3 May 2013

15 things you should be doing to drive traffic to your blog!


I'm fairly new to the world of blogging, but even during my short stint writing blog posts for my creative blog: The Creative Frontier and my beauty blog: Beauty and the Bargain, I've discovered a few tricks of the trade that can help boost your page views dramatically. 

I'm certainly no expert and I'll admit I still haven't quite yet cracked how to get more followers via the 'Google friend connect' feature. If you've got any tips on this please feel free to 'share the wealth' and comment below! But as for now I'm happy just writing away to build my experience and hoping that it'll come in useful the next time I'm applying for a job!

Anyway, if you're writing a blog and want to help more people read it then here are some methods that I've been using recently...

1 Get social!
As well as linking to your blog on your Facebook and Twitter bios you should post links to all of your new blog posts on your personal channels. If you want to go one step further you could set up a 'fan page' for your blog on Facebook, and similarly a dedicated Twitter account. Depending on what you're writing about use popular hashtags to help get your content noticed, for example, beauty bloggers commonly use #bbloggers when linking to their posts. 

2 Contact influencers
Following on from the point above, you should try and get your blog posts noticed by 'influencers'. By this I mean that getting RT's, replies, shares or comments from influential people who are in some way connected to the theme or content of your blog. For example, if you're a beauty blogger and you write a review of a Revlon lipstick....@mention Revlon on twitter telling them about it and hopefully you'll get a RT to thousands of other fans who like Revlon. (good PR for them and exposure for you) 

3 Use Linkedin
If like me you're writing a blog to help boost your writing skills to improve your job prospects then it makes sense to encourage your Linkedin connections to view your blog. You can mention it within your actual personal profile and also post updates, much like a Facebook 'status'. Just recently you can @mention 'companies and connections', which would be useful if you had written a blog post about a certain company, person or if you just wanted to notify someone in particular about the post. 

4 Use Google+ features
As blogger.com is a Google platform it 'likes' it if you use Google features and other platforms, and I've certainly seen a rise in my page views since I've started using these techniques:
  • Automatically share your posts on your Google+ page (make sure they are set to share with the public)
  • @mention people or companies directly within blog posts
  • Enable 'Google+' comments on your blog posts
  • Search for and add other bloggers into your 'Circles' 
  • Join or even create relevant Google+ communities
  • Use the 'Google friend connect' feature to follow other bloggers and encourage others to follow you

5 Keep search engines 'in-the-know' 
Every time you post on your blog submit the link to http://pingomatic.com/ which is a free service that tells search engines that your site has been updated. 

6 Submit links to Reddit
One of the sites that drives the most traffic to my blog is http://en.reddit.com/. Create an account and sumbit a link to every new blog post you write, tagging in under the right group to make sure it gets noticed. Most of mine go under Graphic Design, Social Media or Marketing. 

7 Get Bloglovin followers 
This site is a tool for publishing your blog posts and following other blogs. It seems to be most popular with beauty and fashion blogs but it could still be worthwhile to create some more inbound links to your blog which will increase it's credibility to search engines. Once you've made an account you can add a badge to your blog sidebar to encourage people to follow you on Bloglovin. You can also link your profile with your personal Facebook page so it automatically posts your latests blogs. 

8 Use good photos and ALT tags
Be sure to include at least one image in all of your blog posts as not only will it help it look more interesting it will pull through as a preview when you link to the post and encourage potential readers to click through. Also, remember to include descriptive ALT tags for images for accessibility and to increase the chance of the image being found through a search engine. 

9 Choose the right 'labels' 
Remember to use labels to categorise your blog posts. They can be shown at the bottom of your posts and users can click through if they see a word, or label they are interested in . You can also use them in your sidebar as a menu by showing how many posts you have per label. 

10 Run a competition
From what I've seen a sure fire way to promote your blog is by running a competition on it through a service such as http://www.rafflecopter.com/. You can encourage people to enter through a number of methods such as following you on Twitter, sharing your blog link, liking you on Facebook etc...I think I might try it out soon on my beauty blog, but I'm not sure what I'd give away here on The Creative Frontier hmm!

