10 Proven Methods : How To Get Traffic to Your Blog

Wondering how to get traffic to your blog? After writing a blog post, it can feel really discouraging when it just sits there without anyone coming to read it. After all, you are not just writing for yourself; you are writing for others to come and read, which will, in turn, generate money for you. 

But if, after writing, nobody reads your blog post because Google has not found your content worthy of displaying in its search engine result pages to drive organic search traffic, it can be very disheartening. 

For decades, many bloggers have relied solely on search engines like Google for their traffic. This option has worked and is still working, but it has become greatly threatened by the presence of AI.

Recall that during Google’s I/O 2024, the giant search engine introduced the AI Overview, an experimental answer by AI to users’ search queries. With it, users can receive direct answers to their queries on search engine result pages (SERP) without needing to visit the different web pages displayed in some cases.

This development, coupled with AI invasion, has led to a decrease in organic search traffic.

However, I have maintained that blogging is bigger than Google’s SERP and even bigger than SEO. A blogger can run a successful blog without paying attention to SEO and AdSense but explore other options away from display ads. See How to make money from blogging.

To get started, have a content strategy that focuses on creating evergreen content. Then, early, build email marketing systems, social media, and other forms of audience building.

Here are different ways you can increase blog traffic, get traffic to your website, and build your blogging career easily without having to depend overly on search engines like Google. 

How To Get Traffic to Your Blog for Free

1. Social media

Social media is a very powerful channel to promote your blog. This involves using any social media platform, whether Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on. 

On Facebook, for instance, you could build a personal brand around what you do. 

Assuming you own a scholarship blog or a sports blog, you may begin sharing sports analysis and updates on your profile to build an audience interested in sports content. 

Once that happens, you can always drop a link to your blog post on your Facebook content. 

For example, after writing your blog post, you could write a summary, post it on your Facebook profile, and attach the link to the blog post so that people connected to you can read the summary and then go over to your blog to read the full post. 

You could also use a Facebook page or a Facebook group. Many big bloggers no longer rely on search traffic. They focus all their energy on building social media traffic because they know that once they build social media traffic, they can always drive engagement to their blog posts. 

This is very important, especially for days when you experience low clicks from search engines. 

So, you can always augment your traffic using social media. 

As I said, social media traffic is not limited to Facebook alone; you could use Twitter, LinkedIn, and other platforms. 

Blogging is a profitable career, if you follow the right blueprint. To get started, check out: How To Start and Make Money Blogging

For instance, people in the scholarship niche often use LinkedIn to promote their blog posts by updating people on available scholarship opportunities and dropping the link on how to apply, driving traffic to their websites.

2. Email newsletters

Email marketing is another channel through which you can promote your blog. If you have gone to a website and keep receiving their emails repeatedly, that is an example of an email newsletter. 

If you can build a list of people who subscribe to your email list, you can update them on the current content on your blog from time to time. 

For instance, if you have an email list of 1,000 subscribers, every week, you could do a recap of the major content you have published on your website and drop those links in their email with buttons that take them directly to the content. 

This way, they will be able to come back to read your content. 

There are many ways to build your email list of subscribers. I do not recommend buying email lists; I advocate building organically. For this to happen, you could have a subscription form on your website or blog in various places, requesting people to subscribe. If you scroll to the footer of my website, www.princewilluchegbu.com, you will see the email subscription button at the footer. This is one way to build your email list.

3. Guest posting

This involves sharing your content on other people’s blogs and then linking back to your blog. 

For example, if you are in the business niche, you could figure out other blogs that accept guest posts within that niche. Write a blog post for them for free, they publish it, and leave a link to your website. 

This way, people reading that content can visit your blog through that link. 

Before doing this, ensure that the person is within the same niche as you and has a good number of readers. You do not want to publish your blog post on any website. This method also helps grow your backlink profile and domain authority.

4. Influencer outreach

You can also use influencers to promote your blog post. For example, if you have a blog in the news and entertainment industry, you could find social media influencers who can post your content. 

Pay them either daily or weekly to share your blog post with their community. Many people use this method on Facebook.

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5. Paid advertising

You can also use paid advertisements to promote your blog, which is especially useful for those who want to go into arbitrage blogging. This involves using various advertising platforms to promote your blog posts and or buying traffic from traffic sources like Facebook, TikTok, Google AdWords, or even native ad platforms like Adsterra, Monetag, etc.

6. Online communities and forums

Platforms like NairaLand, Quora, Pinterest, and Medium provide opportunities to tap into existing user bases. By sharing summaries of blog posts and embedding links, you can attract traffic from these forums to your blog.

For instance, some of my blog posts I know will appeal to a wider audience. Once I publish it, I will briefly overview the content and post the summary in those online forums. Before the day elapsed, I could get close to 100 visitors, and over time, I could amass more than 1,000 free site visitors from that single post.

7. Webinars and live sessions

Hosting webinars and live sessions is another way to promote your blog. Blogs like Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal use this method frequently. You can host webinars and live sessions to promote your blog, directing attendees to your website.

Struggling to write your first blog post? Check out: How To Write Your First Blog Post on WordPress

8. Podcast appearances

Appearing on podcasts is another method of promoting your blog. By being a guest on relevant podcasts, you can reach new audiences and direct them to your blog.

9. Utilizing push notifications

Push notifications allow people to subscribe to updates from your website. Whenever you publish new content, you can send them a push notification about it. They will receive a notification on their phone or browser and can easily click on it to read the content. I use this method frequently. If you visit my blog, you will see a notification icon, which is an example of push notifications. Various options for this include web pushers and notice tools.

10. Leveraging YouTube

Whatever niche you’re into, especially if you’re building a personality around what you blog about, you can use YouTube to drive traffic.

Currently, YouTube is the second most visited website globally, which means that there’s enormous potential to tap into its audience.

A typical way to achieve this is to have a channel similar to my channel on YouTube. If you go around this blog, you’ll find YouTube videos embedded in some of the content. I could mention the various content I’ve on my website in those videos to draw views from YouTube to my blog.

FAQS | How To Get Traffic to Your Blog

Final Thought

My advice to every newbie is this: do not depend on one source of traffic for your blog, and most importantly, learn to bank the traffic that comes to your blog. While you focus on driving massive traffic to your posts, think of ways to have a good percentage of those people in a platform you’ve control over so that on rainy days, you can always bring them back to the blog if you so desire.

Furthermore, SEO is an ever-changing landscape; invest in it. Learn the basics of SEO and keyword research, build rapport with colleagues in the industry, build quality backlinks, and avoid any black hat strategy that Google and other search engines consider unethical.

Ultimately, to increase your blog traffic in the long run, have a content strategy, do appropriate keyword research, and write quality content with no plagiarism and preferably evergreen content with your target audience in mind. Then, optimize your blog for search engines and users.