When you start out blogging, you might not have a specific goal in mind. Many bloggers, especially mom bloggers, start as a hobby or something to do on the side of parent life, as it can be therapeutic, enjoyable, and fun to document that stage of life. However, blogs can be a very real way to make an income, whether you work with brands or use affiliate codes on the posts that you share. So even if it started out as a hobby, you could definitely earn some cash from it.
Of course, the more that you share, the more site traffic that you’re able to get to your site, the better. Brands won’t want to work with you, and no one will be clicking on your affiliate links and buying what you’re promoting, if no one is coming to visit the site. So how can you make sure that you keep getting visitors to your blog?
The content that you create is definitely one thing. If you have good quality content that is interesting for others to read, then you will get the right kind of people finding it online. If they enjoy it, hopefully they’ll come back again and again, and even share your posts on their social media channels.
The good news is that you can do some more things to help your content be found. If you’re wanting to grow your blog and want to get more people to find you online, then getting eyes on that great content is what it is all about. Here are some strategies to help you to get more website traffic.
Promote your posts on social media
Unless someone is looking for something specific on a search engine, then how can they find your website? One of the ways that they can do that is by promoting your posts across your social media channels. If one of your friends or followers likes it or shares it, then it gives more visibility to the original post, and will mean the people that follow them will see that they’ve liked or shared it too.
This chain of sharing, liking, or retweeting can carry on and on. If you’re not sharing posts on social media, then you are definitely missing out on something that can make a big difference to you and is so simple to do.
Know what your niche is
If you want to have real success in blogging, then you need to know what your niche is all about. If someone found you for your fun and realistic viewpoint on parenting, then they might be surprised to come back to your blog and find content about gardening, for example. If you want to create a loyal following, then sticking to a niche is really the best way to go.
People will know what to expect when they come to your site, and they will want to stick on your site for longer as there will be more relevant content for them to click through. Plus, it can also help when it comes to search engines. If your content regularly comes up when someone searches for a particular topic, then it will show them that is what your site is all about.
Improve your search engine optimization
If you want to improve your blog traffic, then optimizing your site is important. Although you can speak with a technical SEO consultant about this kind of thing, there are a number of things that you will be able to do yourself. One of the things that can make a difference is about the words that you use in the titles of your blog posts, as that is what will usually be the URL of blog posts.
Blog titles will help people decide if this is the kind of content that they want to read, as well as being a point of reference for search engines. If the words in your blog post title is what someone searches for online, then it can make a big difference to your post coming up in their search.
The words that you use in your blog posts count too. Keywords are important, and if you use a particular keyword throughout the post, and the title, then again, it shows to search engines that is what the content is all about.
Internal linking, as well as generating backlinks to your site, such as when another blogger links to a post of yours, can all help to show to search engines that your blog is of value which can help to get you seen on a Google search.
Don’t forget to include photos
There are a number of studies that have found that including photos in blog posts helps when it comes to readership. Photos are visually appealing which keeps readers interested, but when it comes to SEO and being found online to boost your traffic, they make a difference too.
Images can have an Alt Image tag on each of them that you add, and this is another way to show to search engines what the content is about. If someone searches for it, then it is more likely to come up.
Of course, when it comes to photos, you need to either use your own that you have taken with a camera yourself, or that you have found on a royalty-free image site, such as Pixabay. You can’t just search online for a picture and use it in your blog post as that can be breaching copyright guidelines and you won’t want to get into trouble with anyone.
Content is really key when it comes to getting more website traffic. As well as writing your own content, it can be a good idea to write guest posts to be featured on other bloggers’ blogs too. This introduces you to their audience and can help you to get more website traffic (you’ll get a backlink to your blog too). It isn’t complex, you just need to keep working at it and remember that it won’t happen overnight.