When we start blogs, either for our businesses, or personal sites, we often naively expect that we’ll set it up, add a little content and an about me page and the traffic will come. We expect to get thousands of readers within days. Other sites have got plenty of traffic, after all, they even work with brands and make a living from their blogs. How hard can it be?
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Then, the truth hits. No one reads your blog. Your first week might bring 50 readers, no subscribers, and four twitter followers. It can be a massive knock when you realize that if you want people to read your blog, to subscribe to it, to buy from it and to become invested in your business because of it, it’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of hard work and that you are going to have to learn a lot about the different areas of blogging if you want to be able to compete with the other sites in your niche and get taken seriously as an online business or influencer. Here are three easy steps to start increasing your blog traffic straight away.
Find Your Audience
When we start blogs, we get on every social media platform that we can find and try to give them all plenty of attention. Our followings don’t grow, and we see almost no traffic from our efforts. In large part, you are wasting your time. Think about your audience. Where do they spend their time online? Food bloggers, for example, tend to get a lot of traffic from Pinterest. People use Pinterest as a search engine to look for recipe ideas. They are less likely to be on Twitter looking for meal ideas. Food bloggers also do well from niche sites like Foodgawker.
Find out where your audience spends their time online and focus your own efforts on these areas. Stop wasting your time and start maximizing your efforts where it’s worth it.
Perfect Your SEO
SEO or search engine optimization is about much more than stuffing your posts with keywords. It’s complex and complicated, with many different elements. But, it’s essential. Social media is great, but you need to give it constant work to get traffic. If your SEO is great, you’ll get consistent traffic from search engines without having to push it. The services of a seo agency can be a worthwhile investment if you’re not confident in the area.
Get People Subscribing to Your Email List
So many bloggers don’t have an email list. So, they are out there finding new viewers all of the time. It’s exhausting. Growing a list and sending them regular emails and extras ensures that your old readers keep on coming back when you publish new content. It increases your traffic while making your life significantly easier.
The best way to grow your list is by offering them something extra. They won’t subscribe just to be told when you publish new posts, but they might for free printable, guides and exclusive content.
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