10 Strategies For How to Increase Blog Traffic Fast
Your website is a portal to a land of opportunities. New freelance writing clients. New sponsorship options. New readers who love what you do. But it only works if people actually see it. So it makes sense you’re here because you’re wondering how to increase blog traffic fast.
You want to increase blog traffic yesterday. You want to know how to increase blog traffic for free. I get it. The good news is there are a ton of tools and strategies that can help you boost your blog traffic fast and without paying a penny.
TL;DR? This is also a guide on how to improve your blog. Because guess what: getting more views and building a better blog and pretty much one and the same thing.
What is blog traffic? Blog traffic, for beginners, is the number of views you get on a post or on your entire blog. How much traffic is good for a blog? There’s no hard number. Whatever number of visitors it takes for you to build your lifestyle is the right number.
I’m a freelance writer, so my entire job and life are based on my ability to attract readers to my website. It’s not intuitive, but it’s not as hard as other people make it out to be either.
I’m going to run through the ten best ways how to increase blog traffic fast. Just so you know, I am not going to recommend any weird or wacky things like blog traffic generators or bots. I am about sustainable, real, long-term blogging. Bots ain’t it.
Even though these suggestions will mostly be quick wins, gaining traffic is a long-term project. Use the strategies you can today, but bookmark this and come back to it in a few weeks or months for the longer wins.
Remember: nobody is born knowing how to manipulate algorithms or write good titles. We all learn it. You can too.
Start basic: good content is key.
I had a horrible googling experience the other day. I’d searched for how to program a Mac time machine to go less often than every hour. And one of the posts that cropped up was clearly SEO-optimized. All the headers referenced my question. The keyword was stuffed. They’d bolded and italicized all the right words.
But there was no actual answer to my question.
It infuriated me. I bounced and reported the website to Google. (Yes, I’m petty; no, I won’t apologize.)
Why am I sharing this anecdote in an article about how to increase blog traffic fast? Because that’s a perfect example of how not to do it. Even though this website got a visitor (me) and presumably some ad revenue from my visit, they will lose me as a long-term reader because of their worthless content.
No matter why you’re trying to boost your traffic today, it’s critical to remember that quality comes first. If you find yourself doing any of the traffic-increasing strategies below and scrimp on quality, go back to basics. If you get a million views on your blog tomorrow on crappy content, it’s not worth it for you in the long run.
If you want to be a blogger, you should know how to write well. The main thing to keep in mind is your reader.
What do they want?
What do they hope this article will do for them?
Will they leave satisfied?
If you can answer all those questions with every single blog post you publish, you will increase your blog traffic faster than someone who doesn’t.
Learn basic SEO
Quality matters, yes. Knowing how to play the game matters, too. Unless your word-of-mouth network is unreal, your best bet to increase blog traffic fast is relying on good old-fashioned search engine optimization (SEO). This lets casual searchers stumble across your awesome blog.
SEO is how Google and every other search engine out there decide what to show a searcher. When I was looking for answers on how to change my Mac time machine settings, Google trawls through the literal billions of articles out there looking for the one that will make me happiest. Google’s algorithm is not a real person - it can’t look and make decisions on the actual article’s quality. Instead, it uses a few indicators of topic and quality. Usually, they get it right. (Sometimes bad actors who know how to game SEO succeed, but for the most part Google knows better.)
Topic: does the title reference the searcher’s question? Do the subheaders in the article also have the search keyword? Is the search keyword mentioned in the body of the article? What about similar keywords?
Quality: is the site reputable? Does it rank highly for similar keywords; do many people link to it? Is the article in question long enough to offer a comprehensive answer? When people click on the article, how long do they spend on it?
Google is trying to do searchers a solid by offering the very best answer to the reason they’re searching. Put yourself in Google’s shoes and write an article that tells the algorithm exactly what it’s about, and why a reader will benefit from seeing it. Google is one of the most powerful tools to help you know how to increase blog traffic fast.
Learning basic SEO is easier than you think. I offer a beginner’s SEO tutorial that will walk you through the basics:
Identify what makes a good title
It does you no good if you SEO-optimize your blog post but nobody clicks on your title. For people who want to know how to increase blog traffic fast, one of the quickest wins is turbo-charging your titles. One of the fastest ways to get blog traffic is by improving your title game.
