How to get Website Traffic to Your Brand New Blog
In this blog post, I will write about the various ways to get traffic to your blog or website. There are many free ways to get website traffic to your brand new blog and also paid to advertise ways. With both free or paid advertising, it is important that you stay on top of industry trends as social media and the internet grows and changes. But first….
Choose a Topic People are Searching
The biggest mistake I see people making when they are starting out is writing about anything they want without researching it first. You should start off by researching a keyword. The video tutorial I created walks you through how to find keywords. Watch the Keywords Everywhere Tutorial.
Basically, you need to be writing content that people are searching for. If your goal is to write for fun, you do not need to do this, but since your here for blog traffic advice, this should be your first step!
Free Traffic
Word of Mouth
The most obvious one, but the probably least executed tactic is to talk about your blog to people you see in person. Don’t feel bad, I didn’t do this for a while either, oops! For the first year and a half of my blogging journey, a lot of my friends would forget that I had a blog. I can’t blame them though, because I wasn’t talking about it. Work on an elevator pitch about your website or blog that is exciting and full of energy. The more excited and passionate you are about your blog, the more other people will be excited about it as well. Practice what you tell people in the mirror and get serious about what it is that you cover.
Tell your friends and family. Tell the cute guy at the coffee shop or the lady helping you out at the retail store. Talk about your blog, website, or business everywhere, anytime, anyhow to anyone who will listen.
SEO
The quickest and easiest way to make sure that your blog is being seen for free is through SEO. I use a plugin called Yoast for my WordPress blog that helps make sure that my blog post is reaching a good standard for SEO. Yoast checks criteria such as if I have a long enough title if my keyword is used enough times throughout the page so that people know what I am talking about, among a list of other improvements. SEO is very complex and ranges from hundreds of different strategies.
One strategy I have been working on is outbound and inbound links. Outbound links are links that you put on your own website or blog post that directs people to other people’s websites. Inbound links are any links that are on other people’s websites that direct to your site.
Inbound links are a little tricker than outbound links as you will need someone to put your URL on their website somehow. You can try to reach out to people who would be interested in interviewing you and posting the content on their website. They will most likely add a snippet about you and your website at the end of this content. I suggest that you pre-type up a paragraph about yourself to send to the writer in cases like this. Also note, Google checks to see if these websites that are linking to your page are high quality. If they are google will assume that your website is also high quality. You may ask why this is important. This is important because Google will list you higher on its search engine and results pages.
Commenting on other People’s Websites or Blogs
Commenting on other people’s blog is an amazing way to network within the blogging community and your niche while also getting traffic to your website since their audience is reading those posts for that content! Most likely the person who you commented from will return the favor which will give you a new view and comment! Whenever I leave a comment on someone’s website, I write lengthy responses incorporating keywords that will help their page. Then at the end of the comment, I will sign it “Best, Kit from www.kitstanwood.com“.
A great way to find blogs and websites to comment on are through searching on Pinterest. You may already have a few boards where you pinned articles you want to read, so challenge yourself to actually go through all of the pins on your board and comment! Another way is to google search for blogs since this will tend to return popular websites on the first page and you have a good chance that your comment will be seen. You can also join Facebook groups where bloggers comment on each other’s pages.
Guest Posting
Guest posting is a fantastic way to get in front of a fresh audience. You accomplish this by asking a website owner in your niche if you can submit a piece of writing to them for them to post on their blog. This post will them be sent out to their mailing list. You will want to include a small bio about yourself (including your website link) at either the beginning of the post or at the end.
Some website owners and bloggers have submission guidelines or will make you pay them to be published on their site. Others will pay you to write for them if you are well known and they need content. Lastly, of course, you can do a collaboration for free if you both are just starting out and want to help each other grow!
