5 Proven Strategies to Grow Your Blog Traffic Faster

Do you want to grow your blog traffic faster?

It’s crucial to concentrate on blog traffic growth. This is not just about gaining more readers but also about the potential to start earning a substantial income from your content. Without blog traffic, your writing might not reach anyone or anything, but with the right strategies, you can unlock a world of opportunities.

If you grow your blog traffic, you gain increased visibility, more engagement, and, as I said before, more opportunities to earn a profit.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to grow your blog traffic faster by optimizing for SEO, using social media, doing email marketing, collaborating with others in your niche, and repurposing your blog content.

Strategy 1: Optimize for SEO

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a technique for optimizing content to enhance organic traffic growth from search engines.

In SEO, you research keywords, looking for higher search volumes and lower competition. You’ll then implement your keyword into your content and ensure your blog is optimized. Finally, you’ll develop backlinks for your content.

A completed SEO procedure can help get your blog posts on page one of search engine results, which is usually the only page that users visit after searching for information.

Let’s break down the steps of SEO to help grow your blog traffic faster:

Step 1: Keyword Research: Find and research the keyword for your blog post.

Determine a topic based on the biggest needs, wants, and pain points of your audience.
To research the keyword, use a keyword tool such as SEM Rush, Ahrefs, Keywords Everywhere, or Uber Suggest.
Look for a higher search volume, which means people are looking for that content, and lower keyword competition, which means you’ll have to compete with fewer blogs for the same SEO tactics.
Every piece of content should have its own keyword unique from any other content.
Longer keywords (often called longtail keywords) will be easier to compete for.

Step 2: Keyword Implementation: After you determine a keyword, implement it in your content.

Put your keyword in your title and URL slug.
Put your keyword in your H1 heading. You should only have one H1.
Put your keyword in one or two of your other headings (H2, H3, H4, etc.)
Put your keyword in the first sentence of the first paragraph of your blog post.
Put your keyword in a few more times throughout the content where it makes sense.
Put your keyword in at least one ALT tag of an image you use on your blog.
Use something like Yoast SEO for WordPress to help you audit your SEO.

Step 3: Blog Optimization: Make sure your blog is optimized for the best user experience.

Make sure your blog loads fast. It should load in less than 2 seconds.
Make sure you optimize images to load faster. Large image sizes can slow your blog down.
Make sure you use a caching plugin to help speed up your blog.
Make sure you keep your blog updated and enhance security.
Make sure your blog is extremely mobile-friendly.

Step 4: Backlink Development: The more backlinks you have, the greater chance you’ll succeed.

Focus on getting backlinks on relevant and trustworthy sites
Create the best content possible to increase your backlink development
Post your articles on relevant forums and social communities
DO NOT spam or practice black hat SEO techniques

These four steps are the foundation of SEO. Try to use them enough to make it a habitual process so that you can easily optimize your content for search engines. Most importantly, make sure you write the best content you can; otherwise, all of the steps above will be a waste of effort.

Strategy 2: Leverage Social Media

Social media is a powerhouse when it comes to accelerating your blog traffic growth. The sheer number of users on social media platforms every day is staggering, and if you’re not tapping into this potential, you’re missing out on a significant opportunity to expand your blog’s reach.

The sheer number of users on social media per day is in the billions. Every blogging niche is already on social media and likely very large. If you want to get real blog growth and you’re not using social media, you’re missing out on ample opportunities to grow your blog’s reach.

By utilizing social media marketing for your blog, you’ll convert the curious into loyal readers who will follow you and your content to the end, but it does take work.

The following steps will show you how to grow your blog traffic faster with social media marketing:

Step 1: Promote Cross-Platforms: Make sure you’re on all the platforms your niche is using.

Research your target blog audience and what social media platforms they’re a part of. Join those platforms.
Don’t join platforms where your audience isn’t. You’ll waste your time on those platforms, and time is precious in the world of social media marketing.
Make sure your branding matches across all platforms. People need to know who you are right when they land on your content.
Don’t promote the same content across all platforms. Try to find a unique value proposition for each platform.
Use all the features on the social media platform to take advantage of getting maximum views and engagement.

Step 2: The 80/20 Strategy: Don’t just post your blog links and think that’s all you have to do.

