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
2009. 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 , beautiful videos that tell a story and remarkable collections of facts that challenge common assumptions
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 Double Click'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:
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,
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.
Some people will use your images without linking back, which sucks. However, you can find them by employing the
Image Search function of "similar images," shown below:
Clicking the "similar" link on any given image will show you other
images that Google thinks look alike, which can often uncover new
sources of traffic. Just reach out and ask if you can get a link,
nicely. Much of the time, you'll not only get your link, but make a
valuable contact or new friend, too!
#7 - Conduct Keyword Research While Writing Your Posts
Not surprisingly, a big part of showing up in search engines is
targeting the terms and phrases your audience are actually typing into a
search engine. It's hard to know what these words will be unless you do
some research, and luckily, there's a free tool from Google to help
called the
AdWords Keyword Tool.
Type some words at the top, hit search and AdWords will show you
phrases that match the intent and/or terms you've employed. There's lots
to play around with here, but watch out in particular for the "match
types" options I've highlighted below:
When you choose "exact match" Ad-words will show you only the quantity
of searches estimated for that precise phrase. If you use broad match,
they'll include any search phrases that use related/similar words in a
pattern they think could have overlap with your keyword intent (which
can get pretty darn broad). "Phrase match" will give you only those
phrases that include the word or words in your search - still fairly
wide-ranging, but between "exact" and "broad."
When you're writing a blog post, keyword research is best utilized for
the title and headline of the post. For example, if I wanted to write a
post here on Moz about how to generate good ideas for bloggers, I might
craft something that uses the phrase "blog post ideas" or "blogging
ideas" near the front of my title and headline, as in "Blog Post Ideas
for When You're Truly Stuck," or "Blogging Ideas that Will Help You
Clear Writer's Block."
Optimizing a post to target a specific keyword isn't nearly as hard as
it sounds. 80% of the value comes from merely using the phrase
effectively in the title of the blog post, and writing high quality
content about the subject. If you're interested in more, read
Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization (a slightly older resource, but just as relevant today as when it was written).
#8 - Frequently Reference Your Own Posts and Those of Others
The web was not made for static, text-only content! Readers appreciate
links, as do other bloggers, site owners and even search engines. When
you reference your own material in-context and in a way that's not
manipulative (watch out for over-optimizing by linking to a category,
post or page every time a phrase is used - this is almost certainly
discounted by search engines and looks terrible to those who want to
read your posts), you potentially draw visitors to your other content
AND give search engines a nice signal about those previous posts.
Perhaps even more valuable is referencing the content of others. The
biblical expression "give and ye shall receive," perfectly applies on
the web. Other site owners will often receive
Google Alerts
or look through their incoming referrers (as I showed above in tip #5)
to see who's talking about them and what they're saying. Linking out is a
direct line to earning links, social mentions, friendly emails and new
relationships with those you reference. In its early days, this tactic
was one of the best ways we earned recognition and traffic with the
SEOmoz blog and the power continues to this day.
#9 - Participate in Social Sharing Communities Like Reddit + StumbleUpon
The major social networking sites aren't alone in their power to send traffic to a blog. Social community sites like
Reddit (which now receives
more than 2 billion! with a "B"! views each month),
StumbleUpon,
Pinterest,
Tumblr,
Care2 (for nonprofits and causes),
GoodReads (books),
Ravelry (knitting), Newsvine (news/politics) and many, many more (Wikipedia maintains a decent, though not comprehensive list
here).
Each of these sites have different rules, formats and ways of
participating and sharing content. As with participation in blog or
forum communities described above in tactic #2, you need to add value to
these communities to see value back. Simply drive-by spamming or
leaving your link won't get you very far, and could even cause a
backlash. Instead, learn the ropes, engage authentically and you'll find
that fans, links and traffic can develop.
These communities are also excellent sources of inspiration for posts
on your blog. By observing what performs well and earns recognition, you
can tailor your content to meet those guidelines and reap the rewards
in visits and awareness. My top recommendation for most bloggers is to
at least check whether there's an appropriate subreddit in which you
should be participating.
Subreddits and their
search function can help with that.
#10 - Guest Blog (and Accept the Guest Posts of Others)
When you're first starting out, it can be tough to convince other
bloggers to allow you to post on their sites OR have an audience large
enough to inspire others to want to contribute to your site. This is
when friends and professional connections are critical. When you don't
have a compelling marketing message, leverage your relationships - find
the folks who know you, like you and trust you and ask those who have
blog to let you take a shot at authoring something, then ask them to
return the favor.
