10 Blog Traffic Generation Techniques You May Be Ignoring

Blogging is one of the legit ways of making money online. As a
blogger, your work is to inform a specific audience. How you do that
spells the difference between a successful blog and a failed one. Now,
contrary to what you may believe, blogging is a time-consuming
undertaking especially if you intend to make a reasonable income from
it.

I can say from experience that setting up your blog
and publishing the first post is no task compared to getting targeted
traffic. In fact, I have scoured the net for blog traffic generation
techniques with little if any success and I believe I’m not alone
otherwise why would be reading this post :).

Research
has it that only 30% of bloggers earn from it the rest are struggling
with low traffic or should I say lack of blog readers.

Therefore,
after months of what seemed like an endless search for traffic, I
paused. I realized that at times we run for complicated things when the
simple ones can still serve us sufficiently.  Asking whether I have
overlooked some blog traffic generation techniques in pursuit of a quick
fix. Obviously, I had and we all do sometimes.

Internet Traffic – Free Image via Google Images

You may be reading this and wondering why blog
traffic is so important. For starters, you want your message (post and
articles) to reach certain audience without which blogging is a
self-defeating exercise.  I mean, you cannot continue writing pieces for
a couple of readers.

You need readers and the more you
have the louder your message is. Again, these readers are your source
of income i.e. if you monetize your blog well.  Last yet importantly,
high number of page visitors is a mark of trust and online reputation.
This is something you would ‘kill’ for, wouldn’t you?

First
things first, you need a custom domain name before you embark on
traffic generation. Nobody takes you serious with addresses such as
example.wordpress.com, examples.blogspot.com or example.tumblr.com.

Buy
a Top Level Domain (TLD) e.g. example.com from reputable sellers such
as Namecheap, GoDaddy. Unless you are using Google’s Blogger as your
platform then you need good Webhosting too.

Ok,
let us cut to the chase, you need blog traffic and loyal readers,
right? Here are the 10 traffic generation techniques you may be ignoring
but capable of turning things around:

1. Post quality and informative posts

I know
this sounds like a song to your ears. I mean, everyone keeps on
reminding you to write good articles as if you are a newbie. Well, I
also felt the same whenever I bumped onto a site with such instructions.
Little did I know that I spent much time looking for traffic that I
forgot to post informative articles for the few readers I already had.

At
times, we lose focus of the real thing in pursuit of an illusion.
Looking free sources of unlimited traffic should not replace your
research time. Remember, your article is only as good as the time you
put into the research.

In an attempt to provide fresh
contents daily, you may resort to clever plagiarism (i.e. posting
re-writes from other blogs). You should know that visiting other popular
sites to poach articles is not going to help. First, your re-write or
plagiarized content can never rank higher than the ordinal article not
to mention that readers already trust the sites you poached from.

My 2 pence advice; please research and write convincing pieces and you will never worry about ranking.

How
do you get unique and informative contents to your readers? I mean,
there is nothing you are going to discover and patent today. Most of the
things we write about are already published. Well, you can improve the
available information. For instance, if most people talk about ‘20
steps’, you should list 30.

If most writers are
praising a product (e.g. iPhone 6) then join them in singing the praises
while affording your readers the truth about the cons. With such
twists, you can write about the same topic but appear unique and
informative.

Resources:

1. The ingredients of a good article
2. How to approach an article from different perspectives

2. Effective social media strategy

I know you
are sharing your posts via the major social networks. The question is,
why are you not getting readers from your links? Something must be wrong
and it will be unfortunate to keep on doing the same thing and expect
better results. What I learnt is that there is more to social networks
than meets the eye.

