We all need more traffic … at least, I’ve never met a blogger who wanted less!
Without readers, your blog isn’t going anywhere. But as your traffic levels grow, you’ll find that it’s easier to get new readers – and with more people to share, retweet and post about your content, you have more chances to get in front of new audiences.
Even big bloggers, though, need to think about traffic: those shares and retweets and links won’t always happen on their own.
Whatever stage you’re at with your blog – whether you’re just starting out or you have thousands of visitors every month – these tips will help you get more traffic, fast.
1. Write a Shareable Post
Most bloggers agree that the “if you build it, they will come” advice doesn’t really apply – there’s lots of great content out there that never gets read. Even so, content is where you should start before looking for more traffic.
Write a great, compelling post – one that delivers real value. Make sure you have an attention-grabbing headline (throwing a number in there usually works well). People love to share amazing content, so the better you can make your post, the more likely they are to tell all their friends.
2. Pay Attention to SEO
If you see yourself primarily as a writer, you might be a bit nervous about SEO (search engine optimization). Perhaps you’ve come across sites that were optimized in such a heavy-handed way, the content became almost unreadable.
SEO doesn’t mean cramming keywords into your post, nor does it mean having a degree in computer science. By paying attention to the basics – like having keyword-rich headlines, interlinking posts, and getting links from high PageRank sites (see #6) – you’ll find that your search engine traffic goes up.
3. Use Your Email Signature
Your email signature is a great place to let people know about your blog. It gives you an easy way to include a link to your blog in every single email you send – without having to remember to do so manually, and without seeming pushy or demanding.
You might want to simply link to your blog, or you might link to a specific post, page, or other resource. By changing your signature around occasionally, you prevent the people you email regularly from becoming blind to it.
(Many forums also allow signatures, and these too are a great place to put a link: do check the forum guidelines, though, for any rules on whether or not you can put links in your signature.)
4. Leave Great Comments
Although commenting on blogs will only usually bring in a trickle of new readers, it’s a great way to grow your blog in the very early days – when even five or ten new readers can be a big boost.
When you comment, make sure you’re adding something relevant to the discussion: people will be much more likely to click through on your name, and the blog post author will value your contribution.
Don’t use keywords in the “name” field for your comment: use your real name. If you feel you want to add more, you could use your name followed by your blog’s name (e.g. I might be “Ali Luke – Aliventures”).
5. Ask for Shares / Retweets
Some bloggers worry that it’s somehow “wrong” or “needy” to ask their audience to share their posts…but this can hold them back from getting more traffic. Plenty of bloggers, big and small, will say “Please retweet” or “If you enjoyed this post, please share it.”
Make it easy for people to share your posts, too. If you’re tweeting a link and asking for a retweet, make sure your tweet is short enough that people can add a “RT @yourname” (if that’s how they prefer to do retweets). On your blog posts themselves, have a Tweet and/or Facebook share button.
6. Write a Guest Post
One of the very best ways to get an influx of targeted traffic is to write a guest post for a blog in your niche. (This also boosts your SEO by giving you an inbound link from a high PageRank site).
Your guest post should be your very best work – that way, it stands a good chance of being accepted. Make sure you use your bio and especially your link to full effect: try linking to a particular post or resource rather than to your blog as a whole, as this gives people more of a reason to click through.
Have you been successful with any of the above methods…or do you have a seventh tip to add? Let us know your experiences, and your ideas, in the comments.
one tip from my side, don’t really focus on key words, focus on key phrases. there work better than keywords and being really used by people.
That’s an interesting point, Hemendra — I’ve always thought that “keywords” means the same thing as “key phrases” but perhaps you have a slightly different definition? Did you want to give us some examples? Thanks!
For my part I’m very new to the world of blogging. I actually started for two reasons.
1) I love to talk.
2) Hoping to drive more traffic to my site.
The way I see it if I can attract 2 or 3 more solid clients a year life would be much better. Perhaps that sounds about on the shallow side but either way the statement is true enough. The only problem is that I have spent so much time over the last month reading about blogs and how I can improve both my blog and my approach to blogging that my head is spinning from all of it.
Barry, I don’t think that sounds shallow at all — in fact, I think it’s great that you’re clear about what your blogging goal is.
In terms of next steps, I’d suggest you focus on high-quality content (including guest posts) so that you build a strong reputation in your field — it sounds like you’re aiming for high-end clients, and you don’t necessarily need lots of traffic, just a handful of strong leads.
Ali:
For the most part I am aiming for high end clients. As that’s what feeds the family so to speak. Everything helps and clients aren’t turned away but many small jobs just fill in the gaps while large clients like Disney really keep the ball rolling.
As far as blogging goes even though I’m just starring out I can already see that I have to problems. Many more but two that I’ll mention here.
The first is that I do have a black background for my website and my blog. As a photographer my website is aimed primarily to editors and photo editors of magazines and publications. Photos simply display better on dark backgrounds. It’s not a requirement, its just one of those things. That’s something I need to think about consider. Either way blog or no bog my photographs are the heart of my entire website.
Next is content. I know that I do have good information to pass along but most of that information is information that photographers would be interested in knowing. The bottom line, Potential clients aren’t going to want to come to my website and come across an article explaining to other photographers how to deal with cases of infringement or how to help boost to their licensing fees. Even though I know this information and can really help others.
In the end I’m still just a photographer and feed my family with photographs.
It might be worth having a look at what other photographers are doing in terms of content … the photographer who did the photos I use online, Antonina Mamzenko, has a great blog – http://www.mamzenko.com/ — mainly focused on sessions she’s done with clients. Seems like it does a great job of showing off her work but also telling a little bit of a story.