Guest blogging is a fantastic way to spread your brand to new folks
who've never seen your work before, and it can be useful in earning
early links and references back to your site, which will drive direct
traffic and help your search rankings (diverse, external links are a key
part of
how search engines rank sites and pages). Several recommendations for those who engage in guest blogging:
-
Find sites that have a relevant audience - it sucks to pour your time
into writing a post, only to see it fizzle because the readers weren't
interested. Spend a bit more time researching the posts that succeed on
your target site, the makeup of the audience, what types of comments
they leave and you'll earn a much higher return with each post.
-
Don't be discouraged if you ask and get a "no" or a "no response." As
your profile grows in your niche, you'll have more opportunities,
requests and an easier time getting a "yes," so don't take early
rejections too hard and watch out - in many marketing practices,
persistence pays, but pestering a blogger to write for them is not one
of these (and may get your email address permanently banned from their
inbox).
-
When pitching your guest post make it as easy as possible for the
other party. When requesting to post, have a phenomenal piece of writing
all set to publish that's never been shared before and give them the
ability to read it. These requests get far more "yes" replies than
asking for the chance to write with no evidence of what you'll
contribute. At the very least, make an outline and write a title +
snippet.
-
Likewise, when requesting a contribution, especially from someone with
a significant industry profile, asking for a very specific piece of
writing is much easier than getting them to write an entire piece from
scratch of their own design. You should also present statistics that
highlight the value of posting on your site - traffic data, social
followers, RSS subscribers, etc. can all be very persuasive to a
skeptical writer.
A great tool for frequent guest bloggers is Ann Smarty's
MyBlogGuest, which offers the ability to connect writers with those seeking guest contributions (and the reverse).
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are also great places to find
guest blogging opportunities. In particular, check out the profiles of
those you're connected with to see if they run blogs of their own that
might be a good fit.
Google's Blog Search function and
Google Reader's Search are also solid tools for discovery.
#11 - Incorporate Great Design Into Your Site
The power of beautiful, usable, professional design can't be
overstated. When readers look at a blog, the first thing they judge is
how it "feels" from a design and UX perspective. Sites that use default
templates or have horrifying, 1990's design will receive less trust, a
lower time-on-page, fewer pages per visit and a lower likelihood of
being shared. Those that feature stunning design that clearly indicates
quality work will experience the reverse - and reap amazing benefits.
These threads -
1,
2,
3 and
4 - feature some remarkable blog designs for inspiration
If you're looking for a designer to help upgrade the quality of your blog, there's a few resources I recommend:
-
Dribbble - great for finding high quality professional designers
-
Forrst - another excellent design profile community
-
Behance - featuring galleries from a wide range of visual professionals
-
Sortfolio - an awesome tool to ID designers by region, skill and budget
-
99 Designs - a controversial site
that provides designs on spec via contests (I have mixed feelings on
this one, but many people find it useful, particularly for
budget-conscious projects)
This is one area where budgeting a couple thousand dollars (if you can
afford it) or even a few hundred (if you're low on cash) can make a big
difference in the traffic, sharing and viral-impact of every post you
write.
#12 - Interact on Other Blogs' Comments
As bloggers, we see a lot of comments. Many are spam, only a few add
real value, and even fewer are truly fascinating and remarkable. If you
can be in this final category consistently, in ways that make a blogger
sit up and think "man, I wish that person commented here more often!"
you can achieve great things for your own site's visibility through
participation in the comments of other blogs.
Combine the tools presented in #10 (particularly
Google Reader/
Blog Search) and #4 (especially
FollowerWonk)
for discovery. The feed subscriber counts in Google Reader can be
particularly helpful for identifying good blogs for participation. Then
apply the principles covered in this post on comment marketing.
Do be conscious of the name you use when commenting and the URL(s) you
point back to. Consistency matters, particularly on naming, and linking
to internal pages or using a name that's clearly made for
keyword-spamming rather than true conversation will kill your efforts
before they begin.
