How to Increase Your Blog Traffic

Your blog is a valuable marketing tool–perhaps one of the most valuable marketing tools if you’re using it correctly–and knowing how to increase blog traffic can do wonders for your business. Your blog is an excellent way to inspire your customers, generate leads, establish yourself as a trusted voice in the market, and subtly reinforce your brand. Unfortunately, there is a lot of competition, and putting together a blog that leaves a lasting impact can be easier said than done. Case in point: I visited three blogs during this first paragraph. Will I remember any of them by the time I’m done writing this post? Doubtful. It’s a crowded platform, but it is possible to claim your space within it and boost your site’s traffic, and we’ll show you how it’s done. But first, let’s answer a couple of key questions:

How Much Traffic is Good for a Blog?

There’s a lot to consider before answering this question. Unfortunately, the question of “how much” is not one that can be answered by a mere value of X. The truth is that the traffic you generate from your all-time most-viewed blog might equal your fiercest competitor’s off day, and while we want views, there’s more to good traffic than that. Good traffic means that visitors are on your site, becoming familiar with your brand, and moving slowly down the sales funnel. It’s better to have one qualified lead look at your blog than ten unqualified leads.

Rather than relying on a specific number or metric, you’ll want to set your own benchmarks to determine successes or opportunities relating to blog traffic. If your blog is brand new, anything is better than zero and you’ll see some rapid increases, but it might take a while to figure out what kind of traffic you can expect regularly. If your blog has been around for some time, a good goal is to shoot for around 6 percent monthly traffic growth. As you continue blogging and more people start noticing, you can start setting more aggressive monthly growth goals.

Why is Increasing Blog Traffic Important?

Increasing blog traffic not only widens the net for valuable leads but it lets Google and other search engines know that you know what you’re talking about. As Google notices that your site is an important resource for specific search terms, you’ll see your rankings start to go up organically. Better rankings mean more traffic, more leads, and more sales.

Is that a gross oversimplification of the process? Perhaps. If it were that easy, everyone would quit their jobs, find a couple of advertisers, and become full-time bloggers. The truth is that SEO blogging is a highly-complex medium, and best practices are changing and evolving daily, making it hard to keep up. For this reason, we’ll always recommend having a trusted content marketing agency in your corner.

13 Fool-Proof Steps to Get Your Blog Noticed

Getting people to visit your blog without bribery, trickery, or witchcraft can feel impossible, but it’s not with the right approach (I mean, we got you to read this one, right?). While there’s no legitimate magic formula that’ll send your site visits into orbit or make you go viral, there are a few steps you should take with every blog you write just to increase your chances of success.

1. Understand Your Audience – And What They’re Actually Searching For

If you want your blog to be read, you need to understand your audience and their needs. Remember, you are writing for them. Your blog needs to connect with them and offer insights and information they crave. It can be tempting to simply write about what strikes you in the moment, which could be great information in general, but if it’s not what your customers are looking for, it won’t help your business get found. Ultimately, if you’re not writing with your audience in mind at all times, you’re missing the mark, and your traffic will prove it.

2. Hire an SEO Strategist

If you don’t already have an accomplished and knowledgeable SEO strategist available, it’s essential to partner with one as early in the blogging process as possible. Whether one person or a team, they can perform all of the necessary research to help you find the right keywords with the right amount of search volume to get your blogs where they need to be SEO-wise. Your organic pushes (social media, email newsletters, etc.) will certainly help, but an SEO strategist can help you craft a perfect blog that gets noticed by search engines and boosts the authority and profile of your overall site.

3. Study the Competition

Before deciding what to write about, it’s important to check out what’s already out there surrounding a potential topic and your chosen keyword. Google your keyword and see who’s already ranking. Are you going up against Wikipedia, CNN, Buzzfeed, or Google? If so, you might want to go in a different direction. When you start seeing your competitors, or sites with comparable domain authorities, you’ll know you’re on the right track. Plus, you can start seeing examples of the direction you should probably take your blog in when drafting.

4. Develop Tailored Topics with Consumer Intent in Mind

Now that you know what your audience is searching for, it’s time to create your blog topics. Topic research can be one of the tougher steps in this process; it needs to be broad enough to reach a wide audience, yet specific and focused enough to where you won’t have to write a 50,000-word anthology just to cover it. When developing your topics, keep in mind the intent of your customers when searching. Are they simply searching for information on one specific topic? Are they needing comparisons to make a more informed buying decision? Perhaps they are looking for trusted product reviews or testimonials. Understanding the consumer intent of a search will help you better focus your tailored topic.

5. Prep with Content Outlines and Strategies

Okay, so you’ve got your keywords and your topic, now it’s time to write… right? Before you start writing your blog, jot down some notes of exactly how you want this blog to look. What is its purpose? What questions do you need to answer? How will it be structured? Who is your leading competitor on this topic? And what can you offer that they don’t? Plan your blog top to bottom, ensuring your account for your H2s and H3s (your SEO strategist can help here). Once your content outline and strategy are in order, NOW it’s time for the heavy lifting (or typing, anyway).

