Today, there are over 300 million blogs on the world wide web, but there are a lot of things you can do to increase blog traffic.

As a result of this blog sprawl, generating traffic for your blogs and getting them to produce better ROI has become considerably harder. This can be quite frustrating, especially when you do all the right things, including developing great content, creating appropriate opt-ins, using the right keywords, and sharing on social media platforms to improve your blog visibility. However, you wouldn’t want to quit just yet having spent lots of energy, time, and effort developing your blog.

Here are ten tips that will enable you to increase blog traffic:

1. Create Catchy Blog Titles And Headlines To Increase Blog Traffic

The headline is the focal point of a blog post. It has the power to either encourage or discourage visitors to choose your post in search engine listings. The title or headline also plays a huge role in increasing your blog’s click-through rate (CTR). Since the visitors see it first, it will inspire them to read the entire post. In the process, they might end up reading and sharing related posts. Therefore, you need to dedicate more time and attention to creating headlines. Lucy, co-founder of Get Blogged adds…

A quick tip for when you’re creating powerful blog titles is to always ensure that the title says what the post is about, who the post is meant for, and how it will help them.

2. Harness The Power Of Social Media

To increase blog traffic, it is imperative that you increase your engagement on social media. Platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter are areas of interest because they already have communities of people who can potentially follow your blog posts.

There are many tools out there that can help you automate the time-consuming job of sharing your blog posts on social networks. Buffer is one of our favourites, especially now they have launched Instagram auto-publishing. Kaya La Roche, who runs the blog, Earning By The Sea adds…

Use scheduling tools to keep you active on social media and to drive traffic to your site. Use Hootsuite for Facebook and Twitter, and Tailwind for Pinterest and Instagram.

Georgina Grogan, who blogs at She Might Be Loved told us…

A lot of people keep their blog a secret at first, but I’ve found that a lot of my loyal readers are actually friends and family! They love keeping up with me and what I’m trying out, so sharing on my personal Facebook page has become one of my top traffic sources.

3. Lower Your Blog’s Loading Time

One of the criteria that Google uses to rank websites is the loading time. It has been found out that 47% of the current internet users will not wait longer than 2 seconds for sites to load. Moreover, there are other competing blogs in your niche which might have better loading speeds. Owing to these two critical aspects, it is a fact that you will lose a lot of traffic if your blog’s loading time is below par. So how do you remedy this?

Start by cutting down on the number of plugins you use. Excess use of plugins slackens the loading speeds of sites. If you must, go for all-in-one plugin rather than several dedicated ones. You can also compress your images or set them to load conditionally as the reader scrolls the page. Plugins such as Smush.it and BJ Lazy Load will help you with that.

Pro Tip: Recent statistics from Google Analytics show that up to 50% of internet traffic consists of mobile users. This brings about the need to adopt mobile optimization for your blog. Therefore, check whether your posts are legible or clear enough for mobile users.

4. Create Links To A Variety Of External Sources

You probably know the importance of linking your posts to external sources. However, the bigger issue is ensuring that these sources are diverse and of high quality. Such links help the search engine rank your site based on its association with highly resourceful websites. It goes without saying that better ranking will potentially increase the number of people seeing your posts through search engines.

Therefore, always link your posts to relevant and informative sites for better traffic. Tools such as Open Site Explorer, by Moz, can tell you the domain authority of any site you wish to use as an external resource.

5. Optimize Images In Your Blog Posts

Did you know that the images you put on your blog posts also affect the visibility of your site online? Search engines, particularly Google use them together with text to rank sites. This means that haphazardly placed images with no description will weigh down on your average content rank. It is therefore important to optimize them just as you would your text.

Always use relevant, high-quality images for every post published on your blog. In addition, provide eye-catching titles, alt tags, and enticing descriptions for all images to improve the overall performance of your blog content.

6. Create Active Forums On Your Blog

Active forums help create a community on your blog, which will increase blog traffic. This way, you get to keep all your readers engaged as well as attract new readers through long-tail keywords that will crop up during daily interactions. When creating a forum, identify a keyword of interest within your niche. Search for the keyword + “forum” and then create your own account based on the most active one. If your blog is hosted on WordPress, install the bbPress plugin to start your own forum.

Chloe Dickenson, of blog, I’m Just A Girl, told us…

Engage with your followers, reply to any comments and like and share other bloggers’ posts. Being involved in the blogging community is extremely rewarding and your followers will thoroughly appreciate you being actively engaged with them.

7. Update Your Old Blog Posts

You probably have outdated posts in your archives which were once ranked highly. This is common because new ideas, as well as better ways of doing things, emerge every day. Some of the information in such posts may still be relevant. Therefore, rather than spending long hours creating new captivating content, you can spend half as much time/effort reviewing and updating your old posts.

All you need to do is identify the old post, spruce it up with better references, illustrations, images, and modern SEO techniques. You can also lengthen it with relevant information. By just republishing this post with a new date it can get back to the top of your blog where it can be ranked better.

Emma Iannarilli, of blog Fashion Mommy adds…

Publish regular content, your readers need something new to read so make sure you post as often as you can to keep your blog vibrant and fresh.

8. Keep Track Of Your Keywords

If you want your posts to perform well in search engines, you need to review your keywords regularly. Ensure that the keyword isn’t too broad or generic. A more efficient way of increasing your blog traffic is by using the long-tail keywords.

In SEO, long tail keywords are among the best sources of organic traffic for blogs. They allow search engines to match search queries to relevant phrases (LSI keywords) in your article alongside the target keyword. Usually, specific multi-worded phrases are far much easier to rank than generic single- or double-worded phrases. A quick tip is to create fairly long high-quality content, where long-tail keywords will appear naturally.

9. Write More Guest Posts To Increase Blog Traffic

Guest posts are an ingenious way to create backlinks for your blog. Naturally, you will leave a link to your bio at the beginning or end of the post. Some bloggers may also allow you to list your blog as a resource for further reading. Guest posts help spread your brand to other popular sites and are a good source of targeted traffic. Start guest posting today and you will soon enjoy a greater online visibility as well as better ranking in SERPs.

10. Make Use Of The ‘Click to Tweet’ Plugin

As mentioned earlier 50% of online traffic comes from mobile platforms and social media. Therefore, leveraging the power of social sites such as Twitter can help enhance your traffic. Click To Tweet is a plugin that allows you to make your blog posts tweetable for easier and faster sharing. You can use it to create customised messages within the body of your post to highlight critical parts of your content for other readers in the social community.

These are just some of the effective ways to increase blog traffic. You can use any of these tips or combine them for better results. Not only will they drive more traffic to your site, but they’ll also improve your blog conversion rates.

Have you any tips to add? What are your tried and tested ways to increase blog traffic? Comment below…

Pin this for later…