Almost 95% of blogs fail within the first year. People start blogging for many reasons. But, they quit too early. Why? It’s because they can’t get any traffic to their blog! (One of the many reasons.)
Everyone can start a blog. It’s not something which requires a special talent. (You just need a PC/Laptop & an internet connection) It also doesn’t matter if you are 50+ years old or in your teenage years. But, making a successful blog is hard!
After starting a blog, one of the things all bloggers do is to start writing blog posts & think about how they will get traffic to their blog. Getting traffic to your blog isn’t an easy task. If it was easy everyone would become a blogger!
You shouldn’t ignore blogging even if you have a well-established site. With blogging, you can drive more visitors and more sales.
By now, you would know that – getting traffic to your blog is the most important task. Without traffic, you can’t do anything with your blog. Your readers are the ones who make your blog successful. If you want to be a successful blogger then you must get traffic to your blog.
So, today I am going to share 14 ways by which you can get more traffic to your blog. Make sure to apply these methods, and they will also work for you.
14 Ways To Promote Your Blog [ Best Methods ]
#1 Create Amazing Content!
The first way to get traffic is to create an amazing piece of content. Create great content is the best way to drive more traffic to your blog. Your readers will love and share your blog posts if they are great.
There are many benefits to writing great blog posts – they get more backlinks (which help in increasing your search rankings), more social shares, etc. Your average blog post isn’t going to get backlinks from higher blogs or social shares either.
What most of the bloggers do – is that they write & publish on a regular basis and think they will get more traffic this way. It’s the wrong approach! Why? Because you need to create content that promotes itself. (Yup! Rather than publishing more blog posts.)
You also need to produce more “Evergreen Content”. By “Evergreen Content” I mean the kind of blog posts that will remain relevant for many years to come. The information on these blog posts will not be outdated.
In simple words – When you write much better content than others, you become a reliable source of information! “Content is King!” (With Promotion.) Once you become a reliable source, more and more people will visit your blog.
#2 Include Social Share Buttons On Your Blog.
The success 0f a blog mainly depends on how many readers you can get to your blog. Suppose you’ve published a great blog post, got some readers, what’s next? How can you make those readers share your blog post with their friends?
It’s simple with the help of social share buttons. You can simply improve your blog’s readership by including share buttons on every blog post. There are many reasons why adding these “social share buttons” is good for your blog.
One of the obvious reason is – to promote your blog for free. If your readers enjoy your blog posts they will want to share it with other people. Many bloggers ignore them & think they will get traffic through other ways. And, they miss a lot of free traffic.
Adding share buttons to your blog allows you to get more shares on your blog post and as a result, you get more traffic. The other reasons to use social share buttons are – you will get more natural backlinks (which is a ranking factor), increase brand exposure, etc.
You can easily add share buttons on your blog if you use WordPress. There are a lot of plugins to make your work easier. (And it’ll not take much time.) Just don’t forget to add social share buttons to your blog.
#3 Use Contests/Giveaways For More Traffic.
Running contests & giveaways have been one of the best ways to get free traffic for a long time. These are also great ways to increase user engagement on your blog. You will get more traffic, sales & leads if you can do contests & giveaways the right way.
With viral contests & giveaways, you can earn in thousands of dollars & also grow your email list. There are many people who have done them & got amazing results. You can do a simple Google search “Case Study: viral contests/giveaways” & see the results by yourself.
Here’s a great article by Shopify, by which you can learn – How to Grow Your Business With Giveaways and Viral Contests! And, if you want to create a successful contest or a giveaway post, it must have three things.
Those three things are – #1 You must have clear goals. (What’s the thing you want to achieve.) #2 Have an amazing prize. (Which will excite everyone.) #3 You must do a little promotion. (After some time traffic will come on its own.)
Running contests & giveaways can create your blog more popular. (After all, who doesn’t want to get something valuable for free?) Right? Even if this an old age marketing tactic, it still works today. And, you must use it!
#4 Optimize Your Blog For SEO.
You might know what SEO is, and why you should learn it. The main aim of doing SEO on any site is to increase its search traffic by ranking much higher on Google than others. And, when you rank higher you get more traffic. (Looks simple. Isn’t it?)
But doing SEO is much harder than you think. New bloggers assume they can put articles on their blog & build some backlinks. (And, they are now SEO experts.) It is much more than just link building. Yes, there are many other ranking factors.
But, that’s another thing. For now, you must know to get more traffic through Google (other search engines only have a 10% market share), you must do proper SEO on your blog. You should plan about SEO even before starting your blog.
There are many things to learn in SEO – you need to make your site much faster, building backlinks, making great content for SEO and almost 200+ ranking factors. With SEO you can drive free traffic to your blog.
Almost every successful blog’s main source of traffic is Google. If you ignore SEO, then the chances of your blog’s success are very low. You need organic traffic if you want to have an authority blog in your niche.
#5 Start Networking With Other Bloggers.
Blogging is a lonely work! You’re always alone on your laptop and just doing your work with no social life. (Most of the times. And also, in my case.) We all know that networking with other bloggers is important. But why? (And, how does it help in getting more traffic?)
