How to Get Traffic to Your Blog (That Actually Grows Your Business)

Want to learn how to get traffic to your blog that helps grow your business? This article will give you four steps on how to improve your blog traffic with SEO-focused articles.

The key to using your blog to grow traffic and attract customers is to produce high-quality content that is readable and engaging for your target audience.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to improve the discovery of your content by search engines, make it more readable, and publish it more consistently.

By following these tips, you’ll be able to get more traffic to your blog and see better results from your online marketing efforts.

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I receive a small commission at no cost to you when you make a purchase. This helps me pay to keep this site going and to bring all these free resources to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Why the “right traffic” matters for your website

As many business owners inevitably discover, not all traffic is created equal. It’s not just about how much traffic you can generate – it’s about generating the RIGHT KIND of traffic.

There are two types of website visitors: those who are actively looking for what you have to offer (i.e., your target market) and those who stumble upon your site by accident.

The latter group may not be actively seeking out your product or service, but they might still be interested in what you have to offer – if they can find it. This is where SEO comes in.

Search engine optimization is all about ensuring your content can be easily found by people looking for information related to your business.

It’s how you attract the “right” kind of traffic that is more likely to convert into leads and customers. Marketers call this “targeted traffic.”

When you get this stuff right, good things happen for your business. Just as it did for Stevie, one of our happy clients.

How to drive more traffic to your website and blog

There are four ways to increase blog traffic and reach your target audience:

• Improve discovery by having a clear traffic strategy

• Improve readability and the formatting of your blog posts

• Improve the frequency of publishing fresh content

• Improve reach through the better promotion of your blog posts

Step 1: Improve discovery by writing strategic content

As a business owner, you know how important it is to clearly understand your target market. The same goes for your website and blog content.

Before you can start driving traffic to your site, you need to make sure you’re producing content that appeals to the people who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer – i.e., your target market.

This means doing keyword research and creating optimized content for search engines and your target audience. You’ll also need to ensure that you pay attention to on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

Make keyword research the first step in your content process

When it comes to keyword research, there are a few different approaches you can take:

• Use keyword research tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Moz Keyword Explorer to find popular keywords related to your business.

• Use analytical tools like Google Analytics to see which keywords people are already using to find your site.

• Look at the content of your competitor’s websites and blogs to get an idea of the keywords they are targeting.

Once you have a list of relevant keywords, you can start incorporating them into your content.

Beware: Stuffing your content with too many keywords will not only turn off your readers but also get you penalized by Google.

The goal is to use keywords thoughtfully and sparingly in a way that feels natural and makes sense for your readers.

Optimize Your On-Page SEO.

On-page SEO refers to all the measures you can take to ensure your website and blog posts are optimized for search engines. This includes things like:

• Check your headings for keyword placement. H1, H2, H3- oh my!
• Don’t forget alt tags on images- they’re not just for the visually impaired, search engines need them too.
• Internal linking keeps readers (and crawlers) on your page longer.
• Have you double-checked those meta descriptions? Ensure they accurately describe the content AND include a targeted keyword or two.
• Image file names – ensure they include keywords relevant to the post and aren’t just a string of numbers and letters.
• Is your URL structure clean and readable? It should be www.yoursite/target-keyword/ rather than a jumbled mess of numbers and symbols.
• Utilize subheadings to break up text and make it more skimmable for both readers AND search engine crawlers.
• Optimize page load speed so visitors (and crawlers) aren’t left waiting forever to access your content.
• Double-check for broken links- they can be a major headache for both users AND search engines trying to crawl your page properly.

Off-Page SEO Matters, Too.

In addition to on-page SEO, you also need to focus on off-page SEO. This refers to all the measures you can take to improve your website’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Some of the most effective off-page SEO tactics include:

• Link building (i.e., get backlinks from authoritative websites in your niche),

• Reviews and recommendations on popular review sites like Trustpilot, and social media sites

• Social media marketing, guest blogging, and Influencer marketing

• Complete and optimize your Google My Business listing (ideal if your business has a physical location)

We’ll expand on most of these below.

Optimize Your Content for Long-Tail Keywords.

Each article that you publish needs to focus on a primary keyword and a few related long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are simply longer, more specific phrases that are closely related to your primary keyword. They tend to be less competitive than shorter, more general keywords – making them easier to rank for.