#13 - Participate in Q+A Sites
The best strategy I've seen for engaging on Q+A sites isn't to answer
every question that comes along, but rather, to strategically provide
high value to a Q+A community by engaging in those places where:
-
The question quality is high, and responses thus far have been thin
-
The question receives high visibility (either by ranking well for
search queries, being featured on the site or getting social
traffic/referrals). Most of the Q+A sites will show some stats around
the traffic of a question
-
The question is something you can answer in a way that provides remarkable value to anyone who's curious and drops by
I also find great value in answering a few questions in-depth by
producing an actual blog post to tackle them, then linking back. This is
also a way I personally find blog post topics - if people are
interested in the answer on a Q+A site, chances are good that lots of
folks would want to read it on my blog, too!
Just be authentic in your answer, particularly if you're linking. If you'd like to see some examples, I
answer a lot of questions at Quora,
frequently include relevant links, but am rarely accused of spamming or
link dropping because it's clearly about providing relevant value, not
just getting a link for SEO (links on most user-contributed sites are
"nofollow" anyway, meaning they shouldn't pass search-engine value).
There's a dangerous line to walk here, but if you do so with tact and
candor, you can earn a great audience from your participation.
#14 - Enable Subscriptions via Feed + Email (and track them!)
If someone drops by your site, has a good experience and thinks "I
should come back here and check this out again when they have more
posts," chances are pretty high (I'd estimate 90%+) that you'll never
see them again. That sucks! It shouldn't be the case, but we have busy
lives and the Internet's filled with animated gifs of cats.
In order to pull back some of these would-be fans, I highly recommend creating an
RSS feed using Feedburner
and putting visible buttons on the sidebar, top or bottom of your blog
posts encouraging those who enjoy your content to sign up (either via
feed, or via email, both of which are popular options).
Once you've set things up, visit every few weeks and check on your
subscribers - are they clicking on posts? If so, which ones? Learning
what plays well for those who subscribe to your content can help make
you a better blogger, and earn more visits from RSS, too.
#15 - Attend and Host Events
Despite the immense power of the web to connect us all regardless of
geography, in-person meetings are still remarkably useful for bloggers
seeking to grow their traffic and influence. The people you meet and
connect with in real-world settings are far more likely to naturally
lead to discussions about your blog and ways you can help each other.
This yields guest posts, links, tweets, shares, blogroll inclusion and
general business development like nothing else.
I'm a big advocate of
Lanyrd, an event
directory service that connects with your social networks to see who
among your contacts will be at which events in which geographies. This
can be phenomenally useful for identifying which meetups, conferences or
gatherings are worth attending (and who you can carpool with). The founder of Lanyrd also
contributed this great answer on Quora about other search engines/directories for events (which makes me like them even more).
#16 - Use Your Email Connections (and Signature) to Promote Your Blog
As a blogger, you're likely to be sending a lot of email out to others
who use the web and have the power to help spread your work. Make sure
you're not ignoring email as a channel, one-to-one though it may be.
When given an opportunity in a conversation that's relevant, feel free
to bring up your blog, a specific post or a topic you've written about. I
find myself using blogging as a way to scalably answer questions - if I
receive the same question many times, I'll try to make a blog post that
answers it so I can simply link to that in the future.
I also like to use my email signature to promote the content I share
online. If I was really sharp, I'd do link tracking using a service like
Bit.ly so I could see how many clicks email footers really earn. I
suspect it's not high, but it's also not 0.
#17 - Survey Your Readers
Web surveys are easy to run and often produce high engagement and great
topics for conversation. If there's a subject or discussion that's
particularly contested, or where you suspect showing the distribution of
beliefs, usage or opinions can be revealing, check out a tool like
SurveyMonkey (they have a small free version) or
PollDaddy.
Google Docs also offers a survey tool that's totally free, but not yet great in my view.
#18 - Add Value to a Popular Conversation
Numerous niches in the blogosphere have a few "big sites" where key
issues arise, get discussed and spawn conversations on other blogs and
sites. Getting into the fray can be a great way to present your
point-of-view, earn attention from those interested in the discussion
and potentially get links and traffic from the industry leaders as part
of the process.
