In the previous post, we talked about some of the mistakes most new bloggers make that lead to the death of their blogs.
But now that you know what you shouldn’t be doing on your blog, it’s time to take a look at some of what you should be doing to make your blog more popular with your audience.
The strategies that we’ll discuss here are proven to work effectively, and yet they aren’t used by the majority of bloggers.
This is probably due to the fact that they aren’t as easy as the rest to implement, and most people just want to go with whatever is easiest.
However, as a smart blogger who wants real results, you’re going to use the unique and actionable tips to sky-rocket your blog’s traffic levels.
3 Unique Strategies That Will More Than Double Your Blog Traffic
1. Use the Kindle Select 90 Day Plan To Boost Traffic
Self-published books represent over a third of all ebooks sold on Amazon’s Kindle Store today.
Getting your book published before meant using thousands of dollars of your own money, and acquiring contracts with large publishing houses, but all that has changed now thanks to the advent of the internet.
These days anybody with an idea that they want to share can become a published author within a week. More importantly, they can use this strategy to drive a lot of qualified search traffic to their website and blog.
It’s beyond the scope of this post to discuss the process of Kindle publishing in detail, but there are lots of excellent guides online that will show you how to do this for free.
For now, let’s take a look at how you can reach thousands of readers for free using Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing).
How Kindle Direct Publishing Works
When publishing your book on Kindle, you have the option of enrolling it in the KDP Select Program. This makes your book exclusive to their store for the first 90 days.
Your book is also included in the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library and thousands of targeted readers can borrow it for free. For 5 days out of the 90 days that the program runs, you can even run a free promotion on a paid ebook.
Here’s how you can use this to drive blog traffic:
First, by placing direct links to your website (or blog article, or landing page) inside your book. Just by doing this alone, you’ll be able to send a lot of extra visitors to your site within the first few weeks of your book being on Kindle’s program.
But you can do even more than simply linking out to your site.
If you truly want to stand out and increase your traffic from Kindle significantly, then include a free giveaway – which is the second method of fully leveraging KDP.
You could build a massive list of targeted subscribers using this technique.
Put a ‘Free Gift’ message and links on your author landing page offering a freebie to Amazon book buyers, and most won’t be able to resist. This technique is a simple and effective one to help you maximize the results that you get from Amazon KDP.
There are also other features on Amazon that you can make use of in order to bring traffic to your site, including the ‘Download a Sample’ and the ‘Look Inside’ features. Use them to give your readers a free report, or to add a call to action on the last page of the preview, and add a link back to your blog or landing page.
With a free ebook, you can typically expect over 1,000 visitors to your blog in the first week or so.
Free downloads raise your book’s ranking, and they attract the attention of the audience you’re targeting in search traffic.
2. A New Twist On Guest-Blogging
Guest blogging is a proven way of increasing your blog traffic and building up your list of email subscribers. But in order to get the best results from all your efforts, you have to have a unique approach to this strategy.
Use the three steps outlined below to get thousands of readers to visit your blog each month from your guest posts.
Step #1: Find blogs that have a high level of social influence
Google and other search engines absolutely adore authority blogs.
These are active blogs that have lots of social media followers. If you want to get more traffic to your own blog, then focus all your guest posting activities on such sites in your niche.
Before pitching a guest post, check that site’s social influence and analyze roughly how much traffic you could expect to get from social media when your post gets featured on their site.
A lot of these A-list blogs do not display their social states publicly, so you may have to check out their Twitter handle or Facebook page.
The more followers and fans they have, the higher the amount of traffic you can expect from them.
Step #2: Check out top ranking sites in your niche
Another effective strategy for ensuring that your post gets ranked in Google and is able to drive targeted traffic back to your blog is to find the top sites in your niche that are already ranked.
Simply conduct a search on Google for one of your long-tail keywords as if you’re searching for ideas.
For instance, say you wanted to write a guest post with the title ‘7 Easy Steps To Launch A New Blog’, but you had no idea which authority blog you could pitch your idea to.
You can plug your headline into Google’s search box, and find the top results that are ranking high in the SERPs for a similar topic.
These posts will also have a ton of long-tail keywords that you can ‘borrow’ for your own post. Focusing on these blogs that are SEO-friendly will help you drive search traffic to your own blog in the long term.
This works very well because that idea you have has already brought organic traffic and possibly even some income to those blogs.
So when you pitch a similar guest post to them, they are more likely to say yes, as long as you can show them that your post will add real value to their blog.
That’s where your pitch comes in.
Step #3: The Pitch
After identifying the suitable targets for your guest post, it’s time to write your pitch.
Your pitch doesn’t have to be complicated at all. It doesn’t have to be perfect, either.
