This is a guest contribution from SEO expert Zach Radford.
Today, you don’t gain blog traffic by paying for backlinks or by swapping them like the old days. Instead, you need to focus on creating quality content that is beneficial to your visitors.
We know that. But how do you do it? And do it consistently?
The content should solve main problems faced by your reader. It should be actionable, specific and relevant to the audience. If you do this, your audience will come to trust your site, and visit it regularly looking for new content. They will also engage with you, which helps you to improve your blog.
To that end, here are five new ways of looking at increasing your blog traffic.
Create quality content and mention other bloggers
Your blog is the main avenue for communication with your audience. While your main purpose for the blog may be to promote your business, yourself, or some other product or service, you need to focus on providing quality content to the reader. Just focus on providing information that readers will find interesting to read, without trying to be overly strategic about it. Look for trending topics in different areas and create amazing content on those topics. Your audience will not only keep coming back for more if they find your posts interesting, they will also share your posts with their friends. You also need to mention other bloggers that you follow in your posts. You can quote them if you feel the information is interesting to the reader or just mention their names in the post. This will create good relationships with the bloggers and they might return the favour. Lifting each other up has the added benefit of leading to increased traffic.
Share your blogs on social networks
This is a no-brainer, but cannot be ignored. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Linkedin are where your readers are. Give them your posts. After creating your post, you can share a link of the post through Facebook or Twitter and then ask your friends or followers to comment. This will expose your blogs to thousands of social media users and eventually lead to increase in blog traffic.
Syndicate your posts
Syndicating your blog posts will expose them to more readers. You can use RSS feed or syndicate the blog to applicable high-traffic sites. RSS feeds allow your audience to keep track of your blogs without having to bookmark it. The readers only need to open their RSS reader and all your posts will be displayed there. Syndicating your blog to high traffic sites will also popularize it. This will also give your post more credibility, which could lead to high traffic.
Involve your readers
After posting to your blog, you need to ask your readers to leave a comment after reading the blog. Research shows that people will do (mostly) what you ask of them, and will comment where they might not have before. Read the comments that are left and try to reply all of them. Readers feel more valued if they are treated well and respected by the bloggers they engage with. They will keep on visiting your site to look for more content and to engage you as well. This will also build trust with your readers.
Use Pinterest Individual or Group Board
Pinterest allows bloggers to post on individual board and collaborate by posting on contributor boards. The main benefit of pinning your blog on contributor boards is that your blog is exposed to other contributors. Those contributors also have followers who will also see your post, leading to increased traffic.
The bottom line
Your blog will attract more readers if it is of good quality. Above all, this has to be the main aim. Therefore, it is important that you focus on quality more than selling your products or promoting your business through the blog. You also need to network with other bloggers and create good relationships with them. This will help you gain new ideas of increasing traffic to your blog.
Zach Radford is an SEO content expert, working as an SEO consultant and Sales manager for the past 10 years. He strives for success in everything he sets out to do. He believes that high-quality keyword-rich content is the key to running a successful online business. Currently starting his own venture: an SEO Content Company, aiming to provide quality SEO content to the masses.
Great post thanks for letting us know different ways to increase traffic and yes we have to give our blog more exposure by sharing our blog post on social media sites and good point mentioned about Pinterest, i will give a shot to to pinterest now Thanks for the great ino
Hi Zach, It was informative to me,I also make other things to boost my Blog trafic, So Pinterest Group Board
is a valuable source for good traffic and I believe similar two sites digg and Scoopit are good for make traffic. Thanks Zach for !Wonderful post.
Thanks guys , I’m glad you enjoyed the content.
Hi Zach,
Mentioning other bloggers is the easiest way to drive traffic.
My round up post on Blogging from Paradise generate so much publicity, and boost my traffic so quickly, that it’ll make my head spin.
Feature other people to feature yourself. You sow what you reap. You get what you give. It’s simple, and it’s the Golden Rule, and it’s the easiest way to grow your presence online.
Be humble. Give up your platform once in a while. Promote other bloggers and you’ll most certainly promote yourself.
Don’t be so quick to make your blog, your blog. Reach out to bloggers in your niche through outreach. Comment on top shelf blogs. Promote people freely.
By doing these things you can naturally draw attention to you in the form of features and interviews and guest posts, all of which help you expand your presence and boost your traffic.
So many otherwise talented bloggers struggle because they fail to see that promoting others through round up style posts is the quickest, easiest way to inspire these folks to share your content.
Give freely, receive easily.
That mantra will aid you again and again, if you remain true to it during your blogging career.
Thanks much Zach.
Tweeting soon.
