4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic

by Daniel in 188 Comments — Updated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Have you hit a page views ceiling on your website?  That’s fairly common among people with newer blogs.  You get everything set up, you fill your site with content, you add to it on a regular basis and at first you grow…to about a hundred or so page views per day.

And then, things seem to stall.  You get stuck at the “around a hundred page views per day” mark and struggle to grow much beyond that.

If that’s the problem you’re facing, you’re in luck!  You’re in luck because a) it means you’ve done the basics right, and b) your site is more-or less working, just on a smallish scale.

That means it’s time to enter a new phase of traffic growth and that requires a very different strategy than what you’ve been doing to this point.  Here’s a quick overview and a list of strategies you can employ, starting today, to take your page views to the next level.

Spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally).

First Step: Killer Articles (1-2 hour per day)

Killer Posts are generally time consuming to write, so don’t be surprised if you struggle to generate one per week.  If you do, shoot for one every other week.  The point is, you want to add a big, meaty post like that to your blog at regular intervals.

Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on).

Killer Posts are generally time consuming to write, so don’t be surprised if you struggle to generate one per week.  If you do, shoot for one every other week.  The point is, you want to add a big, meaty post like that to your blog at regular intervals. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work .

So what makes a killer post?

Well, as you might expect, they take numerous forms, including:

  • Compiled lists of high value resources for people in your niche (“Ten free art programs that will take your digital art to the next level” – or similar)
  • Detailed tutorials – This assumes you have a certain level of expertise in your niche and can teach others to do something they may be struggling with.
  • Solve a problem in your niche – Again, this assumes you’re an expert in your niche (and you should be!). Think back to one of the problems you encountered early on and explain how you solved it.  Or, identify a common problem that others are having in the niche and demonstrate how to solve it.  Either approach lands you in the same place.

When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my social media account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”

Second Step: Networking (30 minutes per day)

To execute #2 successfully, you’ve got to understand your market.  That means, you’ve got to know at least a little something bout demographics.

Who are the people most interested in your niche?  Are they predominantly male or female?  How old?  Do they tend to be single, married, or an even mix of the two?  What are their preferred social media channels?

Some of this, you can find out just by exploring the corners of the internet related to your niche.  Where do you look for content about your niche?  Odds are, that’s where most others who are interested in the topic are looking too, and that’s the social media channel you want to embrace.

Build a presence for yourself there, both by sharing your own content, but also by liking, commenting on, and sharing the content of others who have a strong presence in your niche.  Form a kind of “virtual posse” with 5-8 of these people and become an active presence, both on their websites and on their social media channels.

When you write one of your “Killer posts,” share it with them.  If they agree that it’s high value, you’ll start getting backlinks from them, and you’ll be able to increasingly tap into their followers.  That’s when you start seeing really rapid, next-level growth.

Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:

  • commenting on other blogs in your niche,
  • linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
  • interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.

Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together.

Your blog is your blog, but if that’s all you’re doing, you’re missing huge potential traffic streams.  Your killer blog posts make a great starting point for a video script.  You can essentially record yourself talking about the same topic and upload the video to YouTube or other video sharing repository.

This gets your content in front of a different set of eyes and plays into the fact that different people learn and use the web in different ways.

Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day)

The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:

  • letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
  • letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
  • getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
  • getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
  • posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.

If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.

Fourth Step: Normal Posts (30 minutes per day)

Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles.

In addition to your periodic “killer posts,” you should be regularly adding lesser content to your site.  This is no less well written, but these smaller posts are much more narrowly targeted.  If your killer post is the steak, these are the potatoes and side salad that go with it.  You need both for a good, well-rounded meal.

“The Basics” also includes making sure you’re hitting all of the basic SEO Best Practices, including the little details like good interior linking, image tags and the like.  Never lose sight of these details!

There are, of course, plenty of other things you can do to take your pageviews to the next level, but even if all you do is execute these four things on a regular basis, you’ll find your pageview count growing at a steady clip!

For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:

  • a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
  • a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
  • a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
  • a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers

While killers articles are essential to promote your blog and bring new readers aboard, normal posts are the ones that will create diversity in your content and keep your readers engaged.

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188 thoughts on “4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic”

  1. I am privileged to be the 100th commenter, i do write killer articles and my site traffic has averaged at around 300, i will take you up on the other tips, but i believe in blogging “Content is King” MANTRA

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  2. Great tips. Yes I need more visitors and this tips give me a lots ideas. Your step by step article is really help me. Thanks

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  3. Thank you for your advice. I love my new hobby of blogging and the outlet of expressing my thoughts. I am new to blogging and your shared information is greatly appreciated. I wish continued success.

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  4. Thanks, this is the most relevant, straight-forward content I have yet seen on this seemingly overwhelming subject. This is exactly the kind of practical advice I was looking for. THANKS!

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  5. Excellent advice Darren. I usually do a killer article every week or so. I’ve learned that it’s more about quality than quantity; I used to think that I had to post every day but when decided to post only when inspired my readership went up.

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  6. Hmm. that link didn’t seem to work, but if you go to my site, you’ll know exactly which post is the killer one!

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  7. Just found this site, and I like it a lot. Subscribed already.
    This post was one of the few posts in the last month that really struck me.

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  8. Thanks for the tips, Daniel. I recently found Daily Blog Tips and I’m now subscribed. I look forward to reading more of your content in the coming days.

    Reply
  9. Thanks very much for the article. This is exactly the way to go.
    Just my opinion – personally, I don’t have the patience to scan through lists containing more than 20 services/items. But that’s just me.

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  10. @Slavi, some will, others will read it in full. Regardless, they will all perceive the article as something valuable, which will increase their chances of sharing the article with other people.

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  11. Thank you for this article! Writing has always been a passion and past time of mine. I love creative writing in particular, but I never paid attention until recently to what it takes to bring writing to a new level on-line and via blogging (for anything other than the fun of it that is!) I appreciate posts like this that give us a daily plan :0)

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  12. I’ve never thought of doing killer articles before…but now…the aim is one a week. Thanks for sharing!

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  13. I think I spend too much time networking. But it seems to work for me. Great advice, I really need to work on the “Super Killer Article”.

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  14. hi,
    it awesome tips. my problem is to write articles…
    before this, all most i use plr articles for my blog…any sugesstion?

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  15. Great content! It is so easy to forget the fundamentals of why we chose to blog about a certain subject. Great posts= followers. Great posts take time AND thought… Thanks for the reminder!!!

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  16. @Ching, my advice is to not get obsessed with the analytics. I recommend checking it weekly or even monthly, but making sure that you evaluate what is going on (keywords, referrals, etc).

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  17. With everything said and done, the winning factor is hard work, patience and persistence. These are the basic guidelines for bloggers to adhere and kick off their traffic-influx campaign. By having proper analytics or monitoring apps, one could benefit from knowing which strategy works best within each steps. I wonder does anybody here, or Daniel yourself, have any suggestions or experience in monitoring traffic source via analytic applications?

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  18. Writing is the key to getting traffic… But only if it is quality work. I have found that pillar/killer articles are the best way to get consistent traffic and build new members in your community.

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  19. I normally spend 10 hours to research and writing blog.
    Sometimes it makes me tired but bring traffic a lot.
    In my opinion, writing regularly is a good way to get more traffic.

    Reply
  20. waw this is nice and great article, please let me translate it to indonesia in my blog [i already sent a trachback to this article]

    Reply

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