In its early days, blogs were mostly used as a creative outlet, or an online diary of sorts. While they are still being used in this way by a large number of people, blogs are now also used to generate income for bloggers. Whether it’s income generated through ad revenue or sponsorships, blogging has become an additional revenue stream.
Making a living off of blogging however, is largely dependent on the amount of people visiting the blog regularly. Website traffic has now become directly correlated to the success of a person’s blog, which is why so many bloggers on WordPress are trying to increase it as much as they can.
Below are a few strategies to help you increase website traffic in your WordPress blog.
Generate quality content
One of the things that sets apart blogs that have a good amount of traffic from those that don’t is the quality of the content. Writing great content for your WordPress blog is one of the ways to drive more traffic to your blog. Avoid generating content that does not provide value to your target audience, and make sure that the content you provide is not redundant. While you can tackle the same topic other bloggers may have tackled, make sure to provide your own voice and perspective to that topic. And most importantly, never plagiarize other bloggers’ content for the sake of getting more traffic.
Consider guest posting
You may have noticed that a lot of blogs nowadays feature content written by other people. And no, it’s not just the blogger being lazy. Rather, guest posting is a strategy used by many bloggers to help grow their WordPress blog traffic. Guest posting is a great SEO strategy, and it is a great way for you to drive people from other sites to your own blog. You can even do this the other way around. But if you don’t have a viable audience that will attract other bloggers, you can pay someone to write your blogs. Over time, your guest posts on other sites will attract audiences and other bloggers as well.
Use social media
Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are really great tools you can use to complement your strategy to increase WordPress blog traffic. For one, social media is free to use. Second, a lot of your potential readers are on social media already, so you can easily pop on over to Twitter or Instagram, and get people on social media to view your content on your WordPress blog. Social media can even be used to better your email marketing efforts if it’s properly integrated. If managing multiple accounts proves to be hectic, you can use marketing automation platforms such as Hootsuite to automate your blog postings. That way, you can focus more on creating great shareable content on your site.
Connect with others
When thinking of ways to increase the number of people who visit your WordPress blog, you may be thinking of implementing digital strategies. While they are perfectly fine and acceptable to use, going out in the real world and connecting with others can also be a way to increase website traffic. Being the creator of your own blog, you can also be the ambassador for it. Attend social functions where you can network with like-minded individuals, and work your website into your conversations.
Make functional improvements
It’s not enough to generate traffic using content and social media. Google’s search algorithm has been putting more emphasis on user experience. Websites that work well within user expectations are rewarded with higher search rankings. In this case, you want your website to be responsive and efficient for users. The best way to do that is to make sure it loads faster and it doesn’t make it difficult for users to jump from one page to another. Loading time plays a big role in the success of your website. Indeed, people want instant access to information, so you wouldn’t want to keep potential customers waiting. One way you can make your website load faster is to compress your images and review the plugins you have installed and see which ones to discard and which ones to keep.
Use the right plugins
Speaking of plugins, the success of your website will depend a lot on the kinds of plugins you have installed. And when it comes to increasing organic traffic, you need those plugins that can help you improve the searchability of your website content. Yoast, for one, can help you make sure your blogs are search-engine friendly. Once the plugin is installed, it will give you suggestions about the optimum frequency of your SEO keywords as well as suggestions for improving the readability of your content.
These are just a few ways to increase your WordPress blog’s traffic. Following these tips will surely net an increase in the number of people who visit your site regularly.
