It's easy to build a blog, but hard to build
a successful blog with significant traffic.
Over the years, we've grown the Moz
blog to nearly a million visits each month
and helped lots of other blogs, too. I
launched a personal blog late last year
and was amazed to see how quickly it
gained thousands of visits to each post.
There's an art to increasing a blog's
traffic, and given that we seem to have
stumbled on some of that knowledge, I
felt it compulsory to give back by sharing
what we've observed.
NOTE: This post replaces a popular one I
wrote on the same topic in 2007. This
post is intended to be useful to all forms
of bloggers - independent folks, those
seeking to monetize, and marketing
professionals working an in-house blog
from tiny startups to huge companies.
Not all of the tactics will work for
everyone, but at least some of these
should be applicable and useful.
#1 - Target Your Content to an
Audience Likely to Share
When strategizing about who you're
writing for, consider that audience's ability
to help spread the word. Some readers
will naturally be more or less active in
evangelizing the work you do, but
particular communities, topics, writing
styles and content types regularly play
better than others on the web. For
example, great infographics that strike a
chord ( like this one ), beautiful videos that
tell a story ( like this one ) and remarkable
collections of facts that challenge common
assumptions ( like this one ) are all
targeted at audiences likely to share
(geeks with facial hair, those interested in
weight loss and those with political
thoughts about macroeconomics
respectively).
If you can identify groups that have high
concentrations of the blue and orange
circles in the diagram above, you
dramatically improve the chances of
reaching larger audiences and growing
your traffic numbers. Targeting blog
content at less-share-likely groups may
not be a terrible decision (particularly if
that's where you passion or your target
audience lies), but it will decrease the
propensity for your blog's work to spread
like wildfire across the web.
#2 - Participate in the
Communities Where Your
Audience Already Gathers
Advertisers on Madison Avenue have
spent billions researching and
determining where consumers with
various characteristics gather and what
they spend their time doing so they can
better target their messages. They do it
because reaching a group of 65+ year old
women with commercials for extreme
sports equipment is known to be a waste
of money, while reaching an 18-30 year
old male demographic that attends rock-
climbing gyms is likely to have a much
higher ROI.
Thankfully, you don't need to spend a
dime to figure out where a large portion
of your audience can be found on the
web. In fact, you probably already know a
few blogs, forums, websites and social
media communities where discussions
and content are being posted on your
topic (and if you don't a Google search
will take you much of the way). From that
list, you can do some easy expansion
using a web-based tool like DoubleClick's
Ad Planner :
Once you've determined the
communities where your soon-to-be-
readers gather, you can start
participating. Create an account, read
what others have written and don't jump
in the conversation until you've got a
good feel for what's appropriate and
what's not. I've written a post here
about rules for comment marketing, and
all of them apply. Be a good web citizen
and you'll be rewarded with traffic, trust
and fans. Link-drop, spam or troll and
you'll get a quick boot, or worse, a
reputation as a blogger no one wants to
associate with.
#3 - Make Your Blog's Content
SEO-Friendly
Search engines are a massive opportunity
for traffic, yet many bloggers ignore this
channel for a variety of reasons that
usually have more to do with fear and
misunderstanding than true problems. As
I've written before, " SEO, when done
right, should never interfere with great
writing. " In 2011, Google received over 3
billion daily searches from around the
world, and that number is only growing:
sources: Comscore + Google
Taking advantage of this massive traffic
opportunity is of tremendous value to
bloggers, who often find that much of the
business side of blogging, from inquiries
for advertising to guest posting
opportunities to press and discovery by
major media entities comes via search.
SEO for blogs is both simple and easy to
set up, particularly if you're using an SEO-
friendly platform like Wordpress, Drupal
or Joomla. For more information on how
to execute on great SEO for blogs, check
out the following resources:
Blogger's Guide to SEO (from SEOBook)
The Beginner's Guide to SEO (from Moz)
Wordpress Blog SEO Tutorial (from Yoast)
SEO for Travel Bloggers (but applicable to
nearly any type of blog - from Moz)
Don't let bad press or poor experiences
with spammers (spam is not SEO) taint
the amazing power and valuable
contributions SEO can make to your blog's
traffic and overall success. 20% of the
effort and tactics to make your content
optimized for search engines will yield
80% of the value possible; embrace it
and thousands of visitors seeking exactly
what you've posted will be the reward.
