How to Increase Your Blog Traffic and Get More Followers
How to Increase Traffic to Your Blog Today
Momma bloggers, want to know how to increase traffic to your mom blog and grow lots of followers? I have practiced the tips below and they.really.work! I want to provide you with the best stuff so that you are successful as a mom blogger. I understand your time is precious (need a weekly planner?) and your kids are more important than your blog, so make your time count and find the strategies that will work to grow your audience.
I have sorted the list and put the easiest and quickest tips at the top so you can focus on quick changes and big results. Enjoy! If you haven’t started your blog yet, here is a step by step tutorial or go here if you’re stuck on what you should blog about. Then come join me and make money from home!
*This post contains affiliate links.
Step 1: Get traffic to your blog for free: Be Part of the Blogging Community
That advice mom gave you when you were 5 years old, do unto others as you want them to do unto you, yes that advice, it still works! And especially in the blogging world where everyone wants to get traffic and make money. The best way to do this is by helping others out first, and have the favors returned. (Reciprocity – a persuasion technique – if you’re into the science behind why people do things.) Return emails, reply to comments, share their posts and link to them on your site.
Half of my product sales come from my email list. (Here are my income reports to show how I make money with my blog) It’s valuable! Nourish your email list and treat each person like your #1 customer and friend!
How do you become a part of the blogging community effectively?
- Leave comments
- Leave enticing and insightful comments on others’ posts. This will compliment the blogger and will increase the likelihood of a reader clicking through to see your blog.
- Help Others
- Go out of your way to help someone else, that one person could potentially have a huge influence somewhere that could help you in the future.
- Besides, this should be one of the reasons you become a blogger. To connect with others in your niche, to learn from them and share their advice.
- Be a Friend
- Your followers will increase if you’re nice and genuine and kind. Even if it is just that one person, that is one more follower for your blog. That one person could share the story of how genuine you are, and bring you additional followers.
- If you’re a friend to someone, they have a much higher tendency to link back to your blog on their website. These back links increase traffic to your blog and your rankings in SEO.
- Share Others’ Posts
- This will build up your reputation in the blogging community as someone helpful and will get you followers. Share smaller and larger bloggers’ posts. Let them know through Twitter (or another social media platform) that you loved their recent article and send them a quick compliment. Most of the time they will retweet/reshare it and it will show up on their feed. That puts your name in front of all their followers, bonus!
- Have Role Models
- Build relationships with your role models. Share their posts, comment on their articles, learn from them. By learning from others you will become a better blogger. Additionally, you will see below how these relationships will come in handy for helping your site grow traffic.
Sound like the things you learned in kindergarten? Yup! Those golden rules apply in blogging too. Even Dale Carnegie dives deeply into the concepts just described in his world famous book that has been published for over 75 years, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. I’m reading it now and it’s brilliant!
The only way to have a friend is to be one. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Step 2: Write Quality Posts: Increase your blog traffic and followers
You want to produce content that people find useful and are easy to implement. Those are the types of posts that get the most shares. Like this one!
- Focus on Your Audience
- Always think about your reader’s needs and how you can transform their lives. Your readers are busy and have a lot of things to do, how can you positively impact and improve their day?
- Find sites that are in your niche and read the comments. Or join Facebook groups in your niche and read what people are struggling with. When you see a theme, this is what you need to write about. This will give you guidance to create fantastic posts!
- Post should be useful, practical and easy to implement with quick results.
- Example: During pregnancy I get very nauseous, my mom (love my mom!) advised me to drink water with lemon juice in it and shred an apple, wait 30 minutes until it turns brownish, and then eat it. Sounds crazy, but it worked immediately! That is my number one tip I give pregnant mommies.
- Always think about what’s in it for your reader. How will your blog post transform them and improve their lives?
- Post Often
- The more times you post, the more chances there are for search engines to find and rank you, and the more opportunities you give your readers to share your content.
- But don’t let the increase in frequency decrease your quality. If you have to chose, always post quality over quantity.
- I post 4-5 times a month and get great engagement. I’m not always creating content, I spend half of my time promoting my content, nourishing my email list, creating products and testing new strategies.
- Here are 25 blog post ideas for when you need inspiration.
- When I’m short on time I make sure to do one of these quick blog tips and tricks to help my blog grow and gain more followers.
Posts should be useful, practical & easy with quick results.
