You’ve spent many hours researching and writing your blog post. You’ve even crafted the perfect layout for it. But no matter how hard you try, your readers don’t seem to be coming by as much as you’d like them to.
Getting your blog up and running is a big milestone. But how do you keep the momentum going? How are you going to grow your blog? What can you do to get more people to visit and read it?
Blogging can be a great tool for sharing your ideas and experiences, but it can also be a trap if you don’t have some strategies in place. While strategies will vary from person to person and blog to blog, some have been proven effective in drawing in more visitors. In this article, we’ll list down some clever ways of promoting your blog to help you grow it.
First things first
Before you set out to implement any strategy that will bring more traffic to your website, you must first get some very important tasks out of the way:
Make sure you’re optimized for SEO
You won’t get very far with growing your audience if your site is not optimized for search engines in the first place. If your goal is to increase traffic to your site and gain better online visibility, then some search engine optimization strategies need to be in order.
Make sure that your blog should have good, clean title tags, good content, and a well-organized site that is easy for people to navigate. There are also some technical SEO elements that you can play around with, such as using keywords in your title tags so that when someone searches on Google they will see your blog’s name there instead of hundreds of other irrelevant results.
Keyword research is a must
For most bloggers, keyword research takes the form of keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner or Google Trends. These tools let you see what people are searching for in your niche and how they’re using search engines to find information online.
As you start out, it can be helpful to focus on a few keywords that are most relevant to your niche. If you have a blog that focuses a lot on Japan, it makes sense to include relevant topics including their language and culture, and of course, you can’t blog about Japan without talking about anime.
Eventually, you may want to expand your search strategy as you continue to build your audience. Not only will this help you reach a larger pool of readers, but it will also increase the chances of ranking for more related keywords.
A technical website audit is on order
A website audit is a thorough review of your site’s structure, look and feel, functionality and accessibility. It’s a must when blogging because it ensures that you’re using the best practices for SEO, image optimization, and more.
One thing that you’ll want to pay attention to as you go through your audit is the web design. Make sure that it looks clean, simple, and accessible across all devices. This will help to improve your rankings in Google’s search engine results pages (SERP) and make your site more user-friendly overall.
Promoting your blog
With the right strategy, you can get the word out there about your brand. To help increase online visibility and traffic to your blog, consider the following tips:
Use social media for promotion
When increasing blog traffic, social media platforms can make all the difference. With social media users now amounting to 58% of the global population, you are missing out a lot if you do not harness the power and reach of social media platforms to promote your website.
Share your blog posts on your social media platforms and make sure to use appropriate hashtags so more people will find it. Use appropriate images and share videos, especially on platforms that are more visually geared. Don’t forget to add links to your blog to all your social media accounts.
Post content regularly
There is no better way of promoting your blog than making sure that you post articles regularly. How often should you post depends on your goals. You can use a content calendar to stay on top of things.
Frequent content posting is one way of showing your readers that you are committed to providing them with the best experience every time they visit your site, which is ideal for improving organic traffic. Whether you choose to post once or twice or several days a week, the key is to provide them with current and relevant information and to maintain a regular interval between posts.
Repurpose your content into videos
One great way of promoting your blog is repurposing your content into videos and sharing it on YouTube. With a whopping 1.7 billion unique visitors per month, it would do your blog great wonders to tap into such a platform with an impressive audience reach.
Since you already have existing content to use, all you have to do is highlight specific talking points in your blog, which will help you save time. If you have several related blog topics, then picking out the highlights and compiling them into one single video would be a great idea. For instance, if you have a travel blog and have already covered several locations, then a video compilation of your best destinations for food, nightlife, etc. would be a good idea.
Promote at events
Just because blogs are digital doesn’t mean you can no longer promote them in person. You’ll be surprised how many potential readers you can meet and connect with by attending events such as trade shows, conventions, and conferences.
Whether it is a local meetup or a full-on conference, this can be a great opportunity to increase your reach. You’ll need to keep track of relevant events where many of your target audience are likely to attend. Social media platforms can be a great place to discover these events, so keep your eye out for groups and communities that are related to your blog’s subject matter.
Grow your audience with the right strategy
In this day and age, it is not easy to gain popularity as a new blogger. There are so many new platforms emerging almost daily that it is hard for anyone to keep pace. That being said, there are ways you can grow your blog and promote it easier than others. A good understanding of some of these clever strategies as well as having a good grasp of what your audience wants will go a long way.