When building a new blog, the deepest fear is not getting good traffic. What use is it if you can’t get your target audience’s attention?
I was in the same boat and worried, but not anymore. I now have the strategy to grow blog traffic. In this article, I’ve shared my top tips for getting blog traffic for beginners. You can apply these tips to your new blog or clients’ blogs if they have started as a small brand.
In the last two years as a content writer, I’ve written several blogs that rank on the first page of Google for both my clients and my blog. Here is an example of a post I wrote for this blog, ranking at position #2 on the SERP.
Also, I wrote another article for a client two years ago that still ranks at position #4.
So, let’s get into the blog traffic tips that helped me get these results.
TL;DR: 21 Top Tips To Get Blog Traffic For Beginners
Here are my top pointers to get traffic to blog as a beginner:
- Identify and Understand Your Audience
- Share Valuable Content
- Do Keyword Research
- Build Pillar Pages and Topic Clusters
- Create Freebies
- Implement an SEO Strategy
- Optimize Website Speed
- Focus Outside SEO
- Do Guest Posting
- Start an Email Newsletter
- Focus on Internal Linking
- Build Backlinks
- Create an Editorial Calendar
- Update Your Articles
- Use Google Search Console and Google Analytics
- Add Audio and Videos
- Optimize for E-E-A-T
- Add Infographics
- Leverage Relationships
- Optimize Your Site for Mobile
- Create Free Tools
1. Identify and Understand Your Audience
You must have heard this tip a thousand times, but let me tell you why it’s so important.
Consider another example. Suppose you’re marketing high-end kitchen appliances. If your audience is working professionals who hardly have time to cook, your messaging should focus on the tool’s ease of use or automation.
If your audience is chefs in multi-star hotels, the messaging should focus on the appliances’ performance and how they can elevate their culinary skills.
The same product, but the messaging changes entirely based on your target audience.
If you don’t investigate your audience’s interests, likes and dislikes, pain points, and dying problems, you won’t be able to showcase yourself as their best solution.
The result?
They’ll visit blogs that do solve their problems. And you’ll only hear crickets even after investing time and effort into building a blog.
Before you even start writing blog posts, spend time figuring out your target audience by doing this little exercise I do:
Think “OBVIOUS”
What’s that?
Ask yourself:
1. What do I offer? (What service does my business offer?)
- What is your reason for offering that service?
- What do you think makes you the right person to offer that service?
2. To whom do I offer the service?
3. What problems does my service solve for the audience?
- What happens if they don’t solve the problems?
4. What are the symptoms of those problems?
- How are the problems affecting their business?
5. Have I targeted those symptoms through my service?
- How will that change with your solutions?
- Have you created any case studies before?
If yes—how did the audience approach me about that?
If no—how can I target those in my content? (What kind of content does the audience seek?)
6. Have I created content targeting those symptoms earlier?
If yes—how was it received? Were there any questions from the audience?
Here are my answers to these questions:
| Suggested Reading: My guide on doing SEO for service-based businesses
2. Share Valuable Content
When you start a new blog, you have zero domain authority. Nobody knows you, nor do the search engines.
You have to consider some time, which we often call Google’s Sandbox period. This is the time Google takes before it starts ranking your content. During this time, Google determines if you’re really worthy of getting ranked by checking signals like who is sharing your content, how accurate and relatable your content is, if someone lands on your page, how long they stay, etc.
While it takes time, you can speed up this process by consistently sharing value.
Don’t get demotivated; never stop publishing authentic, well-researched, relatable content that genuinely helps.
Here’s how I create valuable content:
Understand where the reader is coming from
We’ve already discussed how vital audience research is. Else, you’ll miss the mark by a mile.
However, there’s more. Each post has a different feeling, need, and motivation (though all posts belong to the same blog).
For example: Consider a few of my own blog posts. The post “What is topical authority” is for those who have only recently heard this term and want a detailed understanding of the concept. The blog post needs to be an explanatory guide teaching them every nook and corner of what topical authority is.
On the other hand, the post “How to Rebrand Your Blog for Success” is for those who know what rebranding is and want actionable steps to guide them through their blog rebrand.
Understanding the needs of what the reader wants is half the job done.
Get the answer of “Why would I search this query if I were to search it?” and you’re golden.
