Promote your blog

100+ Ways to Promote Your Blog & Get More Visitors

According to data referenced in a recent piece in the New York Times, titled “Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest”, approximately 95% of blogs fail; the piece, that analyzed several failed and “retired” bloggers, to understand why they quit, came to the conclusion that many blogs fail due to lack of readership.

Luckily, I’ve grown some blogs into 500,000+ monthly visitors (see image below) and I’ve literally tried every method on the the internet. However, I want to let you know that it didn’t happen overnight and it took a lot of testing, failing and starting all over again.

blog_traffic_growth

Want to learn how to start a blog? Check out my step-by-step tutorial.


P.S. This article is VERY comprehensive at over 8,000 words; it contains 101 unique and practical ways to promote a blog and get traffic, with links to case studies, research, resources and tutorials when necessary. I believe this is the only guide you’ll need if you want to unleash an avalanche of traffic on your blog.

Enjoy.

Hubspot content frequency traffic screenshot

Seven-figure blogger Neil Patel also revealed that his monthly traffic went from 46,134 visitors to 59,787 visitors because he increased content frequency from 1 article to 2 articles weekly.

No matter your niche, research has shown that publishing more content will always lead to an increase in traffic for you; increase your content frequency to 2 or more articles a week, and you’ll notice a significant increase in traffic to your blog.

Research by Buzzsumo, in a partnership with Moz, which analyzed over 1 million articles, found that articles that are 3,000 – 10,000 words get twice as many shares and 3 times the links content that have fewer than 1,000 words get. The screenshot below shows the average shares and links articles analyzed get based on their word count:

Buzzsumo-Moz Screenshot

In the Neil Patel article we referenced earlier, he also reveals that one of the top reasons why his blogs get a lot of traffic is because he writes in-depth and comprehensive articles; the average article on Neil’s blog ranges from 4,000 to 8,000 words, and the result is that he ranks for lots of long-tail keywords, which leads to significant traffic on the long run.

Darren Rowse Case Study

Email is such a powerful medium for generating traffic that many bloggers vouch for it; the reason is simple, all things being equal, your email list will only keep growing and rarely decrease. Even more, unlike your blog traffic that can fluctuate, you have access to a database of the people on your email list and can always email them.

Here’s another screenshot from Neil Patel showing traffic to his new blog in 30 days from a list size of 3,612 visitors:

Neil Patel Translate Traffic Growth screenshot

If you haven’t started building an email list, start now. Install the free SumoMe plugin and use their email list building options including the ScrollBar, Popup and Welcome Mat.

Here’s a screenshot showing the kind of traffic you can get from a guest post:

Digital Current guest blogging traffic screenshot

To make guest blogging work, try to only guest blog on blogs that are more popular than yours; look for blogs with tens, or hundreds, of thousands of subscribers and submit your guest post to them.

search traffic screenshot

The above screenshot shows traffic to an authority blog in one month; you can see that out of 582,000 visitors, 476,000 came from search engines. That’s how powerful search traffic is; after all, Google is the biggest website in the world!

It’s important that you don’t ignore SEO; familiarize yourself with the concept of SEO and optimize your blog and your articles to rank well for relevant keywords in Google and other search engines.

For every article you publish, make sure you have a solid blogger outreach plan; compile a list of dozens of relevant bloggers that you can email your article to and ask them to share or link to your article. This article is a good place to learn how to do blogger outreach.

Regularly link to other bloggers in your articles and email all of them to let them know about your article; many of them will share your article, resulting in lots of traffic for you.

Once your expert roundup has been published, ask all the bloggers featured to spread the word about it; the result of this will often be thousands of extra visitors to your blog.

A good example of an expert roundup is this article that features 32 bloggers who reveal their favorite site building platform; the result is hundreds of shares. Here’s another good example that got over 1,000 shares.

Matthew Woodward screenshot
Oliver Emberton screenshot

The screenshot below shows the kind of traffic you can get from a single resource article:

Resource article traffic screenshot

Look for a list of publications and network sites in your industry that republish content and see if they’d like to republish your articles.

As we saw earlier in this article, search engines favor comprehensive articles rank them better; people love them too, so they’ll share them massively. By publishing an ultimate guide, you’ll benefit from all angles.

Once you’ve published your ultimate guide, reach out to bloggers in your niche and ask them to spread the word about it.

You can promote your blog by creating good looking infographics, especially those that share important facts and statistics, and tell influencers in your niche to share it and republish it. You should also submit your infographics to several infographics directories.

In a case study, Ana Hoffman revealed that by publishing 9 presentations on Slideshare she was able to generate 243,000 views to her slides and over 1,400 clicks to her blog in 30 days; as a result, Slideshare became her second largest referral traffic. Now, that’s one great way to promote a blog!

Anna Hoffman slideshare screeshot

Create your own Slideshare presentations too, using fewer words and visually rich images to communicate your points, and watch your traffic grow.

In a case study analyzing how he increased traffic from Facebook groups by 3,000%, Bruce Zhang revealed that the best way to get traffic from Facebook groups isn’t just to post your links; instead, make sure to use catchy text images as well as a compelling message that shows how people will benefit by reading your article.