For example, if you’re a real estate agent in Toronto, your  primary keyword might be “Toronto real estate.” But you might also want to target long-tail keywords like “luxury condos in Toronto” or “Toronto real estate market forecast.”

Create Evergreen Content For Your Blog

As part of your content strategy, you should also make sure to focus on creating evergreen content.

This is the type of content that remains relevant and useful over time. It’s the kind of content you can return to again and again – regardless of when it was first published.

Some examples of evergreen topics include:

• How-to guides

• “top 10” lists

• Product reviews.

While it’s important to mix things up and keep your blog fresh with new ideas and perspectives,  including a mix of both evergreen and timely content will ensure that your site has something valuable to offer readers – no matter when they stumble upon it.  

Learn and Apply SEO Basics to Your Website

You can have the best blog content in your industry, but if your website is too slow to load or difficult to navigate, you won’t get the traffic you want.

Here are some basic SEO tips to follow:

• Use internal linking to help search engines crawl your site

• Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

• Optimize your website speed for faster loading times

• Make sure all of your links are working properly

• Regularly update your website content to keep it fresh and relevant

• Connect your website to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

• Monitor your website’s search engine rankings and traffic levels

• Create a sitemap using a tool like Rankmath or XML-Sitemaps.com and submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools so that search engines can find it.

Write for people, optimize for search engines.

An important thing to remember is that, at the end of the day, you’re writing for people – not for search engines.

While it’s important to include keywords throughout your content,  make sure that they flow naturally and don’t sound forced. In other words, write for your readers first and worry about keyword optimization second.

Step 2: Improve readability and engagement by producing better quality content (pay attention to format)

Research reveals that the majority of readers will not read your entire post. In fact, most will skim through it, looking for the information they need.

This is why making your content as readable and scannable as possible is important.

Here are some tips to keep in mind:

• Use short paragraphs and sentences

• Use headlines and subheadings to break up your content

• Use bullet points or numbered lists whenever possible (list posts are popular because they’re easy to scan)

• Highlight key takeaways with bold or italicized text

• Use images, infographics, and videos to break up your text and add visual interest.

By making your content more readable and scannable, you can improve the overall user experience – which will help you attract and retain more readers.

Here are some additional tips for improving your content quality.

Publish Long-Form Blog Posts

What’s the ideal blog post length?

While there’s no magic number, recent studies have shown that longer posts tend to perform better regarding social shares and SEO rankings.

In fact, one Backlinko and Ahrefs study of 11.8 Million Google search results found that the average word count for a first-page Google result is 1,447 words.

So if you want your blog posts to perform well, aim for at least 1,000 words.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should pad your posts with fluff just to hit a word count. But if you have something valuable to say, don’t be afraid to write a longer post.

Write About Trending Topics

A good content strategy will incorporate evergreen blog posts and timely blog posts about trending topics.

When writing about timely topics, it’s important to strike a balance between being timely and relevant.

You don’t want to write about something just because it’s trendy if it’s irrelevant to your business or industry. But if you can find a way to write about a trending topic in a way that’s relevant to your business, you can capitalize on the traffic and attention it’s receiving.

One way to do this is to set up Google Alerts for key terms and phrases related to your industry. This will help you stay up-to-date on the latest industry news so you can identify any potential blog post ideas.

Use Long Blog Post Headlines

Long blog post headlines have a few benefits:

• It makes it obvious what the content contains and who it’s for

• Helps improve your SEO rankings

• Makes your blog post more shareable on social media

If you want to write attention-grabbing and informative headlines, aim for a length of 60-70 characters.

Make Internal Linking a Routine Task

Internal linking is the process of linking to other pages on your website from within your blog post.

Not only does this help improve the user experience, but it can also help improve your SEO.

When writing a blog post, take some time to see if there are any other related articles you can link to. This will not only keep readers on your site longer, but it will also signal to search engines that your site is relevant and informative.

Pro tip: You can use a WordPress plugin like Link Whisper to make the process of identifying opportunities to add internal links quick and easy.

Learn to Write Great Headlines

What good is putting a tonne of time and effort into producing awesome content if no one ever sees it?

You could have the best piece of content in the world, but if your headline sucks, no one will read it.

Your headline is what entices people to click on your blog post in the first place. So it needs to be both attention-grabbing and informative.

