The top 13 ways to Increase your Blog Traffic without spending a cent

My small business clients often ask me what they can to simply tweak their blog and their blogging effort a little bit to get more page views. Most of them have a limited budget for these kind of measures also.

So I have put together my list of the top 13 free ways to increase your blog traffic.

All of these are pretty easy to implement if you aren’t doing them already and they should all not only increase your actual blog traffic but also help with the all-important search engine optimisation as well.

1. Write at the right time.

As bloggers, we tend to be inspired to write at different times of the day and week but when are most of your readers looking at your blog? If you have an international audience, what time is it locally when they are more likely to be looking at your blog? If you’ve just written a cracker of a blog post and its 2am where your main readership is, it might be worth hanging on for a few hours before you publish it.

2. Be smart with links.

Don’t be afraid to give away some links in your post to another blog or website – especially if the other site is a well-trafficked one. Also, think about including links within your blog post that links away to other posts within your blog. This can be great for SEO, but also improves the reader’s experience while also establishing you as an expert in whatever you write about. Sometimes writing a ‘series’ of blog posts about the same thing or splitting your posts into several different posts over a number of days can work really well for traffic too because you are adding a sense of anticipation.

3. Put your Facebook Page to work.

OK you all know how much I love a high-performing optimised Facebook Page. And this is the great way to see what power it really has. Every time you publish a new blog post, update your Facebook status with the direct link. Not only that but ask a question of the Facebook audience that they can only get the answer of from the post or encourage more comments and interactions in that way.

There are a heap of really nice Facebook plugins available for WordPress blogs now which will make the readers’ experience – especially if they are also Facebook users – so much better.

4. Fall in love with StumbleUpon.

I love StumbleUpon. I know it can be perceived as pretty nerdy but it’s also one of the 3 highest referrers of blog traffic for me. After I publish a blog post, I also ‘stumble’ it – and it can lead to a lot of new traffic you wouldn’t get otherwise. For instance, last month, StumbleUpon referred 4,267 people to my blog posts – not bad.

5. Get comfortable with video.

YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. Using video is a great way to be found by random searchers and Google loves video! Not only that, but video can provide a different, and in some ways more engaging, element to your writing. A lot of people aren’t too keen on doing stuff in front of a camera but if you’re not one of them, you will definitely see increased traffic (as I have) if you include video elements.

6. Will it be your blog or a guest blog?

There are two parts to this. You can get another blogger to write a guest post for your blog. This can increase traffic hugely because you are suddenly utilising two different audiences instead of just your own. It can also be a disaster if the person you get to write for you is controversial, has a horrible writing style or is just really rubbish. Always check out their work on their own blog first.

The other thing is you can also write a guest post for someone else – a more authorative, higher-trafficked post with a bigger audience. This has the effect of raising your profile as a blogger but also increasing the traffic back to your own blog because you have been exposed to a bigger audience. Always include a couple of obvious links back to your own site.

Most blog owners – including me – won’t accept blogs that have been published somewhere else, I only use guest posts that are 100% original and haven’t been posted before – even on the guest bloggers own site.

So, before you publish an article, particularly if it’s a pretty good one, think about whether you would like to submit it to another blog for consideration. Blog owners (like me) are always on the lookout for quality content, so you could get lucky. If nobody else is interested in the post, then publish it on your own blog.

7. Promote your RSS Feed.

This is one of the most under-valued and under-used tools for bloggers. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a way that people can get updated with any changes on your blog (like a new post) without having to check back to your site all the time. I honestly think that if more people in the world understood what RSS was, they would all be using it!

So, on your blog posts, promote your RSS feed clearly and encourage your readers to subscribe to it. If they are using an RSS Reader, or something like Microsoft Outlook that works like one, it can be a great alternative for people to sign up to your site who may not want to receive emails but instead get your RSS update feed.

This, by the way, is something that I should be doing and I’m really not doing it. Not very well anyway. Not yet…

8. Present an alternate view.

OK, I don’t mean present a blatantly and obviously antagonistic view but maybe write about a topic in a way that nobody else has written about it. For instance, there might be thousands of blog posts about the top 13 ways to increase your blog traffic without spending a cent (I hope there isn’t) so you might write a post about the top 13 ways to increase your blog traffic by spending $50 or less.

With more than 100 million blogs circulating the world, you have to do something to stand out a bit.

9. Find the right length for your posts.

I was going to entitle this section “write short posts” but that isn’t always a recipe for increased blog traffic. Some of my most successful blog posts have been really short succinct ones but some of my long-winded rants have done really well too. My standard advice, based on two years of constant split testing, is that on average the blog posts that were between 300-800 words have done the best. As a point of reference, this post is just over 1,600 words.

The point is, you have to find what works for you and your readership.

10. Get the Twitterverse on board.

As you all know, I am a massive advocate of Twitter. While it is a great tool for building brand awareness, creating an online community around your business and raising your personal profile, it is also an amazing referral tool for new blog posts. After every new post is published, I always tweet the headline and the link out and then I might follow that up a couple of times on that day in a different form so that people in different time zones and countries might also be exposed to the new blog post.

Just remember to try to avoid any of these.

11. Make it easy to comment.

In the past, I have had it so that nobody could leave a post on my blogs without first signing up to them or at least having me moderate what they said before it went live.

After speaking with my SEO expert Glenn Murray and reading his amazingly simple and helpful ebook, SEO Secrets – The DIY Guide to Topping Google, I changed all of that and now when you make a comment on my blogs, it appears right away. I also wrote another post about the pros and cons of doing that and you can read it here.

Since I made it easier for people to comment on blogs, guess what? They do!

12. Comment on your comments.

It’s simple. If there are 10 comments on a blog post and you return every comment with a comment of your own (to thank them or challenge them or encourage them in some way to comment further) then there are 20 comments on that blog post. The end result is your blog looks more authorative, the user experience is enhanced with more comments to read at the end of the post, and your commenters are pleased to have been validated. Too easy.

13. Write good content.

Write for people, not search engines. Try to have good spelling and grammar (although I am not one to talk). Write content that is interesting, engaging and encourages comments from your readership. Listen to your readership – ask them what they would like you to write about. It’s not rocket surgery, if you write good content, you will get more readers.

Did you know … that I can help you with blogging content, guest posts and search engine optimisation features on your blog? Or even just show you how to get started? If you would like to find out how I might be able to help you with making your blog better, more relevant, and found more by Google, call me TODAY on 02 8006 2498 or email me nick@thebowditchgroup.com.

And let me know if there is any other topic you would like me to write a blog post on that is relevant to your business or industry.

Do you have any other tips that can really make a blog work better for a small business owner? Do you disagree with any of my tips?

Please let us know in the comments below. When you leave a comment on this site, it appears straight away – no signing up, no waiting for the comment to be moderated – it will appear below straight after you have posted it.