Many businesses have tried blogging as a traffic-generating tactic, but given up after not seeing enough Return on Investment (ROI). Blogging can help you rank in Google, but it takes time. In the meantime, you will need to figure out how to drive traffic to your blog (yes, even if you started your blog to drive traffic to your website.)
This article contains affiliate links if you choose to make a purchase after clicking on a link, we would receive a small commission. We only recommend products and services that we would use ourselves.
1. Frequency and consistency
How often you should blog will depend on your business. In some businesses, you need to blog twice a week to stay ahead of the competition. In others you can blog one a month. Once a week is probably fine for most.
Take a look at your competition. How often do they update their blogs? Don’t give up if you find out they blog rarely or never. If no one in your industry is blogging, it might just give you the competitive edge to exceed their rankings.
Stick to the point of your website. Writing on a variety of unrelated topics will confuse your visitor and Google won’t know how to classify your site. Ask yourself if your post topic would interest your ideal client. Although you may want to build a personal relationship with your customer, don’t mistake your blog for a journal. If you don’t know what to write about, consider the questions that your customers frequently have about your product or service. You can even look for questions on Google and Quora. Read the comments on other blogs to find out what concerns people have about your topic and what questions they have that aren’t being answered.
2. Social media
You may already have social media accounts set up. This is another place where businesses tend to become discouraged quickly. A social strategy is more than posting your offer and waiting for a response. Social media is about sharing content, generating engagement, listening and responding. Having a schedule to post your content is only one piece of the puzzle. You should also ask questions, respond to other comments and share content that isn’t from your business. Set a goal to grow your accounts and decide how you are going to do it.
If you have more than one account, you might want to start with the most popular one for your business. The table below has a list of some of the most popular social sites. However, this may not apply to your visitors. For example, LinkedIn has fewer users than some other sites, but if you are marketing to business executives, it is essential to be on LinkedIn. Once you grasp your most popular platform, work your way down the list until you have a plan for each popular platform:
Users Per Month
| Facebook: | 2.23 billion |
| YouTube: | 1.8 billion |
| WeChat: | 1 billion |
| Instagram: | 800 million |
| LinkedIn: | 500 million |
| Reddit: | 330 million |
| SnapChat: | 300 million |
| Google Plus: | 300 million |
| Pinterest: | 200 million |
| Twitter: | 68 million |
| Tumblr: | 50 million |
Don’t forget to add social media buttons to your blog to allow your readers to share your post.
3. Optimize your titles and headlines
Your headline should be strong enough to encourage people to click, contain your main keyword and offer something that your reader hasn’t already read on a competitor site. You might want to test a few headlines until you find something that converts your visitor into a reader. Don’t forget to add subheads and add secondary keywords or keyword variations to help your reader (and Google) figure out what your blog post is about.
4. Photos and videos
Blogs aren’t just about text anymore. While it’s true that search engine robots can’t read photos and videos, they can read the metadata (unseen descriptive text) that you add to them. Plus, photos and videos will make your website much more attractive to your visitors. You can add behind-the-scenes photos of your workplace, videos of your people at work, employees and owners explaining their jobs, explainer videos about your product and service, video testimonials and other company-specific images. Stock photos, quotes overlaid over a related image, graphs and infographics are also good visual content. Hosting your videos on YouTube and embedding them can give you a slight boost in Google, which happens to be the biggest search engine.
5. Link-building
The Internet is a web (a world-wide web, in fact). Everything on the web is connected and, if you’re connected, you can be found on the web. You can ask other sites that aren’t direct competitors to host your link in order to develop inbound links. This may even take the form of a guest blog. You can link out to high-quality sites. You can also link internally to your most important pages. You will want the most links going to your top-level pages.
6. Pay
Facebook has announced that they are prioritizing posts from people – not businesses - in newsfeeds. Even if people have liked your business page, they may only see a tiny fraction of your posts. You may want to boost your posts on Facebook. For a small price, such as $5 a day, you can get your post in front of people who match your target market.
7. Email
Convert your visitors to subscribers so they will keep coming back to read your blog. You can use a pop-up form that appears just before the visitor exits the page to collect email addresses. Offering a free download of some valuable content such as an ebook will increase your conversion rate. Then, remember to email your subscribers consistently, as well.
8. Write long
It seems counterintuitive because for years people have been telling us that people on the Internet have low attention spans. However, researchers discovered that this was not necessarily the case. In fact, articles over 1,000 words had the most engagement and the most social shares. This is because a long article gives the reader more value than a short one. Additionally, Google’s robots will perceive that your article has more information than a shorter one. Try to aim for 1,000 words or more, but don’t just repeat yourself and add meaningless filler. Make sure that the information you are providing is concisely stated. Keep your paragraphs short and use headers, images and graphics to break up the text. A giant wall of text will scare people away.
9. Long-tail keywords
A new blog will have trouble ranking for keywords, but keyword phrases are a different story. Use a tool like Google Keyword Planner to find phrases that relate to your target market. The trick is to find phrases that have a medium to high search volume with low to medium competition.
It’s also important to understand your buyer’s intent when they are searching for a keyword phrase. Someone searching for “cat pictures” probably just wants to look at cute pictures of cats. Someone looking for “cat portraits” may want to buy a picture of a cat. Someone looking for “cat portrait photography” may want to take a picture of a cat. Someone looking for “need a portrait photographer for my cat” probably wants a photographer to take a professional picture of a cat.
Type your main keywords into Google and look at the suggested search queries at the bottom of the page.
10. Network
Take advantage of the audiences of other people in your general niche. While you may not want to mention a direct competitor, you can make connections with people who provide related services or blog about things related to what you are selling. Some examples of online networking are:
- Offering a guest blog post to a related website with a link back to your website. Once it’s published, share widely. Mention the person who published your post, so that they will also share it.
- Mention someone positively on social media. Chances are they will share or respond and their audience will see it.
- Mention someone when you share a blog post on Twitter. There is a strong chance they will retweet it if it is relevant to them.
- If you talk about someone’s product or service in a blog post, let them know so that they can share it with their followers.
- Do a roundup of a bunch of different blogs and related services. For example, a real estate agent might want to do a roundup of local businesses selling home décor products. Once you’ve published the roundup, let the businesses know that you mentioned them and they may share your post. Make sure that at least some of them are active on social media.
- Ask people to share your post. It sounds spammy, but in reality when people ask for retweets on Twitter, they usually get results.
Are you looking for more traffic for your business or non-profit website? Words Plus Design specializes in expanding organic reach. Book a call to find out how we can help you.
Book a discovery call to find out if our service is right for your business or organization
Shella Gardezi is a marketing, PR and SEO specialist with experience doubling website traffic and sales and getting features in national publications and on the airwaves.