Step 3: Guest Post to Increase Blog Traffic
From your list of role models (if you don’t have a list yet, check out the importance of making your list of role models) find a role model that is in your niche. You want their audience to be the audience you want to target. If they have a completely different following, guest posting on their blog will only bring you Hi-Bye traffic. Visitors will stop by but not follow you as they won’t be the audience you’re targeting.
- Research: Go through their blog and research their most popular posts. It will be the posts with the most shares on social media and most comments. That will show you what their audience likes.
- Write: Write a guest post that is in the same category as their most popular post because you already know that their audience will like it.
- Back links: Be sure to include one or two back links to your own blog to revert traffic back. Check with your role model what their guidelines are for guest posting.
- Share: When you send the post to your role model, you already know they and their audience likes the topic, so you chances of success are much greater!
I guest posted on a few sites and the sales for my ebook, Blog by Number, went through the roof! Trust me, if you guest post on the right blogs, it will be so worth it! From these few guest posts alone my income doubled from June to July! Guest Post #1: Time Management for Mom Bloggers Guest Post #2: Blogger Success Interview
How to Get Traffic and Grow Your Followers to a New WordPress Blog
Step 4: Build Your Email List and Drive Traffic to Your Blog when You Decide
Your email list is one of the most valuable assets of your blog. Search algorithms can change and social media platforms can come and go, but your email list is yours to keep. These are the people that trust you with a key to their inbox, treat it with the utmost respect. Below you can see my growth from day to day.
As of October 2016 – I’m at 4,223 subscribers.
Update: June 2017 I’m over 20,000 subscribers. If you want to know how I use Convertkit to do all this, you can check out the List by Numbercourse.
Update: May 2018 – I’m at 40,096 subscribers.
Update: March 2021 – I’m at 70,000 subscribers.
- How to build an email list?
- The easiest way is to install the plugin SumoMe and set it up with your desired type of subscription box popup.
- Sign up for a Convertkit account and create a list (you can get a free month of Convertkit when you enroll in the Blog by Number course). This is the site that you will use to create email campaigns and store all of your followers automatically.
- Update: since I grew my list to over 2,000 fairly quickly I switched to Convertkit after starting with MailChimp. Their automations and email templates are pure gold and have helped to increase my product conversions tremendously! I now average around adding 50 subscribers a day.
- Here is more help on how to build an email list for beginners.
- I also design super pretty printables for my readers, and they love them! In this post I show you how I create printables that have grown my email list! I also go into more depth in the Optins ABC course!
- Offer the visitors something of value!
- What would make you give out your email address? Think about the sites where you share your email address, and about those sites that have pop up windows that you almost instantly close. What is the difference between these sites?
- Follow Me vs Valuable Freebie: When I changed my signup from “Follow my blog and read more about my life” to “Here is an awesome, valuable freebie you can use right now” my signups increased instantly!
- Again, focus on your ideal visitor. If they feel the site is ‘for them’ they will follow, love and share you.
- Connect Individually: Initially, do not be afraid to reach out to each follower individually. Build that connection and personal relationship. I know it is time consuming, but it helps to build a loyal following.
- What would make you give out your email address? Think about the sites where you share your email address, and about those sites that have pop up windows that you almost instantly close. What is the difference between these sites?
- Strategic Sign Up Boxes
- Setup Google Analytics and use its analysis of your site (it’s all free) to find your most popular post.
- In this post, place a strategic sign up box for visitors to subscribe to your blog. You can do this by embedding a sign up form from MailChimp or Convertkit.
- How to use your email list to grow traffic?
- Weekly Roundup: Email a weekly roundup of best tips to your subscribers.
- Exclusivity: Email them an exclusive post that you have not published on your blog. Make them feel special.
- Call to Action: Always have a Call to Action to let the reader know what to do. Ask them to share your article on social media, this in turn will bring more visitors and potential subscribers to your blog. And the beautiful circle of building your blog continues!
- Consistency: The growth will be slow at first, but grow exponentially if you keep up this consistency and rhythm.
Step 5: Write Posts That Grow Your Traffic
There are definitive posts that will help boost your traffic if you use the correct strategies. If you want a larger list of blog post ideas, check out these 25 blog post ideas for when you need inspiration.
- Interview Bigger Bloggers
- This can drive great amounts of traffic to your site.
- Reach out to one of your role models who has a large following.
- Find a hot topic that will benefit both of your audiences and come up with a list of interview questions to ask.
- Ask questions that do not have yes/no answers, that put your role model and yourself in a good light, and that are fun and engaging.
- Also, keep the question list to around 10 out of respect to your role model’s time.
- You may have to email a few role models to get a yes.