Ryan
I totally agree with you and what go’s around comes around. I also believe in internet karma! :)
Great Comment!
Thanks Ryan
Unique? These principles have been bandied around the oodles of marketing blogs out there for caring lengths of time.
How about adding #6 to the list–headlines need to deliver on their promise and not vacuously bait the reader. To wit: Five Tried and True Ways to……..
agreed glenn. didn’t expect this from problogger.
the writer hasn’t even bothered to reply to a single comment. maybe he just needed a backlink.
after all he runs an SEO firm.
I was thinking the same thing. The word unique led me to click on the title…. nice post, but nothing close to unique.
Hear hear!
Agreed. The word unique should not be in this post. This is VERY basic stuff.
Hey Guy’s, I hear you loud and clear!
For the more seasoned blogger these techniques may not have been so “Unique” but the post was meant to inspire someone who was struggling to generate traffic to their blog. Plain and simple! I appreciate your opinions and will be working on posting more advance techniques. I look forward to seeing your future comments.
Kind regards,
Zach
You know perfectly well that the word ‘unique’ draws more clicks and readers than the word ‘basic’, which is what the tips really are, so don’t pretend anything else! Looking forward to those advanced techniques!
Hey Zach,
I’m sorry I didn’t mean to be rude.
Actually I had seen the headline of this article in my Facebook feed and had thought I’ll read it later. Then when I decided to read it, I went to Google, keyed in the bits I remembered from the headline along with the name “Problogger”, clicked on the relevant link from the search results and came here.
Then I kept on reading the article waiting to find some unique tip but after not finding any, I got a bit annoyed as I had spent so much time on it.
And I don’t mean to say that all SEO firms are spammers. Just like many other things, there are good and bad SEO firms.
It’s good to see that you are now participating in the comments.
“varying” to replace “caring”. Apologies.
Hey Zach,
Nice tip off! Its great to read tips provided by a successful person and an SEO expert like you. Driving traffic is the hardest task a blogger may ever face.
It sounds really hard but can be drove if one follows the steps you mentioned above. Also, one should keep in mind that content also plays a vital role in driving traffic.
Thanks for your tips and for serving us with your valuable content on here at problogger.
Have a great week ahead, Zach.
Cheers!
– Rohit
Thanks Rohit, Glad you liked it!
Horrible post.
How can you call these tips unique?
Thanks for you honest opinion. I mentioned the reason above about what I trying to achieve with this article.
Zach, Great article !
As of now I am doing only 2 bits – writing quality article and sharing on social media. Need to learn and practice other points mentioned by you :)
Thanks Subodh
Thanks for this incredible post! I know how is efficient to increase blog post audience. If you really ready to think outside of the box — try to use something completely different. For example, AtContent.
I think mentioning other blogger is a good wake up call to me as sometimes I also find it difficult in creating both interesting and informative articles. But in my country, pinterest is not quite popular at the moment, but will also give it a try, thanks for your sharing.
What are some good sites where new bloggers can connect with established bloggers for mentoring opportunities? In particular, being able to search by subject matter?
hey Zach Radford
Unique? Its great to read tips provided by a successful person and an SEO expert like you. I know how is efficient to increase blog post audience. Create quality content is old talk but the new thing is mention other bloggers in content.
@ Ringo – I’m glad you can take something away from the article.
@ Steven Eisenberg – There are a number of forums and blogs around. I would honestly would recommend using google to find a community that seem to be a good fit for you and go from their.
@ dheerajjain – That’s it! That’s all it takes to try something new and get people think of new Ideas. Good luck with your traffic efforts.
Great Post. Quality Content is must for Targeted Traffic to increase you conversion rate. specially i like last word of this post most which is Good Quality of blog is must to attracting People.
Great advice, I include my audience by having a weekly show and tell of corsets they have made. It’s a great way of interacting.
All points are really important to create a powerful blog content that increase visitors. Find one new point that is “Create quality content and mention other bloggers”. Create quality content is old talk but the new thing is mention other bloggers in content. :)
What are the best resources to identify trending topics? Once you find the trending topics and identify what to write about, is there a way to predict how well your post will do before producing it?
No disagreement here about the importance of these steps – but “unique”?
I’d say “tried and tested” is more accurate. Not that that isn’t a good reason for the blog – just the over-sell isn’t unnecessary, imho.
*is unnecessary* or *isn’t necessary*; not both!
;-)
I must say I’m disappointed. I actually came here looking for “unique” ways to improve traffic, but asking to leave comments, social sharing and RSS are probably the most basic methods of traffic generation. Nothing new and unique about it there.