Every blog owner that you approach is different, and they have their own ideas of what makes your offer worth their time.
The psychological triggers that work for one may not work for another. So, even if your pitch impresses one blog owner, it may sound lame to another.
However, to give yourself the best chance of getting a ‘yes’, use the following tips:
- Your email subject needs to set the right expectation – Tell them upfront that you want to write for them. Most blogs are very interested in quality stuff, so this is a great way of ensuring that your email gets opened.
- Compliment the blog owner on their content, tools, site design, etc – Find something to compliment them about, and show them that you know your stuff. This also makes it more likely that you’ll get a reply. After someone compliments you, it’s natural to want to say thanks (even if they’re saying ‘no thanks’ to the guest post).
- Don’t try to persuade them that your content is the best – Let them decide for themselves how good it is. Simply give them your topic ideas as well as some writing samples right away to make it easier for them to judge if you’re a good fit or not. If you give them what they need to evaluate you, it makes it more likely that you’ll get a positive answer, quickly. Of course, everything comes down to how valuable your topic suggestions are to them, so that part is worth spending a bit of time on.
The Bottom Line
By taking a different approach to your guest blogging, you’re guaranteed to produce more social shares and organic traffic that will make your blog more popular and help you build a targeted list of email subscribers.
You’ll also be able to get a lot more mileage from your content with a few content repurposing skills.
Just freshen up your content a bit, republish and remarket it, and you’ll get new traffic and fresh leads with your old material.
To get your content in front of even more eyeballs, cross-promote with complementary businesses using co-branded contests and create revenue shares.
You get to share the work and double your audience – every marketer’s dream.
3. Restructure Your Posts For Relevancy
The posts on your blog need to be designed to suit your ideal audience. If you are not getting any blog comments other than a few readers saying ‘nice post’, then you’re not getting enough engagement.
Your readers have not totally bought into the content you create, and you simply haven’t managed to get their attention with your posts.
All it means is that your blog post needs a bit of restructuring.
Once you can speak in the same language as your core audience, they will be happy to promote, share, cite your post, and be your advocates on their various networks, thereby increasing qualified traffic to your blog.
Understand Your Audience Behavior
The first step is to understand exactly what makes your audience tick. This will give you a competitive edge. Use Alexa’s search engine tool to find out all you need to know.
Simply type your blog address into Alexa’s search box on the homepage and click ‘Go’. From the results you get, you’ll be able to judge the current engagement level of your blog.
Focus on the following metrics:
Important Metric #1: Bounce Rate
One of the most important ones to focus on is the bounce rate.
This shows you the percentage of people who left your site after viewing only one page, and you can use the tips listed below to help you decrease your bounce rate significantly.
Tips to decrease your site’s bounce rate:
- Make your website layout responsive on all devices will lower your bounce rate.
- Make sure your text is readable. Pick a font that is large enough and easy on the eyes.
- Make your site load faster. Improving site speed has been proven to reduce bounce rates significantly.
Important Metric #2: Daily Page Views Per Visitor
This is the number of pages viewed on your site during each day, on average. It shows you just how interested your readers are in your content.
Use the tips outlined below to help you increase the pageviews from each of your visitors:
- Use related content links at the end of each of your posts. Make sure that the posts linked to are completely relevant to the current one to increase the chances of your readers clicking through.
- Cross-link within your posts. Adding links in your content will increase your page views as these in-text links typically get more clicks than your navigational menu links.
Important Metric #3: Daily Time on Site
This indicates the value and quality of your content. If it’s really helpful (or even a little controversial) your readers will engage with it – some without even realizing it.
Use the tactics below to increase the time visitors spend on your site:
- Use more headlines, bullet points, blockquotes, and lists.
- Write long, in-depth articles, but make sure they are formatted the right way to allow those without lots of time for reading to be able to scan the posts quickly. 2,000 – 2,500 words is the sweet spot.
- Use attractive images to increase the readability of your posts, but if you’re keeping them under 2,000 words, when you have to limit the number of pictures that you use.
- Create conversations by using the words ‘I’ and ‘you’ in your posts. Your blog shouldn’t be a monologue if you want people to come back for more.
- A clearly labeled conclusion at the end of your posts will help you get more people to scroll all the way to the bottom of your post.
In Conclusion
These strategies are proven to work effectively when it comes to boosting your blog traffic in a relatively short space of time.
However, keep in mind that consistency is key, and even though you may not see big results overnight, you will be able to use these tactics to boost conversion rates, increase email subscribers, and get a consistent flow of fresh blog visitors in the long term.
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PlanetBizOp.com
->Steven
Updated: Originally published January 13th 2019
