How to Promote Your Blog in 2020 : 10 Tips & Tricks to High Traffic
A research by Hubspot says “ 53% of marketers say blogging is their top content marketing priority.
Are you one of those marketers wondering how to promote your blog in 2020? With all the Google updates rolling out SEO trends and tactics are changing drastically.
Just doing SEO on your site won’t help you gain traffic that your blog deserves!
Another fact: There are more than 20 billion blog post views each month on the WordPress platform. (That’s only WordPress!)
Even then, lot of marketers are still struggling with the traffic on their blogs.
Here’s a checklist of all the tips to sum it up, I will also tell you how to get there in details we go
1. Write blogs on new and trending topics
Better content can drive traffic to a blog by up to 2,000%. (Omnicore)
But how do you write better and appealing content that actually brings traffic?
Writing what you are expert at is a wonderful idea, however if the topics that you choose are outdated will not bring noticeable traffic.
To get better engagement rate and hike in your traffic graph.
You should always search for the most trending topic that you can write about.
How will you find it?
You can use paid tools like buzzsumo or you can use free tools like Google Trends
Let me show you how you can use this to promote your blog:
Type in the topic that you want to write about, use keywords here and you will see something like this image below:
For example:I am a digital marketer, I would like to write about something related to digital marketing and its trends. But the term “digital marketing “will be very broad and vague.
So, I typed in the term “Google Adwords” which is more specific
Here you can see trending data from past hour to last 5 years. You can also select a custom range for trending data for various geography and demography.
It also shows a variety of related topics and trending keywords that you can use
2. Be consistent & Select the right time to post and promote your blog
Once you write 21-54 blog posts, blog traffic generation increases by up to 30%. (Traffic Generation Cafe)
Make a routine to post a blog consistently be it 1 blog a month or 1 blog a day or 4 blogs a day but be consistent. That way your readers will know when to expect new piece of content which will increase your traffic exponentially.
You also have to make sure to see where your target audience is.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Which platforms my audiences use – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Quora,Reddit
- What are the regions and time zones where they live – don’t post late in the night or very early in the morning.
- What is the routine of your audience – are they office going people or are they house wives?
Decide your post scheduling and publishing time according to these factors.
3. Reply to every comment
This is an easy one.
Make your readers believe that you care for their opinion. Appreciate them for the value they add by leaving their comments. Even a little gratitude or thanks would do!
The readers who engage with your content are the ones that are most likely to become your regular source of traffic.
This is a way to build long term traffic!
4. Promote your blog on forums
Forums are the platforms where real people give real feedback.
If your content is good, you will get a lot of quality organic traffic.
Famous forums that get you can leverage are Reddit, Quora, Warrior forum and a lot more.
How will you promote your blog on these platforms?
- Try answering to the questions that seem relevant to your blog
- Ask questions on forums that lead the conversation towards the point where you can drop a link of your blog
- Talk to the people in comments and engage with them
Here is an example that should help you start writing on forums:
In the image above we are trying to promote our recent blog Hashtags
I suggest answer as many questions as possible. Helps you gain lots of loyal traffic.
If you are new to forums check out my blog which will help you start with Reddit marketing Reddit Marketing Guide for 2019 and beyond
5. Leverage the power of LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the most underrated marketing tool right now.
A few facts about LinkedIn :
- LinkedIn now has over 500 million members
- Only 1 million usershave published an article on LinkedIn.
- There are 9 billion content impressions in the LinkedIn feed every week.
I think these facts are more than enough to convince anyone that LinkedIn is the best place to get top quality organic traffic.
How do you use LinkedIn to bring traffic?
- Use long form posts
- Try to be interactive and real.
- Use relevant hashtags and images.
- Write to educate not to sell.
Here’s an example of my recent post on LinkedIn:
This post alone got me organic traffic of 1000, 4 client enquiries and 2 conversions from the enquiries. With 3691 views only.
All I did was writing content wittily enough to intrigue my readers into reading my whole blog. I am no LinkedIn influencer.
