Hello all and welcome back. Today we are going to check out 15 different methods you can put into place to improve your website traffic.
New bloggers can often find things very overwhelming at the start of the journey. I know exactly how that feels as I have been through it!
This is the 2nd blog that I have started and this blog is dedicated to helping new bloggers to get started the easiest ways possible.
By implementing these 15 tips you can improve visitors to your site over time 10 fold.
These are strategies I have personally used to increase The visitors to this blog in double-quick time.
This post may contain Affiliate Links which means if you make a purchase through one of the links I may receive a small commission. The price you pay will not be affected.
#1 Make Your Font Bigger
There is nothing worse for visitors than if you use a tiny font that makes it difficult for them to read.
Many people are short on time and when they have a few minutes to spare they like to read blog posts the majority of visitors just skim the post to see if it’s of interest.
When I do this if the font is bigger I will stay on the post and read it to the end. This is obviously what you wish your users to do.
Having a larger font also has benefits to SEO for Google.
The majority of themes have this set at only 12px as a default setting.
It is very easy to go into the settings and change this.
Mistakes Bloggers Make is set on 19px.
Make sure to increase the line-height as well as the font to improve the space between the sentences.
Using the GeneratePress Theme you go to- Appearance-Customize-Typography-Body and you will see this screen:
#2 You Need To Know Your Target Audience
This may take you some time to learn who your target audience is.
I know it took me around 6 months. The best person to base this on is actually you.
Think about the process you went through when you started blogging and write content to help others to get started.
Knowing who your audience is will increase your traffic because you will be able to write specific content just for them.
The traffic to this blog increased significantly when I concentrated on writing content to help new bloggers to get started on Pinterest.
Another idea is to write about the fails you have gone through to stop other new bloggers from making the same mistakes.
#3 Produce Content On A Regular Schedule
Every month that this blog has been in existence I have been writing 16 posts a month and in the previous blog that I had at least 12 posts were published every month.
When it’s possible to get more posts written I have noticed that the traffic increases a lot.
The majority of posts written are a minimum of 1,000 words and some are 2-4,000 words.
All of them give help to the reader to implement simple ways to get ahead with blogging and marketing.
I know from experience it can be difficult to write when you have a child or children demanding your attention.
Our 3-year-old granddaughter lives with us so I have to write around her schedule.
Have you tried reusing your content? This is very easy to put into practice:
- You can make the content into a live video on Facebook
- You can also make a Youtube video
- You can make a shorter version of the post and put it onto Medium.
- You can send parts of posts to your email list.
It is much better for you if you can put out 2 posts every week than it is to put out 4 in one week and none for the rest of the month.
The traffic coming to your site will stay consistent and grow steadily if you stay consistent.
The way I manage this is to write for 3 hours in the morning when my Granddaughter is at school, this way I always have posts in reserve for when life gets in the way.
#4 Link Your Posts
One of the best ways for Google to understand what your blog is about is to link your posts internally and externally.
Externally means linking to other well-established blogs in your niche.
Internally you can put references to other popular posts that will help your readers to answer other questions they may have.
Doing this kind of linking will help you to gain authority from Google which will increase your website rankings and that will gain you more free traffic.
#5 Make Sure You Write Content That Helps Your Audience
Visitors are looking for answers when they click through to your posts. With this in mind, it is your job to provide educational content that helps the reader.
When the content is not helping then nobody will share or comment on it.
Try as much as possible to stay on your niche choice.
It’s alright to write about any personal experiences that you want to share but do this sparingly otherwise you could lose traffic.
#6 Choose To Use Enticing Headlines
Before writing any content the first thing you need to get right is the headline of your post. This can be difficult to get right in the beginning.
Think about what captures your attention when you decide to read other people’s blogs.
For me, I always tend to want to read list posts.
The most popular content on this blog post contains lists.
When you start a blog from scratch try as often as possible to write content in list form as many people will save it to read later as well as sharing it.
SEO is important for blog growth with the search engines but it is not always the same for your visitors. Some of my titles were chosen for marketing on Pinterest to get more click-throughs while the blog is in its infancy.
Certain words tend to capture peoples attention:
- Secrets
- Crazy
- Critical
- Easy
- Simple
Using these words in your pin titles will encourage more visitors.
Ask yourself what benefit are you proving to your reader.
#7 Write Content Containing Lots Of Helpful Information
This post is going to give you 15 ways to increase your website traffic because of the nature of the post it is going to be a long one.
Google loves this type of content and will often rank it in position 1 on page 1. This is the best way to gain free traffic.
Longform content that is based on one subject has been proven over and over again to get the most comments and shares.
Another awesome benefit to long-form content is the number of backlinks that can be gained!
What is considered to be long-form content is a post with over 3,000 words.
In the longterm, it is beneficial for your blog growth to have at least some long-form content as well as shorter posts with 1-2,000 words.
#8 Utilize Google Analytics
There is not a much better feeling than going onto Google’s analytics page and seeing how much growth your blog has had each and every month.
The Analytics pages will help you to write more content that is resonating with your audience as it will show you your most popular posts.
Another way of using analytics is to see what times your visitors are online knowing this will help you to schedule posts for social media purposes.
#9 Optimize Blog Posts For SEO
The best way to optimize your posts is to ensure you have bold headings, subheadings, lists, and images.
Making your sentences and paragraphs short will make your visitors stay longer on the posts.
The majority of great blogs are written in this form.
Doing this means people will read the content as opposed to just skimming through.
- Use a larger font size.
