Setting up a blog is a smart move. After all, blogging is considered one of the leading content marketing strategies. But just starting a blog and writing a few posts is not enough. You also need to drive traffic to your content in order to reap the results for your business.
Traffic refers to people who visit your blog. More visitors can lead to an improvement in your blog’s reputation on the internet, not to mention a higher possibility of getting conversions. There are a number of proven ways to get more people to click on your blog posts and actually read them. Below are seven of the top strategies to employ right now.
1. Share Your Posts on Social Media
Most, if not all, of your readers will have at least one social media account. It makes sense, therefore, to share your blog posts on all relevant social networks. A single retweet on Twitter or share on Facebook, could easily attract readers who probably would not have encountered your content otherwise. If even one of your posts manage to achieve viral status, your blog traffic could take off exponentially. You can also consider promoting (boosting or sponsoring) a few of your posts that are popular among readers to attract even more attention.
If you don’t have time to manually share your content, consider using a service such as PenSignal. PenSignal is an easy to use tool that auto-tweets your posts on a predetermined schedule.
2. Create Strong Headlines
The importance of crafting catchy and memorable headlines cannot be stressed enough. Most internet marketers even agree that the headline is as important as the content. Others suggest spending most of your time creating the best article title and the rest on writing the content.
Why? People won’t click on your post unless the headline arouses their curiosity. And, according to Copyblogger, only 20% of the people who see your headlines will follow through with reading the content.
With that said, your headlines need to be eye-catching, powerful, and interesting. The first step to doing this is to truly understand what your target audience is interested in. If you have a blog about food preparation, for example, your readers will probably be interested in tips on how to save time and money in the kitchen, unique methods to prepare common foods, and even gadgets related to meal preparation. If you are not sure what is interesting in your particular field at the moment, Quora is a great platform to find out what topics are driving conversation on the internet. In addition, here are some other useful tips on how to create compelling headlines for your blog posts:
- Include a number or statistical data in your headline. Odd numbers are considered to be more authentic than even numbers.
- Personalize your headlines by using the words you, your, or referring directly to what they do (“bloggers,” “drivers,” “movie-goers,” etc.).
- Use common, simple words that readers can relate to.
- Research words that trigger emotional responses in readers when placed in a headline. A few examples include breathtaking, miracle, amazing, grateful, guts, sensational, uplifting, surprising.
- Ensure your headline promises some value in relation to your audience’s specific needs. Follow this up with content that provides solutions your readers are likely searching for.
3. Create Evergreen Blog Posts
There are certain topics that people will always be interested in, regardless of the amount of time that has passed since being posted. A blog post about top trending Christmas décor ideas in 2020, for instance, will lose relevance as soon as the season is over. On the other hand, a post about 10 useful DIY Christmas decoration ideas will remain interesting for years to come. That’s what evergreen topics are all about – articles people will always find useful.
You need to have plenty of these on your blog to attract readers who are looking for helpful content relative to their needs. Evergreen content, especially in the form of list pots, are great for SEO purposes and can help to reduce bounce rate. Moreover, having evergreen content means you will have posts that can be shared on social media at any time if you are not able to keep up with your regular post schedule for whatever reason. Just to note that evergreen posts are usually long-form content. In fact, content marketing statistics suggests that the longer they are (1,500 words or more), the more shareable they tend to be.
4. Pay Attention to SEO
As you probably already know, SEO stands for search engine optimization, and refers to how search engines present your content to people who use them to get information. For example, if someone goes to Google and types in “best desktop computers,” the search engine will look for content that provides the most relevant answers to that query – based on specific algorithms – and show it to them. Of course, the article or webpage with the most suitable content relating to the keywords will be shown at the top of the search results. And that’s what SEO is all about.
This might seem a bit technical for the average blogger who just wants to create blog posts and has little knowledge about what goes on in the backend. However, the main thing to remember when thinking about SEO is to craft high-quality content people will be interested in reading. Also, coming up with great headlines as mentioned earlier helps with SEO. In addition, there are increasing numbers of tools and resources that simplify SEO and how to implement it in your content marketing strategies.
Bloggers using WordPress, for example, can install the Yoast plugin, which helps with making blog posts SEO-friendly. There are also many tools and tutorials that helps with understanding and practicing SEO, including finding suitable long-tailed keywords to target.
5. Engage with Others in the Blogging Community
Other bloggers and marketers may be willing to share your content if you engage with them. You can, for example, post comments on blog posts created by other bloggers in your field. You can also choose to feature content from other creators on your site, seek out content collaborations or even conduct interviews and post them on your blog. Featured bloggers and marketers will only be too happy to share the content they are featured in, and maybe even unrelated posts on your blog to their respective audiences. As you can imagine, this will also lead to increased traffic as your blog will be exposed to readers from other platforms.
6. Use Suitable Images
A suitable image helps to make a blog post more shareable when posted to social media. It also helps with SEO, especially when appropriate alt-text is used. Great images tend to have high resolution and are relevant to the topic being discussed. Infographics also make great images, especially for sharing on graphic-intensive platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram.
Finding good images for your blog post is not difficult nowadays. There are a number of websites, including Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, etc. offering free stock images. If you have photographing and editing skills, you can also create your own images as well.
Two popular choices for editing images are Visme and Canva.
7. Set up a Newsletter
A large portion of the people visiting your blog on a daily basis will be returning visitors. This means you want to give as many people as a possible a good reason to return. This is where email marketing comes in. Setting up a newsletter means people who subscribe will receive updates on articles you write in the future and then click back to your blog if they receive something they are interested in reading about. Substack is one option that makes creating a newsletter simple. However, there are a number of Substack alternatives worth checking out.
Conclusion
The more viewers you get to visit your blog, and who actually take the time to read your posts, the higher the chances of achieving your targets, whether that means more direct sales, subscriptions, or downloads. Be sure to try out the above tactics to start increasing traffic to your blog.