Question everything You write
This one is my favorite tip. You’ll find me talking about it everywhere.
You should be able to provide a valid explanation of everything you mention in your content. For that, you need to question everything you write.
Follow every sentence with a “WHY.” Whenever I claim something, I ask, “WHY?” If I can’t answer it, I haven’t explained it well.
We writers mostly focus on conveying the WHAT but forget that every WHAT should be able to justify its WHY and HOW. If you can’t, you still haven’t answered the question.
Rich resources
As a writer, you must already know how time-consuming research can be. However, it doesn’t have to be so if you don’t start from scratch each time.
Certain points remain constant even though the research for each post varies. Additionally, it is preferable to keep a database of your past studies.
I have a spreadsheet with all the resources I regularly utilize, even if it takes some time. It contains everything, including blogs, Google updates, and market research.
I use many SME quotes in my content. Although Qwoted and Help a B2B writer are excellent resources, they do need a lot of time.
For that, I leverage my active LinkedIn network.
I’ve compiled a list of LinkedIn experts and the posts I like to read from them. I now know who to ask for a quote whenever I need one.
Additionally, I have another document with their saved LinkedIn posts that I embed as needed.
My wait time has significantly decreased.
Lastly, I have begun utilizing SparkToro to discover my audience’s reading and listening preferences. I’ve started transcriptions of these podcasts and YouTube videos, which I’ve bookmarked for usage as quotes.
Cash on Competitors’ Mistakes
If you go through the top ten articles for any keyword, you’ll find at least one area in which you can improve. If an article has covered everything about the topic, it may lack explanatory visuals. Another article might have old data, which you can replace with more updated statistics. Some other articles might not have covered the search intent properly.
There’s so much to cash in on.
Simply read the top-ranking articles and note the improvements you can make. Then, develop a content brief and outline your article by considering those areas of improvement. You’ll have an article that has the potential to outrank your competitors.
| Suggested reading: How to save your website from SEO mistakes
3. Do Keyword Research
If content is your vehicle, keyword research is your fuel. It’s the guiding factor that helps keep your content in front of your audience’s eyes.
Use keywords that your audience would search for. If you find all the right terms searched for in your niche, you’ll have a complete content calendar that contains only posts that convert visitors into customers.
It’s important you only choose keywords that help you fulfill your business goals. There are many keywords with high volume that, in reality, don’t add much to your blog goals.
For example: If you’re a food blogger, there are two keywords: “best cooking tools” and “homemade mango pickle recipe.” The former has a monthly search volume of 210, and the latter has a search volume 10.
But posting about the best cooking tools won’t get you food consultation or workshop clients. The other keyword will be because it has the potential to showcase your expertise.
As an early-stage blogger, you have limited opportunity cost. Only invest in keywords that yield results, which brings me to the next topic—low-hanging keywords.
Targeting keywords with low search volume but high purchase or converting intent will help you rank faster and convert more. The lower a keyword’s search volume, the lesser your competition. It becomes easier to outrank your competitors without much backlinks or other ranking factors.
Also, aim for queries with low keyword difficulty. The metric “keyword difficulty” quantifies the difficulty associated with achieving a high ranking for a specific keyword or phrase on search engine results pages. It estimates the amount of work and competition needed to score highly for that particular term. Again, the lesser the difficulty, the easier it is to rank.
In this quest, you can encounter some keywords with zero volume. But if the keywords are the ones you know your audience will search for, go for those keywords. If you’ve done your audience research right, you’ll understand what queries they’re most likely to search.
I’ve talked in depth about keyword research and how to use keywords in content. You can check out the guide here >>>
4. Build Pillar Pages and Topical Authority
If there’s one hack that can get you on Google’s first page without investing in heavy backlink-building, it’s topical authority.
Don’t get me wrong, you still need to work hard to build topical authority. But it’s achievable without investing heavily in backlinks.
When you create enough content around one topic so that you’ve covered it from every angle, you build authority on that topic. It signals to Google that you’re an expert in that topic.
When you create enough blog posts (at least 30-40) for every important topic of your blog, you build complete topic authority. Once you reach that threshold of topical authority:
- Your articles rank faster
- Google trusts you more
- Your monthly traffic increases
Topical authority also includes the concept of pillar pages and cluster pages.
