Traffic Tips for Bloggers getting less than 1000 visits a week.

As a new blogger, you can’t just wave your magic wand and get more traffic. Try these tips to help reach your traffic goals as a newer blogger.

It can be frustrating as a new blogger to publish content and be working so hard on your blog and then seeing minimal traffic come to your blog. I hear from disheartened bloggers all the time who just wish they could get more than 1000 visits a week.

Some just want 50 visits a day. So they can grow to 100 visits a day. So that they can get that traffic rolling and finally feel like the time and effort they put into their blogs are worth it.

Here’s the thing, getting traffic as a brand new blogger is different than getting traffic when you’re already established.

Established bloggers with a good size following email their list and BOOM. They get 500 hit on one day. They include a swipe up link to their 10,000 Instagram followers and they get traction.

Those big bloggers… they’ve been where you are. Trying to find their people and place online. And you can get to where they are.

For the tips in this post, I reached out to several experts in the blogging world who help newer bloggers. They get what you’re going through and know what you should focus on.

It’s not going to be easy. And their tips aren’t going to be a magical solution that you can do one time and you get instant traffic.

You’re going to have to put in the work, but when you take action on these traffic tips – you will start to see results

1. Choose one traffic source and master it
2. Create 10-20+ Headlines For Each Article You Write
3. Publish Good Content
4. Participate in Q&A Threads and Sites
5. Answer questions your audience is actively looking for
6. Be an early adopter
7. Craft Powerful headlines
8. Use Pinterest strategically
9. Befriend and Collaborate with other bloggers
10. Know where your readers are

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Choose one traffic source and master it

— Lauren, Create and Go

Alex and I watch most new bloggers jump on every search and social media platform out there (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Google, etc.) when they first get started. When you try to do everything at once, you end up unfocused and not very good at anything.

The best thing that you can do as a new blogger is carefully choose ONE platform to drive traffic from and focus on learning everything there is to know about getting great at it.

Look at others in your niche who are already successful on the platform and study them. See what they’re doing right and what you think others might be doing wrong. Form your own strategy from here based on your audience and spend ALL of your time and energy creating and promoting your content on that platform.

Don’t move on to another form of traffic until you feel that you’ve gotten a good handle on the first one and you’re getting steady and consistent traffic to your blog.

P.S. Pinterest is AMAZING for bloggers! 😉

Create 10-20+ Headlines For Each Article You Write

— Kelan, The Savvy Couple

One of the worst blogging mistakes you can make is spending hours creating epic content and not spending the time to make a click-worthy headline. For each article, you create spend the extra time to come up with 20+ headlines you could use. A great tool for this is the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer.

Once you have a good set of headlines pick the best one that will create curiosity & value with your audience. You can also use these headlines for your Pinterest pins. This will immediately increase the traffic to your articles.

Publish Good Content

— Carly, Mommy on Purpose

Good content is the foundation of good traffic.

I think it’s common to overlook the importance of content as a traffic foundation. Is anyone out there ACTIVELY SEARCHING for what you’re writing about? The starting place of any traffic strategy has to be content.

And GOOD content is the thing that separates every successful blog out there from millions of failing blogs, and allows them to rise to the top. Content that your reader can benefit from or relate to; that people actually read, like, and SHARE is the key to growing sustainable traffic. Good content is also easier to monetize.

Good content is a number of things:

• Original (*ahem* – round-up posts…)
• Actionable, inspirational or thought provoking
• Problem solving or “search-able” (9 times out of 10, this means it’s about the reader – NOT about YOU)
• Detailed (this doesn’t mean you should use 700 words when 500 will do, it means you don’t just touch on the basics of your subject – you go deep)
• It has a well thought out + click-worthy headline
• It’s easy to read (physically easy to read – short paragraphs, broken up with h tags and bullets, lots of white space, and contrast on the page)

Good content often takes us far longer (and feels harder) to produce, but it pays dividends in the end!

Participate in Q&A Threads and Sites

— Tracie Fobes, pennypinchinmom.com

One way that you can quickly grow your traffic is by helping others. The more value you give, the more people will want to visit. In fact, the more you give away for free, the more people will clamor to buy anything you sell! How do you do this? Answering questions.

Join Facebook groups that are in your niche and answer questions — but don’t randomly drop links to your site. You certainly do not want to come across as self-promoting (that looks bad). The more helpful you are, the more people will turn to you as an expert.

For example, I am in several blogging related groups on Facebook. I am in there answering questions and helping people all day long. I am giving my expertise as a blogger to them and expecting nothing in return. I rarely ever drop a link to any posts I write — but others do. They have gotten to know me and what I can do to help. I’ve even picked up countless blogging clients — all without any advertising.