There are many reasons to connect with other bloggers. Some of the reasons are – you get the solution for almost every problem you face, you can help each other, share guest posts, etc. You shouldn’t try to compete with other bloggers. (You should grow with them.)
People who walk alone don’t go too far. You can’t achieve anything on your own. There will be times when you must take help of others. (By keeping your own ego aside.) Also, networking with other bloggers will make your social life alive. (To some extent.)
You can also get traffic by asking them to share your blog posts on social media sites. When you have a great friendship with them you can even ask them to link to your content. This way you can get referral traffic from their blog.
You can also reach out to big authority blogs in your niche and ask them to link to your blog content if they find it good enough. And, also ask for guest posts. There are too many benefits of networking with other bloggers!
#6 Commenting On Other Blogs.
Commenting on other blogs in your niche is a good way to get targeted referral traffic. You build your brand image and also connect with other bloggers. This is the strategy that I used at the starting of this blog. (To get free traffic from other blogs!)
What you should do to get traffic from blog comments is to provide value in your comments. You can’t just go and spam the shit out of other blogs. (Your comments won’t be approved in the first place.) However, most of the blog comments are now NOFollowed!
There are only few authority blogs left which give DoFollow comment backlinks. Even NoFollow comments can be used to get traffic. (Which should be your main aim.) But, there are some things which you should keep in mind before starting commenting on other blogs.
First of all, you must use your real name & image to comment on other blogs. And, avoid general comments like – great post, thanks for the great article, etc. The blog owner will know you’re just commenting for your benefit. (Which isn’t good for connecting with them.)
Your comments must be 100-200 words. And, must have something valuable like – your views and questions that you want to ask other bloggers. When done right – you can get a massive boost in your traffic with blog commenting!
#7 Advertise To Get More Traffic.
It isn’t a surprise to find this in the list. Is it? Paid traffic is one of the most common ways to get traffic to your blog. Paid traffic may be the second biggest traffic source for sites after organic traffic. (It’s hard to choose from one.)
With the rise of adverting platform like Google Ads, Facebook Ads. Many people think it’s just better to pay for traffic rather than waiting years to get decent traffic from search engines. Paid traffic can be as good as organic traffic. (Or, much better in some cases.)
The best way to advertise (acc. to me) is by Facebook Ads. The results are great and cheap. You can get targeted traffic at a fraction of cost when compared to Google Ads. You can also promote on other sites as well. (There are a lot of options.)
Some of the best sites to advertise your blog are – Google Ads, Bing Ads (Yes, many people use Bing), Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. You can also try out online ad networks like Outbrain. Try many ad networks as possible and stick with one which gives the best results.
If you’re not short on money, then trying ads to promote your blog is a great idea. You can see the traffic on your blog and it’ll be much engaging. (If targeted properly.) Staying away from paid traffic isn’t a good idea if you’ve got some extra money.
#8 Start An Email List.
How many have you heard – “Start an email list”, “Don’t forget to get email subscribers from day one” or “Never ignore the power of email marketing”? I guess you would read everywhere that one mistake every blogger make is to not start an email list.
There’s a reason everyone is so much focused on getting a huge email list. It’s because the money is in the list! And you can also get traffic through email marketing. Of, course it’ll take a lot of time to get an email list of decent size.
But, email lists are important. You can go and ask any blogger what are top sources of traffic on their blog. And, they will say that email is one of their top three sources. On an average, Email marketing generates a 44 times ROI.
See, creating an email list and growing is one of the factors that can decide your blog’s success. To become a successful blogger you must start an email list. There are many email list building plugins available and you can use them to grow your email list. (If you’re using WordPress.)
Many bloggers like Darren Rowse of Pro Blogger, see a spike in traffic whenever they send an email after publishing a blog post. Email marketing is one of the best forms of marketing. (i.e, Without a doubt!)
#9 Join (Popular) Forums In Your Niche.
By now, I guess you would know what an internet forum is? If you don’t know here’s a short definition – An internet forum is an online community where people have conversations with each other. There are forums about every topic.
You can find everything on these forums. And, most of the top forums are highly active. Now, you might be thinking about how to use these forums to promote your blog? (It’s a little hard to drive traffic from forums if your main aim is to drive traffic. What?)
Let me explain – Like blog commenting when you post on forums (acc. to your niche) you need to provide something valuable to the community. If you go to forums and start spamming you’ll get banned in no time. They have strict rules.
Most of the forums allow you to link your blog with a signature at the end of every post you write. In some forums, you need to make some posts before you can add a signature. Just remember – be helpful and add more value to every comment & post in forums.
You can find forums in your niche by doing a simple search “Top + Your niche + Forums”. Example – “Top Blogging Forums”. And, also people will only read your blog when they find your posts and comments valuable.
#10 Ask Your Readers To Share Your Blog Posts.
When your blog grows, you will start to receive many readers. Why not ask those readers to share your content? There’s nothing wrong in doing this. (And, you wouldn’t sound rude in doing so if you do it in a nice way.)