Let’s say you search for something like “apple pie recipe.” You see two options:
Apple Pie Recipe
3-Step Easiest Tasty Apple Pie Recipe
Which do you pick? One is more appealing to me, I can tell you that much.
Writing a good title is 95% psychology, 5% writing. You have to get into your reader’s head and identify the factors that make them click. One of the best ways to do this is to keep an active log of what you click on. For example, when you check your inbox, which titles grab your attention? Why? Write that down. When you search for apple pie recipes, which blog post gets your click? Identify the reason why.
Many factors make a title worth clicking:
Is there a number in it? People love clicking on numbers.
Is there a spicy word in it? Attention-grabbing words are great tricks to employ with titles.
Is the value obvious? If it’s a tutorial, it should read “how to” in there. If it’s a rant, that should be clear from the title.
Now, your options are usually a little more complex than the example above because it depends on the person you’re trying to reach. For example, my blog posts help beginner freelance writers start doing well. My titles are therefore geared to be appealing to beginners. Going back to the apple pie recipe, you might see two equally good titles - but one speaks to you, specifically, more.
Insanely easy apple pie recipe for beginners
Tastiest apple pie recipe to impress at Thanksgiving
Look at those two titles: both are great, but they’re great for different readers.
It’s not just about numbers or clickbait words. It’s about knowing your reader. If you want to learn more, here’s a resource to help:
Look for “low-traffic” SEO wins
When you start digging into SEO, you’ll quickly learn about the Google Keyword Planner. It’s awesome. You put in a keyword, it spits out TONS of keyword ideas, shows you what the traffic is, and how competitive it is to buy ad space on it. You can use that as an idea of how hard it’ll be to rank organically, too.
Many SEO gurus will tell you to look for high-traffic, low-competition keywords. After all, if you’re trying to figure out how to increase blog traffic fast, is it worth writing a whole-ass blog post for 0-10 visitors a month?
I am here to tell you yes. Yes, it is. Here’s why.
Those estimates aren’t always right. I get 200+ monthly visits on a keyword that is estimated to have 0-10 monthly visits. Google underestimates.
Nobody else is hunting for those. If everyone else is charing their white whale, you can happily scoop up the minnows. Every view counts, especially when you’re trying to increase blog traffic fast.
They add up over time. Let’s say you write one blog post per week. Each post gets 10 visits per month. In the first month, you’ll have 40 visitors. The next, you’ll have 80. After that, you’ll have 120. In a year, You’ll have 520 visitors per month. That’s the very worst-case scenario. It’s likely to be much more than that.
Look for the low-traffic SEO wins. You’ll be much more likely to rank, and they’re worth more than you think. This will help you rapidly increase your blog traffic.
Repost on other sites
Writing a blog post is a hard, time-consuming process. That’s why it’s so important to reuse and recycle content where you can. Online, there are tons of places you can syndicate your content for free. This is one of the best strategies how to increase blog traffic fast because it requires very little effort.
I recommend treating your blog as home base. Write and post there as often as you can. However, for each blog post, repost that content on at least three different sites:
Medium
Vocal
LinkedIn
(You can also look at turning them into videos and posting them on YouTube. This is a good strategy, but takes some extra time.)
These platforms will start building your name and reputation far and wide for the keywords you’re targeting. The one thing to keep in mind is to canonize the original post. You can easily do this on Medium using their canonical tools. For Vocal and LinkedIn, just be sure to write “This article was originally published on myblog.com.”
This can help boost your site’s SEO and get extra readers.
If you’re wondering how to get started on Medium, make sure you check out my linked guide.
Build a network
Writing feels lonely, but that’s a huge misconception. Your blog’s success depends massively on your network. For writers wondering how to increase blog traffic fast, knowing the right people can get you very far indeed.
For example, I regularly get offered great guest posting opportunities through the other writers I know. Many blogs are looking for high-quality content, and most of the emailed guest post offers we get are not very appealing. Those blogs look to their network to provide recommendations.
Your network will help with more than just guest posts, though. I will often link out to a friend’s blog post on my newsletter because I know them and they created an awesome resource I want to share. My network also helps me land byline opportunities.
I used to hate “networking.” But building your network is easy and even fun – if you do it right. When done right, it looks a lot like valuing and appreciating the work of other people.
