Practical Tips for a Beginner Blogger to Increase Traffic

BLOG AWAY AND ENJOY DOING IT

It is estimated that there are over 200 million blogs online therefore if you only just started blogging, you would really have to tough it out with the competition to get noticed and to make some revenue if you so wish. You can have great content but without robust marketing, it would take you a very long time to break through. Here are four methods that had helped me increase traffic hence subscribers to my blog.

CONTENT

     The saying that “content is king” cannot be over-emphasised. Before you even start blogging you must know what you want to blog about. Every expect would tell you to have a niche but I insist that, not having a niche is even a niche as long as you have the knowledge in the area and can write great content on the chosen topic. All you need is intensive research. If you have no idea of what to blog about, join Quora, find some questions that people ask often and give answers. It may give you a fair idea of what you should blog about.  Having a niche and being an expert in the area will make life a lot easier for you, though. It makes you gain respect and increases your reputation as an expert, therefore people would always come to you for answers on a topic in your area of expertise. It also enables you to use the right keywords that would enable search engines to easily find you and put you on top of the search pile when targeted well. If you want some insight into SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategies. There several free E-books on SEO but Google itself is a good point to start. Go check out this link for a free ebook download on SEOs  http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

UPDATE: As a point for S.E.O., Google has updated it's algorithm to ensure that those who optimised their site for mobile device usage appear at the top of the search pile so ensure that your blog or website is optimised. If you need more information on how to do this, check out their support page (https://support.google.com/sites/answer/1368620?hl=en). Also, to ensure you are on the right track, google your page with a mobile device and see how it looks like, then make the necessary changes if you have to.

GOOGLE+ FOLLOWERS

     Create a blogger profile, yes you heard me right, blogger!! I agree that there are lots of platforms on which you can create blogs. The advantage with having a blogger profile is that Google rules the search world. They have probably the best ethics in my opinion regarding blogging and advertising. They also have some of the best plug-ins like Google+ where you can join communities from all over the world and share your blogs with them. Therefore if you have no ‘evil’ intentions Google is your best friend.

1.      Create a Blogger profile, and add a Google+ profile,

2.      Find people and communities on Google+ with similar niches or interests as yours, add them and join the communities. I will suggest you find this guy +Daniel Stock . He would help you gain followers with is community building strategy.

3.      Participate actively in discussions within the communities and ensure you share every article you write in the niche community. The thing about joining and sharing your articles in Google+ communities is that, you get more searches directly via google.

4.      Show genuine interests in the blogs of people you follow and your followers by commenting and sharing their stuff. If they find something they like on your blog, they will return the favour and the word will spread.

SOCIAL MEDIA

     Join Linkis.com and automate the sharing of your blogs. Linkis is like a ‘one stop site’ where most, if not all social media sharing buttons have been harnessed for easy access. You will find buttons like Digg, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc, there. All these sites are great marketing tools for your blog so create profiles on these sites. What happens is that once you have a profile on all these sites you can go directly to Linkis.com and share your blog on all these platforms from there. Becareful not to spam, though or you would lose your reputation. A good technique for sharing a blog on twitter would be to align the link to your blog with a quote. 

Example :

BEFORE LOGGING IN

AFTER LOGGING IN

You can do same for all social networks. Reddit.com is another great platform that allows you to actually share links and contribute to topics. Join Reddit.com but ensure you read their guidelines before sharing links or you would be banned.

BACK-LINKS

    Building back links can also help you boost traffic. There are several methods but I will focus on one popular method used on Quora. A lot of people on Quora are looking for answers to questions so it’s a great platform on which you can link people to your site. Quora however is very strict on spamming so becareful. You type in keywords for a topic you’re interested in and give answers to these questions only because you actually know your stuff. If you have written a blog about that topic, you can attach the link at the end of the answer so that people who see these answers can link back to you anytime they want answers.

GOOGLE YOUR PAGE

Every now and then, Google-search your page  and see how it appears in search. You can also google-search topics you have written and see where it appears on the search pile. Do not google the exact topic but google closely related topics and see where you are in the search pile. For example if you have written a blog with the tittle "Why coconut is good for you", you can instead type "Benefits of coconut" in the google search engine and see if your page will appear. If it doesn't, then it means you need to work harder on your SEO.

FREEBIES

    

    Offering freebies is also a great way to increase traffic and subscribers. If you already have a niche, you can write an E-book on a subject area and offer it for free to anyone who subscribes to your blog. It’s that simple.

     All in all content and reputation is the key. In the end people have problems that need solving. That is why they would find your product. I would not suggest you put a timeline on increasing traffic because it takes hard work to garner a lot of it. However, maybe after a year of not being successful, you should know you are not doing something right. Go back, research and start again because the trends keep changing. Just don’t give up.