You must know whom you are sharing
the information with. This is called effective social media use. You are
going to share your article with the interested persons only. Here are
some tips to help you generate targeted blog traffic from the social
networks:

• Get relevant followers on Twitter. This will ensure that only people
  interested in what you post follow you that translates into higher
  clicks rates.
• Know the time to tweet your articles. Contrary to popular opinion,
  you cannot just tweet whenever you like unless you are not interested in
  getting engagements from the tweets. I’ve read from authority sources
  that tweeting should be between 9 am to 3.pm. people are active on
  Twitter by then
• Do not forget to hashtag your tweets; this makes them available for
  non-followers too. Hashtag should not just be what is trending (i.e. you
  do not have to use #Gaza on freelance writing tweet).  Find a relevant
  hashtag by doing a twitter search.
• Share your tweets with a list. A list is a group of followers who
  have common interest e.g. Article Writers, Bloggers and Fitness Coaches
  etc. Only share relevant articles with a given list to improve the click
  rates.
• Having a Facebook Page, Joining groups relevant to your niche and
  tagging friends are some tips you could use to maximum your impact.
  Unlike twitter, Facebook allows you to write many words. So, make your
  snippet as enticing as possible.  A link alone will not get you any
  clicks. Put in a good word (a snippet) for the link and your Facebook
  friends and page likers will want to read more.
• Contact administrators of popular and relevant Facebook pages if
  your articles mentioned them. They may share it and get you some
  thousands of clicks in a day. You know as I do that social media traffic
  is so valuable and considered natural.
• Since Google+ is used for ranking (i.e. what you publish on Google+
  is indexed on Google search engine results and ranks higher than your
  competitors) tag relevant Google groups or friends to your links. Again,
  do not forget a snippet.
• Avail social media buttons on your site with a polite message asking
  the visitors to share your posts. There are hundreds of social media
  widgets out there e.g.  AddThis, ShareThis etc. Just use the one that
  loads faster and looks nice on your blog.

Another way of sharing articles (though it is less effective and
non-targeted) is via social exchange site. Asking fellow bloggers to
share your link with their followers is good thing. I have received
objective comments from readers originating from Viral Content Buzz and
Empire Avenue. To me that is quality blog traffic. The good thing is
that the click rate is high if your articles are interesting.

Resources:

1. How to get free instant social media following 

3. Evaluating your ranking

This may be tricky
as it obsesses. Checking your blog analytics from Google Analytic,
Compete, Alexa, Quancast  etc is a good thing if done controllably. Your
rankings on the Search Engines and the nature of the audience your
articles attract will help you improve. Again, there is no need to
pre-occupy your mind with rankings; just check occasionally to know your
progress!

4. Join relevant blogging communities

Do not
confuse a blogging community with a blog directory. The latter is where
your blogs are listed and may be good for backlinks and high SERP.
However, I am talking about sites where bloggers share their contents
and ideas.  At times, joining Blogging Communities on Facebook, Google+
and LinkedIn may be all you need to get up on your feet as far as blog
traffic is concerned.

Resources:

1. Top blogging Communities you should join
2. Google+ Blogging communities you might have overlooked

5. Guest posting and forum posting

Guest
blogging should be adding value on other sites by donating informative
posts. You then are rewarded by placing a link to your main site or
social media sites at the author box or the end of the post.

Guest
blogging with the intention of getting links alone is selfish and may
be unsuccessful. Worst still is posting on low-quality sites (i.e. blogs
with low traffic and ranking). Here are things you may want to do to
complement your guest posts:

• Comment on other blogs, especially the ones with Commentluv. Your
  comments should add value not spam such as ‘great post’ ‘thanks for
  sharing’ ‘I’ve bookmarked it’. Instead, write comments of at least 50
  words without links.  Commentluv displays the link to your latest blog
  post, which means more exposure for your linked post.
• Join relevant forums (Warrior Forum, SitePoint, Digital Point, etc)
  and post threads pertinent to the forum and under the right section.
  The moderators will allow you to display your signature (your blog
  link) or banner every time you post. This can only mean more backlinks
  and hundreds of clicks.
• Join Quora, Postloop, myLot,  Yahoo Answers etc and provide answers.
  After a while, you will be allowed to place do-follow links to your
  answers. Just do not spam the networks unless it is your desire to be
  banned from the site.
• Write related articles on sites like Hubpages, EzineArticles,
  GoArticle, Squidoo, Bukisa and others.  Needless to say, your article
  should be unique and informative for it to stand out among the
  thousands. These sites receive millions of readers in a day. So, be
  smart and leave an enticing link to your blog to tap readers.