- Always send the completed and edited post to them for review before you publish it on your blog.
- Don’t forget to thank them.
- Example: I emailed 3 role models of mine, and 2 returned with a yes. I interviewed both on a very interesting topic. The posts were shared on their social media accounts and drove massive traffic to my site. Additionally, those are still very popular posts as readers love the easy format of a question and answer post. And the real-life look into another person’s life is exciting, especially if it’s on a topic my readers are interested in.
- This can drive great amounts of traffic to your site.
- Top List Posts
- As you go through your process of finding fantastic content to feed your followers and boost other bloggers posts, keep a record of the ones you like the most. These bloggers can then be added to your role model list. Use these posts to create a list of top posts from your favorite bloggers and explain to your readers why they are helpful.
- Once completed, publish your post and share it also with those top bloggers you featured. They will be complimented that you liked their article and went through the trouble of making a blog post about it.
- They could then either just thank you for the share or reshare it to their followers. Either way, you made yourself seen before your role model and potentially their followers too, which can increase traffic to your blog.
- Featured Article
- Have a bigger blogger in your niche that you absolutely admire? Do you both share the same audience and can you provide value to their followers too? Will knowing about this blogger benefit your readers?
- If so, write a post about how this person has changed you. How have they made an impact on you and in what ways have they helped you.
- If your readers like you, most likely they will like this person too.
- Once published, let the bigger blogger know of your post via email or social media and genuinely thank them for the help they have given you. Don’t be fake.
- Most likely they will share this post with their followers and bring traffic back to your site. Win-win for both!
- This can also be done for a product or service. For example, if you genuinely love PicMonkey (which I do!), write a post on why their product is so amazing. Share it with your followers and with PicMonkey as well. The potential of them sharing or mentioning your post to their followers could bring huge amounts of traffic back to your site. Also, if you include your affiliate link, this will be a money-making post!
- Co-Author a Post
- Find a hot topic that your audience is interested in. Connect with one of your role models who is knowledgeable about this topic and ask them if they want to co-author a post with you. Make sure their audience will love this topic too!
- If they are busy, you can do most of the writing and get quotes or input from them.
- Publish the post and ask them to share it with their followers. And watch your traffic grow.
Step 6: Get Blog Followers: Leave Strategic and Helpful Comments
- Any comment you leave on another person’s post should be genuine and add to the conversation. But there is a way to leave a comment that will drive great traffic back to your site.
- Find a blog that serves the same audience as you.
- Find an article that is slightly controversial or an article you think will have high shares.
- Be one of the first people to comment on it.
- Leave an insightful but enticing comment that will pique the curiosity of the reader.
- This curiosity will drive the user back to your blog.
- But don’t be rude and leave your link in the comment, the interested reader will click through your gravatar to your blog.
- I have experienced awesome traffic with this little tip!
Have a Clear Blog Theme
- Have you ever stumbled across a blog that looks like your junk drawer? Things are just thrown together, it’s hard to navigate, nothing matches, and you can’t ever find what you need? Or there are a hundred ads and pops ups! Eeeek!! Click away, click away!
- Don’t be a junk drawer blog.
- Have a clear theme for your images. A standard method for writing your posts. And a consistent font. Also, incorporate some white space on your blog to allow your reader’s to ‘rest their eyes’.
- Busy, messy and disorganized blogs convey a busy, messy, and disorganized blogger.
- Creating a blog on wordpress is the first great decision you made – because wordpress allows you to fully customize your blog with free or paid themes!
Be You!
- There are many blogs about similar topics all in the same niche. The one thing that will truly set you apart from other bloggers is who you are.
- Let your personality come shine through your posts and include a few personal anecdotes here and there.
- Start posts with a short story that draws in your reader. Relate to them. If you open up to them, they will feel more connected to you.
- On that note.. I love coffee, The Office and anything Frenchie – want to connect? 🙂
Curiosity
- Use this one little tip through all your blogging practices. Curiosity is what piques people’s interest and gets them to click to your site, subscribe to your blog and download your ebook. (Curiosity + The amazing value you provide!)
- If you establish that gap between what your reader knows, and what they want to know, you have a very valuable piece of information.
- Use curiosity in your titles, in your signups and in the opening of your posts. Get people interested, and then wow them with your awesome content and personality.
- Try out a headline such as “10 ways to improve your life, I use #3 every.single.day.” The curiosity of #3 draws people into the post.
