How to Get More Traffic to Your Blog

If you want to grow your blog traffic, then keep reading.

Throughout this post, we will be sharing some of the most common and effective ways to drive traffic where you need it most.

Increasing Blog Traffic

You’ve begun your affiliate journey, now all you need is an audience to buy the products you’ve been promoting. At first, it can seem like an overwhelming task to build a substantial enough userbase to generate a decent amount of income.

And while it is true that growing your site traffic takes time, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Affiliate marketing beginners can often become discouraged that their audience isn’t growing as fast as they would like, which is why we have created a short, yet actionable, list of steps you can take to improve your blog traffic.

Below are some of the most common methods affiliate bloggers use to grow their site traffic. You can choose to act on one, some, or all of them, and there is no requirement to put all of these actions in place – some may not be relevant for your niche.

However, for the new affiliate marketer, having knowledge of the below strategies will give you a solid foundation for all your affiliate and digital marketing pursuits.

If you are unsure what keyword research is, you can read our beginner’s guide to keyword research here. In short, keyword research informs us of what our intended user base is searching for.

Creating content that is representative of your keyword research is the first step towards getting your content in front of the right people.

Keeping a content calendar is an excellent way of tracking your content creation. When used in conjunction with analytic tools such as Google Trends or Buzzsumo, you can track seasonal trends within your niche.

It is worth noting that the best performing content is evergreen, meaning that the subject matter is always applicable – even after years.

Content doesn’t always indicate written blog posts either; custom images, infographics, and video are all highly shareable assets that can net you significant traffic over time. It is always good practice to repurpose your best performing content into other mediums to improve your reach.

Guest posting works like this –

• Find a niche relevant blog/website
• Contact them via e-mail, DM’s, etc.
• Offer to create content for their blog
• In return, you can link back to your own blog
• Create content
• Get traffic

Guest posting works as a double-edged sword, as not only will you get traffic clicking through from their blog. Having a link pointing to your site lets Google know that you are a trusted source of information and deserve to appear higher in the SERPs.

After you have reached out to other bloggers & webmasters, they may ask for payment to place a post on their site. This is called a sponsored post.

You will need to assess each sponsored post on a case by case basis, if their site is significantly more powerful than yours, then it may be worth the investment.

Guest posting isn’t limited to written word blog content; contacting influencers across social media platforms is a great way to get some exposure. Buzzsumo is an outstanding tool used by digital content marketers to find and collaborate with influencers in their niche.

There are numerous link building strategies used by content marketers, and you can read about several of them in our post here.

Although to provide a brief overview, link building strategies all follow a similar formula:

• Create a linkable content asset
• Prospect (search) for potential backlink targets
• Reach out to each prospect and offer your content to them as a resource
• Get link

The more separate domains (referring domains) you can get to link back to your blog, the better your chances of appearing in the SERPs. It is worth noting, however, that not all backlinks are created equal.

Backlinks designated ‘dofollow’ transfer the most power, or ‘link juice,’ to your page. While ‘nofollow’ links hold much less weight, although that’s not to say they are bad.

A solid backlink profile will have a combination of dofollow and nofollow links from both high and low authority sources if you are interested in learning more about what makes a great backlink profile, check out this post by The Upper Ranks.

Your link building success rests on the quality of your content assets, which is why such importance is placed on creating high-quality content that people want to see and share with their friends.

Say, for instance, you have one page on your site that is performing well in the SERPs, yet doesn’t generate any revenue, and you have another page targeted towards sales that isn’t performing.

By linking to your intended money page from a higher authority internal source, it is possible to share the ‘link juice’ within the same domain, resulting in better SERP performance (hopefully).

An audience on social media is highly relevant and easy to target. Again, by creating great content and sharing it with your audience via social media, they are likely to share it themselves. Having regular ‘social signals’ is an excellent way of informing Google that your content is highly regarded.

Run competitions

Running social competitions is an effective strategy to increase your social footprint. Offering prizes to everyone that ‘likes, shares, comments, etc.’ can build your social following and provide a small boon to your site traffic.

Some niches have seasonal trends, which you should have noted on your content calendar, ready to implement when the time is right. Google Trends is one of the best ways to discover seasonal trends within your niche.

Being aware of developing trends allows you to create highly relevant content before your competitors, further increasing the chance it may go viral within your niche. Being the first source to create quality content on a developing trend can lead to huge leaps in traffic.

Becoming an authority on Quora can take some time, but if you dedicate yourself to providing one or two quality answers per week, you will notice the results over time. Quora allows users to link back to their site, meaning if you have relevant content, you can insert it into your answers.

As long as you are providing quality, relevant answers on Quora, you will build up a good level of authority. Then, it is only a matter of time until you start receiving enough votes for top answers.

Quora inserts the best answers into their e-mail blast newsletters that can reach tens of thousands of users at a time – if you get featured, it is possible to see huge spikes in traffic.

Even if your old content is evergreen, you can always turn to it to create ‘new’ content. By which I mean repurpose it into a different medium.

If you have a well-received, data-driven blog post that has performed well for you, why not distill that information into a custom infographic?

Infographics are a highly shareable source of information that will net you backlinks from sources that otherwise might not have seen your content.

If you have the capability, repurposing popular content into video is an effective way to gain social shares. Not only that, but people spend more time on sites containing video – and are more likely to convert into sales after watching video content.