Guest blogging is currently under strict monitoring by major
search engines and the backlinks you get from such activities may not be
helpful in some cases. So, maximize on the traffic by making the
readers thirst for more from you. Where else can they get more except
your site?

Resource:

1. Effective Guest Blogging Tips
2. Submit a Guest Post on My blog

6. Tweak your site for speed and look

Even if
you followed all the blog traffic generation tips yet have a mediocre
looking site, you will lose the readers ultimately.  Nothing is
off-putting like a site that takes a century to load. More disgusting is
a noisy site i.e. a site with less information and more advertisement.
Here are some tips for a better site:

• Design a clean, minimalist and responsive blog template.
• If you have limited HTML or coding knowledge then contract a designer or buy from premium sites
• Download a free template with the right qualities
• Your blog should load within 1-2 seconds
• Don’t go for a flowery look but a professional one
• Remove unnecessary widgets, test your blog speed  and overall site’s integrity and SEO score

Resources:

1. How to download the right free blog template
2. Where to get free blog templates

7. Engage your readers

Receiving hundreds of
unique page visitors without knowing how to retain them is like pouring
gallons of water into a leaking tank. It is a waste of time. As they
say, satisfied customers tell others, so make sure your readers find the
answers they are looking for inside your articles or by replying to
their comments. I mean respond in time with the right answer or an
appreciative message. The following will make your blog more engaging:

• Add a related posts widget (LinkWithin, nRelate and Outbrain) to your blog so to engage the readers more
• Add subscription boxes (an all in one subscription box is ok) so that they can join your mailing list and get updates
• Add your author profile below every box for the reader to understand
  you more. This may help cultivate  a personal connection between you
  and the readers
• Add polls at the end of your posts to get your readers’ views as the whether the post was informative etc

Resource:

1. How to engage your blog readers

8. Have giveaways for your readers

Rewarding
your loyal readers is one perfect way to keep them glued to your site.
They will feel that you are aware of their presence and appreciate it
too. Here are some blog traffic generation techniques you may try:

• Write a free Ebook and give it to anyone who subscribes to your mailing list
• Have some free domains to give the most loyal readers.
• Share coupon codes  with your readers especially the ones for hosting or domain renewal
• Offer gift cards if you can
• Add Pay With A tweet Button to your blog

Resource:

1. SEO Freebies to give your readers

9. Build quality and relevant backlinks

If
there is one thing you can depend on, it is traffic from search engines.
Annoyingly, the search engines consider certain aspects of your site
for ranking. Your well-written article may be rank number 200 on the
search engine (far beyond the reach of many) simply because it lacks
strong backlink.

I don’t want to your to be obsessed with Pagerank but it pays to set some times to build high quality and relevant backlinks.

Resource:

1. How to build Quality Backlinks

10. Ping your site

If you did a template change
or a site-wide change then it is time to tell the search engines about
it. The process of telling the search engines about your new posts or
site changes is called pinging. It means the search engines will
re-index your site.

Adding a sitemap to Google or Bing
will ensure that your site is indexed. You may ping other search engines
and blog directories manually through the ping sites/ software.  Again,
too much of something is dangerous thus over pinging will only mark
your site as spam.

Resources:

1. List of pinging sites you can use

Bonus:

These are methods you may
employ to complement the ‘normal blog traffic’. In some cases, their
effect on your site’s reputation may be counterproductive.

11. Buy Traffic

This is one method I’d advice against, but not when we are talking high quality traffic. Not some bot traffic that will never convert let alone earn you a coin. I’m talking about traffic from experience providers like Growtraffic.com who specialize in referral traffic. Traffic that is both safe with google adsense and real enough to boost your subscriber list. Let me not spoil things for you..read more about them here. Think of it as using Google Adword to promote your site only cheaper.

It is my hope that these tips help you get the
right blog readers and end your search for quality blog traffic. You can
add other tips or ask your questions via the comment box. Happy
blogging!