Here are some tips for writing headlines that work:

• Use keyword-rich phrases

• Make sure your headlines are clear and to the point

• Use numbers and symbols to break up your text and add visual interest

• Use actionable words that describe what readers will get from reading your article

• Use emotional words like “amazing,” “heartwarming,” or “inspiring”

Headline writing is definitely a skill that takes some practice. But the more you write, the better you’ll get at it.

Bonus tip:  We recommend using Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer tool to score how good your headlines are.

Add pictures, graphs, and infographics to make your content more visually appealing

Here are six benefits of making your content visually appealing:

• You can use visuals to break up long blocks of text and make them easier to read

• Visuals can help you communicate your ideas more effectively

• Visual content is easier to understand and remember

• Eye-catching visuals are more likely to be shared on social media

• Visuals can add a touch of personality to your blog

• They can help you stand out from the competition

People are more likely to share and link to content that contains images. In fact, articles with images get 94% more views than those without.

But don’t just add any old images. The images you use should be relevant and high-quality.

can also use infographics to make your content more visually appealing. People love infographics because they are easy to understand and share.

You can check out this guide if you’re unsure how to create an infographic.

Add Videos to Your Articles

Videos are powerful because they can help you communicate your message more effectively. In fact, four times as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it.

Videos are also an excellent way to build relationships with your audience. People are more likely to remember you if they’ve seen your face.

And adding videos to your blog posts can help you rank higher in search engines. This is because Google gives preference to websites that contain videos.

Another advantage of embedding video in your blog posts, especially if it’s a video that you’ve uploaded to your Youtube channel, is that it can help you drive traffic to your YouTube channel.

This is valuable because YouTube is the second largest search engine, so it’s a great way to get found by new people interested in your work.

If you’re unsure how to get started, check out this guide on adding videos to your blog posts.

Improve Your Blog’s Design

Whether you like it or not, design plays a role in how people perceive your blog.

People will be less likely to take you seriously if your blog has a dated or unprofessional design.

On the other hand, if your blog has a clean and modern design, it will give off the impression that you’re a professional who knows what they’re doing.

There are two ways to improve your blog’s design – hire a web designer or DIY.

If you prefer to work with a WordPress expert, we recommend our amazing designer Colleen Keith. Colleen helped us with our recent rebrand, which included updating our website theme to the one you’re looking at right now (looks amazing, right?).

If you’d prefer to DIY, plenty of free and paid themes can help you give your blog the professional look it deserves.

Check out this guide if you’re unsure how to choose a theme or install it on your WordPress site.

Make Sure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly

More than 60% of internet traffic now comes from mobile devices, so it’s essential that your blog is optimized for mobile.

If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, people will have difficulty reading your content, and you’ll lose out on a lot of traffic.

Fortunately, plenty of mobile-friendly themes and plugins can help you make your site more responsive.

If you’re unsure how to make your site mobile-friendly, we recommend checking out this guide.

Include a clear call to action with every piece of content you produce

The goal of all this isn’t just to get more blog traffic, right? Your goal is to get more traffic to achieve your business goals.

And for that to happen, you must ensure that every piece of content you produce has a clear call to action.

A call to action is simply an instruction telling your readers what you want them to do next. Typically, you’d point readers to useful resources related to the blog post that they’re reading.

For businesses, some common calls to action include:

• signing up for an email newsletter

• downloading a valuable free resource from a landing page

• buying a product or service

• booking a consultation

• joining completely free Facebook groups

For example, if your goal is to get more email subscribers, your call to action might be something like “subscribe to our newsletter” or “sign up for our email list.”

Like this:

If your goal is to get more people to buy your product, your call to action might be something like “buy now” or “add to cart.”

Step 3: Improve frequency by publishing more consistently

Ever visited a business’ website only to discover that the last time they published an article was over six months ago?

What did that make you assume about the business?

It probably wasn’t anything good.

When people see that a business hasn’t updated its blog in months, they assume it is either inactive or not very professional.

On the other hand, businesses that publish new content regularly are perceived as more active and professional.

The truth is, if you want people to keep coming back to your site, you need to have fresh content regularly. That means publishing new blog posts consistently.

Publishing more content frequently also signals to search engines that your site is active, which can help you rank higher in search results.

It also gives you more opportunities to rank for different keywords and get found by new people.

And the more content you have, the more likely people are to share it and link to it, which can also help with your SEO.

How often you publish new content depends on your goals and audience. For example, if you’re running a news site, you’ll need to publish new content multiple times a day. But once or twice a month might be sufficient if you’re a small business owner.