The 80/20 Strategy is simple. 80% native content. 20% promotional content.
Native content includes posts like text posts asking engagement questions or giving relevant tips, uploading photos and videos to the platform, adding stories, and live streaming and chats. Promotional content, on the other hand, is like links to your blog and blog posts.
Promotional content is like links to your blog and blog posts.
Social media algorithms award those who keep users on the platform longer. If you post more native content, you get more views. If you post more promotional content, you get fewer views.
Your main use of social media should be to build a community and a loyal following. That’s how you’ll effectively grow your blog traffic faster with social media.

Step 3: Engagement is King: Engagement is more valuable than content in terms of social media.

While content is crucial on social media, engagement is the real king. It’s not just about posting quality content, but also about actively participating in your community. By regularly interacting with your audience, you can build a loyal following and significantly boost your blog traffic.
It’s important to post quality content that is of high value to your niche audience.
You should A/B test the content formats on your pages to see what types of content your audience likes the most, such as engagement questions, videos, stories, etc.
A/B test different days and times of the day to see which ones have the most engagement. This will help you understand when your audience is most active and adjust your posting schedule accordingly.
Learn how to use the analytics of each social media platform you use. The more you understand what you’re looking at, the better you can plan and structure your content.
Content is important, but engagement is king on social media. You should engage significantly more than you post content. Get to know your audience and become familiar with them. Be as helpful and friendly as possible.
Use a scheduling tool such as Buffer to schedule content to post consistently in the background so you can focus more on engagement.

Step 4: Paid Promotions: Take advantage of the promotion systems that social media has to offer.

Social media offers paid promotion tools where you can buy ads on their network.
You should budget for this even if you’re just spending around $5 to $10 a day.
You can customize the ads to reflect your target blog audience and attract the readers you want.
You should never use the default ad settings. Instead, try to customize your ads to the audience that matters most to your blog.
The more you spend on ads, the more likely you will grow your blog traffic faster.
Make sure you set goals with paid ads. Getting traffic isn’t enough. Have goals of getting newsletter subscribers, selling your products, or something like that.

The four steps above will not only help you grow your blog traffic faster, but they’ll also help you develop an entire social media community. Communities are so important for branding and website growth these days, too. Social media might be considered a rented space by many people. Still, it’s one of the best marketing tools you’ll ever use.

Strategy 3: Utilize Email Marketing

Email Marketing is essential to grow your blog traffic faster because it gives you a direct contact with your readers and isn’t rented space like most everything else is.

Social media is a great tool for bloggers, but because you don’t control it, you can lose it at any time. While you own WordPress, you have to add add-ons or access the database to get information, and that could be challenging. But an email list is a contact list you own and can access easily, plus you can contact your followers directly.

No algorithms are getting in between you and your audience with an email list, so you should start one right when you start your blog or right now if you haven’t started it yet.

Now let’s take a look at the ways to grow your blog traffic faster using email marketing:

Step 1: Choose a Platform: Choose the best email marketing platform for your needs.

There are many different email marketing platforms to choose from. Some offer different features than others. It’s important to understand those features and choose the service that you need the most.
Mail Chimp is a great email marketing platform for those who just want an email list program. Kit is great for creators who want more than an email marketing service. There are many other great email services to research and choose from.
Most platforms offer generous free plans. Kit, for example, has a free plan with up to 10K subscribers.
Most free plans do not include segmenting and automation. If you need those features, you should expect to pay around $20 to $60 a month.
As your email list grows, you’ll need to upgrade to higher-costing plans. You should create a way to earn income so that your list can pay for itself. One great way is to offer sponsorship for each issue and charge double what you pay for the month so that it pays for itself and you can earn a profit.
As your list grows, you should increase your sponsorship cost and capitalize on the money generated by your email marketing campaigns.

Step 2: Create a Lead Magnet: Make sure you have something to encourage subscribers.

Creating a newsletter and watching subscribers start filling up is but a fairytale. You need something in place to encourage people to subscribe to your newsletter.
A lead magnet is how you can get subscribers. A lead magnet is something of high value that you offer as an incentive to subscribe to your mailing list.
Most of the time, a lead magnet is digital, like an eBook, template, ultimate guide, or even an app. It should be something that would usually cost money to obtain.
You need to promote your lead magnet with your mailing list. Include copywriting material about it on your website, social media profiles, and each blog post. The more readers see your lead magnet, the more likely you’ll gain subscribers.
You can increase your subscription rate by offering a limited-time offer for your lead magnet. Explain in your copy that it’s only available for a certain amount of time. Hence, people need to subscribe quickly to get it. This is a very persuasive but effective method of getting more subscribers.
Know that people will subscribe just to get the lead magnet and then unsubscribe right after. It’s going to happen, and we can’t stop it. However, we can write great welcome messages to encourage them to stay for more.

