How to Increase Blog Traffic: Top 10 Ways That Works

Blogging isn’t a one-way street; A blog can’t exist without traffic and It’s readers, can it?

I grew up with this quote.

Today I am going to share with you some really awesome working ways to get those readers and increase blog traffic that I’ve tried and worked on myself.

Before I start, let me tell you that the days of easy Google traffic are over. If you want more traffic to your blog, then the first thing you need to bear in your mind is that they are not traffic! They are humans, they are your readers who trust you.

You should respect this fact and start on building an everlasting traffic source (email list) of your own as soon as possible to wrest the control of your blog from Google, and other websites.

When you have set this thought in your mind, you are eligible to read on this post further.

THIS IS A LONG POST:

When I talk about website traffic, I have to go long. The reason is, I have a lot to say (Don’t worry, I seem to know when to shut up). I’m sick of the fluffy traffic tips and tricks that don’t work. If you want to know about the strategies that work to increase your blog or website traffic, you’ve come to the right place.

In this post, I’d like to address a few dos and don’t that If you work on will help you increase your blog traffic. This post will cover topics like:

1. What is traffic and why it matters?
2. Why do most blogs fail to get traffic?
3. Best ways to increase blog traffic
4. Bad ways to increase blog traffic
5. And more…

Understanding what is traffic and why It matters?

Sticking to my habit and starting with the basics as usual.

Before I teach you how to increase blog traffic let me tell you what is traffic and why it matters If this is something you’re hearing of first time.

Traffic refers to the number of people who visit your site in an interval of time, a month, a week or a year.

If your primary goal with your blog is to make money than traffic is REALLY necessary.

Making money from #blogging requires you to do only 2 things: drive a lot of traffic, then maximize the income from that traffic.

— John Chow

Traffic doesn’t come in one day, even those top bloggers whom you worship today also used to get only a few page views per day until they met me, I told them how to increase blog traffic like I am telling it to you today, kidding.

Okay, let’s talk about it a bit more.

Why Most Blogs Fail to Get Traffic?

I think It’s important to address a couple of problems first that might be holding you back from getting more traffic to your blog.

The reasons why most bloggers are able to attract only a few people are:

• Bad Content: When the comments you get, or you see on other blogs are better than the content you create
• Bad Reputation: You know it when people call you a fake guy or a cheater
• Bad Practices: Black Hat SEO, buying links, etc. More on bad practices and bad ways to get traffic at the end of the post!
• Not using social media: You and your blog need to be everywhere, on all social media websites, like YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and more…
• Unable to create a brand: You need to convert your blog into a brand. Don’t know what a brand is? Read this branding guide here.

And there are many other reasons too why they don’t get traffic which we will discuss later in this post.

Best ways to increase blog traffic —

Here’s the list of the top 10 best ways to increase blog traffic:

1. Be a king with your content

If you’ve been blogging for any amount of time, you have definitely been hearing the term “CONTENT IS KING”, Aren’t you?

That’s my first point, Your content needs to be the king.

In order to get huge traffic, in order attract a lot of people to your blog to read your blog, you need to write something that’s worth their time and when they visit your blog they don’t feel like they have just visited a stupid blog.

So mark my words, create wonderful content on your blog and make your readers feel that they are worth the best, so they’ll come back to your blog and share it with their friends.

2. Think of the queen

If there’s a king in the kingdom of blogging, there has to be a queen right?

The queen is SEO.

Yeah! Search engine optimization, I mean to see what’s the use of creating that epic shit when people can’t find it when they need your creations.

You have written a wonderful piece and people can’t just find it when they are searching it on Google you are still lying on the third or fourth page. Organic traffic from Google will keep your business going and growing.

So in order to reach the first page of the search results, optimize your posts and once you are able to get on the first page of Google with your targeted keyword, then traffic will come flowing in like water. I recommend using Keyword tool by Google and create posts with SEO friendly titles, and permalinks.

Check out Top 11 SEO Optimization Plugins for WordPress Website & Blogs

3. Harness the power of social media

Till date for most of the bloggers, social media is the second largest source of their traffic above advertising referrals and direct traffic all because they were and still are active on social networking sites.

That’s what you need to do, harness the power of social media use it at its fullest.

Connecting with other bloggers in your niche on all social media websites is really important, Here’s the article I’ve recently written on Why Social Media is the most powerful tool for blogging and business.

