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Something many (most) new bloggers struggle with is increasing their blog traffic and page views. I get it, with my first blog, Adjusting to Adulthood, I struggled for a long time to build up my traffic, and then when I did see my numbers rise, I hit 10,000 (ish) page views per month and felt like I just could not get past that point. Over the next year, I very SLOWLY got my page views up to about 20,000, and again felt very stuck at that number.
It was at that point I decided to really focus on my traffic and try a few specific things in hopes of increasing it and seeing a steady incline. I focused on 6 specific tasks and to my surprise, my traffic DOUBLED in 30 days. I went from 20,000 page views to 40,000 page views in one month. Then, to make things even better, I hit 50,000 page views only 60 days later. My traffic has steadily increased since, and I owe it all to those 6 actionable steps I took.
So, lets dive right into it so you can start growing your blog traffic too!
Action #1 | Consistency + Posting More Often
The biggest thing I owe to my increase in traffic is posting more often and on a more consistent basis. Almost instantly, I seen an influx of traffic once I started posting more often. I use to post a new blog post about 1 a month. When I decided to work on increasing my traffic, I made the commitment to posting weekly and I seen instant results.
I find it hard to post weekly because I find writing quality blog posts + creating my Pinterest graphics, to be very time consuming. So, a way I made that a bit easier was by accepting guest posts from other bloggers who write about similar topics. By having one guest post per month, I only had to focus on 3 posts per month.
I mean, if you think about it, more blog posts = more opportunity for traffic. Every time you write a blog post, you share it and promote it (or at least I hope you do!), and the more posts you write, the more you are sharing and putting out there, the more chances you are giving people to visit your blog. If you have 50 posts on your blog, and each of those posts only get 25 views per day, that is 1,250 page views per day!
I also started trying to be more consistent. I tried to always post a new blog post on a Wednesday of every week. I don’t know if this played a part in my traffic increase, but it was something I started to do around the same time as my traffic spike, so I feel it is important to mention here as well.
Action #2 | Revamping Posts
Something I did right before I seen a spike in my traffic, was go through and re-vamp and edit my blog posts.
I went through each post on my blog to ensure the content was valuable and relevant to my readers. For every post, I asked myself — will my readers find this post helpful and easy to implement into their own lives? If the answer was no, I made the changes required to change that answer to a yes. When your content is answering questions readers may have, or solving a problem that is common among your niche it gets attention, and gets people clicking, and also sharing!
Some tips for writing great content:
- Write for Your Audience
- Always think about your reader’s needs and how you can help them or make their lives easier.
- Ask for feedback in an email or via social media. Ask what they want to see a post about, and then if you see a recurring topic, that is what you need to write about!
- Your Posts should be helpful, practical and easily implemented.
- Will your post help your readers? Will they get something out of it? Can it improve their lives? Can they implement the advice? Think of all these things when creating your content. It will help you from writing a post filled with “fluff”.
- Post Regularly
- The more you post, the more chances there are for search engines to find and rank you. BUT do not get caught up in quantity over quality. Quality always wins!!!
- The key is to try to post a few times a month if you can! Don’t post every 2-3 months and expect your blog to have great traffic!
Action #3 | Focusing on SEO
As a new blogger starting out, SEO was not something I focuses on at all. Mainly because I was already overwhelmed with all the information around starting a blog, and I had no idea what SEO meant or how important it actually was. But, since starting my first blog 3 years ago, I have learned that If you want your blog posts to be ranked higher in search engines, it’s absolutely essential that they be appropriately optimized to do so.
It can take a long time to see real traffic results from search engines, but optimizing your blog posts from the very beginning is the best way to achieve results. It is also worth it in the long run, because eventually, by making your posts SEO friendly, you can gain a large increase in organic traffic as your blog grows.
The best tool to use if you aren’t familiar with SEO is the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. It helps you make your post SEO friendly by using a simple red, yellow, green method. It also tells you what to improve to get your blog post to green. Best of all its a free resource!
Learn more about making your blog posts Search Engine Optimized with this post: Learn SEO: The Beginners Guide to Making Your Blog Search Engine Optimized
Action #4 | Focusing on Pinterest
If you do not have a Pinterest account, I highly suggest that be a high priority task on your to do list. Pinterest brings in a very large majority of my traffic. If you utilize Pinterest properly, you can really drive a ton of traffic to your blog.
Here is what I focused on in the months leading up to my huge traffic increase:
- Making sure I had a Pinterest “Business Account”
- Creating more boards to pin to that were less broad and more specific. (i.e. Self Care, Self Love, Personal Growth, Positivity and Mindset, Self Reflection) Previously I had a “Self Improvement” board and I pinned most of my pins to that. But, by breaking that down into more boards that were more specific, I had more places to pin my pins!
- Using relevant keywords in my profile, board names & descriptions, as well as in all of my pin descriptions. This will help you show up more often in Pinterest searches.
- I started to use Tailwind to automate my pinning to that I didn’t have to spend so much time on Pinterest. I also found Tailwind Tribes to have a big impact on my growth.
- I created multiple pinnable images for all of my blog posts. These are typically vertical (recommended size currently is 600 x 900) and should be attention grabbing and visually appealing. I use Canva to create mine. Pin your images to your Blog Board + all other relevant boards.
- I made sure to pin fresh content on a regular basis. This includes new blog posts or simply newly made pinnable images for older blog posts.
- Making sure I was pinning other people’s pins as well as my own so that I was not coming off as spammy. If you constantly only pin your own content, Pinterest can flag you as spam.
Action #5 | Branching Out
Pinterest has always been my biggest source of traffic, so it was always the main focus on my time and attention when it came to traffic and sharing my posts. But, you should never put all your eggs in one basket! I started to branch out and explore other options for sharing my content and bringing in traffic. I’ve already mentioned above how I started to focus more on SEO, but I also started to focus on Instagram and Facebook as well.
Every time I posted on the blog, I also posted about it on Instagram and included a link in my bio so people could click it to read. Next, I joined relevant Facebook groups and shared my posts when relevant (share days, when someone in the group asked a question that was relevant to one of my posts, etc.) The key with Facebook is to find a few really great groups rather than joining a whole bunch. I joined a group of other personal development bloggers where I can not only share my posts, but have gained some great friends out of it and some really great collaborations.
Action #6 | Switching Hosting Providers
A few months before my traffic doubled, I decided to switch to Siteground for my blog hosting. There were two big reasons I finally decided to make the switch. The first was that I was coming up on renewal of my other hosting with Bluehost, and decided to shop around and the second was that my site was continuously down with Bluehost, and downtime is not okay!
At one point my blog was down multiple times in one day, and at one of those points it was down for over 4 hours! That is NOT okay! When you depend on your blog to bring in email subscribers, income, and new readers, you cannot afford to have downtime like that.
So I did some research and I decided to go with Siteground. I had heard great things about them previously, and after doing my own research I thought they had a lot to offer.
To read more about why I switched and how it benefited my blog, Click Here.
So there you have it! Those are the 6 big things I could pin point that I had worked on or changed around the same time I seen mega growth in my blog traffic. I really do not believe there is any guarantee formula that will work for every single blogger, but as a new blogger it is definitely nice to have some direction and know which areas to focus your time on. So, hopefully this blog will help you do that and make your blogging journey just a bit easier!
