You’ve put in the effort to create and expand a blog, which might not sound like much but is actually a lot harder than most people think. Good content takes time to write, after all, and that’s after you’ve been through the tricky ideation phase. So what comes next? Well, it doesn’t matter whether you’re blogging as a hobby, to sell products or services, or even to develop your personal brand: the next step is to drive as much relevant traffic as you can.
If your blog doesn’t get visited, then your content doesn’t get read, and the whole thing becomes little more than a semi-private diary. You can’t get better if people don’t visit and comment. You can’t sell anything if there’s no one there to consider your offers. You can’t grow your brand if no one gets the chance to be impressed by your eloquence and expertise. You can’t run webinars if no one watches them.
Driving relevant traffic isn’t simple or easy, though — marketing mistakes are very common, particularly in the ecommerce world — so it’ll take some time to achieve. In this post, we’re going to look at six techniques that will help you move in the right direction:
Cover the most common queries
The biggest driver of blog traffic is organic search, chiefly (near-exclusively) through Google, so you need to do what you can to be accommodating. By expanding your content to address the most common queries regarding your niche, you can pick up some easy traffic. Focus on listing questions and straightforwardly answering them: it’s essentially the FAQ format that’s common to business sites, but applied to topics instead of your brand.
For instance, if your blog covers home entertainment topics (like TVs and furniture), you should research the most common searches about those topics and collate the answers in posts with names like “Choosing a Home TV FAQ: Top Questions Answered”. Go into detail, but be sure to remain succinct: Google tends to consider punchy answers more valuable (and more rankable).
Get active on social media
Any person or brand eager to get noticed should be using social media because it’s a fantastic way to reach massive numbers of people and engage with them — and since you can include links and insert picture into picture in your social posts, there’s every reason to use platforms like Twitter or Facebook (or even publish an Instagram post) to gently push people towards visiting your blog. Invest in influencer marketing. Create some influencer giveaways, too!
One of the easiest ways to do this is to post notable excerpts from your blog posts along with links to the full pieces. Anyone who reads a highlight and finds it interesting will most likely want to find out the full context, and if the only clear way to do that is by visiting your blog, so be it. If you don’t feel into that, you may want to consider affiliate marketing to support your efforts.
Start writing guest blogs
Guest blogging is a core part of disciplines including marketing, SEO activity and SEO services, and brand development. It can introduce you to countless new audiences, often without having to spend any money (though not always: you need to get confirmation). This is a guest post, as you may have noticed, meaning it was written by an external contributor.
The whole point is that guest posting is a mutually-beneficial activity: the host site gets some fresh and relevant content to keep its readers interested, and the writer gets some publicity for their name, more material for their portfolio, and possibly even a valuable backlink.
Don’t forget that, to get the best results, you also need a proper SaaS marketing strategy.
Run some PPC advertising
Paying to get blog traffic isn’t ideal, but it’s a great way to quickly drum up interest, and the most cost-effective option is PPC (pay-per-click) advertising — most likely through Google Ads or Facebook Ads. Because you only pay when someone clicks to visit your website, it’s ideal for sheer traffic: if you get no results, you also get no bill.
Of course, it is possible to get a lot of traffic that doesn’t really help you: many people could misunderstand the nature of your blog, visit expecting something different, and immediately leave (costing you money but not providing any value). This comes down to presentation, though: if you word your ads correctly, people shouldn’t end up feeling misled.
Collaborate on a project
Lastly, a reliable way to get a big boost in relevant traffic is to collaborate with another blog that operates in the same niche (e.g. Baltimore lead inspection). If you’re not directly selling anything, then you could even collaborate with a blog that you might sometimes consider your competitor: this is because people don’t generally limit how many blogs they’ll visit, so if they see value in both blogs then they’ll continue to stop by to see both.
Think about what projects could be viable. One idea is to work together to create two high-value pieces of content: one for their blog, and one for yours. Through mutual promotion, you can both benefit: their audience will visit your blog (and possibly stick around), while yours will visit theirs. And given the power of teamwork, as well as your employee engagement, it’s a great way to lift the quality of your content.
Leverage email outreach
Don’t forget about the good old email. Plan an outreach campaign aimed at promoting your blog post among users possibly interested in the topic of your article. You can either rely purely on cold emails or message your database using an email automation tool. Remember to write a compelling email copy that underlines values and benefits for a reader and that will will encourage recipients to click on a link and read your blog post.
Bonus: Don’t forget to continuously improve your website. If you don’t have developers in-house, consider outsourcing web developement.
There you have it: six techniques for boosting traffic to your blog. While this isn’t an exhaustive list, it does cover the most common and valuable tactics, so be sure to take advantage of them and start improving your visitor stats.
