37 Ways on How to Increase Blog Traffic and Grow Your Online Business

‘Going Viral’ means thousands of social media shares, hundreds of sites linking to it, and unusually enormous traffic. But do you really want to make your blog go viral? What are some of the ways to make your blog go viral?

Seriously though, who wouldn’t want to get their blog post to the right audience?  We all do, right?

As we have always insisted, blogging is 20% content creation and 80% promotion.  Nowadays, it’s not about the number of posts that you’ve got,  it’s about the quality of posts. Learn to curate great posts that the influencers in your niche would want to link to and share with their followers

Read also: How to Start a Blog and Make Money Step by Step Guide

To help you make your blog go viral, we have compiled a list of the most trusted recommendations that give ultimate results. We know, it’s a lot to take in, but just be sure to try off a few dozens of them and see how it works out for you.

How to Increase Blog Traffic

Before you hit publish your post, there are several ways to boost traffic, including:

1) Write Powerful and Authoritative Content.

Think of an ultimate guide, a resource article, or simply a long list of content.

Just like writing a book, you should craft something that you would be proud to put your name on it. The era of cheap, unorganized, and robot-generated content is over. Your content has to be of great value if you want others to talk about it.

Evergreen content is search engine optimized content that is continually relevant and resourceful and stays “fresh” for readers. To start you off, here is a beginners guide to evergreen content by Word Stream

2) Optimize your Post for On-page SEO

You don’t need to be an SEO expert though, you may hire one if need be. Ensure that you have met the following recommendations before hitting the publish button.

• Do keyword research and aim for keyword intensity of above 0.5%
• Employ the use of long-tail keywords. Neil Patel breaks down 11 reasons why you should embrace long-tail keywords
• Use synonyms or phrases related to your keyword randomly in your blog post
• Link to insanely awesome content from other bloggers related to your content
• Link to your existing blog posts that are related to your blog
• Always include Alternate tags for all your images. Ensure that your alternate description carries your keyword.
• Include your keyword in your blog post SEO title
• Let your keyword appear in the first paragraph of your post
• Set your focus keyword and meta description.
• Ensure that your meta description is compelling enough to have people click through

To make this process a lot easier, we recommend that you download Yoast Plugin if you are not using it yet. It is great since it gives you on-time progress about your post-optimization and rates your content SEO as either poor, okay, or good.

3) Write Compelling Blog Post Title

When it comes to blog headlines, stick to clarity, brevity, and emotions.  Harness the power of power words to earn credibility and trust.

Instead of 52 Ways to Manifest Your Destiny, 

Why not try something like

52 Powerful Ways that will propel you to your destiny 

You should spend enough time researching and crafting the best headline for your blog. You can come up with three or so blog title variations and ask friends and colleagues which one would they prefer. It works like a gem, trust me 🙂

4) Share your Post on Twitter.

I prefer you do this manually. Simply copy the link,  and head to Twitter. Write a compelling introduction of about 100 characters,  paste your link and upload a full-size image.

This is important so that Twitter displays it as a large image instead of a thumbnail aligned to the left. Find and include relevant hashtags. You can use a tool like Hashtagify to find relevant hashtags. When it comes to Twitter, one or two hashtags per tweet are enough

5) Share the Tweet link with Your Friends and Colleagues and Ask Them to Retweet.

If you do this right, you can have about 100 retweets on your post. The best way to do this is via Whatsapp and Facebook

6) Pin the Tweet to the Top of the Twitter Wall.

This way, people who visit your profile can see it and click through, hence the continued source of traffic. Chances are, if you have the right followers, they might want to favorite and retweet to their followers as well

7) Monitor the Performance of your Links.

You can easily do this using a service like bit.ly to track the click-throughs and determine which platforms work for you so that you can make a decision on where to spend your time, resources, and energy on.

8) Post the link to your Facebook page

At The Penny Matters, we usually recommend that you focus on three main social media platforms and these are Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Well, we know Pinterest is not really a social media platform but rather a visual search engine.

