You’ve worked hard on your blog day in and day out and now you’re ready to get seen.
But has low blog traffic got you frustrated? No need to fear, learning how to increase blog traffic is much easier than you might think!
With the right tools and knowledge, growing an online presence has never been easier and often times, the results are almost instantaneous!Â
This guide to increasing blog traffic will cover:Â
- How to promote your content on Pinterest
- How to use Google to rank in organic searches
- Additional tools you should invest in to to start growing your blog NOW
- How to use social media to grow your blog
Whether you’re in need of suggestions in blogging for beginners or are looking to get more views to your small shop or social media profile, we’ll cover all of the basics here.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and I could earn a small commission if you make a purchase using one. This comes at no additional cost to you and all recommendations are based on my experience.
How to Increase Blog Traffic: Blogging Tips for Beginners
By implementing the 5 simple strategies below, you can 10x your blog traffic like I did!
But before you get started, check out your website’s performance to see how you rank in terms of speed – my favourite resource for this is GTMetrix.
Simply enter your blog’s URL and then click Test your site for a review of your blog’s performance.
If you aren’t into the technical stuff, look no further than Performance Score and Page Details!
Here are my results.
I host my super fast blog (just a 1.1 second load time!) with Siteground and if your load time was anything higher than 3 seconds, I would seriously suggest you make the switch to Siteground too – you’ll save 60% off your first year with my link.
Site speed has a direct impact on your ability to rank in Google results and when 40% of users will ditch a website that takes over 3 seconds to load, you’re risking even more points by jeopardizing user experience!
Here are my Google Search Console results for one week in October.
That’s 10,500 clicks from Google Searches – no clicks from Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook included!
Not bad for a busy mom who blogs maybe once a month these days!
But what about pageviews?
17,227 pageviews that same week!
Increasing your blog traffic is easy to do with good bones (like the right hosting!) and powerful resources.
I first started blogs on Wix and WordPress.com – they failed!
So, now that you know where to self-host your blog, let’s move onto other strategies that will help you grow your site’s unique visitor count, sessions, and pageviews.
We’ll start with every new blogger’s favourite topic – Pinterest!
1. Promote Your Posts on Pinterest + Get Tailwind NOW
This might be obvious for those of you who were referred here from Pinterest but if you haven’t started with Pinterest for business yet, now is the time!
About 60% of my traffic comes from this powerful cross-over between social media and a visual search engine.
The keys to success on Pinterest are consistency and platform optimization – this includes both your profile and keyword research for your pins and boards.
Now, should you pin manually or with a Pinterest scheduler?
As a busy mom, I’ve gone with scheduling 99% of my pins on Tailwind and have seen AMAZING results.
Tailwind is a scheduling and analytics tool plus a blogging community – Tailwind Tribes – all in one.
Tailwind pins at ideal times when my audience is most likely to be active – something I would have had to spend a lot of time figuring out – and allows me to be present on Pinterest even on my most unpredictable days.
Tailwind has also helped me to:
- grow my monthly viewers count to over 1.7 million
- reach 182 million Pinterest users
- receive over 27,200 re-shares on Pinterest
- receive over 55,500 repins on Pinterest
Without Tailwind, it would have been really challenging to accomplish this in just one year!Â
You can try Tailwind for FREE for one month – no credit card required.Â
How to Use Tailwind Tribes
Think of Tailwind Tribes like Instagram engagement groups, except they’re actually allowed and in fact, were created by an approved Pinterest developer.
Tribes are usually category based – i.e. recipes, parenting, fashion.
Since other bloggers in these groups are writing about similar content and want to share these topics with their Pinterest followers too, your pins will perform best if you share them with like-minded bloggers.
When considering “all niche” tribes, it’s also important to consider that they tend not to be moderated as well as smaller, niche specific groups.
Some of these tribes have thousands of members and receive thousands of content submissions daily!
It can thus often be difficult for moderators to regulate content in addition to making sure that everyone is playing fair.
Imagine being one or two of these moderators and also trying to manage your own blog or business website at the same time – yikes!
Different groups have different rules and I’ve seen everything from one submitted for one shared to one submitted for five shares!
Some groups are also more strict than others and you can be removed for not adhering to the rules in a timely matter – like mine 😉 I’d rather keep it small than have people spamming the group and NOT reciprocating!