Step 3: 80/20+CTA: Make your newsletter exclusive while promoting your content.

Use the 80/20 strategy I mentioned about social media for your newsletter, but add a Call to action.
80% of your newsletter’s content should be exclusive tips and helpful content targeted at your subscribers’ pain points. This is not promotional material.
20% is promotional material. This includes links to your latest and previous blog posts, social media profiles, and anything that requires a link away from the newsletter to view.
Your CTA should be what you want readers to do after reading your newsletter. This could be purchasing your services, commenting on a blog post, following you on social media, or whatever other action you want to get out of it.
Most importantly, make sure you deliver the best content possible when sending your newsletter; otherwise, subscribers will unsubscribe.

Step 4: Segmentation: Segment your email list so that you can send the right stuff efficiently.

Segmentation is when you divide up your email list based on the demographics, behaviors, or interests of your subscribers so that you can focus specific content on each group.
For the best results, break segments up into demographics, interests, engagement levels, buying behaviors, customer journey stages, and behavior.
Segmenting allows you to focus your efforts on subscribers who will actually give you the results you’re looking for while helping other subscribers gain a better position in your email marketing.
Segmenting is usually a feature that will require a paid plan on most email marketing services.

Following the steps above will help you grow your blog traffic faster with email marketing. You can also use your email list to sell sponsored content and make money with it. Email marketing will open a whole new world of passive income and community development if you use it to its fullest advantage.

Strategy 4: Guest Blogging and Collaboration

Guest blogging is when you write for another relevant blog in your niche, and in return, you get to promote your blog and image, which will help grow your blog traffic faster.

Guest blogging is one of the best ways to promote your blog, in addition to social media. It’s also a great way to build backlinks for your blog, which can help boost your search engine optimization. However, you must still put loads of value and quality into your guest content.

By doing more guest blogging on other blogs in your niche, you can earn new readers from their traffic and meet more of your overall blogging goals.

Do the following steps to help grow your blog traffic faster using guest blogging techniques:

Step 1: Look for Blogs: Find blogs in your niche to request guest blogging information about.

Look for blogs in your niche to contact about guest blogging. Don’t guest blog on blogs outside of your expertise, or you’ll lose most of the benefits of guest blogging.
Bigger blogs with a higher domain authority will be the best blogs to try to become a guest blogger on, but they’ll also be the hardest blogs to get approved for,
You might find it easier to target blogs similar to yours in size and ranking or those that are slightly doing better than yours.
Make sure you are genuine and honest in your pitch for a guest blogger. If you come across as a salesperson, most bloggers will add you to spam.
It’s good to already have a lot of great content and some authority established to prove that you know what you’re talking about.

Step 2: Write Articles: Write high-quality content for blogs and include your bio information.

When guest blogging for another blog, you should write high-quality content that provides value to its readers.
Research the content the blog typically provides and the type of content their readers engage with the most. That’s the kind of content you want to provide as a guest blogger.
Write guest blogging articles for other blogs as if you were writing a great article for your own blog.
Sometimes, it’s a good idea to have the blog post already written before you request to be a guest blogger so that you have something to provide for a quick yes or no response. If it’s a no, you can always post it on your own blog.
Include links in the article to other relevant posts on the blog you are writing for.
Your link should only be posted on the bio.
Your bio should be well-crafted, too. When you guest blog for another blog, your reputation and authority are evolving.

Step 3: Interview Bloggers: Cross-promote by interviewing bloggers for your blog content.

As a way to cross-promote, you could offer the blog you’re guest writing for an interview to post on your own blog.
You could email the blogger a set of questions to answer and request a bio with their link on it. You could then turn their response into a blog post for your own blog.
This would be a good way for both your blog and their blog to get fresh content and establish a great, relevant backlink.
A lot of people like interviews. The blogger can promote your interview, which will likely cause their readers to want to go see it to learn more about the blog they love. It’ll also introduce your readers to the other blogger.