Essentially, I’d suggest you think about what your potential clients would be looking for online (e.g. information on choosing a photographer, information on what to expect from a professional photoshoot, information on taking good basic photos themselves…) and go with that.
Best of luck!
I realize I am already breaking one of the rules with my signature name, but I promise I love this list! 🙂 It is very helpful, and I am definitely going to bookmark it for future reference!-Ashley
Thanks, Ashley, glad you found it helpful! And they’re more guidelines than rules… 🙂
Hi Ali – I attended your session at BlogWorld in L.A. last year and I’m hoping to attend again this year. You’re a great presenter and I learned much. Glad to have found you here. I’m following you now!
Thanks so much, Kimberly, really glad you enjoyed my presentation!
I was originally planning to be in LA this Jan, but I’m going to be almost eight months pregnant then, so sadly won’t be able to make it. (I live in the UK and don’t really want to fly so far, plus I’m not too sure how keen immigration would be..!)
Hope you have a wonderful time if you do go. 🙂
Hi Ali I often comment on Allison articles. Your 6 points of attracting more traffic are good points. Some of them I already know. I think I should concentrate on point no.6 and try to write a guest post for some music blog. However I’ve never done this, so I’ll have to look for a good topic first. I’ll also have to be careful that I don’t write to much about myself, but rather serving other people’s needs.
With friendly greetings, Hans
Thanks Hans! Best of luck with your guest post — I think having a good topic, and focusing on the reader’s needs, will make for a great post. 🙂
Hi Ali,
Great insight for getting traffic and thanks to your link to Corbett and Danny video about guest blogging. The time was well spent.
Just that I find posting in forum take more time to get the traffic I want. But since you mentioned it, I might want to go back to some forums and monitor the traffic again.
Cheers…
Thanks Michael! Forum posting definitely does take time and patience — good luck building your traffic, though. 🙂
i find social networking as a good source of driving traffic to one’s blog. they work real effective.
I guess the biggest problem I’m having is SEO, I think blogging favors more tech savy types, and I like to try to have humorous posts (not so much information rich) and search engines obviously aren’t looking for that. Good advice though, I try to follow some of the steps, then i start getting lazy (that’s another big problem I have.)
Hello Ali Luke,
wow nice tips to generate traffic, you solve 99% newbie queries, mostly newbie want to get traffic from the first day but we know that it is not possible you have to hardwork for this. but if we try all of the above ethics then we will generate a huge traffic but we can also use stumbleupon and digg to generate huge traffic 😉
nice share Ali
These are some amazing tips. Most times us newbie bloggers are just trying to share our experience and hope that it helps the next person accomplish their goals.
Thanks for sharing with us!
niche article
some of my queries are solved some i am going to follow up now thanks @ Ali Luke,
What about analytics? And Ad Words? Any advice on how to use them? Secondly how effective are these ping type sites such as ping-o-matic and pingoat.net? Do they really achieve anything?
I blog at http://icethreads.com
Awesome! I love tip 6.
Above six tips are very useful for my blog traffic. Thanks for sharing informative tips.
Hi Ali,
Enjoyed reading this post. I’m a (very) new blogger – only three days and two posts in and welcoming any kind of advice I can get at the moment (feels a little odd posting stuff and not knowing how to get people to come and read it!). I’m finding most of my blog visitors are coming from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but this kind of feels like cheating a little as they’re already my friends/followers/connections, and ideally I’d like to attract people outside of my own networks.
I’d never thought about actively asking people to share my blog posts, which makes a whole lot of sense really as working in sales I’m often asking for referrals and recommendations! Thank you for this tip, will give it a go.
All the very best,
Stuart.
Good luck with your new blog, Stuart! You might also want to check out this post as a way to get traffic when you’re new: 58 Ways to Get Noticed as a New Blogger
Nice information on getting more website traffic I just recently start using this website traffic software that generate me over 100,000 TARGETED vistors to my website check it out and see for yourself
A large and interesting list, I like your ideas regarding helping the community in various social networks – I also have over 2000 followers on twitter that I try help and guide towards my website. I have also been trying out a free site called http://www.boostasite.com that gives you free advertising. Give it a try!
well i tried all of this but i dont understand how can we do email signatures ? What is a guest post?? what does it mean??? i also dont understand what is retweets??? i really want to increase the traffic of my blog and now i really find it very difficult. Please provide me some more advices!!!!!
Hi Ali,
The way of presentation is good in this article. I think you have missed one point. Blog created from blogger.com and other websites didn’t drive traffic. Only a blog is having own domain name is considered. People don’t consider about the normal blogs, they comments only on the blog is having own domain. I created my blog using blogger.com, yet i didn’t receive any comments, here i am presenting unique contents only. Not copy and pasting.
What I’ve Learned From Bloging “Attention to SEO” Is The Only Way to Get Traffic to Your Blog/Site….and it is good to have traffic from search engines rather then other platform’s like Facebook,Twitter,Advertising, and Guest Bloging You Know what ? Google Love those site’s which get traffic from Search engines…Now a Day’s I’ve heard that Google is Punishing Those Website’s/Blog Who are Doing Guest Bloging.
So My Suggetion is Just Do a Good SEO for Your Website and then just concentrate on You’r Site’s Content.Google will give you traffic But it take’s little time.So You Have to be patience.
You nailed every point on the head! I’ll vouch for post consistently and guest blogging any time. These two have a way of driving traffic beyond your imagination. Thanks for sharing!!
Your tips on blog traffic is pretty good, but it still looks raw.
If there is time I will write back on My Blog with a tutorial in the form of a more detailed article.