Have you started with your blog and are frustrated with the low blog traffic? Don’t worry, I have been there and know how it feels when you put a lot of effort into creating content and publishing blog posts but still no traction.
So, if you want to take your blog traffic to the level of awesomeness, then keep reading this blog post till the end. In this post, I’ll be sharing 25 actionable tips and tricks that will skyrocket your blog traffic.
Before I move further, let me explain to you the various types of blog traffic.
If you have started a blog, then I am pretty much sure that you might have installed Google analytics to your blog.
Google Analytics shows you key data points such as monthly organic traffic, sessions, page views, demographics and so on. If you look at your acquisition, then you’ll come across various sources of traffic such as;
- Organic
Organic traffic is a type of traffic that you get from search engines without spending a penny on paid ads.
- Direct
This is a type of traffic that your site gets when someone directly searches your site name or URL in the browser and lands on your website.
- Referral
Referral traffic is a type of traffic when someone visits your site by clicking on links that appear on another website.
- Social
The traffic that you get from social media posts is called social traffic.
- other
Other sources of traffic include paid ads, traffic from online communities and forums, web directories and so on.
Now that you might have got an overview of are different types of traffic, now let us understand why blog traffic is important.
Why is blog traffic important?
Website or blog traffic is the digital currency, especially for bloggers and webmasters across the globe. The more people visit your site, the more opportunity you get in terms of increasing your revenue, sales, generating leads, and so on.
However, more blog traffic does not always mean more money.
Sometimes blog traffic can also be used for expanding your product line, service, and business and increasing brand credibility.
Now let us dive deep and understand how you can grow your blog traffic in 2021
surefire tips to increase blog traffic in 2021:
- Create pillar topic
For my personal blog, I focus on creating one single blog post that covers each topic in detail, rather than writing a bunch of articles on a single topic. For example;
If you want to create content on ‘SEO’ then try to cover topics like what is SEO, types of SEO, and the importance of SEO and various SEO strategies in one single post.
This will give an edge over your competitors and will also help you in creating the most comprehensive content ever.
And guess what?
Google loves content that is in-depth, comprehensive, and covers the entire topic in detail.
Do you remember Moz’s beginner’s guide to SEO?
That’s called pillar content. This content is ranking for all the major keywords related to SEO. It has also got tons of likes, comments, shares, and backlinks as well.
So, try creating something or better than this.
- Republish your old content
I am 100% sure that republishing and updating your old content is not on your top to-do list. But this is one of the most important techniques that will help you in growing your blog traffic to the next level.
I did an experiment with one of my content titled top IT companies in Kolkata.
I published this content around September 2020. By the beginning of January, this content become quite outdated and was merely fetching 50 visits per month.
So, I decided to upgrade and update this content with more information, stats, facts, and images.
And guess what happened?
Within 3 months, this content got ranked on Google and it started getting 200+ organic visits every month.
That is the power of updating your old content and republishing it.
So, make sure that you keep on updating your old content every 6 months.
- Create backlinks
Do you know what is the most important ranking factor on Google?
No it is not website speed, social engagements or website security. Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors on Google. Spark to did research and found that referring to the domain or link point to your site is the most important ranking factor on Google.
However, not all links created will have a significant impact on your search engine rankings. It is the quality of links that matter and not the quantity. For example, you should focus on creating 1-2 links from high DA PA websites, rather than creating 10-20 links from low DA websites.
Following are the link-building techniques that you can try;
- Guest posting
- Blogger outreach
- Article submission
- Profile creation.
- Link exchange with relevant domains.
- Speed up your website
The next in this list of 25 tips to increase your website traffic is to speed up your website. This is the one thing that most of bloggers overlook and regret later. So, if you seriously want to increase your blog traffic, then improve your website speed.
You already know that the average attention span of a human is less than 8 seconds. This means humans are very impatient, especially when they access information on websites or the internet.
If your website does not load within a specific time, then they’ll simply abundant your site. And you’ll end up losing opportunities in terms of sales, conversions and leads.
Even Amazon did a test and found that a 1 sec delay in website speed would cost them a loss of $1.6 billion.
Apart from this, website speed is also a ranking factor for Google.
So, if you want to increase your blog traffic, sales, and conversion and want to rank on Google then focus on increasing your site speed.
- Enable SSL certificate
I have already mentioned that organic traffic is the best source of traffic. It converts well and gives long-term results for sure. However, getting organic traffic is not that easy.
There are several parameters that you need to follow, and one of the parameters is website security.
In the early 2000s, only e-commerce websites used to have SSL certificates in order to ensure safe and secure monetary transactions. But, in 2014, Google made website security a universal ranking factor.
