It’s almost sure that Google can answer any thought or question you search on it.
The online world is saturated with inaccurate and uninteresting information. And as a result, we must compete against the excellent content already available and claw our way past the bad stuff, which is a huge task.
It’s the same reason why even great businesses with amazing blogs take a while to get things moving.
Having great content is not enough to drive traffic. It’s equally important to find readers as well as write the posts.
Here are five free ways to increase blog traffic, and, good enough, it works for any industry.
1. Create Guest Posts for Other Blogs
Guest post is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase traffic and visibility to your blog. In addition, your site’s visibility can increase significantly by writing guest posts on other blogs.
It’s an avenue to showcase your expertise to a broader audience. In return, your blog gets a backlink from another site, giving you an SEO boost.
There are several things you should consider when choosing where to submit your content for guest posting.
First, you need to consider the audience of the blog. Next, you must select a blog that is close to your target audience. Else you may end up wasting your time creating that content.
You might submit to sites such as Social Media Examiner and Social Media Today to sell social contest software. Although Kissmetrics covers social content and has a large readership, its focus is more on metrics than SEO.
Why You Should Consider Guest Posting
Most sites allow you to place one link in your guest post.
If you provide a bio, you can also link back to your site. But, of course, you should always ensure that you get at least one backlink to your site guest posting.
Websites such as Kissmetrics have precise rules regarding guest post linking.
Choose a site that has an engaged readership. Guest posting for a site that has 50 monthly visitors is not going to do much good. Likewise, the backlink won’t provide much benefit. Instead, try to place your content on sites with higher web authority.
Thus, You’ll get more visitors, and your link will be more prominent.
2. Share Posts on Social Media
Social media is a popular and free way to increase your blog traffic. In addition, it’s entirely free to participate.
Although paid campaigns like Facebook Ads and Promoted Pins can quickly deliver more results, regular, organic posts can still bring in much traffic to your site.
Businesses face the most significant challenge with social media: The intense competition for user attention.
While your readers may be active on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter each day, they follow hundreds of other people and businesses.
The algorithms are on nearly every platform so users can see the most crucial information.
Facebook is an excellent example of how this can affect Page engagement. Pages automatically get a lower priority and appear less often in Newsfeeds.
There are several strategies that you can use to get more clicks on social media.
For example, you can share your content multiple times on all platforms you are active. For example, use Hashtags for Instagram but not Facebook.
Share your best content multiple times on every platform, preferably throughout the day and spaced by weeks or months.
Keep an eye out for new social features. There are some essential platforms that all businesses should be using, but they all compete for users’ attention. Two examples are Instagram’s stories and Twitter moments.
You can get more results if you use new features to promote your blog while still innovative and exciting.
Then compile a list from your top blogs into one Twitter moment, or even better, include a list that provides for other users who have shared your posts. Then, feature it on your profile.
Change each update every time you share a post on the same platform, such as when you share it on Facebook 2 weeks later. For more clicks, use different quotes or appeal to various pain points.
3. Utilize Forum Marketing
Many times, the greatest obstacle to getting blog traffic is finding your target audience. Forum marketing is a highly efficient solution.
It allows you to have conversations, answer questions, and link to your content when appropriate. As a result, it’s possible to build relationships with your target audience members and professional peers.
There are many forums that you can participate in;
For example, if you sign up for the ASJA (American Society of Journalists & Authors), you will access valuable discussion forums.
For any questions related to marketing, you can visit Inbound.org or Warrior Forum. Nearly every industry has a forum to join, even dentistry forums!
To establish credibility, nurture relationships, and increase traffic to your site, you can also use question-and-answer sites such as Yahoo Answers and Quora.
Take care while using forum marketing. Don’t just look at the boards looking for opportunities to drop your links. Instead, you can answer most questions with thought and without linking to your resources.
People will be more open to link to your posts if you do. You will also be protected from being flagged for blatant promotions, which can happen on specific sites, such as Quora.
4. You Can Use Additional Publishing Platforms
Uploading your posts to other publishing platforms is a great way to increase content on your website.
These sites allow you to republish content and have large audiences who can search for your posts based on their interests and reading history.
Medium and LinkedIn Pulse are two examples of great publishing platforms. These platforms both offer the benefit of connecting you with interested readers.
On Medium, these readers could be your Twitter followers, while on LinkedIn, they will be your connections. Good enough, it’s free.
Medium allows you to upload posts directly from your website with just a few clicks. It also gives you proper attribution so that you don’t get dug by Google.
You shouldn’t limit your content to these platforms; it may cause you to lose the chance for interested readers and customers to click through the rest of your website.
Inbound links only link to other posts on the publishing platform. If you continue with this strategy, you may not see the results that you want from your content marketing.
Instead, upload the content to your blog first and then republish it on any platforms you choose. Make sure to include links back to your other posts related to this content.
5. Keyword Research
SEO is still essential. While social and direct links are the best ways to drive traffic to your website, SEO is also important.
If you want to drive free traffic to your website, you shouldn’t neglect keyword research. Targeting the right keywords can help you reach users actively looking for you.
Here are some of my favorite keyword research tools:
- Moz’s Keyword Explorer
- Keyword Tool
- SERPS
- Jaaxy
Moz’s Keyword Explorer can provide keyword suggestions based on your search. It can also show you keyword volume, difficulty amongst the competition, and potential opportunities for reaching your target audience.
You should optimize your blog post for one keyword. However, this does not mean that you should use the same keyword throughout your entire blog post.
Instead, it is best to use the phrase in alt text in your images, as a headline or two, and then naturally throughout the post.
Long-tail keywords are your friend when it comes to writing great content. For example, “Freeways to increase blog visitors” or “how I can get more traffic to my blog,” rather than short-tail keywords like “blog traffic.”
In addition, an SEO plugin for WordPress like Yoast is an excellent plugin if you have difficulty ranking for keywords. It will tell you which factors could hinder your ranking for your chosen keyword and what you can do to improve your post’s performance.
Conclusion
Let’s recap; here are five free ways to generate traffic to your blog
- Create guest posts for other blogs
- Share posts on social media
- Utilize forum marketing
- Use additional publishing platforms
- Keyword research
Good enough, they are all free, and you should leverage that.
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About The Author
Muslimah is a writer and blogger. She helps beginner bloggers scale their blogging business to spend more time with their families while working from home. When she's not spending time with her family and friends, you'll likely find her reading books or writing articles like this one.
Hi Muslimah, I think you addressed some good points here. Yes, guest posting is a great idea. I’ve never done a guest post before you are right about not doing one on a low DA website but then I would still say people should start somewhere so it is good practice still. I believe Neil Patel said though with Guest Posting you need to be very persistent with it. Even if you are writing the same articles but just in different ways.
As for your other ideas I would say Pinterest is an important one. Have never heard of Twitter moments I will have to look that up.
With Forum Marketing I use a few. I like BeerMoneyForum as you can earn Crypto each time you write a post. Anyway, the trick with forum marketing is to set up a catchy signature that is there every time you post. A lot of forums don’t allow you to share links but if you have a good signature you don’t need to.
Content marketing. I have dabbled in press releases this is something you can try and SEO is definitely the one. If you want passive income this is the thing to master.
I have not tried the press release yet, that’s a great idea.
Thank you for the comment, Alex.