The most well moderated tribes are usually the ones that you’ll get the most re-shares in as well.
Another important consideration to make when joining and sharing to Tailwind tribes is Monthly Pin Submission Limits.
These Pin Submission Limits are based on the Power Up that you have selected and are a separate entity from your Plan.
The most basic Tailwind Power Up is the Pro Power Up which has a pin submission limit of 30.
Max Power Ups include 200 monthly Pin Submissions and Membership to Unlimited Tribes, Elite Power Ups include 400 Pin Submissions and the Unlimited Power Up includes Unlimited Monthly Pin Submissions!
In my experience, 200 pin submissions is far more than enough for a blogging beginner.
If you are using anything other than the Unlimited Plan, you should pay careful attention to which groups your pins perform best in.
Once you have submitted a pin to your group, this counts as a submission against your monthly allotted amount and deleting a pin that did not perform well will not give you a second chance to submit another in hopes that your results improve this time around.
Here’s an example of what a good tribe looks like:
Now, let’s break down each of these terms since they can be a bit confusing!Â
Re-Shares: the number of times that your Tailwind Tribe mates have shared your content
Repins: the number of times your content has been repinned by your Tribe mates’ audiencesÂ
Reach: the number of potential impressions from all re-shares of your content on Pinterest
So, for me, this tribe is working really well!Â
In fact, 3,400 or so of the total 5,300 repins generated in this groups are mine! Holy cow!
This tells me that my Tribes mates’ audiences are also interested in my content.
Tribe Members
See my profile photo and display name?
The green bar to the right tells you that my content has been reshared by a Tribe mate recently – woohoo!Â
The grey number, 87, shows you that I’ve shared 87 of my pins to this Tribe while the green number indicates that I’ve shared 190 of other Tribe members pins.Â
Remember how we talked about being fair? Tailwind will even reward you for sharing your Tribe mates content by featuring your profile in their Weekly Highlights category for Top-Resharers of the Week!
Other Tribe members can even click to see my Submissions!
Pro Tip: Weekly Highlights are a quick way of finding high quality content to pin on Tailwind!
Pinterest Manual Pinning Strategy
If you go with manual pinning, aim for at least 30 pins a day.
This needs to be a combination of your own content and other users’ related content.Â
You don’t want to spam your followers but at the same time, you do want your pins to be seen.
Start with a 1:1 ratio and be sure to adjust your strategy according to your Pinterest analytics – they’ll tell you within just a few days if your method is working out!
More Tips on How to Use Pinterest for Blogging:Â Â
I find the following schedule has the most impact when I create new content:
- Write
- Create at Least 2 Alternative Pins
- Publish
- Promote
If you’re struggling with writer’s block or haven’t had time to create a new blog post, try designing at least two additional new pins in alternate styles for old pieces you’ve written.
It’s a great way to stay active on the platform even when you’re not up to writing something new!
Pinterest is a visual game and if you want to be competitive on this platform, you need to consistently design gorgeous 2:3 ratio images to draw readers in!
If you’re brand new to Pinterest, start by checking out Canva* and get creative using the following guidelines:
- Include your blog post’s title
- Include your website’s name at the top of bottom of your image – this may deter pin theft later
- Use a maximum of three differing font styles
- Keep it to one script font or less – your pins need to be easy to read
- Images without people’s faces tend to get repinned more
- Pickup a few free stock photos here to get started
- Include a square box or other overlay above your image to make your text more legible!
*Canva is also an excellent means of designing gorgeous board covers to brand your Pinterest profile.
More Pinterest Design Resources:Â
2. Create a Minimum of 2 New Beautiful Pins Daily
Continuing where we left off above, this is an absolute essential for drawing in your potential audience.
You never know when a pin is going to take off but you have a higher chance of that happening if you create them more often!
Creating new pins also gives you an opportunity to experiment with different styles and colours.
Different audiences appreciate different pin styles.
Here’s an example of some pins I’ve created for a client versus my own.
