Creating a blog from scratch is only half the battle. Getting people to discover your brand is your next big task.
Website traffic is so important to your online business for the reason that your visitors are your source of income. The more traffic you have, the higher your opportunities to promote your offers and make money online.
You can write interesting content all you want but without drawing in potential customers, your efforts will be useless.
Today, I’m going to share with you seven proven techniques for driving website traffic.
As you explore these methods, my advice for you would diversify your traffic sources. This allows you to know which traffic source brings you the most results so you can optimize it more.
Also, diversification helps you protect your business.
Let’s get started, shall we?
1. Email your blog posts to your subscribers.
A lot of bloggers publish content on a daily basis but fail to get the interaction they expect.
Don’t just wait for your email subscribers to check your website every single day for fresh content. Reach out to your subscribers and let them know what’s new on your blog.
If you have an email marketing service, you’ll be able to automatically send your blog posts to your email list using RSS to Email.
There are millions of blogs out there creating daily content which makes gaining online recognition quite challenging.
While there’s no shortage of the topics you can tackle, one thing you need to focus on is establishing a personal connection with your audience. Create your content based on the current needs and wants of your customers.
Track the latest news in your industry and write a how-to post about it. Seek to solve people’s problems.
Experiments with different formats to cater to all types of learners – video, infographics, podcast, quizzes, and SlideShare presentations.
2. Integrate social sharing buttons.
How do further increase your blog traffic with the help of your existing traffic? The answer is simple: add social sharing buttons to your content.
When readers enjoy your posts, they would gladly share them with friends on social media. Create better experiences for your readers by making the process of sharing easier.
In addition to growing your traffic using social sharing buttons, you’ll get more brand exposure. Other benefits include a stronger social media presence, increase in social signals (for search engines), and more natural links.
3. Mention influencers in your blog posts.
You can increase your traffic by mentioning top influencers in your niche as you craft your next blog post. Link to one of their relevant posts.
You can include your own thoughts and opinions to provide more value to your readers.
After publishing your posts, let these influencers know you’ve mentioned them by sending them an email. Remember not to appear desperate or pushy.
You can politely ask them to share your content if they believe it helps their readers. If an influencer says no, you can move on to other influencers.
Aside from using social sharing buttons to get the word out on social media, you can share your content yourself.
Send your posts to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other platforms where your target customers are most active.
Sharing your piece of content more than once can help you double your blog traffic. You can tweet your post once on the day it gets published and do it again after a couple of days.
However, be careful not to appear spammy doing this. You can share the same link but NEVER the same message/status update.
Use different hashtags, ask a question to entice your fans, or pull out a quote or statistical data from your post.
4. Guest post on other blogs.
Guest posting on relevant blogs is practiced by a lot of bloggers these days. This traffic-building strategy allows you to demonstrate your expertise to more audiences who are most likely to be interested in your brand messages.
When guest posting, make sure to provide a link or two back to your blog.
At the end of your guest post is your author bio. Again, you can also use this for linking back to your website or your social media pages.
To look for guest posting opportunities, start by running a Google search. Type in the keywords “submit a guest post [your niche/industry]”
Like guest posting, blog commenting is another method to drive targeted traffic.
With blog commenting, you look for relevant blogs and leave comments that provide added value to your blog readers. Then you include a link preferably to your About page.
You’ll reap the benefits of blog commenting if you do it right. Below are some best practices:
• Use your real name.
• Include a real image of yourself.
• Avoid spelling and grammatical errors.
• Avoid general comments like “Thanks”, or “Great post!”
• Make sure to read the post first.
5. Facebook advertising
On August 28, 2015, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook reached a milestone. 1 billion people logged in to Facebook in one day.
This alone is a huge reason to leverage Facebook advertising to grow your blog traffic.
Before you can create a Facebook ad, you should first sign-up for a business page. Facebook allows you to create an advertising objective for your campaign. Make sure to select the objective Traffic (website clicks).
With Facebook advertising, you get to target your existing blog visitors or email subscribers on the platform.
You’ll also be able to reach a similar audience based on your current customers’ traits/characteristics.
6. Start a podcast.
57 million people in the US alone listen to podcasts.
Podcasting has risen in popularity for several reasons:
• Audio content is more intimate and a much better way to tell stories.
• Listening to a podcast is convenient. Your listeners can always take you with them.
• Less competition. There are obviously more blogs than podcasts.
• You’ll be able to build brand authority.
Use your podcasts to generate web traffic. Make sure to include a call-to-action in your podcast episode, asking your listeners to visit your blog and sign-up for your email list.
Final Thoughts
Work on growing your traffic from day one. Again, use a combination of traffic sources/strategies to grow your business fast and minimize risk.
Can you recommend other practical, easy-to-follow tips to increase web traffic? Feel free to leave your comment below!