Increase Your Blog Traffic With These 10 Unique Tips

[This article was originally published in July 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.]

Many of us know the struggle of getting views on our blog. I saw every day that bloggers have problems increasing their blog traffic and I will admit that I also face the same thing, All of us. Getting hundreds or thousands of blog views doesn’t happen just overnight and it always requires a lot of hard work, patience, and consistency.

I started this blog on June 2020 and until now I received an average of 5,000 – 6,000 monthly views. Perhaps it’s not much, but for a 3rd year blog, I’m really satisfied with the number. Half of them come from organic traffic and the rest are mostly social media traffic. I’ve been working hard on SEO and I love it!

So, here I’m going to share with you the tips that helped me to gain this blog traffic! I guess you have already tried some of these, but I know for some who are not, it’s the best time for you to try!

Start with self-hosted

First thing first. If you want to increase your blog traffic, make sure you create your blog on the best platform. The best platform for me is self-hosted. Why self-hosted?

• You have complete ownership of your blog
• You have limitless customization that helps your blog ranked high on search engines
• Fast site speed: if your blog has low speed, it won’t do any good with SEO and your bounce rate will slow. (check your site speed here)
• You can create an email list that you can customize
• And so much more!

Furthermore, having a self-hosted blog is the best choice if you are trying to grow your blog traffic and make money blogging. I use Lyrical host as my self-hosted and their customer support is 24/7 fast responding which can help you with any questions or issues with your site – plus, they have fast server speeds!

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO is one of the important keys to increasing your blog traffic and also getting ranked by search engines (Google). SEO surely is a big topic that burns the blogger’s mind. It also won’t show you results right away, you need to wait around 1-2 weeks or months to get your rank results.

If you are looking for something more in-depth, check out this free SEO guide. It explains more about SEO, keyword research, internal & external links, and more. Before starting your blogging, you definitely need to learn more about on-page SEO.

High-Quality Content

Blogging is not always about writing but also about giving your audience high-quality content. I’m not saying your content has to be ‘perfect’ because being perfect is not part of being a blogger, and there is no such thing in this life.

But, you should try your best and put effort into all of your blog posts. If you don’t have quality content, don’t hope your audience will come back to your blog. When you have quality content, I’m sure your audience will come back.

Take your time to plan your blog post, create graphics, and check your grammar using Grammarly. Make your content stand out from others!

Social Media Marketing

Another best way to increase your blog traffic is with the help of your social media. Most people use social media platforms every day. In this way, social media is really popular and you can use them to promote your blog.

With the help of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, you can grow your blog. I have a love-hate relationship with Instagram, I don’t really use it to promote my blog, only for daily posts. I use Instagram to engage with other bloggers.

You need to make sure you have social media share on your blog for your audience to use. The plugin that I use is the Social Warfare plugin, so if my audience wants to share it with their social media, they can find it easily.

Pro tips: be active – tweet daily but don’t overdo it, engage with others, and follow people who inspire you. Keep promoting your blog posts daily until you create a new post. Don’t just promote your blog post for that one day when you publish your post. I use Revive Old Posts plugin and they help me to automatically share my all posts to Twitter!

Facebook Groups

If it comes to promoting your blog content, Facebook groups are one of my favorite ways. I joined Facebook groups and connected with other bloggers. You can also use Facebook groups to find other bloggers to collaborate with or start a guest post.

Many Facebook groups will have daily threads that allow you to market your blog posts with the other group members too. You can also promote your blog through your Facebook business page.

Collaborate

Work with other bloggers to create a collaborative blog post. I did this with some inspiring bloggers as well. This post will help to bring more traffic to my blog and also to other bloggers. Not only that, but it also makes you interact and engage more with great people! Super fun~

Pinterest Marketing

I have been working on my Pinterest for months. I get traffic from Pinterest but not a lot. But I would say this because I haven’t mastered Pinterest yet and need to try many ways to master it.