4. Do blog commenting

In my early days of blogging some of my comments on other blogs in my niche were the largest source of traffic at Anantvijaysoni.in.

Try to be everywhere, and get your comments early at the top of the list on other blogs. Let them know you, this will have two benefits:

They will start recognizing you, and if the blog you are commenting on is a CommentLuv enabled blog then you are also getting a link back to your blog which is really better for you in terms of increasing rankings and traffic

People will only click your name If your comment is quality.

5. Start guest posting on major blogs

Guest posting is a really popular phenomenon. If you look at it most of the blogs whether they are the top ones or a few new ones have guest posting enabled on their blogs. They allow their readers and other fellow bloggers to post on their blogs in exchange for a link.

You write an awesome post which the blog owner feels are useful or may be useful for his readers so he publishes the post by giving you the whole credit of the post and give a link to your blog, and you meet a new audience.

That link works in two ways to increase your traffic:

1. Firstly it increases your authority among search engines and they respect your site so there are chances that it will rank higher for more keywords.
2. The people who read your post on that blog, if they like and read it word to word then they will surely follow the link to reach your blog. Once they reach your blog they will search for more such content there and here again point number one comes into action.

6. Join forums

Like guest posting, forum posting is also beneficial to increase your blog traffic.

Online forums are a great place to interact with other bloggers, and the best part is that you can find the forums related to your niche.

Forums play an important role in getting targeted traffic to your blog. The concept is simple: The more you participate and post on different discussions on the forum, the more visibility you’ll get and the more traffic you’ll get from the link you have in your signature.

Read More: 20 SEO Tips for WordPress for Better Ranking

7. Network with other bloggers, and make friends

Making friends and being social is really good not only in your real life but in blogging too. The more people you connect with the more name you will make out of yourself.

The best strategy to grow your blog is to make as many friends as possible that are interested in what you do and build a community around yourself.

No matter what niche you’re in, you’re definitely gonna need some friends to get you up there.

8. Write case studies, long articles

Let’s start with an experiment: Search for anything which comes into your mind on Google, and have a look at the results on the first page.

Now If you open each and every result one by one you’ll notice that no post which came on the first page was short. Nine out of ten posts ranked on the first page are really long ones with a lot of research behind them.

Search engines want to deliver quality content to their readers and they also know that short posts don’t convey any value so they prefer long posts over short ones.

That’s might be the reason that the article you are currently reading is more than 2000+ words in length 😉

9. Write controversial posts

A blog can’t stand only with long articles. Sometimes short and controversial posts work great.

I love writing long detailed articles, but I don’t do it always. Let me tell you that the length of the post has nothing to do with how good or bad it is.

Writing short and interesting posts can also be effective to get more traffic and readers because people are curious to know about it. I often write these type of posts, check out this one and this one.

10. Host giveaways

Giveaways are really a huge source of traffic but the only problem with them is that they work only for a short period of time. Till your giveaway is live you will receive a lot of traffic and once it ends the traffic will again come back to normal, but It can get you more exposure and new visitors.

In a giveaway, you ask people to share your post this time when you host one ask them to subscribe to your email list.

This way even after the giveaway ends you will be able to bring all those people back to your blog who only came there to try their luck. I’ve hosted several giveaways here at Guide and News, and I know it works!

So what do you think? These were a few awesome techniques to increase blog traffic, but If you think I’ve missed a useful traffic strategy, just drop a comment and let me know about it. Again, start working on your own traffic stream from today!

Bad ways to increase blog traffic

Now you know about the best ways to increase blog traffic. I’d like to end up with bad traffic strategies that you should avoid.

1. Spin content: If you think that more articles mean more traffic then you are wrong, more traffic means more probability to rank higher that’s all and one more thing you can’t rank higher if you create stupid content
2. Black Hat SEO: Search engines are smarter than you just because you can fool your brother for some cookies doesn’t mean that you can fool the search engines too. Accept it, they are smarter than you and if you try to overdo them then sooner or later you will face the penalty.
3. Overdoing things The traffic strategies I shared above are great, but they are good and they work only if done properly, I mean if you overdo them then they will only decrease your blog readership.
4. Comment Spam: Over commenting will make you look like a spammer in front of search engines so don’t do it.
5. Forum spam: There’s nothing worse than spamming on forums

Over to you:

Are you thinking of using any of the above strategies to increase your blog traffic? Have you been using any of the BAD traffic strategies before? And what else has helped you to find more traffic? Post a quick comment below and let us know.