This is a guest contribution from Garrett Moon, co-founder of CoSchedule.
Of course, you know that writing more blog posts will increase your blog traffic.
If one blog post results in an average of 200 visits, then two blog posts should magically turn into 400 visits. Voila!
But, that sucks.
What if there was a way to increase your blog traffic without creating more content?
Rather than using two posts to reach 400 visits, what if you could get those same 400 visits from a single post?
The good news is that it’s possible. Just recently, we began publishing one less post per week on the CoSchedule blog. Even better, our traffic actually went up. Yes, up!
We did it by better optimizing the traffic we received from each piece of content that we posted online. We decided to blog smarter, and not just harder.
The good news is that you can easily do it, too.
Here are the 10 ‘hacks’ that we used to optimize traffic on our own blog. Most of them will make an instant impact on your traffic growth, so plan to implement a few as soon as you can.
1. Make Your Content More Shareable Using A Click To Tweet Plugin
Everyone has social media share buttons somewhere on their blog, but what happens if you add them in your content as well?
Click To Tweet links do just that by helping you to create tweetable quotes and comments throughout your post.
The idea is that you are not only providing readers a way to share, but actively suggesting that they do. This naturally leads to more shares and more exposure for your content.
At CoSchedule, we wanted to be able to add these Click To Tweet boxes with a single step, so we made a custom plugin for ourselves and have since decided to distribute it for free. It’s easy to install. You can grab it here for free if you’d like.
2. Maximize The Emotional Value Of Your Headlines
A while back, we did some research on more than 1 million blog post headlines and make a huge discovery—blog posts with more emotional headlines actually result in more shares.
The takeaway? Write headlines that have stronger emotional output.
There are several tools that you can use to do this. The Emotional Value Analyzer by the Advanced Marketing Institute will give you a basic rating on the emotional value of a headline.
The Blog Post Headline Analyzer will do the same, but also give you a rating on the overall quality and length of your headline. It should make it easy for you to to write awesome (and emotional) headlines every time.
3. Create Longer-Form Content
Did you know that Google gives precedence to long-form content in its search results? By long-form content, I mean posts that have a total of 2,000 words or more.
Oye!
In a recent post, Neil Patel outlined Google’s trend towards long-form writing. He found that long-form content was more likely to be linked to from another site, and it was more likely to take the top spot in search results.
Not a bad deal for a few hundred (or thousand) extra words.
4. Improve Your Meta Tags And Rich Snippets
There are a ton of things you can do to your blog to make sure that your content looks as good as possible when it’s shared on social media or picked up by search engines like Google.
Most of this relies on a small bit of meta tag code that you should include in the <HEAD> of your html page. This code will provide instructions to networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest by telling them which image, title, and description to use when a post goes live.
You can even preview what your own link previews look like using this handy debug tool provided by Facebook.
If you’re using WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin is a great way to make sure that most of it happens automatically. By making sure your content looks as good as possible when it’s shared, you will increase your blog traffic with ease.
5. Tell A Better Story
In 2014 helpdesk software maker Groove shut down their content marketing blog after seeking a solution that would bring them more traffic. Groove decided to shift their content from “generic evergreen content” to the story of their own success.
Groove relaunched their blog as a step-by-step telling of their journey from $20k in revenue per month to more than $100k.
As it turns out, the relaunch worked! In the first five weeks of the new blog, Groove gained 5000 new email subscribers instantly, and gave us all a lesson in the power of storytelling.
One way to increase your blog traffic is to actually tell your story!
6. Promote Your Content On Social Media More Than Once
One of the biggest mistakes we make as bloggers happens right after we press the “publish” button. Once a blog post goes live, too many of us only share our posts once or twice on social media—even though we are frequently producing evergreen content.
The trick here is to follow a simple pattern to promote your content on social media.
- On publish – Social messages publish when your blog posts go live.
- Same day – Initial social messages trickle out to your accounts throughout the next 2–3 hours.
- Next day – Messages are shared again on the appropriate social channels.
- Next week – Another series of messages are pre-scheduled and sent the following week.
- Next month – More social messages are pre-scheduled for the following month. This is especially important for evergreen content.
- Next _____ – Additional messages can optionally be scheduled for the three-month mark or beyond.
By the way… make sure you add some variety to your social content so you don’t come off as just another spammer. You can read more about this whole process here.
7. Make Your Blog Load Faster
Did you know that Google considers the speed of your website when ranking your website in search results?
Back in 2010, Google engineer Matt Cutts announced that Google is now factoring site speed into search rankings. So, it only makes sense that you would make your blog as fast as possible.
If you aren’t careful, you can easily add a bunch of crummy plugins and themes that degrade your site’s performance over time. It’s important to spend some time reclaiming that speed and improving how you rate on Google.
