Regardless of your niche, there are some things you should be doing that have helped us stay afloat during times when blogging is hard. { **cough cough.. the pandemic of 2020**} Beyond buying pricey Facebook ads or stressing out over Pitnerest, these strategies can increase blog traffic for free. (With a little bit of elbow grease!)
We don’t mean that you’re going to have the same income streams, or that there is a quick fix. You’re gonna have to adjust your strategy to keep your audience feeling like they’re getting valuable content. Also – please keep in mind that we’re bloggers too and like to focus on keeping it real with these articles. There are alot of bad blogging habits out there and we’re guilty of them too!
While there are only 11 steps here, and you could probably find an article with 20, these are the ones that we’ve found that really work.
Get to Know Your Audience
Your audience is what makes your blog stand out!! They’re already there, and you have an opportunity to have them read more than they already do. Traffic doesn’t have to be new readers – consistently engaged readers are just as good!
In November of 2020 – Instagram decided to ban certain hashtag usage to prevent misinformation from being spread about the election. Regardless of your political affiliations- this hurt many content creators who rely on hashtag strategies. Many people saw their reaches drop because people were only seeing what was directly in the feeds of people they followed.
To combat some of the loss in traffic – you could be making an impact by connecting with your followers. The soft ask has never been more effective than now! Increase blog traffic for free by asking your followers to share with their freinds or share articles on Facebook! (If you’re new to blogging and don’t know what the soft ask is- we’ll get to that another time.)
Find Your Keyword Research Strategy
We just talked about getting to know your audience and it’s the perfect lead for keyword strategies.
What Keyword Strategy Is Not: Keyword strategy does not mean you find a bunch of high ranking keywords that have nothing to do with your blog – and then crank out posts with a ton of those keywords sprinkled in for SEO. That’ll get you nowhere long run and have you headed for a disastrous blog burnout.
What Keyword Strategy Is: A good keyword strategy will give you the opportunity to post content that your audience wants to read in a relevant and engaging way. You’ll find the content your audience needs and give yourself the opportunity to grow as a writer.
Click to learn one of our Keyword Strategies With Pinterest.
Facebook Groups
We just recently put out a guide on how to effectively use Facebook groups, because they really are so helpful!! From Pinterest threads to having a helpful community – there is allllways something important you could be learning.
Click to read more about finding and using Facebook Groups to your advantage.
Master Twitter For Free Blog Traffic
You may have missed this train – but it’s time to head back to the train station. Twitter is reporting a massive increase in monthly users since 2019. Not to mention they just put out ‘Fleets’? They’re just like Instagram stories but easier.
One thing we’ve had to realize is that Twitter is far less stressful than it may seem. It’s an easier ebb and flow of traffic and natural interactions – which means it’s much easier for you to find your corner there. Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok are all big, and we know that – but knowing that Twitter is on the rise makes our job as bloggers much easier.
After all – writing is what we do.
You don’t have to work that hard to tweet your random thoughts – even if they aren’t exactly 100% related to your niche. One of my favorite travel bloggers recently tweeted about whether to call that delicious herby breaded mash from Thanksgiving – ‘stuffing’ or ‘dressing’. Since it’s clearly called ‘STUFFING’ for those of you psychopaths who think it’s called dressing… I commented.
And then I read her latest blog post – because she’s funny, and I felt like it. Imagine that. Twitter really can give you instant blog traffic, with easily shareable bite-sized pieces of content.
Follow us on Twitter here for nonsensical bit’s of whimsy!
Revamp Your Blog Design
If it’s ugly- no one will read it. Period.
It’s 2020 so good photography and fast scrolling, combined with compelling storytelling are the only things that stand out. Getting blog traffic is important and no one will tell you otherwise – but the problem becomes your bounce rate.
If you don’t know what ‘bounce rate’ means – it’s a measure of user interaction on your site. Once readers come to your site? Are they staying and clicking on more content? The more that people leave after seeing one page – the worse your bounce rate becomes. To increase your blog traffic for free- you need to focus on creating a seamless and engaging user experience.