Pinterest is AMAZING for traffic. You will hear people say this over and over again. When I first started with Pinterest I had a blog post get over 15,000 views in one month after posting it on Pinterest, and it has grown significantly since then. Pinterest is also a great way to funnel followers into your other social media’s too. Make sure to put your Instagram handle in your Pinterest Bio and on any group boards that you run. Lastly, just have awesome pin graphics so that people go to your website and are drawn to follow you! I have had people comment on my Instagram saying that they found me through my Pinterest account. I even wrote an ebook called Pin it to Win it about how to grow your website traffic with Pinterest because it is JUST THAT AMAZING.
Traffic from Instagram
Currently, I am promoting my blog on my Instagram stories, via the swipe up link, about once a week. This has yielded me results of about 60 views a month. For reference, I have about 17.1k followers on Instagram. My challenge to myself (and my suggestion to you) will be to advertise once per day on your Instagram story and feed. You should always be advertising to people for them to go to your website in all of your captions. You can also put your website URL in your bio and track how many clicks you are getting from it by using the bit.ly app which converts long URLs into shorter ones and tracks analytics.
Traffic from Facebook
I get a little bit of free traffic from my business Facebook page. Facebook is really great because the platform allows clickable links from your post, unlike their other platform Instagram.
Traffic from Twitter
I am not a Twitter guru, hence I do not see a lot of traffic from Twitter. This is only because I am not very active in this platform for my business. I use it more for personal use still and plan to branch out eventually or hire someone to do it for me. I love getting news from twitter and fun trending topics. If you can join in on what is trending on twitter and add in your website on the tweet, go for it! I also suggest finding some friends, creating a group, and retweeting each other’s content to start off with until you learn the in and outs of Twitter.
Traffic from Quora
Quora is a website and mobile all that allows you to answer questions that other people have. For Quora, you are going to want to answer someone’s question on a forum related to your blog post. When you answer, you should write as much as you possibly can and then direct them to your website/blog page. You want to write a lot so people upvote your answer and you show at the top of the page. I just recently started using Quora and have had a lot of success! Below shows two notifications I got on the Quora app within the first week of me using the platform.
Paid Ads
Lastly, there is paid traffic. As any business that you want to grow, you should be investing in it. The most popular advertisements I have heard of are Google AdWords and Facebook. You can also have a lot of success on Instagram as well. If you start using a paid advertisement, I suggest that you are directing people towards a product that you are selling on your website.
A great way to learn more about paid ads is through the website Udemy which is a paid online class platform. You can also watch videos on YouTube. YouTube will take you longer to piece together information that taking a class, but if you have the time and are short on a marketing budget it is a good resource.
What are some of your favorite ways to get more traffic to your website?! Leave in the comment below!
Sarah says
These are great tips Kit, I never thought about answering people’s questions on Quora but that is an ingenious idea!
Kaitlyn Bishop says
A lot of great info! I especially like your point about commenting on others’ blog posts – I’m just gonna have to get over my shyness and do that now!
Best wishes!
Kaitlyn of http://www.sovereignchild.net
Joanna says
hi Kit!
Very informative! I’m new to blogging and also new to instagram and Pinterest so still learning. I’m using these platforms to promote my blog but how do you get followers to instagram and FB? 17 K is so impressive!
Greetings from Joanna at oko-logic.com
Mallaury says
Although I already have 1 successful blog, I am in the process of launching 2 NEW one! So this post was super helpful considering I haven’t really looked anything like this up for a while now. Thanks for sharing!
Chelsea says
These are some really great tips. I love that you provide some really hands-on, tactical things that a new blogger like me could try.
-Chelsea from http://www.chelseabuilds.com
Allyson says
This was really helpful. As a new blogger myself I find I’m struggling to grow traffic. I like how you broke it down by site to show how you’ve gained traffic with different platforms.
Dacia says
Really Helpful tips especially for new bloggers. This is a crucial and the most difficult part of starting a blog!! Thank you 🙂
Iuliya says
Interesting, simple and actionable items to drive traffic!
Mike Katona says
Hey Kit, awesome blog post. Super helpful as I’m just starting out with my blog. And to take some of your awesome advice—> Mike from http://www.shabbychichouse.com
Brenna cliver says
Great information, thank you!