Focus on growing your fan page to at least 5000 likes. You can follow our Facebook page and keep the challenge on. We have not cracked the 5000 likes mark yet, but we have strategies in place

9) Pin the Facebook post Containing your Blog Post to the Top of your Page

This is similar to what you did with Twitter. By pinning it on top, you ensure that your fans who were not online at the time of posting still get a chance to check it out, and click-through

10) Post to Relevant Facebook Groups.

If you are a member of engaged Facebook groups, be sure to post there as well.  Posting in ten relevant Facebook groups guarantees over 500 visits. Just customize the intro message to suit each of the groups.

For people to engage with you, you need to engage with them. Answer their questions in the group, comment on their posts, and share their content.

Don’t post often,  but when you do ensure that you are of great importance. This way people will trust you and look forward to your group posts.

Good News: We have recently launched our own Facebook group; Transformational Online Entrepreneurs after years of deliberation. Be sure to join the discussions

11) Comment on Other Blogs

Leave thoughtful and highly useful comments on other people’s blogs especially those under your niche

Challenge:

Read and comment on 5 of the relevant highly engaging blog posts related to yours every day for the next thirty days. Using Google Analytics, you can track the performance so that you can make informed decisions at the end of the challenge

12) Employ the Use of Trackbacks.

You get notified when other people link back to you.  Just like comments, trackbacks are likely to be abused by spammers. To ensure your internet safety, use trackback filters. If you are using WordPress, you would want to install a plugin like WP Armour

13) Add Outbound Links to Authoritative Websites

If you are writing a really long post, you can link to as many as 20 or even more external posts.  Most often the site owners will be notified and they are likely to share your post if it is really relevant to their audience. This post itself has more than twenty external links.

However, we do not link just because we want to, it is because of the existence of great blog posts in the blogosphere which we feel can complement our content and help our readers expand their knowledge with related content.

14) Email All the Influencers You’ve Linked to

So if you have linked to 100 websites,  the next step is to find contact information for all of them.

What you need:

Their:

• Email addresses
• Twitter handles
• LinkedIn accounts

Once your post is live, you would want to send a personalized email to each and every one of them, thanking them for their great content and also letting them know that you have featured them in your insanely awesome new blog post.

Start off with these influencer outreach email templates by Ninja Outreach

15) Mention all the Influences on Twitter.

Even after sending them an email, it is not a guarantee that it will be open and read. Now, why not harness the power of Twitter to give you an upper hand?

Write custom tweets, with images and a link to your post and mention your influencers.  Tagging them along will increase retweets. Since Twitter limits content characters to 280 as of December 2017, it means you can only add six to seven handles at a go. You may need to create three of four dozen tweets in order to mention all the influences featured in your post.

Twitter is a great place for outreach, be sure to follow our Ceo and founder’s Twitter account for great tips and amazing content creation advice

Follow @msson_

16) Add to Your Email Signature.

You can quickly do so on Google by going to settings.  Alternatively, you can use platforms such as Wisestamps to set up your premium and professional email signature

17) Attend and Speak at Events.

Talk about your new massive blog post and how it has revolutionized your week since you last published it. Also, carry your business cards that contain the web address of your blog.

Ensure that your latest massive post is the first thing they see when they land on your homepage.

Walter Akolo, a renowned Kenyan freelancer and online entrepreneur also recommends that you run online training as well as organize your own seminars as a way to build an irresistible brand

18) Guest Post on Other Blogs

Guest posting is known to bring lots of traffic to your website. Reach out to websites related to the blog post you’ve written and offer to guest post on them.  Naturally link your massive blog post.

However, when starting off you need to learn how to do it right. There are tons of information available for free online, invest time to learn and improve your pitching skills.

There are tons of benefits of guest blogging including generating quality and targeted traffic that highly convert

19) Monitor Performance with Google Analytics.

Almost every expert blogger will tell you that you need to install Analytics from day one.

It’s a great nagging friend who will always tell you hard truths about how bad your website is doing. Monitoring your results will help you narrow down to options that actually work for your website. However, never let the metrics kill your blog 

20) Incorporate Great Design.

Your readers won’t stay if your home is all cluttered. Stick to a simple design that serves your purpose. Our idea of a great blog design here at The Penny Matters is one that treks towards achieving minimalism

You will notice that our website is easy to navigate because we decided to stick to simplicity. Try that too, and your bounce rate will tremendously drop, increasing average time on-site stats.