- Make the height bigger
- Reduce the width of your blog page
- Use headings, subheadings, and lists
- make use of images
- write shorter sentences
#10 Use Keywords To Rank Higher In Google
When you write for your audience you may not be including that many keywords but when you write for Google that’s a different story.
Well, keyworded posts will rank that much higher in the search engines.
I personally optimize my posts from the beginning, this saves time later as I don’t have to then go back and do it.
Some bloggers leave this process to after the 6 month period because Google puts your blog into the sandbox for that period of time.
Utilizing long-tail keywords will help you to get some traction with Google.
The keyword research tool that I use is called Jaxxy it was designed by very successful affiliate marketers for affiliate marketers. If you are a member of Wealthy Affiliate you get to use Jaxxy for free.
What I really love about Jaxxy is its versatility it has loads of features that other tools do not offer!
My favourite way of searching for keywords is using the Alphabet soup technique.
Using keyword research tools will enable you to come up with ideas for your posts that don’t have masses of competition and that will enable you to rank quicker and gain traffic faster.
Learning to use a keyword research tool can be hard, luckily I have you covered.
#11 Utilize The Power Of Social Media
Pinterest: is the fastest way around to gain traffic for free.
A business account is necessary if you want to grow your blog traffic, then you need to create some boards and set up the save it button so you can save the images in your posts directly to Pinterest.
To make the most out of Pinterest it’s important to take SEO into consideration.
- When writing a title go onto Pinterest and see what is showing up in the search as popular keywords.
- Use the keywords in the pin description
- Make sure your boards are keyworded in the description area
- Check your profile description for keywords
- Make use of hashtags
FaceBook: Set up a business account just for your blog posts and other useful information that will help your followers.
After you have published your content you can share the post directly to Facebook using a social share plugin there are tons to choose from.
Using the same social sharing plugin you can set it up to share posts to Linked in as well as Twitter doing these simple steps will gain you traffic.
When using social media there are always going to be new bloggers who are just getting started that need help spend a little time every day going into blogging groups and being helpful.
Taking this step will help you to gain trust as well as authority.
Start a Youtube channel of your own.
#12 Write Posts Where You Mention Other Bloggers In Your Niche
This is a huge way to gain traffic to your content and the beauty of it is you do not need to get their consent.
You can include successful bloggers in a post and link to their content to get a certain point of view across. I’m certain you are thinking how can this possibly help me?
Contact the author of the blog and let them know they are featured and they will be so thrilled that they will share your post with their users.
In the above image is an excerpt from a blog post where I featured another blogger who made some Pinterest pins for me.
#13 Leave Comments On Blog Posts
When leaving comments on blog posts you can do so with your blog name as opposed to leaving your name. This can cause people to be curious and look you up, therefore, bringing extra traffic to your blog posts.
Not all blogs have the comments feature enabled because some have experienced a lot of spam.
Personally, I really like reading the user’s comments whether they are good or negative and it’s also a great SEO booster.
#14 Resources Page Or Sales Page
If you have a resources page or a sales page make sure they are easily available in your top navigation menu.
The resources page on this blog is in the top 10 pages that people visit because when you are new to blogging you don’t know what you don’t know.
There are many necessary tools you need to enable your blog to run efficiently and to load fast.
The faster it loads the better for ranking and user experience and that also means more traffic.
Once your blog has a few posts with images you are going to need certain plugins to make this possible so list everything you use on your resources page for both free and paid options.
#15 Menu Navigation
There is no quicker way to lose your reader than to have them floundering around on your site being lost.
Having a menu that is simple to navigate will enable users to find things of interest easier.
Make sure you change the category on each post so that the post goes into the correct menu. Don’t leave them uncategorized.
Final Thoughts
That’s 15 tips to put into practice to grow your blog traffic.
Using these tips myself has increased the traffic to not only this blog but also to the one I sold.
Bonus Tip:
This list post is ideal for repurposing content because in a few month’s time you can add to it and make it 20 tips or 25 tips or as many as you can think of.
If you decide to do this you will need to get a plugin called WP Last Modified Info, this will change your date from the date posted to the last modified date.
This will boost the post in the search engines once again and if you make some new pins as well you will be able to repurpose it on Pinterest again bringing you more new traffic!.
If you found value in this post then please pin me!
Lisa CEO and founder of mistakesbloggersmake.com
Hello there! This is a very helpful post! Your 6th tip really caught my attention. I forget that even I myself really like “list” types of posts. I’ll be working towards that goal and using phrases like “simple” and “easy”. Definitely going to need to make my font bigger. Thanks for these really great tips!
you are welcome, it’s good to share knowledge with others.
Hey Lisa
What an awesome fabulous post!
Thank you I have learnt So much.
I really appreciate all the information on how to improve my own blog.
I will start with the theme and the idea you had with linking to other bloggers. Social media is really important and I guess that is how one grows an audience.
All the best
Sheen
linking your posts will also improve the navigation of your site as well as making sure the older posts get exposure.
These insights that you have provided have really put some things into perspective for me. I have been on this journey for almost two years now and I always tried to post at least 2-4 times a week but it started becoming a little overwhelming due to my mental health so I stopped writing as much, until 5 posts a month became 0 posts a month. I still get a lot of traffic every day but I know if I actually focused on writing content all of that traffic would be doubled at most. Your post actually motivated and inspired me to not give up on this journey.
Happy to have helped you!
This is a very practical and helpful post.
All of those tips are relevant and easy to implement. They are all essential to creating a successful website.
I was particularly interested in the font size, as I didn’t know how to adjust it before, but thankfully I now do? I thought that it was preset and that was that. But now I know better.
Thanks for sharing.
Glad to have helped you!