Blog Traffic: 5 Straightforward Ways to Get More of It

The other day, my blogger-friend James from TheAverageGenius asked me about the spike in traffic going to my blog.

Blog Traffic… say what?

It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d had one (a spike); I had been too busy blogging! I never feel comfortable talking about traffic or popularity, because it’s not my area of expertise. You wanna talk content strategy and relevancy? I’m your girl. Traffic plays a part in content strategy, but traffic generation is a whole different ball game.

His question made me wonder a bit, so I checked out my analytics and sure enough, traffic had risen sharply and consistently over a matter of weeks. Now, before you get all crazy, let me just say that it’s not a highly-trafficked blog. I still average less than 100 visits per day right now. That’s not a lot.

But it’s more than it had been. My Alexa Rating has dropped over 40,000 spots in a matter of a couple of months, down to about 112,665 (nothing compared to Dev’s drop). The significance is in the day to day traffic. Before, I’d get a little over 100 visits or so every time I published something. But recently it’s been the same – steady – on days that I post and on days that I don’t post. This is where the magic happens. This is what we all want – for our blogs to consistently be getting traffic without peddling for it.

As I reflected on what I’d been doing and where traffic was coming from, I jotted down a few notes:

#1 Fuel the Fire

When traffic starts rising, turn up the volume on your blogging even more. I responded to increases in traffic AND actions (important) by adding more posts. People who subscribe to your feed expect to see something there when they go check it. I know – I don’t want to be a slave to my feed any more than you do, but your readers are hungry!

There’s always a debate over whether you should post everyday, and my answer to clients is not to, especially in the beginning. But plan for increase – simple supply and demand concepts. Whether you do it yourself or have a guest blogger do it, you should always respond to the demand you start receiving from visitors.

#2 Adjust layout so your feed is Prominent

Again, part of the reason traffic is rising is because it’s becoming more steady, and much of the reason is due to feed subscriptions. So, encouraging feed subscriptions is key to that day to day, repeat, steadily increasing traffic. I don’t offer a free gift to get on my list or anything like that. I just have it there for people who truly want to become regular readers.

#3 Pay attention to first time visitors and commentators

As we talked a little bit about before in the marketing funnel post, creating a pathway for your readers is important. I started by implementing the Comment Redirect plugin, and then added the Thank Me Later plugin, and have seen more visitors become regulars. This is marketing 101 – make it about your readers and not you.

#4 Be Consistently [helpful, funny, inspirational - just be consistent]

As soon as I hit publish, I know whether or not the post is going to draw (social) traffic. That’s because I’m a content strategy girl, and if there’s one thing I do know, it’s that people want something for themselves. It’s nice to rant a little, but doing it a lot isn’t a good strategy (I guess, unless you are consistently ranting). Most of us around here are in the offering-some-type-of-advice category, and the best way to do that is to be consistently helpful. The more specific, resourceful, and relevant you are, the more people will pass on your stuff and that will translate into more traffic. General advice is B.S. Say something that someone can literally turn around and implement right then or find another way to make a person-to-person connection so the reader says to herself or himself, “Yes, this is exactly what I was looking for.”

#5 Turn up the heat on guest blogging

Guest blogging, in my opinion, is the kind of thing you have to try on for size. Not all blogs make good hosts for guest blogging. People will swear on the lives of their first-born that guest blogging is the key to traffic but not all blogs are made equal in this way. And even some of the “big” blogs out there are not exactly great sources of traffic if you do a guest post. My suggestion is to find a smaller, more active blog with a really strong following.

Those are some of the ways I’ve been pumping it up. Let me know what you think and if you have additional advice for everyone!

Tagged as: alexa rank, blog traffic