17 Different Ways to Test

Blogs are one of the best ways to create long-form content that provides value to your audience. Unlike social media, however, promoting your blog is not quite as cut and dry. Your Twitter account markets itself, to some degree, by virtue of being on the app. The same is true of Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms. Blogs need a little bit of an extra push, because they do not have the same natural promotion platform built in. 

What is a blogger to do? 

Fortunately, even though blogs do not promote themselves, and there is not necessarily a built-in promotion strategy in place to make sure your audience’s eyes are actually landing on your content, there are plenty of ways to make sure your blog is receiving plenty of traffic. I have put together 17 of the best ways to increase blog traffic in 2024 below. 

How to Increase Blog Traffic through Improving SEO

Improving SEO is one of the most effective ways to increase blog traffic, as it helps searchers come across your work with greater ease. Search engines are the primary resource people use to answer their questions, rather than navigating to a specific site or resource, so it is vital to make sure your blog posts are being seen on search engines. I use SEO religiously in my own work, to make sure my blog content is being seen and used regularly.

Search engine optimization can be overwhelming for someone who has never used SEO practices, but as you practice basic SEO precepts, you can begin to roll SEO into your blog posts as you are writing them, and updating blog content becomes a breeze. The best way to use SEO for blog posts includes learning how to:

1. Optimize Your Blog Posts For SEO

Optimizing individual posts to increase organic traffic is the first step. By optimizing your posts, you can make sure that your blog traffic is consistently rolling in. Long-form content like blogs can be used to develop evergreen content that lasts years, or can be used to keep up to date on the latest trends, but no matter the exact topic being written about, encourage organic traffic through ongoing SEO practices. 

2. Update Old Content

Updating old content often goes unconsidered, but evergreen content like how-tos can continue to bring in blog traffic over time. By making sure that all affiliate links, target keywords, and more are optimized even on an old piece of content, you can effectively make sure that your previous long-form content is doing its part to bring in potential customers and increase awareness of your site or brand.

3. Do Keyword Research

Keyword research is essential to keep up with effective SEO practices. From short words to long-tail keywords, blogging suffers without the use of keywords designed to capture the attention of your target audience. Keywords can be great to generate blog post ideas overall, in addition to helping search engine rankings.

Your online presence as a whole will benefit from keyword research, as even social media platforms can help bring traffic to your blog through the use of keywords. Whether you are guest blogging or creating content for your own site, do not neglect keyword investigation.

4. Create New, Useful and High Quality Content

Content for the sake of content is unlikely to drive people to your site, and certainly will not encourage them to stay. The most popular posts on blogging platforms are those with content that is likely to actually turn up in search queries. Some niches will make it easier than others to come up with useful and high quality content, but no matter your precise area of interest, it is possible to develop useful posts on a regular basis.

Further Reading: 12 “Secrets” to Writing High Quality Content for Your Blog

5. Publish Long-Form Blog Posts

Social media platforms are the platforms on which to focus on brevity. Blogs, however, are the best spot for your online presence to truly shine in long form. Google prefers long-form content, so it is important to make sure that your SEO strategies include this particular type of content. As you create your longer content, make sure you also optimize for mobile devices and consider how certain formatting may appear on screen.

6. Create Evergreen Content

Evergreen content does not have to make up the entirety of your work, but a steady stream of evergreen content is a good idea. Evergreen content can be simple, and include a basic tutorial on how to use a product, or can be more complex, including a comprehensive guide to a concrete item or concept.

Including evergreen content on your content calendar is an important part of creating an effective content marketing strategy, because it continues working for you long after it is created. Fresh content that focuses on trends is great for short-term gains, but will likely not live past the trend it is focused on.

7. Craft Click-Worthy Headlines

Content quality matters, but so do headlines that grab your target audience’s attention. As you create your content calendar, pay close attention to your headlines. Click-worthy headlines can help your blog traffic soar, as your titles and headlines are the first introduction your audience has to your blog and will determine whether or not consistent traffic is likely to come in.

Further Reading: How to Create Killer Blog Titles Using Your Data, Tools & Popular Formulas

8. Include Shareable Images and Videos in Your Blog

Direct traffic can also come from images and video searches, and an image or video that is easily shared can make it easy for others to navigate to your blog from social media. Tons of traffic online every day comes from social media, so including this type of media in your posts is important. A good chunk of traffic is likely to come in from social shares, to encourage social shares across your various platforms.

9. Internal Links Between Posts

Internal links are also useful to support consistent blog traffic; by linking to other relevant posts or landing pages on your site, you are proving to your audience that you are a trusted authority or reliable source of information. Why is this so important? Ultimately, you want your audience to rely on you for future questions and queries. 