I didn’t mean to be rude, but given the quality of ProBlogger articles, I expected it to be more than this.
Hi Guys
I understand the concern about this post – but it doesn’t mean the techniques don’t work.
If you want to add to this, try another resource on my own site:
http://www.contentchampion.com/thousands-of-blog-visitors/
Cheers!
Loz
Hey Loz,
I think the concern is more with the use of the word unique. Definitely get that. I was expecting a lot more.
Jawad’s post on your blog is a far more in depth resource. One worth checking out.
You’re right. Like the old days, many bloggers and internet marketers who resorted to buying paid links and not having to worry about Google Panda and Google Penguin updates benefited from better search engine rankings. That was, until Bing, Google, and YaHoO! started getting tougher on those paid link building schemes and starting kicking alot of high traffic blogs and websites virtually out of search engine results pages.
I recently came across a few link building companies face to face. They even had affiliate programs for their link building paid plans. I played cool and kept it moving, becaise I know creating quality content alone is a natural link builder that will get good SEO in due time, if you play the game of patience and keep churning out unique and engaging content for your audience.
One thing I also noticed alot of people are NOT doing that I take time to do is share every new blog post or article or YouTube vide on Pinterest. They not only don’t do that, but also, people do NOT take time to write a “unique Pinterest description with relevant hashtags,” simple because they are fixated on creating quick content which is very little just to have something published and in front of eyeballs, even if it’s three or four sentences. That’s not going to benefit their overall search engine rankings. If a person takes time to write a unique description for every pin pinned to their Pinterest pinboard with relevant hash tags for at least six months, they can potentially look forward to improve search engine rankings, natural back links, increased repins, as well as more traffic to their site.
I have alot of people beat on Pinterest and my Pinterest traffic grows daily like there’s no tomorrow, simply because I write unique content for every individual can in addition to following Pinterest profiles with 10,000 followers and better. I don’t focus on following more people nowadays. I write unique descriptions every time manually without using an automated program, include relevant hash tags to the pin to be pinned on Pinterest, and don’t worry about writing and pinning 10-20 Pinterest pins everyday. If I managed to get three or four pence posted to my pin board that’s good for me. As long as the content is unique and the images are engaging. All of my content is unique whether it’s on the website, on Pinterest, or YouTube.
Nowadays like yourself, I’m always stressing people to take time to create unique content even if it’s just one post a day with over 500 words. Posting 5 to 10 blogs or webpages a day with very little content means nothing to the search engines and only tells them that you’re looking to build more back links rather than serve the search engine spiders with “lots and lots of content.” I’m into meaningful relationship building by way of creating and sharing educational and meaningful content, even if that means posting just one time a day with 500 words or better on a webpage.
Thank you for this thought-provoking blog post. :-)
That was mighty kind of you and I’m sure it’s going to be very helpful.
Thanks for sharing
Expected more tips. But what is described here, I think everyone should know. But in order to get a good traffic u need to work hard for a long time and may write not less than one hundred articles. And only then your site will have more than 100 visitors a day.
I agree with the other comments that this post is not really unique. My take away though is that there are no secrets to what makes a blog successful. You stick to a few basic principles and you stick with it long enough you will have success.
Got to stick with the basics, George but it’s important to keep looking out for ways to get more traffic. There will always new ways of using old tactics and new tactics.
I agree with you, there aren’t any secrets. Just stuff you don’t know yet.
Nice Post but these are the common things which every blogger do for his blog. Do you have any unique and 100% working tip to increase blog traffic.
Hey Zach, i ran across a blog that not only mentions bloggers and their website, but rather an interview with each blog owner, and it seemed like the best way to network with others online. I thought this was a good idea because as much a favor you are doing them by giving them exposure, there is a good probabilty of them linking back to your site with or without asking them. Building trust between bloggers is key to building a strong business relationship.
Although some tactics here are already pretty well known, it is a good reminder to always try these methods as well, since they don’t affect your site negatively.
Hi Zach,
Thanks for sharing such a beautiful article.Building a good amount of traffic for a new blog is never easy.So I always do various experiments with my blog daily.Thanks for your tips,I would going to implement them on my blog surely to get more traffic.
Why would you call these as the unique ideas. I’ve read these for hundreds of times from the day I entered in blogging world. Surely, quality content is always going to gain long lasting readers, so there is nothing new about it. Sorry, don’t take me wrong at this, but I came across this post as I really was interested to learn what are these unique ideas. These are very much traditional and basic principles that you mentioned in this post.
Hi Zach. Thanks for such an interesting article. As it is rightly said sharing is caring, sharing will definitely bring good understanding between blog owners and readers there by increasing traffic. Thanks again.