6. Create Engaging Content

This is your chance to shine. Tell the story your audience needs to hear and do it in a way that connects with them and leaves a lasting impression. Your viewers need information, and you need to provide it better than anyone else with a keyboard and Internet access. It’s a tall order, no doubt, but you’ve got this. Pay close attention to voice and tone (and grammar and spelling, obviously), staying consistent as you go. Sites like Grammarly can be life-savers here. Remember, stick to your content strategy and spell it out for your reader in your own style.

7. Invest in Eye-Catching Images

Visuals are important to readers. According to LinkedIn, those who added 10 or more images to their blogs were nearly twice as likely to report “strong results.” Now, when it comes to choosing images, you have some options here. At the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with finding and paying for stock imagery online, but consider if that’s your best course of action. If you’re writing about your products, for example, snap some pictures yourself. If possible, original, high-quality photography will always be a key addition to your blog. If you don’t consider yourself much of a photographer or your only equipment is an outdated smartphone, invest in a skilled product photographer for the best results. When creating your own images, think about how shareable they may be – what’s going to catch the attention of your audience on social media channels? And for SEO purposes and a better user experience, don’t forget to pay close attention to the alt-text for each image (e.g., “One dozen pink frosted donuts from Kelly’s Bakery” is going to be much better than “donuts8372.jpg”).

8. Tie In Useful Features

Now that your content is ready to go, what else can you offer your audience in terms of value? Give those competitors another look and figure out where you can fill in the gaps. Remember, a “useful feature” doesn’t need to equate to a fancy interactive experience with hours of development time. It could be something as simple as a shareable quiz, infographic, or chart.

9. Establish Crosslinking Opportunities

Again, you might want to bend your SEO specialist’s ear on this one. You’ll want to be very selective and strategic regarding where you’re putting internal crosslinks and which ones you choose. An effective crosslink strategy can elevate your overall SEO and analytics. Remember, it’s not enough to simply attract people to your blog; you want them to stick around a while and see what else your site has to offer.

10. Promote Through Social Media

Obviously, right? When it’s time to start driving real-life traffic to your blog, why not start with those who’ve already said they’re interested in what you have to say? Your content needs to have some click-attraction and shareability for this very purpose. Organic or paid social media posts can be excellent drivers of web traffic. Again, this one’s going to tie back to your visuals – are any of the blog images particularly shareable that would catch the attention of your audience? The more shareable the image (and blog), the broader your audience will become.

11. Use Your Email List

Email newsletters can be another effective way to get your blog off and running in terms of traffic. Every blog you write can be the centerpiece for a worthwhile email campaign. And make sure your website has clear and enticing call-to-actionss where appropriate (including your blog) to have people sign up for your email list.

12. Perform Routine Content Audits

Hitting publish on your blog might feel like the finish line, but don’t be fooled. You’ll want to perform regular content audits on your site just to see how things are performing (once again, might want to tap your SEO specialist on this one). By paying attention to how your blogs rank organically, you can edit and update them to reach an even wider audience. Plus, sprucing up some slightly outdated topics you used over a year prior means you not only give your audience new information but also save yourself some time thinking up brand-new topics.

13. Post Regularly

When we say “regularly,” that’s going to be different for each business. You need to make the decision based on the time and resources you have available, and you want to consider the types of topics you are posting about. If you’re focused on more newsworthy topics, you’ll definitely be wanting to post daily. For the standard business selling various products and services, you’ll be just fine with two to four blogs a month. In any case, you don’t want to have giant gaps in your posting schedule, but you don’t want to burn yourself out. Build a schedule that works for your needs and stick to it.

How Long Does It Take for a Blog to Get Traffic?

Your blog gaining traction depends on many factors: competition for the keyword, backlinks, domain authority, and more. Between social media traffic, email newsletter traffic, and regular site visitors, you might get lucky and see some decent numbers in the first couple of days. But realistically, this isn’t sustainable over time. For this reason, your best bet is to ensure your blog is optimized for search engine traffic. Even if you’ve done everything correctly, the timeline by which you’ll start seeing regular traffic is, unfortunately, going to be measured in months rather than hours or days.

Partner with an Experienced SEO and Content Marketing Agency

Rest assured, if you build it, they will come… even if some of those visitors are unqualified hits (and yes, I already forgot those first three blogs I mentioned earlier). While blogging may not exactly be a Field of Dreams level task, it is a valuable tool that can help make a real difference when done right. Partnering with an experienced SEO and content marketing agency like Timmermann Group can ensure your blog does what’s best for your audience and your website: creating valuable, strategic content and never letting up. While it may seem impossible to increase blog traffic, just know that it can be done. Contact our team today to find out how you can get started.