Hey there, it’s Matt from Style Factory, your go-to site for ecommerce and digital
marketing advice.
Today I’m going to discuss how you can increase blog traffic.
I’ll show you 10 key ways that you can gain a bigger readership for your posts.
Before we dive in, here’s my usual reminder to like this video, subscribe to our channel,
and hit the notifications bell.
This will give you easy access to all our digital marketing tips.
Right, let’s start with a key question.
Why blog in the first place?
Well first of all, blogging can be a LOT of fun.
It’s a creative activity that allows you to express yourself and share your views with
a potentially large audience.
Second, blogging can help establish you (or your business) as an authority in your field.
And third, blogging has the potential to significantly increase the number of people visiting your
site.
According to inbound marketing experts Hubspot, businesses that blog regularly tend to attract
55% more traffic than those that don’t.
So, if you write well and are blogging about a subject that a lot of people are interested
in, you can end up with a large amount of traffic on your website.
And we all know what getting lots of traffic to your website means: increased sales opportunities
and revenue.
But how do you go about creating a successful blog?
One – find the right writer.
At the heart of getting your blog noticed — and driving lots of traffic to it — is
writing really great content.
And that content is going to be much better if the person writing it is knowledgeable
and passionate about what they are writing about.
BUT: it might be the case that you personally are not the best person to write the posts
for your site.
Perhaps you’re not a great writer.
Perhaps you don’t have time to devote to blogging.
If either of those statements sounds like it might apply to you, consider hiring a writer
who is capable of creating truly exceptional blog posts..
No matter who ends up writing the posts on your website, their personality has to shine
through.
Readers identify with writers because there is much to like — or even dislike — about
their personality and tone of voice.
If a reader likes YOU as a writer, you are much more likely to attract a more dedicated
following for your blog – and repeat visits to it.
Once you’ve found your writer and your tone, it’s time to think about what to write about.
Let’s take a look at that.
Two – use keyword research to identify good blog post topics.
It’s really easy to sit down and write blog posts which cover, in considerable depth,
topics that nobody is remotely interested in!
Similarly, it’s easy to write a blog post covering an area that people ARE really interested
in, but to give it a title containing words and phrases that nobody ever searches for.
Keyword research is your friend here: it can help you generate good blog post ideas and
ensure that there is a target audience for your content.
By using keyword research tools, like Semrush or Ahrefs, you can discover the number of
monthly searches for various keywords — and find out how difficult it is to rank for particular
phrases.
We have some resources available to help you understand keyword research better – please
check the video description for links to these.
Three – focus on creating long-form content.
Studies show that ‘long-form content’ performs better in search results than short
or ‘thin’ posts.
Size matters!
Creating long form content means writing posts with high word counts that go into HUGE depth
on a particular topic.
Now, there are a couple of reasons why long-form content helps to generate higher positions
in search results.
First, longer posts will naturally be more keyword-rich — and therefore more likely
to crop up in results for different keywords.
Second, the in-depth nature of a long post is more likely to satisfy readers who come
across it.
It will be more likely to answer your visitor’s query, or solve their problem.
As a result, a long-form post is more likely to get shared on social media or get linked
to from other sites — with positive implications for traffic to it.
Four – update your existing posts.
Google and other search engines give preference to blog posts containing up-to-date information.
So, it’s a good idea to frequently review your existing blog content and update and
enhance it with new information.
Not only does this produce the ‘freshness’ signals that search engine algorithms approve
of, but it typically increases the length of posts – and helps give you more ‘long-form’
content.
Five – use strong images in your posts.
It’s REALLY important to use good images in any blog posts you publish.
There are a few reasons for this.
First, it helps readers get an immediate sense of what you are writing about.
Second, the main picture accompanying your post will usually show up whenever your visitors
share one of your posts on social media — and if this is a dull picture, it’s less likely
to generate clickthroughs to your content.
And third, images can be optimized to help your content appear in search results.
By adding suitable keywords to a picture’s ‘alt text‘, file name and caption, you
can help search engines gain a better understanding of what your post is about.
Six – optimize your posts for search engines.
There are a series of technical steps — collectively known as ‘on-page SEO‘ — that you should
take to give your blog posts the best chance of performing well in search.
You should:
create blog post titles that reflect your keyword research;
include keywords in each post’s URL that reflect the content;
use keyword-rich headings to break up content; and use keyword-rich alt text and file names
for your images.
For a few more tips on this area, along with some advice on technical SEO too, you might
like to check out our post on how to make your content more visible in Google search
results.
You’ll find a link to this in the video description.
Seven – capture email addresses on your blog.
Once you’ve attracted visitors to your blog, you should do your best to capture their email
addresses.
Doing so allows you to notify visitors via e-newsletter about new blog posts; this can
result in significantly more traffic to them.
To capture email addresses effectively, you need to ensure that there is a mailing list
sign-up form on EVERY blog post.
Make sure that it highlights all the great content visitors can expect to receive once
they subscribe to your list.
Eight – encourage social sharing.
Actively encourage your readers to share your blog posts — ask them to post your content
on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.
If they follow these encouragements, not only will you see a rise in traffic to your posts,
but you may also be sending subtle ‘signals’ to search engines regarding the popularity
and quality of your posts.
Nine – encourage people to comment on your posts.
Encourage people to add their own views at the bottom of your posts.
This creates more keyword-rich content on your website, and it can help encourage return
visits to your posts, as discussions take hold in your comments section.
Additionally, some SEO experts believe that the Google algorithm likes blog posts that
generate a lot of community discussion, and gives them preferential treatment in search
results.
Ten – build quality backlinks to your posts.
Backlinks are links from other sites to yours, and Google treats them as votes for a piece
of content.
Generally speaking, the more backlinks you have pointing to a piece of content, the better
it will perform in search results, and the more traffic it will generate.
So reach out to other website owners, asking them to link to your posts.
The key thing here is that the backlinks have to be high-quality ones on reputable and relevant
websites.
Building a bunch of spammy links to a blog post can hurt its performance, as can excessive
link swapping.
So that’s it: 10 great ways to increase traffic to your blog posts.
I hope you’ve found this video useful – do make sure you subscribe to our channel and
hit the notifications bell to get more great resources from Style Factory.
You’ll find some additional resources in the video description that show you more ways
to boost the visibility of your content.
And finally, if you have any queries about blogging, just stick them in a comment.
We’ll do our best to help.