Pillar pages are detailed, long-form blog posts built on the main topics you choose for your blogs. In short, the blog posts you create around important topics for building topical authority are the posts built around these pillar pages. Then, the pillar pages and the blog posts are interlinked to create a closely woven network of posts.
For example: A blog post on the topic what is content writing can be a pillar post. It’s cluster posts can be articles likes how to become a content writer, freelancing jobs as a content writer, content writing vs copywriting, etc.
5. Create Freebies
Freebies or incentives work to get your visitors’ foot in the door for any future paid products or services you offer. But for this article, I won’t talk about freebies as a source of getting leads.
Today, freebies are all about increasing organic blog traffic and impressions.
When you create a value-pack for free, which otherwise people would have to buy, they’re easily attracted to the offer. Promoting freebies on social media and your blog can increase your email list.
Convert these one-time sign-ups into email subscribers. This list will become the first audience for all newly published blog posts as you’ll send updates and weekly emails to these subscribers. These first few visits to your blog posts create an initial boost to your traffic.
Another added benefit is that if you keep sharing actionable and quick tips about your industry in weekly broadcasts, subscribers will appreciate your work and start searching for your blog. Thus increasing your organic traffic.
6. Implement an SEO Strategy
Nothing works and grows with a proper strategy. SEO is no different. SEO for a successful blog depends on many factors like:
- A thorough keyword research
- Content writing and content marketing
- Conversion Rate Optimization
- Optimizing Technical Aspects of the website
- Link Building
- User Experience
You need to invest time in building a strategy that will smoothly run all of these processes without taking up much of your time.
Create a monthly plan that focuses on each of these factors and optimizes them according to your blogging needs.
Read more about how to implement SEO strategy for blogging here.
7. Optimize Website Speed
One important website ranking factor is website speed. Usually, websites are quite slow on both desktops and mobile devices without any changes. This is because of the many plugins we install, some of which cause the website to slow down.
Poor loading time can significantly make you lose ranks. You wouldn’t want that.
The cure is easy. There are several plugins to optimize website speech. On top of the list is WP Rocket. It’s a paid tool that optimizes website speech once you install it. You can check the results in speed analyzers like pingdom.com and pageinsights.com.
I came across a free plugin named Airlift that is for the same purpose. It reduces the page’s loading time and optimizes the site.
8. Focus Outside SEO
Not many SEOs will tell you this, but every blog needs an outside SEO plan. Yes, SEO is a great channel to build and increase organic traffic. But getting significant traffic to a new blog right off the bat is tough.
That’s when traffic channels besides SEO help. Social media platforms and discussion forums help tremendously to build traffic. Posting links to your blog entries on social media profiles or forums encourages users to visit the site directly. This includes the equally significant organic social traffic in addition to the organic search traffic.
Another added benefit is the organic social traffic prompts search engines that your blog post is what the audience wants to read, making the search engines rank your blog higher.
Promoting your blog on social media is simple—create informative and enticing blurbs that prompt your audience to go check out the blog post right after it’s published. Don’t forget the older posts. Use infographics from the older posts, convert them into carousels or videos and promote them on socials.
Discussion forums are a bit tough. You can’t just post the blog post links right away. You need to provide information regularly through posts or participate in comments and discussions. The more value you give, the greater the success of your promotional content will be.
Suggested reading: Using Pinterest for increasing blog traffic
9. Do Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a great way of creating brand recall. The more people see you, the more they’ll link to your brand name.
Getting featured in known brands in your niche gives you instant exposure to a larger audience. As a new blogger, it’s a big feat to tap into an established audience who can land on your blog as your own.
Guest blogging also invites quality backlinks (the kind that Google approves). It brings credibility to your brand name and increases your domain authority.
Not to forget the many networking opportunities it brings. Once published in a reputable brand, you start getting inquiries from your peers and build a strong relationship with many of them. Relationships are key to any business’s success.
Create a list of brands in your niche that accept guest bloggers. Read their blogging guidelines in detail and send them a pitch. Many brands that allow guest blogging share the way of pitching them. If that’s not mentioned, simply pitch them over email.