See how they’re all totally different?Â
Understanding your niche is the key to creating great pins.Â
Just run a search on Pinterest to see what’s already ranking and take in everything you can about the design.Â
For example, the niches above are home decor versus making money online.Â
A Pinterest search for home decor will quickly show you that visuals are queen.Â
However, the make money online category brings up images with bold text and is information dependent.Â
My brand’s colours are pink, black, white, and grey – I love the idea of fiercely feminine and my ideal audience is moms between 25 – 34 years old.
However, that being said, creating pins with less dominant pinks really helped me to attract an even larger audience.
Have an ideal audience in mind but don’t limit your business.
Maintain the imagery and ideals that you want to your brand portray but don’t be afraid to experiment with new promotional content.
Best case scenario, it’s a hit and helps grow your readership and followers.
Worst case, you spent five minutes creating a new pin style that didn’t explode the way you thought it might! Chances are, it still brought you a few new readers you didn’t have before – winning!
Want to know something that all successful business owners and entrepreneurs have in common?
Successful business owners all take chances!
Reflect on the entrepreneurs you admire most and get inspired.
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3. Sign Up for Squirrly SEO
I started focusing on my SEO and ditched Yoast a long time ago!
Squirrly offers way better value and more features that you don’t get with Yoast including:Â
- Focus Pages – to help you with ranking!
- Calculated chances of ranking
- Determined current ranking drawbacks
- Unique treatment for individual pages
- 14 Days Journey to Better Ranking – basically, a free SEO course!
- SERP Checker
- Keyword Research Tools
- Keyword Research Assistant
- Full and Easy Overview on everything related to visibility issues
- Settings Assistant
- SEO Live Assistant
- SEO Audits
- Social Media Audit
- Blogging Assistant
- Duplicate Removal
- Weekly Site Audit – you’ll get a weekly email with a score out of 88 to tell you how your site is performing
- Plus a lot more!
I love Pinterest but after they accidentally suspended my account, I learned very quickly that diversifying my traffic between Google and social media was the right call.Â
Blogging and SEO are a long term game. Pinterest is for immediate results.
SEO will give you years of blog traffic if you do it the right way and update old blog posts. Pinterest pins, on average, have a lifetime of about one week.Â
This being said though, I still have Pinterest pins that rank first in search results one year later, thanks to the help of Tailwind!
How to Improve Your SEO Keywords Ranking
If you are going to take blogging seriously, you need to start learning SEO now.
I use Squirrly PRO on my blogs and my favourite tool for all of them is the SEO Live Assistant.
Squirrly makes it easy to get your content 100% SEO optimized every time you create a new blog post with the live assistant’s 13 point checklist.
You can also go back to old posts and improve their odds of ranking in organic searches with the suggestions that the SEO Live Assistant gives you – it’s never too late to bring new life to an old blog post!
This is a preview of what the Live SEO Assistant looks like – before I publish anything, I always make sure that my content is 100% optimized to guarantee that my site ranks in Google results.
In addition to Domain and Clean & Friendly, there’s also two additional categories for Title and Content optimization – the additional 8 points here are based on Squirrly’s SEO formula and it wouldn’t be fair to share it 🙂Â
But I can tell you that it works!
Here’s a screenshot of my SEO Keywords Ranking showing what happened after I started using the Squirrly PRO on my blog.Â
I went from ranking for a few hundred different keywords to nearly 10,000 in just 4 months!
Colossal difference, right?
You can get your first month of Squirrly PRO for $20.99 using my link!
4. Sign Up for Google Search Console
This tool is amazing and a must have if you want to rank in Google!
You may actually be surprised to learn how you rank and for what terms when you first try it.
While my Instagram photo editing post continues to be my top performer almost daily, I also learned that I rank highly for Instagram props and blogging topics for moms!
One of the tricky things about using Jetpack for WordPress is the inability to see what search terms people are using on Google to come across your site – not to mention it’ll also slow your page load times down tremendously (getting rid of Jetpack saved me just under 2 seconds).
However, with a very quick and easy setup of Google Search Console, you’ll be able to see exactly what terms are bringing you traffic.
Learn how easy it is to set up Google Search Console and start growing your blog with this powerful resource tool!
Now that you’re all setup, let’s start ranking higher.
First, once you’re on Search Console, click Performance.
Next, you’ll see a graph and some Analytics that will show you your Total Clicks, Total Impressions, Average CTR, (the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click to your site) and Average Position of your site in Google search results.