Natalie Dayton says
Thank you for sharing all of these ideas to grow your blog traffic! Pinterest is the biggest way that I am driving traffic right now!
Natalie
Maria says
I really like how you structured the post. Very easy to read and follow.
Brynn says
Thank you for the tips! I’m honestly having a hard time selling from my website but people seem to be finding me on Amazon (which is odd because I don’t mention that anywhere). I’m trying all of this. – Brynn from http://www.shopllamamama.com
Jane Doe says
I love how in depth this post is, so much helpful information! Thank you for sharing.
Hanya Marie says
This is a great post. Commenting on blogs is one of the most under-used ways to get backlinks which will increase your domain score. I also joined Quora recently and its such a fun app. Im totally going to look for you on there. Cant wait to read some of your answers! -Hanya Marie
Her Coffee Break says
Such a helpful blog post! Definitely gonna try some of these tips.
Kendra says
Very comprehensive list! I forgot about Quora…that’s a possible great place to mine. Excited for the ebook. Pinterest has been good but a very slow climb, but it’s all a process, right? That’s part of the fun. 🙂 Thanks for the awesome resource.
Tricia Snow says
There is a lot of meat in this article! I wish I had known a lot of this when I first started blogging. Pinterest, SEO, backlinks and Social Media can be overwhelming to learn when you are trying to get free traffic to your blog. There is a lot of wisdom here to help bloggers navigate their way through a sea of information getting followers and website traffic!
Kelly says
I’m just starting to get serious on getting traffic, while still creating content for my blog. It’s hard! These tips are great, a lot of them I’ve never seen anywhere else before.
Cather says
Hi Kit
Thanks for your blog post especially the key words everywhere it’s just what I needed to take my blog to the next level.
Catherine
HealthY hippie says
This is so helpful! I’ve just recently started a blog and I’m looking for ways to increase traffic. I had no idea about using SEO and quora so I’ll definitely try those! Thanks so much for writing about this!
Sheila Conley says
Hi, and thank for this amazing post. Pinterest is my favorite traffic source because it’s so easy to get more free traffic with Pinterest.
I look forward to following you on Instagram and Pinterest as well for more helpful advice!
Chris ryan Kingston says
Brilliant Post Kit! Will definitely have a look at using Quora for traffic generation 🙂
Jerry Phorng says
Really informative, thanks for sharing this!
Jordan says
This was SUPER helpful! I’ve been struggling with keywords, so this might be the game changer I needed!
Thanks Kit!
Jordan
kitstanwood@gmail.com says
Yay so glad you found this helpful! I hope the keyword search video tutorial made sense and you get some good tips from it. <3 Kit
Michele says
Hi, great suggestions here! My blog is very new (less than 8 months) so all of this is very important info for me as I try and grow. I’m just getting into Pinterest now with some help. I have also done a couple of paid advertisements on Instagram and Facebook but I am not sure how much it helped my actual blog. Hoping to do some more research before paying again to hopefully get the “most bang for my buck”. I look forward to following you on Instagram and Pinterest as well for more helpful advice!
Thanks ~ Michele at http://www.endlessfamilytravels.com
kitstanwood@gmail.com says
Hi Michele!!! Love your blog! And yess Pinterest has been the best way for me so far to gain traffic and be able to connect with other bloggers which is great! SEO is also important. Right now I’ve been working on commenting on other people’s blogs, which is great for SEO but also super fun! I need to learn more about paid advertising as well! I’ve had a few successful Instagram paid ads, but then some tank. I did a Pinterest ad, but I have such a large reach already that it didn’t seem worth it to me for it until I learn how to master it and like you said “get the best bang for my buck”. I have not done a Facebook ad yet but started to take some courses on udemy.com for it. Good luck with your ad research! I plan to come out with a post within the next few months on it! Maybe even an ebook. <3 Kit
Suzanne says
Pinterest was a HUGE game-changer for me! Once I started focusing on it, my page views quadrupled. Loving all of your tips… xo