- Create curiosity by posting about mistakes or secrets or asking a question. The post with ‘mistake’ titles always get me to click! It may be my mommy guilt thinking I am making a mistake in my life, but I just can’t help my curiosity.
Step 7: Use The Power of Pinterest
- I haven’t even touched on Pinterest in this article yet. All of the tips above are ways to increase your traffic without using social media platforms such as Pinterest.
- Once you have a few strong posts I suggest the following winning strategy with Pinterest. (I will publish a more detailed post detailing each step soon).
- Create 5-10 pillar posts
- Create a Pinterest Business Account
- Create 10 board and include one board exclusively for all of your own pins. This will be your ‘Best of’ board.
- Join multiple group boards. (Organize your process and keep a log of all the boards you apply)
- Sign up for an automation service to help you pin. I use Tailwind and love it.
- Create 1-2 pins for each blog post so that you have more to share and can A/B test.
- Test different pin images and posts to generate more affiliate income and eventually turn that into passive income.
- Pin your own posts to group boards. 1 pin a day to each group board you contribute to. Then fill the rest of your queue with posts from other bloggers and pin those to your own boards (except your Best Of board).
You may also want to check out: How to Use Social Media to Grow Your Blog Traffic orHow to Use SEO to Grow Your Blog Traffic
Make Money by Blogging
Okay, now that you have the traffic, the next step is to Make Money Blogging – Learn from small, medium and large mom bloggers on where their money is coming from.
Some make $3,000 a month and some over $60,000! And their blogs are less than 5 years old. My goodness, it’s inspirational!
Additionally, check out my income reports for more ways to make money with a blog! And if you want to start a blog, I have an amazing ebook + course, Blog by Number, to get you started and help you every single step of the way!
External Links and Resources: For More Fantastic Advice Visit: www.smartpassiveincome.com & www.quicksprout.com
Suzi, thank you so much for sharing all this amazing info! I have just started out with my own blog and am scouring for helpful information. You have some really great content that will be truly helpful in growing my blog. I have a feeling I will be referencing your blog often 😉
Lauren! Thank you so much! I use my site as a resource for myself too and compile all my best tips so even I can refer back to them. So happy you like it!
Great list and amazing tips within. Curated in a strategic fashion for positive outcome. Good one Suzi!
Thank you Chintan!
Your posts are so helpful! Thank you so much for your support!
Thank you! 🙂 so happy it’s helping you!
That is really fascinating, You are an excessively skilled blogger.
I’ve joined your rss feed and look forward to in search of more of your great post.
Additionally, I have shared your site in my social networks
Thank you so much!
Great info. Lucky me I came across your site by chance (stumbleupon).
I’ve saved it for later!
Thanks! 🙂
Everything is very open with a clear clarification of thee issues.
It was really informative. Your site iis extemely helpful.
Many thanks for sharing!
In case I were the one having to write this content, all these readers would be unhappy.
It’s a great thing you are the writer and you bring refreshing creative ideas to us all.
This is entertaining.
I’m usually to running a blog and i really admire your articles.
The post has really speaks my interest. I am going to bookmark your web site and also
keep checking for brand new information.
Hi there! Amazing post! Please do tell us when I will see a
another amazing post!
Weekly I post something new 🙂
I truly treasure your work. Great post.
You can certainly see your skills within the work
you write. The world hopes for even more passionate writers
like you who are not afraid to say how they believe.
At all times go after your heart.
Thank you Kathi!
Yes, it isn’t yet as known as Facebook and Twitter but it’s definitely something that you may use to improve your traffic.
After the Google Buzz and Google Wave failures, I believe they want Google+
to succeed. Below are some of the points use a better understanding concerning how this new system will affect
rankings.
Thanks for one’s marvelous posting! I really enjoyed reading it,
you’re a great author.I will make sure to bookmark your
blog and will come back later in life. I want to encourage continue your great writing, have a nice evening!
Thank you!
Hi there, yup this piece of writing is actually pleasant and I have learned
lot of things from it regarding blogging. thanks.
Thank you!
Thank you so much for this post. Whew! I’m just getting ready to start my own blog and I’m looking for valuable information as found in this post. You made it simple to read and easy to follow. Can’t wait to read more from you!
Fantastic Amy! Thank you! Please check out my post on how to start a blog to help you get going. Email me with any questions!
Great tips! Guest posting can be huge if you guest post with the right blogger. I guest posted for one of my biggest blogging role models and it quadrupled my email list, plus I got to share a personal story with all of her readers.
Fantastic! It really does work! 🙂 the blogging community is here to support each other.