When major events happen, lots of people tend to get interested and start searching for it on search engines and social media; by capitalizing on this and using an angle relevant to your niche, you can get quality traffic. Example: “What the Superbowl Can Teach Us About Successful Blogging” or “What the Election Debates Can Teach You About Success”, etc. You get the idea? No matter the event, you can tie it to your blog’s topic and capitalize on it to boost traffic.

Smashing Magazine also noted that removing Facebook share buttons led to more traffic from Facebook, since readers now directly share their articles on their Facebook timeline instead of liking it (and shares result in more traffic than likes). So that’s consideration for a button you might want to remove.

Smashing Magazine Screenshot

Look for quality interesting images, and focus on using irresistible headlines and you’ll be getting quality Pinterest traffic in no time.

Essentially, a sound bite is a persuasive summary of the message of your article that is easy to remember and easy to quote; because it is short and persuasive, people can, and will, share it, leading to more traffic for you. Mainly due to using this technique, Derek Halpern was able to generate 300 shares and around 9,000 hits for one of his article.

You’ve probably visited your favorite blogs to see “Click to tweet” embedded inside the article? Well, that’s a Tweetable.

Highlight key points all through your article and use sites like Click to Tweet to get people to share your key points. Below is a screenshot that shows a Click to Tweet in one of Michael Hyatt’s articles.

Michael Hyatt Click to Tweet screenshot

Here’s a good case study from someone who created a podcast that was downloaded by over 1,000,000 people; screenshot of his stats below.

James Schramko Podcast Stats screenshot

The key to success with StumbleUpon ads lies in having shareworthy content, promoting it with a few dollars and letting it go viral on Stumbleupon.

If you’re struggling to get traffic to your blog, perhaps it’s time to start your own viral giveaway; look for a product that is in high demand in your niche and offer people an opportunity to win it by joining your giveaway. Let their chances of winning increase by inviting more people to join your giveaway.

Josh Earl Giveaway traffic screenshot

Blogging challenges can unite your community and make them passionately involved in your project, and this will always lead to more traffic to your blog.

Buzzsumo-Moz Screenshot

Here’s a good example of an ultimate list/roundup of articles on how to get traffic from Mark Trueman, featuring case studies from 124 experts, which ended up generating thousands of shares.

Share Locker Screenshot

If you can’t start a podcast, you can record an audio version of your blog posts and submit them to podcast sites. Here’s a list of 8 sites you can submit your podcast to.

Something as simple as optimizing your blog for mobile users can give you a traffic boost, so make sure you have a website that is focused on a better mobile experience for your readers.

This technique is highly underutilized, but it’s so powerful that Jimmy Daly of GetVero was able to get 36,282 people to read a single article on his blog.

One way to benefit from Google’s freshness algorithm is by publishing more articles on your blog, while another way is by updating old articles; review articles you published months and years ago, eliminate outdated information and bring them forward. This will impact your blog’s search rankings and lead to more traffic.

This KISSMetrics article shares practical tips to help you create a site structure that will enhance your blog’s SEO.

A case study that demonstrates how much of a difference the right headline can make was featured on Lifehacker; a New York Times article was originally titled “How Companies Learn Your Secrets” and it only managed to get 12,902 views. The very same article was republished on Forbes and retitled “How Target Figured out a Teen Girl Was Pregnant before Her Father Did” and got a whopping 680,000 views. That’s over 600,000 more views than the original articles, and that’s interesting considering that The New York Times is a much bigger site than Forbes. The difference in traffic was solely due to the headline.

In revealing why their articles go viral, Upworthy revealed that they write at least 25 headlines for every post they publish, they test the best ones and go with the very best one; if Upworthy, a site that gets over 87 million visitors monthly, does this, you have no reason not to.

If you link to top blogs in your article and you and the blogs you linked to both have trackbacks enabled, a link to your article will appear in their comments section; this will ensure people seeing comments on their blog can see a link to your articles, and it’ll eventually lead to more traffic for you.

If your website constantly links to authoritative websites and resources that are relevant to your niche, Google will assume that you’re a good and authoritative resource in your niche, and they’ll rank you better as a result; this, in turn, will lead to more traffic for you.

If you invite others to write for you, especially if they have a much bigger reach than you do, they are more likely to share their guest post with their readers. The result of this will be more traffic to your blog.

Below is a screenshot showing how The Penny Hoarder does it; for a blog that gets about 2 million unique visitors monthly, they definitely know what they are doing.

The Penny Hoarder Writing Screenshot

Ask your readers what content they want to read about the most, and create your content based on popular demand.

Things like using the right title tags, having a catchy description, ensuring that your site is easy to navigate, etc, can lead to a significant increase in traffic to your blog.

Using headings and sub headings, bold, italics, numberings and bullets, you can make your blog content more presentable and scannable, and as a result boost traffic to your blog.

Many successful bloggers routinely share old articles, and it isn’t unusual to see a blogger sharing the same article 30 – 50 times in the span of a few months; this ensures that people who did not see your content at first will see it later down the line.

More Tweet More Engagement screenshot

Find out the best time to post an article on your blog and use this knowledge to effectively promote your content.

Buzzsumo Research Screenshot

If you have a product, reach out to organizers of these events and ask them to include your product; you’ll be increasing your reach due to the cross-promotion other, often more influential, participants and affiliates will do.

Neil Patel Translate Traffic Growth screenshot