#4 - Use Twitter, Facebook and
Google+ to Share Your Posts &
Find New Connections
Twitter just topped 465 million registered
accounts. Facebook has over 850 million
active users. Google+ has nearly 100
million . LinkedIn is over 130 million .
Together, these networks are attracting
vast amounts of time and interest from
Internet users around the world, and
those that participate on these services fit
into the "content distributors" description
above, meaning they're likely to help
spread the word about your blog.
Leveraging these networks to attract
traffic requires patience, study, attention
to changes by the social sites and
consideration in what content to share
and how to do it. My advice is to use the
following process:
If you haven't already, register a personal
account and a brand account at each of
the following - Twitter , Facebook , Google+
and LinkedIn (those links will take you
directly to the registration pages for
brand pages). For example, my friend
Dharmesh has a personal account for
Twitter and a brand account for
OnStartups (one of his blog projects). He
also maintains brand pages on Facebook,
LinkedIn and Google+ .
Fill out each of those profiles to the
fullest possible extent - use photos, write
compelling descriptions and make each
one as useful and credible as possible.
Research shows that profiles with more
information have a significant correlation
with more successful accounts (and
there's a lot of common sense here, too,
given that spammy profiles frequently
feature little to no profile work).
Connect with users on those sites with
whom you already share a personal or
professional relationships, and start
following industry luminaries, influencers
and connectors. Services like
FollowerWonk and FindPeopleonPlus can
be incredible for this:
Start sharing content - your own blog
posts, those of peers in your industry
who've impressed you and anything that
you feel has a chance to go "viral" and
earn sharing from others.
Interact with the community - use hash
tags, searches and those you follow to
find interesting conversations and content
and jump in! Social networks are amazing
environment for building a brand,
familiarizing yourself with a topic and the
people around it, and earning the trust of
others through high quality, authentic
participation and sharing
If you consistently employ a strategy of
participation, share great stuff and make a
positive, memorable impression on those
who see your interactions on these sites,
your followers and fans will grow and your
ability to drive traffic back to your blog by
sharing content will be tremendous. For
many bloggers, social media is the single
largest source of traffic, particularly in the
early months after launch, when SEO is a
less consistent driver.
#5 - Install Analytics and Pay
Attention to the Results
At the very least, I'd recommend most
bloggers install Google Analytics (which is
free), and watch to see where visits
originate, which sources drive quality
traffic and what others might be saying
about you and your content when they
link over. If you want to get more
advanced, check out this post on 18 Steps
to Successful Metrics and Marketing .
Here's a screenshot from the analytics of
my wife's travel blog, the Everywhereist :
As you can see, there's all sorts of great
insights to be gleaned by looking at where
visits originate, analyzing how they were
earned and trying to repeat the
successes, focus on the high quality and
high traffic sources and put less effort
into marketing paths that may not be
effective. In this example, it's pretty clear
that Facebook and Twitter are both
excellent channels. StumbleUpon sends a
lot of traffic, but they don't stay very long
(averaging only 36 seconds vs. the
general average of 4 minutes!).
Employing analytics is critical to knowing
where you're succeeding, and where you
have more opportunity. Don't ignore it,
or you'll be doomed to never learn from
mistakes or execute on potential. ( #6 - Add Graphics, Photos and
Illustrations (with link-back
licensing)
If you're someone who can produce
graphics, take photos, illustrate or even
just create funny doodles in MS Paint, you
should leverage that talent on your blog.
By uploading and hosting images (or using
a third-party service like Flickr to embed
your images with licensing requirements
on that site), you create another traffic
source for yourself via Image Search, and
often massively improve the engagement
and enjoyment of your visitors.
When using images, I highly recommend
creating a way for others to use them on
their own sites legally and with
permission, but in such a way that
benefits you as the content creator. For
example, you could have a consistent
notice under your images indicating that
re-using is fine, but that those who do
should link back to this post. You can also
post that as a sidebar link, include it in
your terms of use, or note it however you
think will get the most adoption.
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