How to Build Traffic to Your Site

How to Build Traffic to Your Site

When you’re first getting started as a blogger, it’s easy to get obsessed with your site traffic stats and get discouraged if you’re not seeing immediate results. Often times, I find that bloggers may think they are doing all the right things to encourage traffic to their sites like blogging regularly and covering a variety of topics that may interest their ideal audience, however, when it comes to building traffic to a site, you need more than a “if you build it, they will come” mentality. If your site isn’t getting the traffic you would expect or building momentum towards a growing readership, there are a few things you need to work on to make it happen.

Understand your audience & niche

If you want to build significant traffic to your site, you really have to understand your audience and niche! You may have a general idea of who you’re writing for and the people who visit your site, but sometimes, those two groups aren’t the same thing. When it comes to attracting a readership, you need to really understand who is coming to your site right now and why, OR if you aren’t getting much traffic, you need to get very specific with yourself on who you are trying to attract, and what sort of niche content you are able to create that would keep their attention. It’s not enough to write posts you think your ideal audience wants to read, you really need to go out there an make an effort to understand them by finding those individuals and talking to them on a deep and meaningful level about the things they are looking for online. You may think you know, but if you are creating content that isn’t gaining traction, you don’t know. Digging deep with market research will give you insight to help you create niche content that truly attracts your ideal audience.

Write interesting long form blog posts with images and graphics

Trends in blogging have been shifting for some time now and it’s now become evident that longer form blog posts are what readers are looking for. Statistics show 1,500 word posts are a sweet spot, but of course, the gist of this is that you need to be producing highly valuable content which tends to be longer in nature. Writing a 1,500 word journal entry most likely won’t do the trick, instead, you will want to focus on creating content that answers your audiences frequently asked questions, teaches them skills they desire to have or shares insights on topics that they are looking to engage with online. It’s probably not the word count that is keeping people hooked, instead, its the fact that a longer blog post has more information on the topic they are interested in, and a greater chance of keep their attention and turning them into repeat readers who share the helpful content they find. Don’t forget that words alone aren’t the key to engagement, and that if you want to get people’s attention with your posts, you will need to make sure to include illustrative images in the form of blog post headers that help add content to a post topic or informative graphics that add to the quality of the post.

Share your posts on other platforms

If you are looking to build traffic to your site via your content, it’s not enough to write a great post and let it sit their on your site. Without even a small, engaged audience, the likelihood of your great content being seen is slim. Although great SEO practices can help your post turn up in search results, why wait for your audience to come to you when you have the opportunity to bring the content directly to them? That’s why it’s up to you to share that content everywhere you can. Link your posts to Pinterest with one of your great images, tweet about your content using relevant hashtags that will help it get discovered, and of course, link your posts in Facebook where it can be liked, shared and hopefully lead to more traffic.

Find other creators with similar audiences and guest post

When your content alone isn’t helping your traffic grow, a quick fix for instant traffic can be getting yourself in front of the audiences of other creators. This can be especially helpful if you are just getting started because finding a ready-made audience that fits your ideal readership can be a quick way to gain fans and page views. In this situation, you will want to identify other established creators who have relevant followings slightly larger than yours, engage with them, and negotiate a guest posting opportunity. You will need to do most of the work by contacting and pitching a great piece of content to the established creator, but if you can get them to agree to it, you will be able to spread the influence of your content to other corners of the internet.

Locate where your audience interacts online and become an influencer there

There are forums and Facebook groups for a multitude of different communities online, and these established sites are a great place to go to find your ideal audience and direct them back to your site and your content if you take the time to establish yourself as an influencer there. It’s not enough to find a Facebook page and start leaving links to your content. In most cases, actions like that can get you banned or marked as spam, however, if you take the time to get engaged as a true audience member and then interact with as many relevant people as possible on the platform, you will gain the trust of that community and can start directing traffic to your own site. Becoming an influencer on other online communities isn’t really that difficult I find. If you really take a hard look, you will see that with every forum or Facebook group, individuals rise to the top by frequently engaging with the community by being helpful and engaging others. You will need to dedicate time to this effort, but when most people are engaging minimally, you can stand out by engaging often. It wouldn’t be out of the question to go from a complete unknown to a leader of a community online in just a few short weeks or months of dedicated service to that community.

I hope this post gives you some new insights or strategies to help you grow traffic to your blog or site. Remember, if you are putting in the effort and not seeing results after a consistent period of time, you most likely need to adjust something you are doing. I never recommend making major changes to your presence online unless you see you’re making major mistakes, but sometimes little tweaks can yield big results! I also want to make sure you understand that growing a large following of traffic to a site is something that takes time and setting reasonable goals is important to keeping your expectations balanced, but if you find that you are making no traction, something needs to change! Don’t keep doing the same things over and over and expect different results. Online, the best strategy for growth is it keep at it and to approach a problem from different directions until a solution is reached!

xoxo,