10. Optimize For Speed and Mobile

Optimizing for speed and mobile is just as important as using relevant keywords. This is because Google searches do rank websites more highly based on speed and their ability to be used easily on mobile devices. If your site is bogged down by ads, or numerous images and videos are making scrolling difficult, pare down on these elements.

To optimize for mobile, make sure that your text is broken up and easy to read. Test your site regularly by viewing it on your own mobile devices, and use Google tools to evaluate your site, including its mobile testing tool.

Further Reading: WordPress Speed Optimization: The 6 Best Ways to Speed Up Your WordPress Website

11. Generate More Backlinks

Backlinks are links tying one site to another. Backlinks are another useful SEO tool, because Google favors sites that link outward–and sites that have links coming in. This is where guest posts can be useful to take on: by posting yourself on other sites, you can create links back to your own content.

How to Increase Blog Traffic: Other Useful Ideas

Now that I have put together the basics of increasing blog traffic, and the most common ways to support your blog, I’m going to walk you through some other useful ways to increase the amount of traffic regularly visiting your blog. From deciding on blog post topics, to getting your name out there as a whole, there are many ways to make sure your blog is bringing in the traffic you need. Consider doing the following:

12. Build an Email List

Email newsletters can be great ways to get your blog out and into the metaphorical hands of your audience. Build an email list in any of the tried and true ways–think opt-ins on your site, freebies on social media, and more–and use that email list to link to any relevant blog posts that you have written.

Emails need not only link back to recent posts; as you build a wealth of content, you can dig back into your archives and send out links to any content you’ve created that is relevant to the season, holiday, or even current events.

13. Leverage Social Media

Social media can also be a great way to point traffic to your blog. With a specific keyword in mind, you can begin creating content to post across all of your social accounts, each of them linking back to a blog or blogs sharing those same keywords or on similar topics. Social media profiles are a great way to increase the reach of your work and cultivate strong relationships.

The quick and easy reciprocal nature of social media means that social media leveraging is a highly useful traffic-driving strategy. Think about your favorite content creators. How often do they share links and encourage you to visit those links? Blogs are not different, and even a simple Facebook post or Instagram Story can quickly and easily direct people back to your blog.

Further Reading: 10 Ways How to Promote Your Blog

14. Participate in Online Communities and Groups

Participating in online communities and groups is a great way to grow your network and get your name or site a larger audience. Remember that not all networking has to be overt; you can easily have your blog link or site link in your signature, and have it visible as you post comments and engage in conversations.

By participating in communities and groups, you can create a stronger sense of connection, get a feel for what might be expected of the potentially hundreds of thousands of people who may come across your blog, and suss out genuine relationships to develop mutually beneficial relationships for guest posting and cross promotion.

15. Guest Blog On Relevant Niche Sites

Guest blogging can be a great way to drive traffic to your site! Whether you link directly to your site in the body of your blog, or you include your blog in your outro or byline, by guest blogging elsewhere, you can dramatically increase the amount of people exposed to your work.

Focus on relevant niche sites as you go about looking for guest blogging opportunities. While a larger site with a broad range of topics might get you more hits, these sites may not be as likely to capture a reader’s interest. A niche site is going to connect you with people who are already interested in the topics you cover, rather than having to work from scratch to prove your topics are interesting.

Further Reading: How To Invite Influencers To Guest Post On Your Blog

16. Repurpose Content For Different Platforms

Different content formats and tones work well on different platforms. Think about your own forays with social media. Do you use the same writing style on Instagram that you use on LinkedIn? Are your Twitter and Facebook posts identical? By repurposing content for different platforms, you can keep a steady stream of different content on each of your platforms, without having to do the legwork to come up with multiple posts from the ground up.

Repurposing content will look different for each platform. If you keep a blog on how to use a product intended for animals, for instance, you can easily shift that into a video demonstrating the actual use of the product. If your Instagram is regularly used to showcase reviews, you can cobble together an entire page dedicated to reviews.

17. Run Ads

Ads are not just a last-minute, last-ditch effort to improve your reach; ads are a valuable part of a marketing strategy, even for blogs. Ads can be run on all of your social media platforms, or they can be run on others’ sites through Google and other ad platforms. When running ads, make sure that your ads are being delivered using relevant keywords, to make the most of the audience they are likely to reach.

Conclusion

Blogs thrive on traffic, but knowing how to bring in the most traffic is not always as simple as the short-form content promotion found on your favorite platforms. Using the 17 ways I identified above can help bring traffic to blogs in virtually any niche. Optimizing for search engines, building community, investing in ads, and doing your research can all help even a single post increase its traffic, and make sure your blog is moving closer to meeting your goals. 

Have you tried any of these ideas to bring more traffic to your blog? Let me know below!

Hero photo by Firmbee.com on Unsplash