11 Become (or invite) a guest blogger
A great way to drive traffic to your blog is to write a 'guest blog' on another persons blog where you can include a link back to your own blog. You could also check out your local publications, newspapers and websites to see if you could write an article for them which could also include a link to your blog (I did this recently with lanark.co.uk)

12 Pay to advertise on other blogs
If you've got some dough to spend you could pay to advertise on other popular blogs through the form of a button or graphic. I'm not sure if there is an official process for this as from what I've seen some bloggers simply post asking 'who wants to advertise on my blog' and presumably people get in touch and pay £x per month to have a graphic or link in their sidebar.

13 Comment on other blogs and leave your link
Blogging is all about building a network so it's essential to check out other blogs within your industry - not only will you be able to see what other people are doing you'll be able to pick up some useful tips! When leaving comments on other peoples blog posts be sure to make them meaningful, not just 'hey check out my blog [link]' - by all means leave a link to your blog but try to read the blog post properly and comment sincerely. 

14 Be relevant!
Blog posts are going to get picked up and noticed if you talk about something relevant. This might be to do with current affairs, new inventions/technology, new products (especially relevant in the beauty industry) or recent events. Of course the problem is that everyone might have this view and your post about the "new Facebook layout" might get lost within a barrage of other similar ones - that's why you've got to do something to put your own twist on it and get your own opinion across. 

15 Give your post a good title
Although you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, many of us are probably guilty of judging a blog post by it's title! Try to include important keywords from your blog post in it's title as these will catch peoples eye when they see any links to the post. Human beings are naturally curious so it also helps to make post titles intriguing  to make people feel as if they are missing out if they don't read it. Some examples of title formats could be...

  • How to...
  • 4 ways to...
  • The top 10...
  • The best way...
  • The worst things about...
  • What you shouldn't be doing...


Thanks for reading, as I said I've just started blogging so am by no means an expert but I hope you found some of the tips useful! 

Please feel free to comment below...you can even leave your link ;)

15 comments:

  1. as a new blog I have found this so so helpful, thank you! following xx
    http://theadventuresofhann.blogspot.co.uk/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Hann! Thanks for commenting and following! As I said I'm no expert but a few of those tips have definitely worked for me!

      Best of luck with your blog :)

      Melissa x

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  2. Love the ideas, trying to follow them.Will be eagerly waiting for more.

    My Blog :- Nature Health Secrets

    And will love to hear from you. I am a new follower of yours

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi there - thanks for commenting and following! :) Your blog looks really interesting...I'll need to try out some of the hair masks! x

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  3. Some good tips :) another good way is to carry out some keyword research for your blog titles. If you get it right, you can get a lot of traffic very quickly! I have managed it a few times when there has been tech events etc and the traffic I seen was unreal. Id also recommend add Rel=Author to your blog, having that little image next to your post in the search results really helps with click through rates!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Matthew! Thanks for commenting. I haven't thought of doing the re=author thing before but that's a great idea. Found this post which explains how to do it so will give it a go! http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/google-author-tags/

      Melissa.

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  4. Replies
    1. Thanks Kirsty! x I also have a 'bargain' beauty blog if you'd be interested in that Beauty and the Bargain

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  5. This was so informative! Great post! It would mean so much if you were to check out my blog which is cheapbutchicbeautyat.blogspot.com

    Thanks,
    Courtney x

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  6. I found your article so helpful!Loved it..Thank you for sharing these tips! <3

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  7. I really like thise tips, I just don't know how to use reddit without getting banned for posting a link of your website, most groups dont allow it :(

    http://alinaalamode.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  8. Pingomatic.com - not heard of this one! Thanks for the tip

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  9. These tips are really helpful, thanks for that!

    http://obviouslybobi.blogspot.de/

    ReplyDelete
  10. Loving the tips, I have been following this blog for a while now! You just seem to always produce incredible content. How exactly do you submit links to Reddit? I tried, and I just seem confused. Could you possibly teach me? Here's my email if you rather email instead of comment - sillysilberman@gmail.com

    Thanks! Jordan Silberman @ SillySilberman.com

    ReplyDelete
  11. Really usefull :)

    http://look-du-jour-by-anna.blogspot.fr/

    ReplyDelete

Please feel free to leave a comment, it really means a lot to me and I reply to every one :)

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