Are you trying to get more traffic to your blog? Are you looking for tips or tricks to increase blog traffic?

My Blogging Journey So far

When I started my blog over four years ago,

I was in my senior year of college and I had NO IDEA what I was doing. I had no idea how to get visitors to your blog, how to work with brands, or how to pose for photos. I didn’t put much energy in my blog because as a senior in college, I was focused on landing a job after graduation while still studying for midterms and finals. Even when I graduated from college, my blog was on the backburner. I was figuring out how to work in a new industry, new state, and a new role with PepsiCo. I would occasionally post once a month or every other month, but other than that I was battling the stresses of my job.

In summer of 2016, I ended up leaving PepsiCo after a year to work for the Boeing Company. I had interned for Boeing in college and was excited to be back in the Northwest. At this point of my blogging career, I was at 2,000 followers and driving an average of 500 page views a month on my blog. I still had NO IDEA how to drive traffic to my blog and Instagram.

So in July of 2016, I was surprised when I landed my first collaboration with American Eagle Outfitters. But that year-long collaboration helped I realized that I could take blogging more seriously. First I focused on creating better content, being more consistent, and connecting with fellow creatives. You can read more about my efforts here on: 3 Things That Took My Blog to the Next Level. Aside from these three major things, I’ve also been focused on driving traffic to my blog.

Where I’m at today with Blogging:

At the start of this year, I made it my goal to drive at least 10,000 monthly page views by December 2018. And I’m so excited to share that I accomplished this goal! In fall of 2018, I now drive 11,500 unique page views and 12,700 page views per month. I’m also driving 6,200 unique users to Emma’s Edition per month. While this may still seem small compared to others, I’m proud to say that I’m driving 23x more traffic to my blog than I was two years ago.

Recently, a fellow Northwest blogger reached and emailed me, “How do you drive traffic to your blog?”.

Her question happened to coincide with my recent accomplishment. I answered her question with a few tips. And I was inspired to take this tip to the rest of my readers! Here are my tips I’ve learned these last two years about how to drive traffic to your blog (and what’s worked for me)

7 Tips to Increase Traffic to Your Blog

Increase Traffic to Your Blog #1: Increase the number of times you post on your blog per month

Two years ago, I used to post once a month on my blog. Then I transitioned to twice a month, then four times a month, and now I post twice a week. Increasing my blog post frequency has definitely helped drive traffic to my blog.

Why increase your blog post frequency? I learned through the ProBlogger podcast that increasing your frequency increases the number of avenues for readers to see your blog! This has been true in my experience. I thought my audience would get tired of me sharing a new blog post on Facebook or on Instagram, but this hasn’t been the case. My readers continue to comeback with each new blog post.

Increase Traffic to Your Blog #2: Focus on SEO

If you’re hosting your website through WordPress.org, I highly recommend installing the Yoast plug in. Before I switched from WordPress.org, I was using Blogger. And I learned that Blogger was really limited with SEO applications. I specifically switched to WordPress.org to have the Yoast SEO plug in. It tells you the number of times your keywords come up in your post and a bunch of other things. This is the only thing I do for SEO and half of my blog traffic comes for Google.

Why focus on SEO? Let’s not forget that Google is one of the biggest search engines in the world. This search engine is being used 24 hours a day/7 days a week. You also have to remember that most people “google” something if they’re looking for an answer. If your blog post aren’t optimize for SEO, at least install the Yoast plug in!

Increase Traffic to Your Blog #3: Create Content Your Audience Cares About

Have you ever seen me post on Instagram Stories asking what you want to see next? Well I literally take the questions and answer them in blog posts. I also do my best to answer the questions I get on DMs.

Why create content your audience cares about? If you want people to come to your blog, you have to create valuable content. I’ve figured out that my audience reacts well when I take the time to thoughtfully answer their questions on the blog!

Here’s a few examples of questions I’ve gotten on Instagram and shared on my blog:

Question: “How do you figure out how to price yourself as a blogger?”

Answer: “15 Tips for Pricing and Negotiating as a Blogger”

Question: “Do you find it difficult to shoot in public places for your Instagram photos?”

Answer: “6 Tips to Help You Get Comfortable Taking Photos in Public Places”

Increase Traffic to Your Blog #4: Explore other channels to promote your blog posts

If I write anything Seattle or career related, I always post to LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn because it has a completely algorithm (it isn’t owned by Facebook or Instagram). If one person likes your LinkedIn post, that person’s entire network sees that they liked your post on their newsfeed.

Why focus on other channels? Instagram and Facebook will constantly update their algorithms to show “relevant content” to what their audience. It isn’t enough to drive traffic just from Instagram or Facebook anymore.

Don’t be afraid to explore LinkedIn, Pinterest, or other social media channels to drive traffic to your blog!

Increase Traffic to Your Blog #5: Install Google Analytics if you haven’t yet

Don’t underestimate the power of data. I check my Google Analytics every single day to track how my blog posts are performing. You can check your previous month, quarter, or year’s history of what content performed well.

By being able to view this data, you’ll get a better understanding of what type of content your audience responds to the best. For instance, I wrote Seattle’s Most Instagrammable Walls last September. The blog post performed so well and continued to drive traffic to my blog that I knew I needed more content like this. In 2018, I also shared:

8 Unique Instagrammable Spots in Seattle

10 Most Instagrammable Places in NYC to See

Seattle’s Most Instagrammable Places in Pioneer Square

Seattle’s Most Instagrammable Places in Capitol Hill

Increase Traffic to Your Blog #6: Don’t forget to link to yourself (over and over again)

If you’re talking about a similar topic or continuing the story in the next blog post, make sure you link similar blog posts you’ve already written to this new blog post. This is such a small, subtle change, but it helps your audience discover what other content they may have missed on your blog.

From personal experience, I’ve found that at least a portion of my audience will click on the links incorporated in the blog post. It’s an easy way to promote yourself over and over again!

Example:

During New York Fashion Week, I linked: “The Real Cost of Attending New York Fashion Week” with “How to get tickets to New York Fashion Week”.

I figured that if someone was interested in learning how much a four day trip to NYFW cost, they would probably be interested in how to get tickets!

Increase Traffic to Your Blog #7: I didn’t give up my blog – I devoted more time to it

In the age of Instagram, so many bloggers have decided to leave their blogs and focus on growing their Instagram channels. While brands do care about Instagram, brands still care about your blog. If you’re serious about being a content creator/blogger/creative, I highly recommend KEEPING your blog for several reasons.

First of all, imagine if Instagram disappeared over night. How would you reach out to your audience? How would they know what new content is being shared? When you have your own blog and your audience knows to go to your website to see what you’re up to, you don’t have to worry about Instagram disappearing.

Secondly, you don’t know how long the reign of Instagram is going to be. Remember when Myspace was a thing? I’m not saying that Instagram is going to fall anytime soon. I’m saying that you don’t know the future of this app, so you should focus on growing your own channel that you can control.

There you have it friends – 7 Tips I implemented on my blog to grow my traffic!

What are your tips for generating traffic to your blog? How do you attract people to your website?

Thank you for reading!

Love,
Emma

Photos: Karya Schanilec