Admit it.
You’ve left no stones unturned to write a blog post.
You share your blog articles on multiple social media platforms.
Still, you wonder why there is no traffic or readers on your blog?
Sounds similar? But, not anymore!
With this post, you’ll know how to direct traffic to your website and boost blog traffic.
When you’ve started your blog, every single website visitor feels like an esteemed guest. Better traffic motivates you to work even more and multiply it, but when you get low website traffic consistently you won’t feel like working.
If you check my blogging guide, you’ll know that a correct mix of SEO and quality content can help you get high quality blog visitors.
But, there’s more to it.
If you want to know the genuine ways to drive traffic to your blog or website, I have this post for you.
How To Direct Traffic To Your Website (Increase Website Traffic Fast & Free)
There are basically 4 sources of website traffic from which you get visitors to your blog, and they are:
- Organic Traffic: The traffic you get from Search engines (unpaid) such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.
- Direct Traffic: The traffic you get directly on your blog which means the visitors open you site by typing the address into their browser’s address bar or via bookmarks saved.
- Referral Traffic: The traffic you get from the links placed on any third party sites like social emedia platforms, other blogs where you’ve gotten mentions and backlinks.
- Paid traffic: The traffic you receive from the paid campaigns such as from Google Adwords, Facebook ads, Bing ads and other networks. You have to pay for this traffic.
Every traffic source has its own significance and a site must get traffic from at least from the first 3 sources.
Let’s dig deep into the ways of driving traffic to your website via different sources.
1) How To Drive Organic Traffic To Your Blog?
Organic traffic means the traffic from search engines. To me, Organic traffic is the king for blogs because it gives the best AdSense CTR and affiliate sales than what other traffic gives.
To build up search traffic you need to indulge yourself into SEO [Search Engine Optimization]. Yes, SEO is the only thing that can help you get organic traffic to your blog.
Recommended Reading: What are backlinks? And how to get more backlinks?
Below are few steps you should take to make your blog’s SEO better to improve search engine rankings, and thus better traffic from search engines.
a) Do Keyword Research
The traffic cycle of a blog begins with the search queries a user types in the search box of their browser, right?
These search terms are called keywords and you should know what keywords you want to rank for. Keyword research is by far the most important and long-term blog strategy that can help your blog with visibility and traffic. According to the latest SEO stats, almost 50% of the search queries are four words or longer. You can use SEMrush to find high potential, low-competition keywords that you can rank better.
Also read: Kwfinder Review
SEMrush also helps you spy what keywords your competitors are using so that you get access to their money-making keywords and use them in your own content strategy. Read the complete tutorial in my SEMrush discount page.
Click the below link to try SEMrush free for 30 days (worth $99.95) and find out tons of keywords for a year worth of content ideas.
Click Here For A 14 Day FREE Trial OF SEMrush »
b) Add proper meta tags for every blog post
When you publish a post, it’s like adding a page to your blog. Therefore, it must have meta title and description. Write better Meta titles in which include one of your targeted keyword, and make sure the title doesn’t go beyond 70 characters (including spaces).
Meta title impacts search engines the most so you must have to write a better one for each article.
Recommended reading:
- Blog post checklist to follow.
- Grammarly discount coupon to help you write flawlessly within budget
c) Update meta description
Meta descriptions should also be written well; you should use your targeted keyword 1 or 2 times in it. Write it as a sentence rather than just putting keywords. Make sure you write only 160-165 characters (including spaces) in it.
d) Focus on content optimization
Content is very important part of a web page as far as SEO is concerned. Always write unique and well-researched content which can solve your readers’ problems.
Must Read: On Page SEO Techniques that boosted my traffic by 325% in 6 months!
Scatter the targeted keywords throughout the content, most importantly use it the H1, H2 headings. If you can use at least one keyword in the very first paragraph, and in the very last paragraph of the article then it will better.
My Advice: Use keywords because that is what is going to bring you traffic but in order to keep that traffic and convert them to loyal readers or subscribers, focus on giving valuable information plus detailed problem-solving blog posts.
Don’t write very small articles because Google loves the descriptive content, and you may also target more keywords in the long articles. Most importantly write evergreen content which never gets old and drives you consistent traffic.