10. Start an Email newsletter
Social media audiences are borrowed. You lose them if you lose your account. But an email list is entirely yours. Plus, you can promote your blog to them anytime without any restrictions.
As bloggers, we all strive to increase traffic regularly. However, the early spike of traffic on newly published posts is equally important. Getting people to land on a newly published blog post also works as a signal for search engines.
An email to your subscribers prompting them to land on the newly published blog post helps you get that spike. Additionally, having an email list helps talk about your services and lead magnets even when you don’t have a huge search traffic in the beginning.
11. Focus on Internal Linking
Why internal linking is so crucial? Because it shows Google your website’s structure. Internal linking helps create a hierarchy of posts that show the search engine crawlers the most important posts on your website.
It also establishes the connectivity of posts on the same topic so the search engines understand what topic you’re building your authority on.
Another benefit of internal linking is that it passes authority from the high-ranking pages to others. Suppose your home page ranks on the first page for its brand query. If it has a high authority, whatever benefits it gets, like the backlinks, it’ll pass on to other connected pages through internal linking.
Think of it like this: your high-ranking pages are like popular kids in school. When they vouch for someone else, that person suddenly becomes more interesting to everyone. In SEO terms, when a high-authority page links to another page on your site, it’s essentially vouching for that page’s importance.
12. Build Backlinks
Backlinks have proved themselves to be the backbone of blogging. Earning backlinks is like earning others’ trust in yourself.
It’s a sign others find your content useful and are willing to link to it for their audiences. That’s trust, alright.
Building backlinks helps hugely in increasing your blog’s authority. There are many ways you can approach building backlinks. Here are some simple ways even beginners can try:
- Collaborating with other bloggers by writing posts and asking them to write for you.
- Creating freebies or guides that can earn many backlinks from being cited as useful resources.
- Building relationships with top bloggers in your niche so they can ask you for expert opinions and thus get you backlinks.
13. Create an Editorial Calendar
SEO is similar to LinkedIn’s content strategy in many ways. One such similarity is following a consistent posting schedule.
You shouldn’t miss out on posting, especially if you’re just starting out. The same is true for small brands competing with giants.
I had decided to post every Monday of the month. But I skipped two Mondays and struggled for a while afterward. Since then, I’ve made it a point to stay consistent by having a well-planned editorial calendar.
It can be any plan and frequency that works for you. I try to complete writing the first draft for two months’ worth of content in two weeks without worrying about the edits and additional content like visuals, etc.
Then, I take my time reviewing each post, editing it, completing it, and scheduling it.
Topic clusters help me stay on track. Instead of going for random keywords every time, I sort them out based on priority. If you’re like me and sell a service through your blog, you must first target the BOFU keywords.
After sorting the keywords, I focus on keywords from one topic cluster each month. This further removes the randomness, as all the blog posts in one month discuss one central topic.
For example: June was all about “Blog traffic and ways to increase blog traffic.” All four posts target different keywords from the same cluster.
This also helps build topical authority.
14. Update Your Articles
If you post content and forget about it, you miss out on an invaluable resource. Updating posts ranking in positions #5 to #20 can significantly increase the traffic you get. On average, updating old content increases blog traffic by 80%.
I’ve created an article on the details of updating old content on blogs. It’ll shed more light on what goes into the process.
15. Use Google Search Console And Google Analytics
Initially, you don’t need fancy SEO tools when you have Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
GSC displays the daily impressions, clicks, and position of your website. You also get to monitor the performance of every blog post published.
The tool also shows where to improve your SEO strategy to improve your blog’s ranking. So, you can find the keywords with high impressions and the ones that could be improved.
With Google Analytics, you can:
- Track user behavior, such as page views, session duration, and bounce rates.
- Examine your traffic sources (social media, direct, organic search, and referrals) to see where your visitors are coming from.
- Monitor conversion rates for specific goals you set, such as newsletter sign-ups or product purchases.
- Learn about your audience’s interests, devices, and demographics and how they visit your website.
Combined, these two tools share enough insights into your blog so that you can work on improving the SEO performance without needing to invest in other tools.
16. Add Audio and Videos
Videos are the new cool. Original and informative visuals have been and will continue to rule the blog world, but they now have audio and videos to aid them.