Create a content publishing schedule

A good way to ensure that you’re publishing new content regularly is to create a content publishing schedule.

Start by determining how often you want to publish new content, and then block out time in your calendar for creating and publishing that content.

If you need help staying on track, consider using a tool like CoSchedule, which can help you plan, publish, optimize, and measure your blog posts. You can also keep it simple and use a Google Sheet to do this (like we have below).

If you want to learn more about creating a content calendar, check out our content strategy guide.

Utilize User-Generated Content

One of the biggest challenges for small businesses with publishing regular content is a lack of available team members and resources.

If you find yourself in this situation, consider utilizing user-generated content (UGC).

UGC is any form of content created and published by someone other than your business or employees. This could be anything from product reviews to Instagram photos to blog posts.

By incorporating UGC into your content strategy, you can free up time and resources so your team can focus on other tasks.

Some great examples of UGC for B2B include:

• round up posts

• guest posting from other bloggers and businesses

A useful tool that we’ve found for generating UGC is Terkel. You can sign up as a Publisher to ask questions that experts can answer with actionable tips or relevant experiences. Here’s an example of an article we produced with Terkel’s help.

While we’re on the topic, if you’re interested in writing guest blogs for this website – submit your pitch here.

Step 4: Improve reach through better content promotion

Just because you’ve published a great piece of content doesn’t mean people will automatically see it.

To get people to see your content, you need to promote it.

Below are several ways you can promote your written content to increase traffic.

Automatically Share Your Blog Posts

You can use a tool like  IFTTT or Zapier to automatically share your blog posts on social media as soon as they’re published.

This is a great way to get your content in front of more people with minimal effort on your part.

Just be sure to customize the message that’s shared, so it’s not the same every time. You can also consider sharing old blog posts from time to time to ensure that all of your content gets seen.

Share Your Content Multiple Times on Social Media

You’ve put so much effort into producing a great piece of content, so don’t you want as many people to view the content as possible and get the most organic traffic possible?

We recommend using Missinglettr to queue up social media posts in advance so you don’t have to think about it. Missinglettr will automatically generate social media posts for each new blog post you publish and then space them out over time.

This way, you can be sure that your content is being promoted regularly without having to do any extra work.

Regularly Share Your Old Articles on Social Media

A big mistake that I see with businesses producing articles is a failure to share old articles on social media.

Just because an article is a few months or even a year old doesn’t mean it’s not worth promoting.

Your audience is always changing, and new people are discovering your brand, so don’t be afraid to share your old content.

A great way to keep your old articles fresh is to update them with new information or data and then share them again. Especially if you’re producing evergreen articles.

This will help you get more organic traffic to your website and ensure that all your content is visible.

Pro tip: You can use Missinglettr to create a year’s worth of social media posts on automation using old blog posts.

Use Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is a great way to get more eyes on your content and increase traffic to your blog.

There are several different paid advertising platforms that you can use, such as Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, and Linkedin Ads.

Whilst paid advertising on various platforms can serve as great traffic sources, they can be expensive. So you’ll want to make sure that you’re targeting the right audience with your ads.

You should also track your results to see how much traffic and leads you’re generating from your paid ads and display advertising.

Reach Out to Influencers

If you want to get more people to see your content, consider reaching out to influencers or niche distribution channels in your industry.

An influencer is someone with a large following on social media or a popular blog. If they share your content with their followers, it can help you reach a larger audience and increase traffic to your website.

To find niche distribution channels in your industry, you can use a tool like BuzzSumo or Sparktoro. Once you’ve found some influencers, reach out to them and see if they’re interested in sharing your content.

In the below video, Amanda Natividad shows us how a coach or consultant might use Sparktoro to identify influencers to collaborate with.

Explore Other Social Networks

While most referral traffic may come from Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, don’t forget about other social networks that could be a great fit for your business.

Many other social networks exist, such as Pinterest, Instagram, and Tiktok.

Consider creating accounts on these other social networks and sharing your content there as well. You never know which social network will be the most popular among your target audience.

Participate in Online Communities

Every industry will have online communities in which you can participate. These are great places to share your content and engage with potential customers.

To find online communities, you can do a simple Google search or use a tool like BuzzSumo.

Once you’ve found some relevant online communities, take some time to read through the rules and guidelines before posting anything.

You don’t want to spam the community with your content – only share when it’s relevant and add value to the conversation.