While writing, keep interlinking in your mind. Add links to the old articles with relevant anchor texts. It improves the overall linking structure of the blog. You may also link out to some informative posts published on other blogs wherever required.
Add images in the content as well, and add alt text to every image. You may use your keyword in the alt text. These are the things you need to do on the blog in order to optimize every article so that it can rank well in search engines, and thus, traffic may be generated. Here is a complete post on image optimization.
Now, there comes, Link building that improves the ranking of the blog post in SERPs. I have a detailed guide on building backlinks the SEO-friendly way.
You might be thinking that instead of traffic generation ways, I am telling you the way to do SEO. But don’t get me wrong because when it comes to driving organic traffic to your blog, SEO is indeed required so it was important to be discussed here.
e) Get your blog optimized for search
Whenver someone complains about having no traffic, the number one thing to consider would be is the blog optimised for search engines. Because that is the thing responsible to increase your direct traffic.
Here are a few things you should consider adding to your checklist:
1) Are you using a SEO-optimized theme?
A good theme makes your blog more optimized for crawling of search bots. Themes by Studiopress have been trusted and used by almost every authority blog. Some blogs like ShoutMeLoud also claim to have seen a bump after switching to genesis themes.
Even my blogs are powered with StudioPress (read StudioPress Sites review). I can vouch having seen a traffic and ranking bump after using it. Click here to learn more about Genesis themes. Or better yet read the ultimate WordPress theme comparison here.
- Foodie Pro Theme Review: Ultimate theme for food blogs
- AlienWP theme review: Best professional theme for minimal bloggers
2) Make your blog conversion-optimized
When your blog looks cluttered, your pitch goes down. Having a beautiful layout, a lot of white space and well aligned article structure converts visitors into subscribers. If you are not a designer and want to create landing pages or make your theme conversion-optimized you should try using Thrive Architect. I use them and they are just the best.
Check out my blogging mistakes to avoid article, you’ll see how I have designed it to boost user engagement, make them feel good and not bounce off. The article also makes good money from affiliate programs I promote in there.
3) Use proper plugins
I always stress about using the right number of plugins on your blog. There is no need to use all or too many of the plugins out there. If you want plugins to boost your SEO I have listed the best SEO plugins for WordPress (choose only 1 or 2 of them).
If you want to boost engagement you can use any of the plugins listed here. Most of these plugins are free of cost.
2. How to Drive Direct Traffic To Your Blog
To drive direct traffic to your blog, you don’t need to build backlinks rather you need to do branding. You need to build a good brand for yourself and for your blog so people wait for you to post your next blog post.
For this, you have to make your blog better with creative content. You could use a writing assistant like ProWritingAid (check how I use ProWritingAid here) or directly hop on to this page to avail your discount on ProWritingAid.
For example, many of us always wait for the next article on Quicksprout and Backlinko because they have built a great brand in the niche they are working. We know that these blogs always share great information and practical tips, that’s why we do wait for them to publish their next article.
Thus, branding is indeed important to get more direct traffic. Few of the ways you may try out to enhance branding on your blog:
a) Brand your images and graphics
Create informative infographics, and add your blog’s signature at the end. Then get it published on multiple blogs initially, and then you will notice more bloggers will be publishing that infographic on their blogs. The name you add at the end as signature works well and build a solid brand for you.
Most of my images have my branding or blog URL. Even if someone copies my blog images, either he can’t use it or in case he does, his audience will be quick to know about my blog. This is branding!
b) Make use of social media
Make use of Social media to promote your blog. When your friends and followers keep on getting update from your blog in their news feed then your blog gets fixed in their mind naturally, and whenever they want to see something on your site, they just type the URL in the browser and open your site.
Increasing direct traffic for your blog takes a bit of time because when your blog is new, no one knows it but after a year or so, many people remember it with its name.
You could use tools like Sendible (see Sendible and Hootsuite compared here) or use a social media scheduling tool like Social Pilot to automate the work.
c) Choose a reliable hosting
Many times, a cheap hosting costs you even more than what the costliest ones do. How? By betraying you. Most cheap hosting services do not keep your server active and your blog goes down every now and then. Sometimes, it would be opening at your end but not for someone overseas.