Adding videos has been shown to increase read time and reduce blog bounce rates. Not all visitors are fans of reading. When they get a video or an audio of the entire article, they can listen to it anytime without actually reading the content.
Videos also help you get that extra score for YouTube SEO, as you can upload these videos to your YouTube channel. For audio, many AI text-to-speech tools with WordPress integration make converting articles into audio a breeze.
If you have a podcast, add a recent episode that aligns with the blog topic. It makes space for more information for the readers at once.
Not everyone leverages this feature, automatically giving you an edge in the blog ranking. I’m working on adding the text-to-speech feature to my blog posts. Soon, you’ll see the feature in all of the posts.
17. Optimize For E-E-A-T
Google’s been pretty vocal about E-E-A-T lately, and for good reason. It’s not just another SEO buzzword; it’s the secret sauce to ranking well and keeping your readers returning for more.
Let’s break it down: E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust. These are not the direct ranking factors but affect how your blog will rank on the search results. Since many spammy websites do not share any real value and rank using unethical practices, Google uses E-E-A-T to determine your website’s authenticity.
I won’t discuss this topic much here since I’ve covered it in depth in one of my blog posts. But with E-E-A-T, you ensure the content you share has personal experience, not random facts. This shows your expertise. Also, your content should be transparent.
You can check out the article on E-E-A-T to understand exactly how it helps boost blog traffic.
18. Add Infographics
As the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” in the blogging world, an infographic can be worth a thousand clicks.
Infographics are all-rounder players of content. They:
- Break down complex ideas into digestible chunks
- Are highly shareable on social media
- Can attract backlinks like bees to honey
A kicker infographic drives in many backlinks. Look at the number of backlinks this Ahrefs article has bagged because of its neat and informative infographic.
You don’t need big tools to create infographics. Simple tools like Canva also do the trick.
19. Leverage Relationships With Other Bloggers
Remember when we talked about building relationships on LinkedIn? Well, it’s time to take those connections to the next level. They not only help build long-lasting relationships but also help with building backlinks and website authority.
Collaborations matter the most here. Think:
- Co-authored blog posts
- Podcast guest appearances
- Joint webinars
Each of these opens doors to new audiences. It’s like getting a VIP pass to someone else’s traffic party.
Build genuine relationships by commenting on their posts, sharing their content, and being a valuable connection before you ask for anything.
And when you do collaborate, make it a win-win. Bring your A-game, promote the heck out of the collaboration, and watch as both your audiences grow.
20. Optimize Your Site For Mobile
Let’s face it: we’re all glued to our phones. And Google knows it. That’s why they’ve gone mobile-first for indexing. In 2023, 96.3% users accessed internet from mobile.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Use a responsive design that adapts to all screen sizes
- Ensure your font is readable without zooming
- Make buttons and links “thumb-friendly”
- Compress images to speed up loading times on mobile networks
But don’t just take my word for it. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to see how your site stacks up.
Having a mobile-friendly website benefits more than just SEO. It benefits your audience.. And happy readers mean more traffic, shares, and success for your blog.
21. Create Free Tools
Want to know a secret? Some of my highest-traffic pages aren’t blog posts at all. They’re free tools.
Think about it. What does your audience struggle with? What calculations do they need to do regularly? What processes could be simplified?
Now, create a tool that solves that problem. It could be:
- A calculator (like a content readability scorer)
- A generator (like a blog title idea generator)
- A checker (like a meta description length checker)
These tools do three amazing things:
- They provide immense value to your audience
- They position you as an authority in your niche
- They attract links like crazy
Plus, they’re evergreen. Unlike a blog post needing regular updates, a good tool can keep bringing in traffic for years.
Just remember to make the tool genuinely useful, easy to use, and mobile-friendly. Do that, and you’ll have a traffic magnet that keeps giving.
Suggested reading: Best practices to run a blog
Conclusion: How To Increase Blog Traffic
There you have the 21 tips everyone can use to get blog traffic as beginners. These are powerful strategies I swear by.
Blogging isn’t about one big thing but a collection of many small things executed correctly. Start with these 21 steps to grow blog traffic, and you’ll surely see a surge.
Suggested reading: Best tools for blogging
Got any questions? Need my help to solve your blogging problems? Book a 1:1 call with me!