Integrate Easy Social Sharing to Increase blog Traffic
To combat the average ADD human and ensure good bounce rates – focus on social sharing. This includes finding the right systems to encourage social sharing. If you click any of the social share icons on this post here are some things that will happen:
- The content that’s shared is optimized by social platform.
- The images are optimized by social platform.
We’ve made it sooo much easier to share our content, including gentle reminders for busy people. The more your content is shared by your readers, the more new people become interested.
OUR THOUGHTS: Create content so good – your readers can’t help but share it!! Your readers can share with minimal effort and you’ll increase blog traffic for free. For free…. and with passive effort. Bonus points if your share buttons actually work!!
Write Longer – In-Depth Posts
Writing longer in-depth posts is not only good for your SEO strategy – it’s also beneficial for your Google ranking. Google is prioritizing long-form content – and since we’d rather not read garbage – make your words count.
Friendly reminder: Your mindset should never be to amp up your word count!! Focus on creating content that’s actually helpful to your readers, so they don’t feel bombarded with nonsense. If you start spelling out every little detail of your successes/failures with a topic – the post will automatically be longer. (But not full of garbage! People love to read about how you made mistakes and triumphed over them!!)
Optimize Exisiting Content for SEO
In times when you feel like your main content may not be as well received by your audience, (travel guides for places they can’t travel to) – you may need to revamp existing content.
Revamping content just means making sure it’s absolutely the best those posts can be. You don’t have to change every little thing – but we would be willing to guess that 90% of writers reading this article have content that needs to be freshened up. And in an SEO friendly way.
It’s not a waste of time. The last thing you want is to write a brilliant article with crisp and complimentary imagery- only to have a related posts section with an out of date article!!
Tip: This means adjusting all of your affiliate links as well! If any of them are out of date – that article does you no good.
Focus on Creating An Email List
If everything you do is about providing value to your readers, they should want to join your email list for more value. We just started growing our email list, and we truly do not have it down pat. Just being 100% upfront that we struggle in that area.
For some reason, the idea of cluttering up anyone’s in-box with one more annoying email just doesn’t sit right with us. Weird right? That’s the big thing we’ve been focusing on during this time of lull for the blogging industry. Producing high-quality emails that give our reader’s a breath of fresh air.
Brush up on Your Photography Skills
Make your blog, Pinterest and Instagram look better! We’ve been told time and time again that good photography sells blogs. People may not remember everything you wrote – but they will remember your photography. One of our favorite blogs of all time, Along Dusty Roads, has some of the most stunning photography we’ve ever seen. Coupled with soulful writing – you can’t help but keep coming back.
Not to mention: It’s muchhh easier to land press trips this way! What’s the point of inviting an influencer that doesn’t make her audience want to be where they are???
P.S. If you’re a content creator struggling to get Instagram to allow you to add songs, get our guide on all the best ways around this glitch!
Write Relevant Articles Once a Month to increase blog traffic for Free
If you’re a travel blogger and you have no idea what could possibly be relevant right now – you’re missing out on a golden opportunity. Since no one is traveling – we’ve realized that there are so many ways to talk about traveling and adventures without focusing on travel guides themselves.
One article in the works for us? All of the languages we want to learn and why we want to learn them. Learning a new language is an adventure itself, and will enable us to travel deeper when we’re allowed again. You’ll have to check back for that article sometime soon… but there are a bunch more ideas in this post!
You’ve gotta start thinking outside of your niched box and start thinking about the content your audience wants!
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Until next time friends,
Hazel
Good advice in this post regarding increasing traffic. I think no matter what kind of content you write, it has to be accompanied by photos. A picture paints a thousand words.
Evan and Shelby
Hazel100%. You have to break up your content to keep things visually stimulating for your readers. Graphs are great too!