The ultimate goal of any blog is to bring in traffic. It takes time, effort, and resources to publish great content – of course after going through so much trouble, you’d want hundred and thousands of people to view and share the amazing content you post.
But the bitter truth is that blogging to increase traffic to your website isn’t easy. In this post, we’ll break down steps that’ll show you how to use a blog to increase organic traffic.
Target your target market through keywords
The first and most important thing you need to do is ensure that you’re targeting the right audience. This logical step is often the most overlooked.
There are several tools that will help you find keywords. Our favorite is Google’s Adwords Keyword Planner. Please note that this resource from Google is primarily used to create Pay Per Click Ad campaigns, but you can use this free-to-use tool to find great keywords.
To get started, visit Google’s Keyword Planner by clicking here.
The next screen you see will show you a number of different options. To find out how to increase traffic for website via blog you need to identify the right keywords. Click Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category.
In this post, we’ll assume that we’re coming up with key phrases for a website that sells chargers for laptops nationwide.
Here are all the fields we filled:
You’re going to get a lot of results. A lot of them are going to be irrelevant. Take a look at this screen:
What you need to do is find key words that make sense for your business. Suppose this hypothetical business exclusively sold Dell laptop chargers, then the keywords would all be specific to Dell.
In this case, we’re just going to assume that we sell all types of chargers.
After filtering through hundreds of results, I identified fifteen great key phrases to target.
- laptop battery charger
- portable computer charger
- buy laptop charger
- laptop charger replacement
- adapter notebook
- laptop charger cable
- where to buy laptop charger
- replacement charger for laptop
- laptop power cord replacement
- laptop battery and charger
- laptop battery charger price
- where can I buy a laptop charger
- cost of laptop charger
- charger for notebook
- best place to buy laptop chargers
Find great keywords to target and group them together by relevance.
Create great content that’s optimized for keywords
There’s a lot that goes into learning how to write a blog for a website to increase traffic. The following tips will help you do just that. But before we get into sharing tips, we’d like to encourage you to consider hiring our professional blog management team. Our holistic blog management solutions are super effective, extremely customizable, and easy on the pocket.
1. Create a clickable heading that has a keyword
Blog posts that perform best on search engine results have an extremely relevant keyword in the heading. Make sure each post you publish has one great key phrase in the title.
Needless to say, the title of the post needs to be click worthy. Users have hundreds of thousands of options to choose from on search engine results. This post outlines everything you would want to know about writing a great headline.
Let’s go through some of the keywords we filtered and created titles for.
- 5 Things to Consider Before You Buy a Laptop Charger
- Highest Performance Laptop Battery Chargers That You Can Buy For Less than $50
- 10 Affordable Notebook Chargers That Are Built to Last
The keywords are in bold. Notice that all titles are catchy and appeal to different audiences.
2. Keyword density: Don’t overdo it
It’s important to understand that keywords are great, but you can’t force them in the content. Try to place them organically in the post. The best thing you can do is identify multiple keywords before the writing process begins. Then you want to write the content with them in mind.
Aim for a maximum of 1% density.
If you’re working with a key phrase like notebook chargers, then you want to make sure notebook chargers shows up not more than one time for every 200 words. 5 is the maximum number of times the phrase should appear in a 1,000 word post.
Similarly, if the key phrase is affordable laptop battery chargers and cables then the phrase should appear a maximum of one time for every 600 words. In a 1,000 word post you should limit the keyword to appear just once because twice would result in a density that’s higher than 1%.
3. Add a keyword in the link
The final tip I’ll share when it comes to optimization on this post is that, if you want to create a blog and increase traffic then you must add the keyword in the link you create for the post.
I recommend that you use the title of the post for the link. Kill two birds with one stone by using a keyword in the title of the post and using that title as the link you create!
Share content on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
Bring in traffic by sharing posts on social media. For one, it doesn’t cost a dime! Secondly, competition on search results on all three of these social sites is low.
It’s relatively easy ranking for key phrases on these websites. All you have to start doing is making sure that each blog post that you have published is also shared on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
The amount of traffic you’ll bring in obviously won’t be as high as search engines, but each hit makes an impact.
It’s hard to ignore Facebook. With over 2 billion users, Facebook has the potential to be a game changer for your business.
The first thing you should do (if you haven’t already) is create and optimize a great business page for your organization.
Start posting the great content you have on your blog on the page and start asking for likes. Every time you post something new, it’ll automatically show up on the News Feed of all the users that have liked your page.
Just imagine how much you’d benefit each time a new post shows up on the News Feed of thousands of users!
There’s a lot of traction that you can build through Twitter. A lot of small to mid-sized business rightly get frustrated with the low results they get from Twitter, but what you have to realize is that it takes time to build a brand on the platform.
That being said, implement these points on Twitter and you’ll start to notice a positive trajectory of visitors from Twitter:
- Add graphics to your Tweets
- Pack a punch with short, creative Tweets
- Ask for retweets
- Share the same post with different Tweets on different days
- Retweet any mentions your business gets
Make sure you have a Twitter handle created specifically for your business before you start Tweeting!
Traffic on LinkedIn is on the rise. The number of professionals that sign up on the network and the amount of time they spend on the platform is exponentially increasing.
The beauty of LinkedIn is that you can share your posts on active communities.
Identify groups that are made up of your target audience and share any posts you publish on your business’ LinkedIn and then on a combination of these groups.
Just look at these groups:
There are a couple of approaches you can take on LinkedIn. The first is to post a version of what you post on Facebook on LinkedIn and then share a link to your blog. This is great because its one way through which you can use blogging to increase traffic to your website.
On the other hand, you can take your post and publish it on LinkedIn. This works well because LinkedIn users actually consume a lot of content on LinkedIn. You can then use a powerful CTA at the end of the content to drive traffic to your site.
You’re going to help your cause with either option. Try them both and see the results come in.
Shares from influencers is a game changer
Guess what? Influencers are always looking for great content to share. Think about it – they’ve got tens of thousands of followers and they have to consistently feed their appetite. You, on the other hand, have great content but lack page views from thousands of followers!
High quality, well-researched content helps because if you post enough of it – it’ll eventually be picked up by potential and full fledge influencers.
What can also do is ask for a shout-out from influencers. Some of them may ask for a payment and you can consider going that route – others may ask for an affiliate bonus. But eventually, you want to get to a level where influencers would start sharing your content without you having to ask.
Don’t feel overwhelmed
All of the above takes time, hard work, and commitment. The results are worth it though.
If you’re struggling to get started, or need help sustaining a blogging strategy then boy do we have some great news for you! Our holistic blog management solutions are tailor-made with your requirement in mind. Give us a call or start a live chat and we’ll create a plan that gets you the results you want.