While it can be a bit technical, WPMU DEV has a great guide for speeding up your WordPress blog. Follow it, speed things up, live long and prosper.
8. Optimize Your Social Sharing Buttons
Do you know where the best place to put your social media buttons is?
The placement of these buttons can actually make a big impact on how many shares your posts receive. Our research has found that they seem to do best near the top left of the page, but you can use this free heat map tool from SumoMe to find out how readers interact with your pages.
9. Clean Up Your Sidebar
One of the fastest ways to make a big impact on your blog is to simply clean up your act. After a bit of time, most blog sidebars start getting pretty congested with ads, links, and other cool widgets.
But, those widgets aren’t so cool if they’re distracting your readers from what they should really be doing. Take a minute to really decide what you want your readers to be doing and remove any clutter that you can.
10. Improve Your Call To Action
One way to determine if a widget belongs on your blog is to ask yourself if it is contributing to your bottom line.
At CoSchedule, our blog is set up to lead readers to only two different calls to action. Users can either sign up for our email list or try CoSchedule. It’s that simple!
Have a a clear call to action, and a blog layout and design that accurately leads your readers to it. This is a guaranteed way to improve your blog traffic and conversion rate.
Garrett Moon is a co-founder at CoSchedule, a social media editorial calendar for WordPress that allows users to schedule blogs posts and social media on an easy drag-and-drop calendar. He blogs about social media and content marketing every week on the CoSchedule Content Marketing blog. You can follow him on Twitter @garrett_moon.
That’s a great post Stacey. Using click to tweet tool to increase the number of tweets is of a great deal. People definitely Tweet because they find it different.
Also liked that story telling approach. You have no idea, what pain it causes when clicking on “No I don’t want to grow my business”. No doubt that it greatly increases conversions.
I’ve only heard about EV analyzer, never for it to try. Wanna try it.
Another surefire hack I MA following in my blog to increase blog traffic is identifying great content on my blog using Google Analytics and producing more content on it.
I also use tools like BuzzSumo to hunt for the content that are performing well on my competitor’s blog. That works great to get more shares and traffic.
Another one that works great is competitor keyword research. Those keywords, lead you to the top of the charts.
To leverage the potential of social media, I use Revive old post plugin. It does a great job to make a way for some traffic to my older blog posts.
Many of the readers love minimal layout. They dislike messy sidebars and designs. Patience of online readers are also declining rapidly, as the visual content has dominated the web. So it’s important to speed up the load speed of your site.
It is also said that the number of mobile Web users are surpassing desktop ones at the end of 2015, so mobile friendly themes are gaining importance. Fi your are ignoring mobile usability, then your are leaking cash.
Cheer,
Akshay ~
Glad to hear you liked the post Akshay! Thanks for adding the note about a mobile theme. That’s a GREAT point!
As always enjoyed your post ! and thanks for caring and replying all your readers.
Hi Garrett Moon,
This article was awesome. I have improved my recent post blog title by tools that you have mentioned in your article..I want to know more about Social Sharing Button with post. One more question is how social sharing increases traffic on blog?
Thanks Nikhil, glad you liked the post! The idea here is that users will be more likely to share your content with their audience. By exanding your reach to their audience on social media (and not just yours) you should be able to increase traffic steadily!
Thanks for reading!
I attest to the point on adding emotional value which works hand in hand with telling a story and i recommend to newbie bloggers and not to dispute other methods which am very willing to start using.However, about the first point on adding a share button and at the same time sharing your content on social media is quite tricky not to spam but my point is when sharing to social media you can do it after every hour and still be on the safe side since its a news-feed form where its updated every second and someone would enter a while after you have posted and miss to see your post, this is why social media comes out to be the effective method to grow traffic.
Well, sharing content every hour is probably more than necessary. I advocate a more staggared approach, sharing it more frequenlty right after it has been published, and then tapering it off. You should also add variety and value to your messages. Don’t just tweet the same thing over and over.
Hi Garrett,
Really a very informative post by you. I had never given importance to meta tags and rich snippet but now I think I should improve them as they indirectly affect our blog traffic.
Awesome! Thanks for the comment Danny. Glad it was helpful
Although I was using various tools and techniques to increase my blog traffic but I was not aware about
maximizing the Emotional Value Of Headlines. Now after reading this post I will follow the guidelines provided by the Author.
Thanks Garrett for this great post.
My pleasure Tirtha – thanks for the comment!
I think a few of these tips scream “try me” !! Thanks!
Monica.
Awesome! I hope they work :)
Garrett and Stacey I really vibe with each tip. I figure that if you go long form you’ll look better in Google’s eyes.