Start Generating More Backlinks by Guest Posting on other sites in your niche

Guest posting is when you write an article for another website or blog in your industry. This is a great way to get your name and brand out there and increase traffic to your website.

Backlinks are links from other websites back to yours. They help improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) and can increase your site’s domain authority.

To guest blog on another site, reach out to the site owner or editor and pitch them an article idea. If they like your idea, they’ll likely let you write a guest post for their site.

Just be sure to include a link to your website in your author bio so people can easily find you.

It’s also critical that you target other blogs in the right niche as you want to attract the right readers to your site.

Cross-promote to your mailing list.

Don’t forget to leverage your own email list when you have new content to share. This is a great way to increase traffic and get more people subscribed to your mailing list.

Be sure to include a link to your new article in your email and a brief description of what the article is about.

Don’t have an email list yet? Check out our guide to creating an email list from scratch.

Repurpose Content For Different Platforms

One of the best ways to get the most out of your own content is to repurpose it for different platforms.

For example, consider turning it into a video or podcast episode if you have an article that does really well on your blog.

This will help you reach a larger audience and increase traffic to your website.

You can also repurpose content by turning it into an infographic or an ebook. These are all great ways to get more people interested in your content.

Launch a YouTube Channel

Youtube is the second largest search engine, so it’s a great platform to help increase traffic to your website.

You don’t need to be a professional videographer to launch a successful YouTube channel. You can start by simply recording yourself talking about the articles that you publish.

To make your videos engaging, you may offer the following:

• Different angles,

• Additional research,

• An expert interview,

• A summary of the article, or

• Other stories that you didn’t include in the original article.

Include a link to the relevant article in the description box for each video. This will help people find your site and bring extra traffic.

Below is an example of a video that I created by repurposing a blog post (that also happens to be about repurposing content – how meta!).

For additional marketing tips, subscribe to our Authentic Marketer YouTube channel.

Increase blog traffic with Live streaming

Live streaming is a great way to reach a larger audience and generate more traffic to your website.

You can live stream on platforms like:

• Facebook Live

• Instagram Live

• Linkedin Live

• YouTube Live, or

• Twitch.

When live streaming, be sure to promote your upcoming stream in advance on your social media channels. This will help you get more viewers and increase your site’s traffic.

Related: 5 Ways to Promote Your Blog and Grow Your Traffic With Live Streaming

Answer Questions on Quora

Quora is a popular Q&A platform that can be used to generate traffic to your website.

To use Quora, simply search for questions in your industry that you can answer. Once you find a question that you can answer, be sure to include a link back to your website or blog in your answer.

This will help people find your site and learn more about what you have to offer.

Get Featured on Podcasts

Podcasts are a great way to reach a new audience and generate traffic to your website.

To get featured on a podcast, simply reach out to the host and pitch them your idea. If they like what you have to say, they’ll likely invite you to their show.

Don’t have time or team members to help with podcast outreach? Contact us about our done-for-you podcast booking service.

Create your own podcast

In addition to guest podcasting, you may want to consider launching your own podcast. This is a great way to build an audience and generate traffic to your blog posts.

Here’s an example of a podcast episode that was originally a blog post.

• Podcast: 5 great ways to share client case studies to promote your business
• Original article: 15 Ways to Share Your Business Case Studies With The People Most Likely To Buy

Write Twitter Threads

Twitter threads are a great way to share longer pieces of content in a more digestible format.

To write a Twitter thread, simply create a new tweet and then click the “add another tweet” button. This will allow you to string together a series of tweets that people can read through.

Be sure to include a link back to your website or blog in the final tweet of your thread. This will help people find your site and check out your content.

Here’s an example of a Twitter thread that I created from a popular essay that I published about the hidden cost of fast growth.

Comment on Related Blogs

One tactic not often discussed is commenting on other people’s blog posts.

When you comment on a related blog post, be sure to include a link back to your own website or blog. Most bloggers will allow you to do this if your comment is relevant and adds to the conversation.

A final word on how to get traffic to your blog – To see sustainable traffic growth, treat it as a marathon, not a sprint.

Getting search traffic to your blog is essential if you want to grow your business.

Consistent investment over time will result in better ROI than trying to go full speed ahead for a short period of time, followed by burnout.

Following the steps above can improve your blog’s discoverability, readability, frequency, and reach. This will help you get more traffic and grow your business.