Also Read:
- StudioPress Themes Review complete solution with website, genesis themes, hosting, podcast platform and lead gen forms.
- WPX Hosting Review: best affordable and fast hosting
- Flywheel hosting review: Best hosting for freelancers and website developers
Now this reader would never bother visiting your site again, because c’mon there are a heck lots of sites other than yours. Definitely not a good sign for branding!
Some shared hosting also host malicious websites and adult or casino blogs on your server, this is the worst that can happen. Google thinks your blog too falls in that category and thus demotes it. If you still want shared hosting, I use and recommend Bluehost.
Click the image below to avail exclusive deal of Bluehost at only $3.49.
If you want VPS, I have listed some of the world’s best yet affordable VPS hosting services for your blog. Check out the most affordable and cheap VPS hosting services!
3) How to Drive Referral Traffic to your blog
Driving referral traffic to your blog is a time-consuming task but it’s very important to get referrals because those visitors are the ones who are actually interested in your content.
The reason is, they read the post title first when they see the post either on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, in commentluv links, so they click only if they are interested in the post. Thus when they come they do spend time on your blog.
Pro Tip: Write Killer Headlines to increase the CTR of the links you have shared on social media sites or other sites.
Below are the best ways to get referral visitors:
a) Blog commenting
It is one of the best ways to drive targeted referral traffic to your blog. Not only me but the experts also agree with this. For example, you may check out this video post on Quicksprout in which you will learn how to drive targeted traffic from blog commenting.
You can use a plugin like Thrive comments to convert your readers like crazy. How?
- By showing an optin form right after commenting
- By giving them an affiliate coupon or showing them an ad
- By asking them to follow you on social media platforms, right after they submit their comment.
- Check out how to do it and more in my detailed Thrive comments review.
b) Social Sharing
People are the readers, and they hang out mostly on social media websites such as Facebook, Google+ twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. So sharing every blog post on these social sites can get you a good number of visits.
I am able to drag so much of traffic from Facebook and LinkedIn because I am working more on it. Therefore, you should make use of social media to drive referral traffic to your blog. Here are 39 ways I use to promote my blog on Facebook.
You can also use a tool like SocialPilot to schedule social media posts to save time.
Recommeded reading:
- How to get a lot of likes on Facebook
- How to make viral quizzes like BuzzFeed and drive massive traffic
c) Using Blog communities
There are many good blogging communities are live on the Internet which you can use to drive traffic to your blog. You can share your article on these sites, and also do some activity like voting, sharing and commenting for others’ blog posts in order to get the same from different people out there.
Recommended Reading: Relationship marketing strategies for bloggers to get more raving fans.
Few of those communities are:
- Klinkk.com
- Bizsugar.com
- Aha!NOW.com
- Kingged.com
d) Guest blogging
In Guest blogging strategy, you publish a blog post on other blogger’s blog and in return you get an author bio and link to your blog. Google is now against the guest blogging practices which are done for link building purpose [SEO Purpose], so try not to use it for SEO purpose but you can always use it to drive referral traffic to your blog.
Make sure to add rel=”nofollow” tag to the links you get for your blog so that Google will not have any issues.
4) How to drive paid traffic to your blog
As the name says, you have to pay to get traffic. Google Adwords, Facebook ads, Bing ads and other advertising networks take money from you and show your site’s ads in their publisher network websites and blogs. However, paid traffic is uncommon for blogs, and is mostly used for business and E-commerce websites.
Concluding: How to get free website traffic easily
Traffic is important for your blog thus getting to know the right ways to drive traffic to your blog is important. This post ain’t boasting something you don’t know as I wanted to frame a mini guide for quick reference when someone wanted to know how to increase traffic for his blog posts.
Hope this helps! How do you drive traffic to your blog?
What are your thoughts on how to increase traffic through Google? Share your favorite tactics for instant website traffic in the comments below.
Hey Swadhin Sir, Thanks for writing such a detailed article it will defiantly help a newbie to grow your blog.