Don’t:
Send unsolicited messages asking for help
Comment insincerely on posts
Link-spam successful people you know
Instead, do it more organically. When you see someone’s work you love, leave a comment and tell them why. If an opportunity falls into your lap, but you’re not a great fit, let someone else know about it. Link to other people’s content in your posts frequently.
In other words, bring value first. This will help grow your blog’s traffic fast through surfacing new opportunities.
Shout on social media
Do you have 300 or more Facebook friends? Then you have 300 or more potential readers for your blog posts. While you don’t want to spam your friends and family with links, a few Instagram updates about your new blog posts can be a great way to increase blog traffic fast.
This is a good early-term strategy for how to increase blog traffic fast, but it’s not the best long-term one. Over time, you’ll want to mindfully target your dream audience. Maybe that’s your mom and dad, but maybe not!
Post more often than you think you can
Remember that once-a-week posting strategy that brings you ~500 visitors per year? That’s great. But the fastest way to double it is just to post twice as often.
If you’re committed to increasing your blog’s traffic as fast as possible, you should know the best strategy is sheer quantity. (As long as you can do it without sacrificing quality!)
Maybe you’re happy with steady growth. If so, you can disregard this tip. Do what you can and prioritize consistency. But if you are after rocket fuel, just post more often. Really stretch your capacity for posts. If you can write a blog post once a week comfortably, then you can write two per week with a little effort.
Posting more often will bring other benefits, too. For one, you’ll improve your writing faster because you’re doing more of it. You’ll learn SEO faster because you’re trying to study it more often. You’ll discover your niche’s edges and boundaries quicker because you’ll be pushing against them in half the time.
I don’t always recommend simply posting more, but for those who want to know how increase blog traffic fast, it’s one of the best strategies.
Build your mailing list
Many bloggers wait until they’re “established” to start growing a mailing list. Don’t do that. Start one today. It’s one of the best ways to increase blog traffic fast.
Imagine you run a personal finance blog, and you write a blog post entitled “How to Budget for Beginners.” You’re unlikely to rank today or even in the next few weeks. If you want to get blog traffic fast, you have to push it to people. You can’t wait for readers to find it.
Right now, that blog post is sitting at a big fat 0 readers. But let’s say over the past month, ten people have signed up to your mailing list. You know these ten people inside out, because they’ve signed up for your list. You know they care about personal finance. You know they like what you have to say. You can send them an email to let them know you published a new post, and bam - somewhere between 1-10 new readers will check out your post.
As you grow your blog, you’ll get more subscribers, getting you more readers. This will grow your blog. It’s an amazing never-ending cycle. Start as soon as you can. For those readers who want to know how to increase blog traffic fast, know that even one reader is more than zero.
Want a resource? Check out my video:
Give readers a reason to come back
Remember that first example I gave about the awful Mac time machine post? I am never coming back to that site because I don’t trust them.
As you begin to dominate your niche, one of the fastest ways to increase blog traffic is to build a returning audience. Many people focus on SEO-only, or first-time readers. But over time you’ll have searchers who come across your content again and again. What too few bloggers take into account is that most Google searches end after a single click. If you miss out on one person’s click because someone else ranked one spot above you, you won’t get that person’s click ever. That means reputation is critical.
Imagine this scenario: you run a cat toy blog, and you post an article about cat toys for bored Maine Coons. A reader finds it and loves it. The next week, the same reader is searching for toys for cats who like water. On the first page of the Google results, the first three spots are blogs she doesn’t recognize. The fourth is yours. Even though you’re lower down, you’re way more likely to get her click because she knows and trusts you already.
Give readers a reason to come back by building trust and authority. You can also give explicit reasons, like saying you post on a particular schedule or that you run regular giveaways for people who leave comments on your blog. Either way, remember that you’re not always chasing after first-time readers. Your returning audience can be a huge, fast traffic boost - if you let them.
How to increase blog traffic fast:
Write well, as often as you can, keeping readers and the algorithm in mind.
That’s pretty much it. All the fancy tips and tricks on how to increase blog traffic fast boil down to that basic advice. If you want to know how to increase website traffic, it really comes down to predictable, boring, but doable factors.
These ten strategies will help you increase your blog’s traffic in 2022 without paying a penny. Like I said in the intro, some of these will be accessible to you right away. You may have to wait for others to become available to you. Feel free to keep coming back to this resource.
Test them out, find the ones that work for you, and watch how your blog’s traffic skyrockets.