That’s why I publish 7,000 word posts. Really, going long form has not hurt me. Why would it? People want resources, big time. If you want to impress someone give them a solution instead of a blog post. Google loves this and your readers will too.
Imagine if someone finds your blog on the first page of Google after a search. Now imagine if you share 400 word or 600 word posts? Even if you answered a question or solved a problem you’re not gonna make the impact you’d make by sharing a long, entertaining, awe-inspired solution. It’s not quality over quantity so much. It’s just knocking someone’s socks off versus being another ho hum post.
I publish once weekly and am loving it. This means each time another post goes live on Blogging from Paradise that folks will see a resource that they can visit and revisit again and again.
Thanks guys!
Ryan
Awesome strategy and success story. Thanks for adding it here Ryan!
Long form is hard for me on my personal blog, but I’m tinkering!
As usual, post is full of knowledge. A great post indeed for one who want increase blog traffic fast. These all things need nothing but will provide More than enough profit in terms of traffic and indirectly authority too.
Thanks
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
you are on all these tips do charm but the most thing is to respect your audience and provide good content
thanks for tips
All things are possible to those who believe and do the transformation entrepreneurial work faithfully. Whether you’re looking to increase blog traffic out of inspiration or desperation, the bottom line is, you’ll need “lots and lots of content.” :-)
Hi Garrett,
I love your point about sharing your content on social media more than once. This is something I have been trying to implement however was concerned I may have been coming off as a little ‘spammy’. To offset this I have made sure I am using the scheduling functions of Facebook and Hootsuite for Twitter to ensure that I am posting general bits and pieces and photos as well as links to my site. After realising that such a small amount of my Facebook likers are actually seeing my posts I don’t feel so bad re-posting them. Thank you for reminding me that it is okay to repost.
Krystal.
Hey Krystal,
Great point. The concern is that things will feel spammy, but there are a lot of ways that you can avoid that. The primary method is to make sure that your reposts are just as original as your original. Don’t rely on robotic automation tools that will turn your feeds into spam. Rather, it is better to hand create your messages each time. We have more tips here in this slide deck: http://coschedule.com/blog/sharing-content-on-social-media/
I hope that helps!
Thanks for reading – Garrett
I had never given importance to meta tags and rich snippet but now I think I should improve them as they indirectly affect our blog traffic.Thanks u so much !
My pleasure!
Thanks for sharing great tips. Social networks work effectively to increase the post reach to audience. And the tips is also effective I think- to decrease blog loading time, previously I used feedjit traffic feed, but it increased my blog loading time, after reading this post, I remove it from my blog. Thanks again.
I think that’s a good call! Thanks for sharing your experience.
Thanks for a great post, i really enjoying what have been told. The story telling part is very interesting but not everyone can write a good story telling in a blog post. And writing for a thousand words .. ohh … some feel a bit difficult to write that long rather than talking about it. :)
“Clean Up Your Sidebar” found something new..Thanks for amazing tips…
Garret, thank you! I enjoyed your post.
Cleaning up your side bar also improves speed.So you get a two-for-one benefit with that. ha!
I think the Call to Action is so important. We tend to forget that we bloggers would like the reader to take action after reading a post – like subscribing for more info. Nice touch listing that at the end of your post.
Something else that helped my clients is compressing images before publishing them. Images can take a long time to download, especially on mobile devices.
Thanks again :-)
Cheers
Rob
Thanks a lot about the great reminder of how a messed up sidebar could affect a page negatively.
what a nice post, sharing content more then once on social media is the fine way for more traffic.
The post are very nice. However i am thrown off by the third point regarding creating a Longer-Form Content. This is because some advocate limiting the posts not more than 1000 words and the author is saying 2000 words, so which is the ideal and proper. There are some of my post that are up to 2000 and they advised that i break the post into series, that is instead of posting one post of 2000 or more that i should break the post into 3 of 700 words.
Darren sir, i will really appreciate if you will throw more light on that point, on shorting a posts or making a long posts?
Never thought that meta tags and rich snippet are this much important. This was a big mistake I was doing since the day I started my first blog in 2012. Thank you so much Mr. Moon to share this post. Today is like a great day for me.. :)
Hi Garrett
Useful tips. Sharing multiple times on social networks is a great idea.
– People are often on lookout of answers to specific questions on social media. Answering their queries with your evergreen posts can be a great way to drive some traffic to your blog.
– One more thing about social sharing buttons. You must make them available to your users. Using a floating social media button is great. Your social media shares will substantially increase this way.
– Write a great meta description tag. It must be interesting and catchy. Users are going to make their decision based on what they see in the description. Write a great one and you will get lots of eyes.
Rich snippets is something I am still not using. But I will give it a go. Thanks for the heads up.