Regards,
Umer Qureshi
Hey Buddy,
Amazing Post!!
If you have a blog you need a constant flow of blog traffic. There’s no point in having a blog if you don’t have any visitors coming to your site.
Yes, I totally agree with you that traffic is like the result of the efforts you put towards building your blog.
So, that is why you should know some good lists to get the best ways to boost your blog traffic.
As you clearly mention all the effective ways to boost the blog traffic, but according to me among all the ways, blog commenting is the best ways to get more traffic to your blog.
Blog commenting is very helpful as it gets readers of other blogs to check out your content on your website and second it creates backlinks to help you site in the search engines.
Regards
Anjali Desai
Hello Swadhin,
Nothing much better than this to start of the week :)
Everybody wants more and more traffic to their blogs, thats why we are all here. I have been too working to engage more and more traffic to my blog post, as I am a newbie but still want a moderate amount of traffic to my blogs so that it could motivate me a lot for moving forward.
These are some great tips which I need to work upon, doing some of these things already and need to work on the new ones. Your SEO tricks are really pretty awesome and it is always a pleasure to learn and seek things from your side.
Thanks for the share.
Have a great week ahead.
Shantanu.
Hi Swadhin,
Really awesome article for every blogger! Yes, getting traffic is not too easy until you follow some tricks like as your 4 Powerful tactics! Firstly, content is always king. But if we sit back by only publishing content, we can not get expected result. What we need is to promote blog as much as possible by following like you tricks.
However, it is a great article. Thanks for sharing an informative article with us. Eager to know more traffic driving tricks from you. Bookmarked!
What a great post! I have been working on increasing my blog traffic, and have invested quite a bit of time promoting my blog posts and freebies in Facebook groups, and on social media in general. I have never used blog communities, and will definitely look into that. Thanks for sharing!
Great “mini” tips here! I’m really trying to build up my organic traffic. I know that SEO is a long term game and hoping that putting in the effort now will pay off in the coming months. I also noticed that my organic search for my blog by my name or my blog name goes up every month so yay for that!
Thanks for your tips,
Nadalie
Swadhin I wrote a post like this a while ago but with a focus on paid traffic sources so it was great to read yours. I really like your writing style so you’ve inspired me to go back and fill mine out with more little nuggets like you’ve done! Cheers
Hi Swadin,
Came across your link while sharing on VCB! Although i have been here some few times ago while i used to blog actively but now that am back i think its time i added your blog to my list of god stuffs.
Great share.
Hello Swadhin
Dude i’m inspire about your writing Skill and You done great Post this time.Thanks For that
Regards
Kunal Shah
Hi swadhin,
I was able to connect to many great bloggers through Rohan’s network. And in the same way I came to meet a great blogger like you.
Honestly speaking, I really haven’t read much on this blog. But after reading this article i will be one of your loyal. readers.
This article is clearly organised and was written in simple way so than anyone can understand. I really love this way found here.
I was really worried about my blog traffic, and those simple tips written in undersatandable way helped me alot. Thanks for the great post swadhin. And can you suggest me an article about keword research?
Thanks a lot. Looking forwrd to connect with you.
Hey Swadhin,
Thank you for the excellent mini guide on traffic, you have covered the basics well and in detail.
Yes, SEO basics is important as that is everything you base on. The articles has to be long and in-depth with optimized keywords. The quality of content matters a lot, that is how the branding starts.
Good to see bloging communities like Kingged, Aha-Now, Bizsugar and Klink mentioned – they are all great places to network and promote.
Social Sharing and Blog commenting will always remain vital parts of blogging. One needs to keep that going as a basic priority.
Hi Swadhin Bro,
Great post indeed :)
Driving traffic to your website is not an easy task but you need to make more efforts to get it in a better way. As you explain in your post that organic traffic is must necessary and to get a high quality of organic traffic you need to be more techy.
Without keyword research you can not think about the organic traffic so you need to do keyword research in a perfect way.
The other thing is optimizing the images and content is must necessary which helps you to boost your web ranking.
All the way you shared here are awesome.
Thanks a lot.
Naveen
Hello, Swadhin Sir!