It’s not just blogs, but if you pen down a random thought nicely on LinkedIn it can provide you with a lot of quality traffic and conversions or sales if you have something to sell.
Look at another post where I have posted something that happened to me in my office.
This is the power of LinkedIn, which you can take advantage of. I will shortly post a definitive guide to LinkedIn too.
Know Your Digital Goals
Get Specific
6. Keep updating your content
Bloggers who have a strategy of updating older content are twice as likely to report strong results.(Orbit Media)
This is one of the easiest yet the most effective tips. Well you might be wondering How to update your content?
You don’t have to rewrite the whole blog / article to achieve this.
You can simply do it by making changes in the images. In fact just changing the dates in the heading would do the trick too.
Have a look here:
Google craves for updated information doing this will let Google know that my website has the latest information and so my content will be given priority over others and hence more traffic.
7. Maintain Email Newsletter
An email newsletter is one type of email used in an email marketing campaign. As the name suggests, it often contains news and updates. Email newsletters aim to keep a business’s audience interested and, at the same time, very softly push them to do a required action. (Source)
News letters basically provide you a direct window to your audience’s inboxes.
Not only does it encourage loyal traffic but also helps you build your own brand.
You can simply add a small widget or code to your site and you are on your way to collecting emails.
For WordPress users:
We are currently using a WordPress plugin – Newsletter
Go to plug-in section > add new > type in “newsletter” in the search bar >install and activate
After installation, it will take you to the plug-in set up screen where you will have to complete the installation.
Once the setup is complete, you will be redirected on the plug-in set up the dashboard. Where you have to add “Newsletter Minimal” and you are done!
Remember:
- Send a welcome mail to each subscriber
- Send regular updates here for regular traction
8. Collaborate with other Bloggers
Another way to promote your blog is collaborating with other bloggers of your niche or your complementing niche.
There are 3 ways you can collaborate with bloggers:
Find a Blogging buddy – Become friends/partners with other bloggers and write blogs for each other. Give shout outs to each other. Endorse each other on various social media.
For example,we can talk about recent friendship between Neil Patel & Brian Dean. In this post We can totally see that Neil & Brian are blogging buddies!
How to promote your blog through collaboration
Inviting other subject matter experts to write and contribute on your site and give them accountability
You can simply mail or just drop a message in people’s inboxes on social media like this:
Guest posting – Contribute to other relevant sites.
Here’s a small checklist by AndyCrestodina
Link & interlink your blogs to other blog posts:
Compounding blog posts make up 10% of all blog posts and generate 38% of overall traffic. (Hubspot)
When publishing blogs on other websites, make sure to link your other blogs in the same article. You can put any number of links as long as they are relevant.
This helps in diverting traffic of that particular site to your other blogs as well.
But keep an eye on these numbers as some guest posting sites have a restriction over how many links you can give to your site.
9. Hold a “Blog Contest ”
Holding a blog contest is a very clever way of getting traffic on blog.
You can hold a blog contest and just like any other event keep a prize!
Your takeaway in this will be tons of quality content for your site without having to spend money on writers.
How can you make this work for real?
- Decide a topic or trend that is closely related to your niche
- Invite bloggers for the event for an entry fee or for free.
- Take limited entries & decide a closing date
- Review all the blogs & declare a winner
- Make sure to announce the winner& promote that as well.
10. Optimize your blog for search engines
You can never forget this one.
All bloggers should make sure that their content is SEO proof
Here’s a small checklist:
- Have a focus keyword –High search volume, Low CPC & use minimum 3 times
- Key phrase length & Density– Use long-tail keywords. In every 500 words, a keyword should appear 3 times
- Meta description length – Write a meta description, it helps crawlers know what your page is about
- Headings & title – Using H1, H2, H3, H4, subtitles wisely
- SEO title width- title should not be wider than the 600 px
- Image alt attributes – Label each and every image
- Text length – minimum 500 to any number of words that is informative, we recommend 800-1500 words.
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