Regards
Neil
Great! Thanks for adding these addition tips Neil – they are very useful tips.
My pleasre
Hi Garrett,
I really needed that post! Looks like I get to turnover my blog and do all these amazing traffic-gaining hacks!
Thanks for this post that is going to help a lot of people!
~Adeel
Awesome – glad to hear it was helpful Adeel!
Hi Garrett,
There were some great tips in this article. I notice that many people make the mistake of making too many distracting images in the header and the sidebar which can quickly turn people off content. I particularly dislike google ads anchored in the centre of a piece of text. I understand that people want to make a revenue for ads but there are right ways and wrong ways of going about this. The writing part of the content is the important part, why would you take a dump on it by pouring a load of conflicting media in the sides?
Best wishes!
Jackson
Very nicely written article. I am quite new to blogging and didn’t knew many of these tips. The tip on adding emotional value is a very good idea of attracting visitors. Thanks a lot for sharing all these ideas. Keep up the good work :)
Hi Garrett Moon
Thank you for this training in SEO This is a great help I have been paying good money and not getting as much out of it as I am on this site I am going to try most of what I have read to night
Cleaning the sidebars was the thing that i forgot ! and now by doing so i’m waiting for huge traffic ! In fact for an improvement.
Great post! Never thought about promoting my content more than during the week it’s been posted. I will definitely be doing that from now on. Thanks!
Hi Garrett,
Thanks for the insight tips to your great post. I was not aware about the 2000 words highlighting and being beneficial on google searches. I always thought that more or around 500 words would work. Will surely be working on slightly lengther posts from now on and to make sure I don’t loose interest of readers but still gain the search engines higher attention.
Thanks for posting
Best, Abhishek
This is the second post i found online stressing the importance of posting through social media. I’ve recently started blogging and I think you’ve go plenty content to keep me fueled for 2015. Any WordPress plugins you recommend for social media sharing on step 8?
Thanks in advance!
What, i originally wanted to say was thanks for the info. Also can you recommend a great plugin for social media sharing on step 8?
It is the same like knowing the SEO and SMO tips to improve the traffic. But 2-3 tips in your post is very good but we have to have to know that sometime it would not work..but thanks for sharing this great article
Fantastic tips Garrett!
And all very easy to implement!
Especially “Clean Up Your Sidebar” is something than many people may think but only some of them finally do. Its difficult to remove some banners and modules from sidebar for most people :)
thanks for correcting myself, i thought if i published the post once will last for long. One question i want to ask, i am using images on my site. Will it slow down the website?
Great post. I had no idea the Blog Post Headline Analyzer even existed……. I’m going to be using it after every post I write now and the record the results to see if the content gets more shares etc. Thank you!!
really a good and informative post hopes that will help to increase my traffic….is there any way i can know how much words i have in my post i am new to blogging pls help
Hi Garrett Moon,
Firstly i would like to say you thanks for pattern of promote content on social media. Amazing tips. Great advice for clean up unnecessary sidebar to make site more Kool. Thank you so much for your valuable effort.
Thanks Garett.
In addition to your post, I think a great post headline and a high CTR on search results is a sure way to increase traffic. The latest Google search ranking factors in how often your blog content is clicked on. Thanks for the tips, will surely implement this on my blog.
Hello Mr. Moon
Just One Word Description Wow, This post is full of knowledge, now I understand my week points which are meta tags & rich snippet. I will definitely use Yoast SEO plugin for sure but sir I have doubt regarding point number 3 which says create longer form content, I mean usually I write about 650 to 700 words or may be more sometimes for every post for my blog, Sir my question is do i need to increase the word limit? If yes them how much? please give me an approx. or near about work limit. I almost check my Google Analytics account to check the traffic and which post they like the most so that the improvements can be implemented on those posts which are having comparatively less shares.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience with us, will visit your site again and again for gaining more knowledge, you are an inspiration to all the beginners.
Regards
~ Piyush Dhiman
Customers are skeptics. In many cases, they will ignore marketing material and advertisements. Since customers prefer neutral third-party opinions, they will ask Google. Therefore, if Google directs their question on your turf, then you already have half the work cut out for you.
Fantastic tips Garrett!
Content lockers are the best. They increse your social media presence.
Keep updating post like this. Very useful post for newbies
Cheer !
Nowadays, most people are using internet from mobile, so a good responsive templates is also a way to increase blog traffic.Moreover it also results in search engine optimisation(SEO).
thank you for the article
This is a very important blog for every Website owner they can understand that things easy to there, you are writing there very informative blog it is very helpful for us and website owner’s, you have to create a lot of links on the different website so you can receive traffic from there and Search engine rule never give you a chance for getting more of more traffic from any one place.