Looking a bit further down the page, you’ll see tabs for Queries, Pages, Countries, Devices, and Search Appearance.
Under Query, Clicks will automatically be displayed in descending order. Surprised with what you see?
Now, after you’ve investigated this for a bit, check out Impressions. While they are often correlated to your Queries, occasionally they’re not!
Ready for the next step?
Let’s go back up to our graph and click on Average Position. Scroll down to view your Query results again and check out your Position for each term.
Click it twice to display results in ascending order.
One or two word search showing that your in position number one or three? Run a Google search to confirm it! Sometimes Search Console can be a little glitchy and might display information incorrectly.
Personally, I’ve found that any terms containing three words and up are pretty accurate though. But, to be sure, always run a search for yourself! Sometimes you’ll actually be pleasantly surprised too.
At the time of writing this post, my Google Analytics showed me as ranking 4.3 on average for “Instagram Line Breaks 2019” but, as I noted earlier, I was actually number 2! Of course, I also had to have a few friends and family confirm it for me, haha.
It’s a bit surreal to see that you rank second among 643,000,000 other relevant pages on the web!
When I first synced my site to Google Search Console though, I actually ranked at number 11 for that search term.
Proof that you can quickly improve your Google ranking by making a few minor adjustments to your blog posts.
It took me less than one month to rank second on Google for this term!
To start improving your rankings, try the following:
- Change your Blog Post Title to more accurately reflect the search term that is leading people to that page
- Update Your Meta-Description to make your post more enticing – use queries to phrase your description so that it matches searches
- In the body of your actual blog post, drop queries that are giving you fewer impressions for similarly related terms
All of the above will help to improve your Click Through Rate (CTR) and thus, help you rank higher in Google Search Results for terms where you are already ranking.
Pro Tip: While it’s great to be ambitious, working to improve your Position for terms that you rank between 11th to 20th has the best odds of moving you to the first page of Google Search Results.
Start here and then tackle other terms you’d like to rank for later on. You’ll see a jump in your blog traffic shortly!
5. Cross-Promote On Social Media
Use your Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and any other form of Social Media that you are active on to promote your latest or an old popular post.
Ask your followers a question or offer an innovative solution to a struggle they might be having.
Especially important on Instagram: strong visual prompts are key to a successful promotion.
And, depending on how you like to use your social media, choose between a relevant image you have taken yourself or one that you have created using stock photos and/or Canva.
While I use a combination of stock photos and images that I have taken myself on my blog, my Instagram is solely reserved for pictures that are my property, intellectual or otherwise.
I view my Instagram as a photography portfolio and want the brands I am working with on here to have an understanding of my creative style when I am pitched an offer.
If creating paid posts for social media is not something you intend on doing however, I think you should feel free to use stock photos on Instagram as a means to attract people to your site.
Even better, use Canva to add your branding and/or your latest posts title to it.
Which of the above was your favourite idea for how to increase blog traffic? Which terms surprised you most when you saw them on Google Search Console?
I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!
Enjoyed this post on how to increase blog traffic? Check out these related ideas:Â
Awesome tips. I agree that changing your pins design can bring new visitors to your site. Sometimes we focus on branding our pins but as you said is good to experiment because you never know. I will also add repining from your analytics. I think is a good practice that works well for me. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the great article! Really helpful for beginners.
Hello,
most of these suggestions are for Pinterest; however, what if I don’t want to use any social media? I’d like to fully concentrate on my blog so the quality of my posts doesn’t start decreasing because I invest loads of time in designing pins.
Are there any possibilities of increasing your blog traffic without social media?
Also, concerning the “Google Search Console” tool, I tried it out, but none of my visitors find my page with Google. Due to WordPress statistics, I know that some of them come from the WordPress-Reader, but not all – how will I know how they have discovered my page? Are there tools similar to Search Console for other search engines, like Ecosia, Bing etc.?
If you would like to give me recommendations on what to do for more traffic, you can also check out my blog: https://justcreativeactivism.wordpress.com/ . It’s not very old (has been online since November). I post content almost daily. The blog is mainly about creative stuff (like DIY), feminism, climate change and books. I think the quality’s not bad (even though I’m biased here ^^), but I only receive 3 or 4 visitors per day.
Thanks!
Really enjoyed reading your article