Nice post indeed. Driving traffic to the blog is core intention of any blogger. I have been following some of the above-mentioned tactics already, but few of them are new to me. I got to know many new things after reading this article. One of them is driving traffic via infographics. Another good thing I came to know about is backlinko. It is certainly a good website to learn about SEO and keys regarding blogging. A good piece of writing. Must say! Thanks for sharing such a useful post. :)
Nice post for the bloggers Swadhin!
Driving a huge traffic to a blog is the dream & goal of every blogger and thus we work hard in all possible directions to get visitors through multiple channels.
I would like to drive organic traffic and thus I do keyword research. I also need the readers as direct & referral traffic and hence performing guest blogging, blog commenting, involving in social media activities etc.
As of now, I’m not interested to get paid traffic, may be I try in the near future. Good content Swadhin, keep your good work.
Hi Swadhin,
Informative post indeed :)
Yes, a mini-guide alright, but it’s got all the things one really needs to know about driving traffic to our blogs. I liked the way you explained the various four ways that exist. Yes, organic traffic is the best way, though for new bloggers it takes a while to reach there as they are new and still finding their way about.
I’d like to add here that we need a perfect circle graph if possible, where there is equal division of traffic source to our blogs, something we are getting for a while now – that creates the perfect balance. Thus, if one source doesn’t work, the others will keep working, and this way you aren’t just dependent on one traffic source either.
You’re right about all the other things you mentioned. Speaking of myself, I know blog commenting and the power of social media have always worked to bring readers to my blog – that still works, in addition to the rest. Never tried paid traffic, so no idea about it – guess one doesn’t need it either!
Thanks for sharing this with us, and mentioning the ABC (Aha!NOW Blog Community) as well. Have a nice week ahead, and we meet once I am back from my blogging break, as mentioned in my last post. Till then, take care and be well :)
Hi Swadhin,
I think this is my first comment in this blog. I had been to this blog so many times but I don’t remember making a comment. Thanks Swadin for sharing very informative and valuable posts.
Swadin, I have a doubt regarding the branding of images that you mentioned in the post. Can we use infographics created by other people without their permission on our blog . Is it a copyright infringement or not?
Looking forward to read more contents from you.
Have a great day.
Reji Stephenson
Hello Reji,
Branding with Info graphics works like this. A person who makes an infographics embed on his blog, also shows a embedded code to add to your blog if you want to add that infographic. Its a legal way to add that embed code on to your blog, which in fact gives him a back link , rather than downloading the images and uploading on your blog.
So a infographic can bring backlinks and more eyeballs to his brand.
Hi Justin and Swadhin
I was actually mentioning about the images we use on the blog and not about the infographics created for using in multiple blogs. For example, if I use one of the images from this blog which is having Swadhins site name on it, is it o.k. without his permission and i may add image source as his site name.
Hoping to hear from you soon.
Have agreat day
Regards
Reji Stephenson
Hi Reji,
Legally you are not allowed to use anything (graphics, text, art, media) etc from oher blogs/writers without their permission. However many times, permission may be sufficed by giving a link back to the image owner in the form of “source” or “image credit”. Most won’t settle in for a site name you have to give them a backlink which is SEO friendly too :)
In case you are using a sensitive or highly valuable image or say infographic you can just message/mail the owner to ask if you can use. Most will agree if you offer a linkback.
P.S. Do not use other people’s photos and pretend its your own. Image creators take his as an infringement. :) Hope this helps :)
Hi Swadhin,
Indeed a quick check guide on traffic generation strategies. Oraganic traffic is a great deal. To get ranked on top of Google, the points you mentioned are perfect. Just to add on that, mobile optimized theme or template(responsive) is also must.
Your blog is perfect example of getting Direct traffic since its now a brand and most visits your blog daily.
Infographic is great take from the new referal traffic point.
No idea with paid traffic but it works great since its optimized to users based on geographic locations ..due to which conversion would pretty high.
Great post …Happy blogging !!
Thanks Swadhin Sir, for writing this great post. It is very helpful for a newbie like me. I will implement ideas given by you. Let me check how much traffic it brings to my blog.
Have a great week ahead.
Thanks
Saurabh