Hi Zach..
Thank you for sharing a very informative article to build a heavy traffic on my blog.. all the points are easy to understand but one thing i would like to ask you and which is new for me is “Syndicate your posts” how can we get more traffic through Syndicate my post… ? i need you to please elaborate more about this point… Thank you!
very helpful article to increase my blog traffic
Thank you for sharing this post to increase blog traffic. I appreciate your work and ideas.
This article has lot of great points that every one need to know. I gonna implement these tricks to get more exposure.
Best,
Mustafa
This subject is great.Thank you.
Hi, i think most of the techniques already known by most blogger. The one that i think is unique is on maximising the use of pinterest or group board. I might give it a try. Thanks and have a nice day :)
Hi Zach,
Thanks for the suggestions in your post.
I’ve been doing most of these for several years now, but not making much headway on increasing my traffic. There must be something else to it. I haven’t yet joined & used Pinterest, so that’s my next step.
I do have one question for you:
How do I syndicate to high traffic websites? (I already use RSS feed) I have no idea how to go about this. Which high traffic websites? How to I syndicate specifically to them?
Thanks for your help.
Best regards, Lash
Hey Lash,
Great question!
Here check out this resource: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm
I hope this answers your question.
Thanks,
Zach
Thanks Zach!
I’ll check it out. Good to know.
cheers, Lash
Really good Information about how to increase the traffic to a blog…..
Thanks for the information that you provided in detail for increasing the blog traffic. I am new to blogging and this article is really helpful for me. I used to share my each various social networking websites but I had never used Pinterest. But now I will share my blog posts on Pinterest too. I hope that it would bring some good traffic.
I’m glad you found this information to be helpful! Pinterest is a great source of traffic, just remember that 80% of Pinterest users are women. So target your content appropriately.
Hi Zach,
This is really informative post indeed,
You are right, Only blog commenting is a source of communicate with you readers. You can solve reader’s problem by communicate with them through commenting. With out commenting, You can satisfy to your reader. and sharing latest post to social media site are great source of gaining lots of traffic by participating there
Any way I enjoyed it.
thanks for sharing with us
Areesha Noor!
Thanks Zach for this post.
From my experience asking directly to readers does not really involve them. What really helps is replying immediately to a post comment or to an email.
I have to research a bit about Group Boards. I am completely lost about that.
Best wishes, Pablo
Hi Zach
Wonderful post indeed.
Sky is the limit if we talk about ways to increase blog traffic. The ways you mentioned in this post are tested and proven methods to lift blog visitors in no time.
Great tips! I’d further the advice by advising to discover which social media platforms are the most relevant for your business. Quora and Scoopit are better for business and Pinterest rules home-style. The more you know, the more you build your audience.
Though I am a facebook addict I have never thought of using it.Is social media in a productive way. Will using it definitely help me in increasing the accessibility of my blog ?
Can someone guide me on how can Facebook be used more efficiently for the improvement of my blog’s reach ?
Nice and well written article but I don’t think the mentioned points are unique.
Nice suggestion to got your blog popular and have more traffic.
Initially i missed to share what i publish on Social networking sites and then I realize it is nonsense.
This is kinda checklist one must follow the steps when made post.
These ways are not unique but are very helpful for everyone trying to increase website traffic.
One of the best social media networks for blog traffic is stumble upon.
I have some of my blog posts getting over 1000 visitors from one post because of Stumble Upon, but remember, you have to write quality content.
I have been searching this post,, at last i found this.
I found this post great for me, I am a beginner and I appreciate this information.
Thank you!
Excellent points raised here of how to get traffic to your blog! It’s all about taking a step forward, reading a blog post that interests you and leaving a darn good comment!
Hi Zach,
Nice info !!!
For most of the bigger blogs referring sites are the the single best and largest source of traffic. In fact they are also he most reliable and a source of long time traffic. Search engines algorithm can change, your rankings can change and this would affect number of visitors on your blog. But if you are for a long haul , I would advice you to focus upon this source of traffic. I have identified below info which can act as a media to send visitors to your
Getting hits from other blogs-
By commenting on them
By Guest posting
Through Trackbacks
Getting hits from forums-
Getting hits from article and web directories-
Getting hits from sites like google groups and yahoo answers-
Thanks,
Siva
Hello zach
A Great Information required for a wonderfull post but you do your job greatly so thanks Man.
Thank you so much for sharing this post.
Awesome post thanks for these awesome Ways I am a new blogger and it really takes a lot of time to get a good traffic I can reach this goal with your provided information, Keep sharing posts like this :)