your efforts at dotting all the Is and crossing the necessary Ts.
Don’t fret over it. Life's meant to throw surprises at you once in a while. However, you can learn from these situations and position your blog for increased traffic using these tips.
Know Your Audience
One of the most important factors for running a successful blog is to have a clear-cut idea of your audience.
Without a definitive understanding of the actual people that consume your message, it could easily get lost in the wilderness of the internet, not with the millions of other competitive blogs and website vying for the little attention of internet users.
If your traffic is slowing down, one of the crucial steps to take is getting to understand the problems of your target audience, their interests, and aspirations, and providing, useful, practical solutions.
It’s also important to narrow down your audience, so it becomes easier to streamline your messages which makes it easier for your posts to reach the people who need it most.
Have a Content Calendar
Yes, content creation is not your problem. However, you may find it hard to come up with brilliant post ideas. And if you can’t give your audience value-adding content consistently, they jump ship and start looking elsewhere for the value they are missing on your platform.
The result is that your traffic suffers a dip.
It’s understandable that the rigors of living can get in the way of your creativity sometimes, but you can avoid this problem by having a content calendar.
A plan of action about what to write and when to post it will not only spur you to action but will also get your creative juices flowing. Planning your work will help you overcome those lame excuses so you can stay on top of your content game.
Remember when you want to get more traffic to your blog, you need to build a relationship with your audience before you can win their loyalty and no better way to earn their trust than giving them a consistent dose of high-value, life-enriching content.
Widen Your Network
As a blogger, you won’t last long if you don’t reach out to other bloggers in your niche. Running a blog can start as a part-time enterprise, but you need all the help you can get if you hope to turn it into something more than a mere pastime.
Interacting and building relationships with other bloggers can provide you tons of goodwill and exposure.
An excellent place to start is to become a regular in the comment section of the respected blogs in your area of expertise.
You should try and offer meaningful contributions to the discussions and also sprinkle your blog's link here and there, but avoid spamming. Over time, you will establish yourself as an authority, and more doors will be easier to open when you knock.
Don’t forget SEO
Search Engine Optimization is a vital tool for getting traffic to your blog. As a blogger, you need to know the keywords that rank for your niche and try to incorporate them into your content strategy and blog layout.
An SEO blog post is a traffic goldmine if you know your onions, and it can also help to rev up your revenue if the blog is monetized.
SEO can seem a bit techy, but it’s not so complex to understand and execute. In fact, you can use SEO plugins to automate your blog's traffic-gathering efforts, and you will find that the investment is well worth the effort.
You can get visitors crawling over themselves on your blog with the right strategies. There are several other ideas to get traffic to your blog, and you can check out this great post Which shows how you could double your traffic to your blog in 30 days!
BUILDING THE RIGHT FOUNDATION WITH PROPER KEYWORD RESEARCH
None of these traffic-boosting strategies will do you any good unless you have the proper keyword research foundation to grow from.
The fact is, most people go to the Google Keyword Suggestion tool, pop in a few keywords, see that they’re high competition / high search value, and decide to tough it out anyway — playing in the same league as competitors who oftentimes are more established and have more money to throw at campaigns.
Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, they try to dig through mountains of competitive keywords, looking for the lucrative low-competition phrases, only to find that they simply aren’t searched enough to use as a viable business-building tool.
THE RIGHT WAY TO DO KEYWORD RESEARCH
Like diamonds under the exacting scope of an appraiser, keywords each have an intrinsic value. To properly value a keyword’s potential for your own business, first ask yourself how relevant your pages would be to the user searching for that keywords.
Generic words like “golf clubs” and “flights to Paris” are extremely competitive (read: costly) and, even if you’re selling those particular items, aren’t exactly the best choices for doubling your traffic.
Instead, search for keywords that your users would type in that would make them delighted and thankful to find your site. Examples might include “golf clubs for women” or “flights to Paris under $1,000”.
This delicate balance between generic versus specific is the sweet spot for keyword research, and one that many online businesses continue to strive for through adjusting their campaigns, targeting and other aspects.
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TEST YOUR THEORY
Once you have your ideal keywords chosen, it’s time to see if your visitors feel the same way. Type in your keywords in Google and notice both the top and sidebar paid ads:
Now, there are plenty of sidebar and top ads here competing for real estate (and clicks), which means that this could very well be a lucrative search phrase. But only a select few of these site are truly making the most of their ads using Rich nippets (which we’ll get to in a future lesson).
If you were a visitor looking for flights to Paris under $1,000, your eye would naturally be attracted to the cheapest possible price (at least at first!) which is being offered by CheapoAir, or the highest number of user reviews, which belong to TravelZoo at 18,000+ reviews.
Lots of ads above the organic results (the three in the slightly-shaded box) tend to point to a phrase that converts well, while lots of ads in the sidebar denote that this is a keyword or phrase with a high search value as well.
But I Don’t Even Rank for the Keywords I’m Targeting!
Granted, your marketing budget might be nowhere near CheapoAir or TravelZoo, but that doesn’t mean you’re relegated to the bottom of the pile. It just means you have to play (and spend) smarter, not harder.
The next step is to test out the performance of your chosen keywords through a campaign on Google AdWords or Bing AdCenter.
At this point we’re not looking to gain the top position, but to determine whether or not this keyword converts well. Set up a sample campaign and use “exact match” targeting.
Point the chosen keywords to the relevant page on your website and let the ad accumulate around 200-300 clicks.
Check your analytics to determine the number of impressions (number of times your ad was displayed) and conversions (number of times visitors took an action, such as booking a flight or clicking through to your affiliate link).
Let’s assume your results showed that within 24 hours, your ad had 5,000 impressions, of which a very conservative 250 users clicked through and an even more conservative 3 users ultimately booked a flight.
Assuming you made a $200 commission on the sale of each booked flight, you’d have earned $600 in one day.
Not bad, right?
That also means that each user to your site is worth approximately $2.40 using that specific keyword. Multiply that by 365 days a year, and you can see how lucrative keyword research can be — and that’s just ONE example!
Obviously, you don’t have to test out every single keyword in your collection, but it’s a good idea to try out the most promising ones, since getting your research right is just the first step. Do this, and everything else falls into place.
“It’s okay to write about personal experiences and share what you’ve learned from a first-hand perspective, but be careful of making yourself into some kind of blog rock star. Instead, aim to be a resource and help to others, you will still get good traffic to your blog!
Blogging shouldn’t be a hassle. But it can become a nightmare if nobody is reading your posts. That can change if you know the right strategies, and this post is a good place to start, read the full article here it really is a great way to learn.
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