#19 - Aggregate the Best of Your Niche
Bloggers, publishers and site owners of every variety in the web world
love and hate to be compared and ranked against one another. It incites
endless intrigue, discussion, methodology arguments and competitive
behavior - but, it's amazing for earning attention. When a blogger
publishes a list of "the best X" or "the top X" in their field, most
everyone who's ranked highly praises the list, shares it and links to
it. Here's an example from the world of marketing itself:
That's a screenshot of the
AdAge Power 150,
a list that's been maintained for years in the marketing world and
receives an endless amount of discussion by those listed (and not
listed). For example, why is SEOmoz's Twitter score only a "13" when we
have so many more followers, interactions and retweets than many of
those with higher scores? Who knows. But I know it's good for AdAge. :-)
Now, obviously, I would encourage anyone building something like this
to be as transparent, accurate and authentic as possible. A high quality
resource that lists a "best and brightest" in your niche - be they
blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, individual posts, people,
conferences or whatever else you can think to rank - is an excellent
piece of content for earning traffic and becoming a known quantity in
your field.
Oh, and once you do produce it - make sure to let those featured know
they've been listed. Tweeting at them with a link is a good way to do
this, but if you have email addresses, by all means, reach out. It can
often be the start of a great relationship!
#20 - Connect Your Web Profiles and Content to Your Blog
Many of you likely have profiles on services like YouTube, Slideshare,
Yahoo!, DeviantArt and dozens of other social and Web 1.0 sites. You
might be uploading content to Flickr, to Facebook, to Picasa or even
something more esoteric like Prezi. Whatever you're producing on the web
and wherever you're doing it, tie it back to your blog.
Including your blog's link on your actual profile pages is among the
most obvious, but it's also incredibly valuable. On any service where
interaction takes place, those interested in who you are and what you
have to share will follow those links, and if they lead back to your
blog, they become opportunities for capturing a loyal visitor or earning
a share (or both!). But don't just do this with profiles - do it with
content, too! If you've created a video for YouTube, make your blog's
URL appear at the start or end of the video. Include it in the
description of the video and on the uploading profile's page. If you're
sharing photos on any of the dozens of photo services, use a watermark
or even just some text with your domain name so interested users can
find you.
If you're having trouble finding and updating all those old profiles
(or figuring out where you might want to create/share some new ones),
KnowEm
is a great tool for discovering your own profiles (by searching for
your name or pseudonyms you've used) and claiming profiles on sites you
may not yet have participated in.
#21 - Uncover the Links of Your Fellow Bloggers (and Nab 'em!)
If other blogs in your niche have earned references from sites around
the web, there's a decent chance that they'll link to you as well.
Conducting competitive link research can also show you what content from
your competition has performed well and the strategies they may be
using to market their work. To uncover these links, you'll need to use
some tools.
OpenSiteExplorer is my
favorite, but I'm biased (it's made by Moz). However, it is free to use -
if you create a registered account here, you can get unlimited use of
the tool showing up to 1,000 links per page or site in perpetuity.
Finding a link is great, but it's through the exhaustive research of
looking through dozens or hundreds that you can identify patterns and
strategies. You're also likely to find a lot of guest blogging
opportunities and other chances for outreach. If you maintain a great
persona and brand in your niche, your ability to earn these will rise
dramatically.
Bonus #22 - Be Consistent and Don't Give Up
If there's one piece of advice I wish I could share with every blogger, it's this:
The above image comes from
Everywhereist's
analytics. Geraldine could have given up 18 months into her daily
blogging. After all, she was putting in 3-5 hours each day writing
content, taking photos, visiting sites, coming up with topics, trying to
guest blog and grow her Twitter followers and never doing any SEO
(don't ask, it's a running joke between us). And then, almost two years
after her blog began, and more than 500 posts in, things finally got
going. She got some nice guest blogging gigs, had some posts of hers go
"hot" in the social sphere, earned mentions on some bigger sites, then
got really big press from
Time's Best Blogs of 2011.
I'd guess there's hundreds of new bloggers on the web each day who have
all the opportunity Geraldine had, but after months (maybe only weeks)
of slogging away, they give up.
When I started the SEOmoz blog in 2004, I had some advantages (mostly a good deal of marketing and SEO knowledge), but it was nearly 2 years
before the blog could be called anything like a success. Earning traffic
isn't rocket science, but it does take time, perseverance and
consistency. Don't give up. Stick to your schedule. Remember that
everyone has a few posts that suck, and it's only by writing and
publishing those sucky posts that you get into the habit necessary to
eventually transform your blog into something remarkable.
Good luck and good blogging from all of us at Moz!
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