So, you have your own blog. Great, but there are also hundreds of thousands of other people who have their own blogs. You will have to compete with all these blogs for readers. If you thought the writing part was the hardest, wait till you learn about promoting your blog. Yes, it can be frustrating and overwhelming to push your blog to the top of the giant pile that is available online. Don’t worry too much. Read ahead for several, simple and easy to achieve tips for increasing traffic to your blog:
Be Specific
As mentioned before, there are literally millions of blogs out there. Modern readers faced with this sheer number of options become more discerning regarding what they read. They are more likely to overlook blogs covering generic topics and seek blogs covering specific topics. Consider for example, a blog about travel. This is one of the most blogged about topics on the Internet. So, if your blog is about travelling in general, your readership will be fewer. On the other hand, if you blog about a specific topic under the larger theme of travel, like backpacking in northern Japan, you will attract a devout following. Aim to retain users, instead of solely generating traffic.
Optimize Content for Search Engines
SEO is a big deal for many sites and blogs these days. Professional bloggers actually hire digital marketing services to optimize their blogs to get higher rankings on Google. You may not be there yet, but you can try one or two simple things to make you blog more palatable to search engine algorithms. You can insert keywords here and there (but not too much) and improve your backlinks. Remember, writing high quality articles is more important than writing a lot of bad ones.
Guest Post
The last thing bloggers with their own site want to do is to post on other people’s websites. This is actually a necessity when you are just starting out. You want the name of your blog out there, and there are no better places to promote your blog than other blogs that have higher traffic than yours. Guest posting can be mutually beneficial. So find several trending blogs and negotiate with owners to post your articles with a link to your blog.
Feature Bloggers
Along with guest posting, you can also feature other famous bloggers or personalities on your newbie blog. This is just like famous actors appearing in cameo roles in indie movies to generate buzz. If you can ask a prolific writer to post something on your little blog, and then share the link on his or her social media site that has a big following, your blog will get free publicity overnight.
Post Regularly
You must have a regular schedule for posting content. If you post an article today, and wait two weeks to post another, it’s a surefire way to lose traffic. Readers like new blogs that post frequently. You want to stay relevant in the minds of readers, so the best way to do this is to post a new article at least once every two days in the beginning. Stick to a schedule, so readers know when to expect new articles.
Generating traffic is only the first step in popularizing your blog. Your users must decide to follow your blog if you want it to be successful. The tips mentioned above will make more people visit your blog, but you must post interesting articles to make sure the increased traffic stays. If your blog about business, post relevant business articles.