Step 4: Networking: Develop an extensive network of other bloggers and creators in your niche.

Guest blogging is one of the best ways to build a network and collaborate with other bloggers and creators in your niche.
After you complete your guest blogging gig, you should attempt to befriend the blogger you wrote for and develop a friendship with them. This will help you develop your network of blogging contacts.
The more blogging contacts and friends you have, the more opportunities you’ll have for guest blogging and collaborative events.
Networking is a great way to help grow your blog traffic faster because you’ll usually have access to more traffic sources from other bloggers in your network.

The steps above will help you get started with guest blogging. Accepting guest blogging on your own blog can also help you get great content as long as you make sure hard work is being put into the writing process on their side. The more guest blog posts you’re able to create, the more you’ll be able to grow your blog traffic faster.

Strategy 5: Repurpose Content

If you want to grow your blog traffic faster, you should take advantage of repurposing your blog content.

Repurposing content means changing and using previously made content to promote your blog. This is why it’s important to write blog posts that are evergreen, meaning they stay useful no matter the date. Once you publish a blog post, it can continue to live on, unlike most anything posted on social media.

Repurposing content is one of your greatest blog growth tools if you learn how to do it right and when to do it.

The following steps will show you how to repurpose content to help grow your blog traffic faster:

Step 1: Audio and Video: Turn your blog content into video and podcast episodes.
If you’re creative, your blog post can easily be turned into audio and video snippets.
Consider your blog post as a script for a video. You can read or paraphrase the content and record your voice for a video to post on YouTube.
You can do the same thing with audio, as well. Audio is great because you can use it to create your own podcasting show.
Just make sure you don’t read off your written blog content in a scripted voice. You want it to sound natural; otherwise, it might turn your audience away from your content.
Make sure you add your blog link to your videos and podcasts so people know where to find more content.

Step 2: Social Media: Use your previous blog content as social media content.

Take advantage of social media to promote your blog content by repurposing it.
You can use the traditional method by simply linking to previously written blog posts. This can be helpful, but it isn’t the only thing you should do.
You can also use snippets and quotes from your blog post to create social media content. Many people use this method to transform text-based posts with background colors into images to share on social media.
You can link to your full blog post with snippet content, but you’d be better off telling them to go check out your bio for a link.
Posting links to your content may cause social media algorithms to give you fewer views.

Step 3: Comments: Use the comments on your blog posts to create new content for your blog.

Utilize your blog comments to create content for your blog, social media, and other projects.
You can use your blog comments to create new blog posts. If a reader asks a question, for example, you can create an entire blog post based on their question.
You can also repurpose content by answering the questions in videos or podcasts.
You can use the questions for a Q&A or snippet for social media.

Step 4: Update Content: Update old blog posts to make them relevant to the current times.

You should also try to update your older blog posts to repurpose content.
If you create blog posts for a specific year (putting the year in the title), you can update the blog to reflect the current year.
When updating older blog content, make sure you actually do some updates to it. Take out older information that is no longer valid and replace it with information that is up to date.
Be sure to reshare and repost updated content so readers and search engines know to check it out.
Try to create blog content that is evergreen and can be updated to reflect modern times. Non-evergreen content is fine, but make sure evergreen content is the majority of the content you create.

By utilizing the advice above, you can use previously created content forever. It doesn’t work with all types of blog content, but it can always work for evergreen content. Don’t let your previously made content go to waste when you can use it to grow your blog traffic faster.

Final Thoughts

That concludes these five great strategies to help you grow your blog traffic faster.

Using the strategies above will help you grow traffic, which can lead to great success for your blog. It can help you build a loyal and dedicated readership and get close to making money with your blog.

If you want to learn more about speeding up your blog traffic, please join my free online community, Blogging Collective. It is dedicated to bloggers who want to help others have better blogs. I’d love to discuss blogging with you there.

If you enjoyed this post and you want to support me in writing it, please consider buying me a coffee.

About the Author

Shawn Gossman has created content, blogged, ran online communities, and shared a passion for digital marketing for over twenty years. Shawn believes the best way to help content creators, businesses, brands, and marketers is to give away more than you sell. The same advice is recommended for the readers who follow this blog. Shawn also offers various services for extra help in content creation and blogging.

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