21) Reply to Comments

It is a good blogging habit to always interact and engage with every comment that one leaves on your post. Keep the conversation going, gain new ideas and build loyalty.

However, when you reply to comments, there is no way that your readers are notified that you actually replied to their comments. That sucks, right? Well, by simply installing Subscribe to Comments Reloaded plugin, you can easily notify them automatically once you or anyone else reply to their comments. 

22) Send out Announcement Emails to Your Subscribers.

To be effective, write a catching intro, include a link, and ask for one more favor: Retweet.

To make it easier, include a ready-to-click tweet with a customized message. You can do so using a service like Click to Tweet.

23) Host a Webinar Dedicated to the General Idea of Your Blog Post.

Discuss some of the points and ask people to head over to the link to download an offline version of the article. This is effective in that you may add a couple of hundreds of subscribers to your list

Here is how you can run a successful webinar. Besides, you do not need a sophisticated and expensive tool when you are starting off. Femtrepreneur details how you can run a webinar for free using YouTube live, formerly Hangouts on air

24) Find a Popular Conversation related to Your Niche and Bring in Some Value.

Join the discussions and bring in some real value. Where to find popular conversations

• Facebook groups
• Twitter chats
• Blog forums
• podcasts

25) Optimize Your Website for Social Sharing

The best plugin is social warfare. Narrow down. Having too many options is the reason for confusion and hence no sharing at all. The basic buttons to show should be Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. That’s what we do here at The Penny Matters

26) Blog Submissions

You can boost the reach of your posts by submitting them to the blog submission websites below:

• Submit to BlogEngage.com Niche: Business
• Submit to Blogkube.com Niche: Blogging
• Submit to Dzone.com Niche: Programming
• Submit to Sharebloc.com Niche: Business
• Submit to Kingged.com Niche: Internet Marketing
• Submit to BlogHub
• Submit to GrowthHackers.com Niche: Growth Hacking
• Submit to Scoop.it Pages
• Submit to Alltop.com simply choose the right category and submit your post for consideration.
• Submit to Reddit
• Submit to Digg
• Submit to Yahoo Buzz
• Post to MySpace

More Effective Ways to Increase Blog Traffic

27. Post to Pinterest group boards: Group boards are similar to the Pinterest groups except that they are collaborative. To begin with, join at least 15 group boards with at least 3000 followers each. These boards should be related to your niche. To start you off, join our Online Business group board
28. Answer relevant questions on Quora and link back to your massive article whenever relevant.
29. Reach out to other bloggers and request them to mention your post: Link building strategy isn’t dead, and it can massively boost your post. If people are linking to it,  then this tells search engines that you’ve got something interesting to say.
30. Feature more quality links than the reigning champion. Chances are, the long list content you are crafting already exists, though they may not be that long. To stand out, you need to ensure that your list outdoes any other. Note that people are likely to click through the post, “35 WordPress Themes That Rock” compared to “7 WordPress themes for your blog”
31. Craft content that elicits emotions: Don’t be dull. What do you want your readers to do?  Telling a personal story is a way to build loyalty and grab your readers’ attention
32. Embed a relevant video: Google owns YouTube. Finding a relevant video on YouTube and including it in your posts can boost your ranking a bit. The use of rich multimedia is becoming the go-to approach for most bloggers and you don’t want to be left out.
33. Schedule an additional ten tweets to go out over the next few weeks: You can employ platforms like Hootsuite and Buffer
34. Schedule additional pins to go out over the next few days or weeks.  The best way to do this is to use Tailwind. You can use different graphics for each pin you schedule. Do split testing to determine which pin gains more traction
35. Use Ritetag to optimize hashtags for your tweets:  Simply paste your tweet and Ritetag will give you suggestions of hashtags based on your content
36. Share your article on LinkedIn
37. Use Twitter cards as they allow you to add a bit more characters and the leaves are well optimized. Besides, Twitter cards allow you to directly collect email addresses from your Twitter wall.

In a Nutshell,

Making your blog go viral is a great task and demands a lot of your time. however, if done correctly, can be immensely rewarding.

Want to Become a Pro Blogger?

Join our 30 Days Blogging Challenge Starting soon.