There’s also an old saying – “If you don’t ask for it, you do not get it”. When you create amazing articles, chances are more people will read it to the end. And when they read it to the end, they’re more likely to share your blog posts.
By simply putting something like – “if you felt this article was worth your time, please share it” at the end of your blog posts, will get you many shares. (I do it most of the times.) Also, put social share buttons where your readers can easily find them.
In this blog, I’ve put the social share buttons at the end of my blog posts. So, when I ask my readers to share my blog posts they can easily share them in no time. The key to getting your posts shared much often is providing more value to your readers.
Your readers are only going to share your blog post when they find it’s useful (or solves a problem). If you can’t provide valuable info. to your readers then forget about getting more shares on your blog posts.
#11 Share Your Blog Posts On Social Media.
What’s the most common way of getting free traffic? It’s Social Media. (Without a doubt.) You should not ignore social media sites because almost everyone who has access to the internet is on these sites. (Most of them just wasting their time though. ‘Sigh.’)
Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter are some of the most used sites on the internet. You can create pages (or accounts) with these sites to get traffic to your blog. Also, you can join groups which are related to your topic.
You can target your audience by joining groups on these sites acc. to your niche. It’s a great way to promote your blog and you will get targeted traffic, free of any cost. (Although, it’ll be less converting than traffic from Google or emails.)
When you join groups on these sites, just don’t start spamming or you’ll get a ban (just like online forums). Try to help and provide much value to others, solve their problems. Provide a link to your blog when you see someone looking for answers which you’ve covered.
You can also use social media automation tools to schedule your social media posts. Social media should be a part of your promotion strategy. (No smart marketer can ignore it.)
#12 Use “Social Locker”.
Are you tired of placing social share buttons all over your blog & still don’t get the expected results? If yes, then you’re not the only. There are many bloggers like you. What you should do is – to give your readers a reason to share your blog posts.
Even if you’ve made the best content on your blog your readers won’t share them. You should make your readers interested in sharing your blog content. (You need to ignite their interest and make them share your content.)
This is where the social locker plugins come into play. With these content locker plugins, you can ask your readers to share your blog content to social media sites to get access to a special part of your blog post. There are also many other benefits of using them.
With these social lockers, you can – drive a lot of traffic, build loyal fans & readers, increase SEO rankings, etc. You can also convert your readers into customers, collect more leads by putting a sign up on the content box.
This is the best way to get more social traffic. And, you don’t even need to do anything. Everything will be done on autopilot. You just need to sit back and see the traffic flowing to your blog.
#13 Start Guest Posting.
One of the oldest tricks in the book, Guest Posting is still one of the best ways to get free targeted traffic. Guest posting is a process in which you write for other blogs in your niche for free of cost. And in return, you get backlinks and some authority.
Most of the bloggers approach to guest posting in the wrong way. Most of the bloggers look for are only backlinks. And, start buying guest posts from spammy sites which are only built to sell backlinks. (And risk getting a penalty from Google.)
They forget that guest posting on niche related sites can also increase more targeted traffic to their blog. You should avoid spammy sites and try to land a guest post on sites which have high authority and traffic. (Which should be niche relevant.)
You should set goals before starting to guest post on other blogs. Whether you want to do a guest post for building authority or for getting more traffic. It should be clear from the start. (Although, Guest Posts do both.)
There are many blogs which accept free guest posts. (But, blogs with high authority have strict guidelines.) Guest Posting is also good for SEO. Guest Posting was and is going to remain effective for a long time.
#14 Make Use Of Q&A Sites To Get Traffic.
Q&A sites are made to solve other people’s problems. So, is your blog, right? These sites are an efficient way to get targeted traffic & you can also use these sites to get blog post ideas. Now, the question is – how to get traffic with Q&A sites?
There are tons of Q&A sites but the most popular site to get traffic are Quora & Yahoo Answers! Some other sites are StackExchange, AskVille, All Experts, etc. When used correctly Q&A sites can be a great way to promote your blog.
What you need to do is – find topics related to your niche, and answers the questions. After answering the questions put a link to your blog so people can visit your blog. Make sure your answers are really helpful & interesting. (To attract more views.)
There are many also many case studies by which you can see if this method works or not. Search ” case study: traffic from quora” and check the search results. Many people have built successful blogs with the help of these sites.
Here’s an article from Smart Blogger, through which you can learn – how to turn Quora into a traffic machine. And, you’ll also become a better writer. Q&A sites are goldmines for bloggers.
Final Thoughts
A lot of effort goes into creating a great blog post. And, if you don’t put an effort into them, it’ll be of no use. Creating a blog post is just half the work being finished, the other half is putting the time into promoting that blog post.
What you should do – is to follow the 80:20 rule. Spending 80% of your time to promote your blog posts & 20% to create them will do wonders for your blog. (And, you will certainly see a spike in your traffic.)
So, what are your favorite ways to get traffic on your blog? What kind of strategy do you use? In case, I missed something feel to suggest in the comments below.