So, if you want to get a spot in the organic listing of Google, then you need to focus on your website security by enabling SSL certificate.
- Start with guest posting
When it comes to building high-quality natural links, guest posting will always be the number technique that most bloggers and SEO experts leverage. For those who are new to the term guest posting, then let me explain it to you.
It is a form of link-building technique in which bloggers and SEO experts contribute high-quality articles to get quality links to their personal websites.
Many people think that guest posting is dead and not a relevant link-building technique. However, this is not the case. Guest post is still one of the best techniques by which you can make high-quality links.
This technique will not only help you in building links but will also increase your referral traffic in a quick time.
Here are the keywords modifiers that you can use for finding guest posting opportunities;
- Target more long-tail keywords
In SEO, there are two most important types of keywords.
- Long tail keywords
Long tail keywords are those keywords that contain 3-5 words and have decent search volume with less competition.
- Short tail keywords
Short tail keywords are high traffic keywords with 2-3 words and are highly competitive.
When you are starting a new blog, I would suggest you target long-tail keywords as they are easy to rank and they also have a high conversion rate. You’ll rank these keywords with little or no SEO efforts.
Following are the examples of long tail keywords for paddle boards:
- Best fishing paddle board for 2022
- Best river paddle board 2022
- Best lake paddle board for 2022
- Best camping paddle board for 2022
- Participate in forums and online communities
Online forums and communities are the gold minie of traffic. They’ll not only help you in increasing your blog traffic but will also help you in building backlinks. You won’t believe that one of blog content is solely ranking on Google with forum backlinks.
Look for one or two forums in your niche and join them.
Particulate in relevant discussions and share your blog post links whenever necessary.
For example,
You are part of a forum that talks about SEO and you stubble upon a discussion on off-page SEO. In this scenario, if you have relevant content off-page on your blog, then you share it on the forum.
This will not only give relevant information to the users but will also help you in building links and getting referral traffic.
- Keep an eye on your competitors
If you are serious about increasing your blog traffic, then you need to keep an eye on what others are doing in your niche. In an effort to increase your blog traffic, you must know what strategies, techniques and types of content your competitors are creating.
- What kind of link-building technique are they using?
- Are they using social media marketing?
- How often do they publish content?
- What keywords are they ranking for?
These are the questions that you should ask yourself while doing competitors’ research.
For doing the complete SEO analysis of your competitors, you can use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs.
These are two of the best tools that will give A-Z detail regarding your competitor’s SEO strategy.
- Add image alt tags
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Google image search has gained popularity more than ever before. Images are returned for 19% search queries on Google and the 60% people who are browsing images through Google search are likely to visit the source of the image.
This clearly means that image SEO can surely help you in getting lot of organic traffic on your site.
But how to optmize images for better SEO?
Here are the few tips that will take your image SEO to the next level;
- Always use alt tags in images.
- Compress all your images.
- Select proper file type and name.
- Lazy load your images.
- Resize your image.
Follow these 5 tips and you’ll surely see good results.
- Create videos on YouTube
With more billion monthly visits, YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world. Almost 300 hours of video content is uploaded on YouTube every month. This clearly means that the demand for video content is increasing day after day.
Gone are the days when people used to read textual content.
Of course, the relevancy of textual content is still there, but the video is going to be the future.
In the year 2019, the number of digital video viewers was 2.6 billion and it is expected to reach 3.1 billion by 2023.
So, if you are not leveraging video content, then you’ll surely miss a ton of opportunity.
By uploading videos on YouTube and placing your website link in the description, you can easily drive traffic from YouTube.
- Have a content calendar
A content calendar will help you in staying organized with your content marketing strategy. It will act as a planning tool and will give you an overview on what is to be done and when it is to be done.
It will also save a lot of your time as it helps in planning content ahead of time.
Moreover;
It will also help you in avoiding last-minute changes on topics and content that have pre-decided to go live on a certain date. This will reduce the chaos and will ensure that your audience gets content in a timely manner.
- Create more blog posts
The companies that regularly publish blog posts get 55% of traffic, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages.
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So, keep publishing blog posts often, but make sure that you never compromise the quality of articles. It is always better to write one comprehensive article as compared to 3-5 articles with incomplete information.
- Write 2000+ words article
Do you think you’re gonna rank content on Google with 500 words?
Of course not, especially in 2021. Gone are the days when you could rank content with 500 words articles. Today, the average length of article ranking on top 10 positions of Google is around 2000 words.
So, if you want to rank on Google then start creating long-form content.
Long-form content not only ranks well but also attracts lots of social shares, inbound links and traffic as well.