For those who don’t know, Pinterest is a visual search engine. With proper strategy, Pinterest has the potential to bring you thousands of blog views monthly, even daily. Like me, many bloggers also focus on Pinterest, other than SEO. It can make you frustrated when your strategy is not working and can be really time-consuming, but it really is a challenging and quicker way to grow your blog views.

You should take time to set up your Pinterest account for success. Here are my tips:

1. Create or switch your Pinterest account to a business account.
2. Optimize your Pinterest captions with the right keywords. As I said before, Pinterest is a visual search engine, it works the same as Google, you need to use the right keywords to make your pins rank higher.
3. Create cover boards to make your boards look clean and catchy.
4. Have a pin perfect on your blog post. You have to at least create 2 different pins for each of your blog posts. I recommend using Canva to create your ideal Pinterest graphics.

OR you can grab these stylish Pinterest Pins Templates! Create eye-catching pins and explode your blog with organic traffic from Pinterest!

Email Marketing

Email marketing can help you grow your blog traffic as well. The first step is to make sure you have email list management. Actually, email marketing is an option if you think organic traffic or SEO is enough for you. I’ve been holding back this till 2021 since I’ve been contemplating what to include in my newsletter. Hope to get back to my newsletter soon!

Having an email list is really important because you can still connect with your audience when social media were to ever go away or when you’re not that social media fan. You can also connect with your audience on a personal level through email marketing.

To start with email marketing, you can use a mix of Jetpack and Convertkit (600 free subscribers). I use Convertkit because it’s easy to create pop-up forms and welcome emails. While the Jetpack plugin sends an email newsletter every time you publish a new post, Convertkit allows you to send a few selected posts while also promoting deals in between to create significant revenue.

Some ideas of emails you can send to your audience (subscribers):

• Welcome series
• Announcement of new products or services
• Exclusive content that only your subscribers can read
• Weekly or monthly newsletters

When it comes to growing your email list, you need to be creative and make sure to have an opt-in freebie. This is something you offer to your subscribers for free in exchange for your audience subscribing to your blog.

Some freebie ideas: e-books, printable, guides, printables, 30 days challenges, e-course, exclusive discounts, weekly or monthly challenges, and many more.

Google Analytics

Make sure to keep tracking your blog progress too. Checking what works and what doesn’t work is really important. When your blog traffic is going down, don’t panic!

Figure out what you might have done that could cause this. Perhaps, it is because you don’t market your blog much compared to the other day/week or other reasons. When your traffic increases one day, figure out again what it was that made you do differently to get this traffic!

Google Analytics is a great way to track your blog views. It gives you more details on who your audience is, which blog post brought the most blog traffic, and where your traffic is coming from.

These are important keys to continue posting your best content that your audience is attracted to and make them keep coming back for more.

Think Positive

The last tip is not going to be related to a tech-savvy thing. It is about your mindset.

If you’ve been following me, from the start, I always said that blogging needs so much work. It needs patience and consistency. It is a HUGE help in my blogging journey that I kept these things in my mind.

I know it’s hard to keep up with work, school, life, and blogging. You always need time and breaks in between and that is the thing I always like to tell myself. But that doesn’t mean you take days or even weeks away from your work, life, and blogging. You won’t take a week or months away from your work or school, right? It goes the same with blogging.

Bloggers have their own schedule and their audience expects them to keep up with their blog. But, it’s okay to take breaks, holidays, and hang out, just like any day off from your job.

If you want to see progress on your blog and make money from it, you need to start treating it like it’s your business. Even if you aren’t making any money, yet – you need to treat it like one.

You have to check this for more tips to be a professional blogger!

It’s important to never compare your blogging journey to someone else’s. It will only bring more harm than good to yourself. We have different lives, factors, and things to take into consideration when building our blogs.

For example, other bloggers may have been able to grow quicker and make money just in three months than I or others. When comparing this to others will just make me worried, anxious, and worse, quit blogging. I keep saying that everyone will reach their success eventually. So, don’t compare your journey to others.