Keep in mind that this is not the same thing as a Facebook share thread. These are often less than helpful and not something most experts will recommend.

You can also join sites such as Quora and answer questions for others there as well. The rules are a bit strict when it comes to self-promotion but the more you answer, the more of an expert you will become. People who like what you have to say will seek you out and will want to read more of what you have to say. They will also begin promoting you to others as a resource which can result in more traffic and readers.

When you give to others for free, they are more willing to give back to you in return. And, the simple way they will do that is by sharing your site with others and promoting you as someone who has the answers to the questions they have.

Answer questions your audience is actively looking for

–McKinzie Bean, Moms Make Cents

One of the most effective ways to bring targeted readers to your blog is to answer the questions they are already asking! Now you may be thinking “how in the world do you know what your audience is looking for?” There are a few ways, but I want to teach you one of my favorites.

Answerthepublic.com is a site that makes this super simple. On Answer The Public you enter in your keyword or category that you want to write about and it brings up tons of questions that people are searching for that contain that keyword or phrase.

This will give you a list of blog post ideas that you know your readers are actively looking for. Use these ideas to create your content calendar. Writing on these types of topics is the most effective use of your time since you aren’t guessing if it is something someone wants to read.

When you have content that answers someone’s question or solves their problem you are going to get more social shares which leads to more traffic for you!

Be an early adopter

— Ben Huber, Breaking the One Percent

Bloggers have the tendency to strictly promote their content on bigger social media platforms. And with good reason. They’re big. But sometimes bigger doesn’t always mean better. Being an early adopter of a social media platform can pay monetary dividends for your blog later on. Spend a little bit of time familiarizing yourself with lesser known social media networks out there (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Insta and Pinterest). Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will these networks.

Furthermore, setting up profiles on other platforms helps send signals to search engines that your “brand” is expanding its online presence. Some networks may even reward early adopters with equity passing links in their profiles – it may not be much juice, but every little bit counts. Having a bigger digital footprint is, generally speaking, a good thing.

Action step: Don’t dump hours into maintaining a presence on every platform out there. Some won’t even have a true audience for your niche.

Instead, consider giving preference to networks that have explore/discovery feeds. Getting followers can be hard, so dumping time into networks that don’t distribute your content beyond just your followers may not pay the dividends you’d like it to.

When we first started out, a content discovery network known as StumbleUpon sent us hundreds of hits/day when we couldn’t even manage to collectively break 25 visitors/day from any other platform. Why? Because we had engaging content with an excellent headline that performed well in front of a large audience. It wasn’t hyper-engaging but it was something at a time when we got no other traction.

They’ve since “rebranded” to Mix.com (which looks cleaner in my opinion) but haven’t quite recovered from their fall as one of the biggest websites in the world. They may never get back to the level, but getting in “early” may be the key earning dozens to hundreds of visitors/day from a progressive algorithm that display content beyond just your followers.

Craft Powerful headlines

— Elna, Twins Mommy

As a professional writer and blogger, I’ve seen how a strong and powerful headline can be the best indicator to help grow your traffic.

It doesn’t matter if you have the “right warm colors” on your social media graphics or if you don’t include faces or your graphic is black and white.

If your headline resonates with the person viewing that pin graphic, Facebook post or Twitter message, they will be inclined to click over to see what you are talking about.

For example, here’s a black-and-white image I used for Pinterest marketing that uses some special headline copywriting. I’ll dive into Pinterest marketing as this is one of the best ways to start growing your blog traffic.

Impressions (how much your pin is exposed on Pinterest) are what will help get your pin in front of as many pinners as possible. Then it’s your headline that will get pinners to take action and click to your site.

Let’s go through how I feel the headline in this pin is what helped drive traffic to my blog:

• This is a list post: People LOVE list posts – especially large list posts – as this tells them there’s a lot of information in this post and they should save or bookmark this post.
• Relying on emotion and curiosity words: Words like hack, secret, clever, ingenious, or ridiculous are all emotional-basd words that make a pinner curious about what you are talking about.
• The headline IS the pin – If you look at the Pin example, you can see that the headline takes up most of the pin. Having a large font, minimal script font and colors, can help pinners notice your pin in their smart feed while scrolling on their mobile devices.
• The headline is bold – Bold headlines are attractive to pinners. I made sure to bold the important words that will resonate with pregnant moms about to give birth.

Try using these tactics in your headline to help boost your blog traffic on Pinterest!

Use Pinterest strategically

— Chelsea Clarke, Her Paper Route

Pinterest is a huge search engine, so utilizing Pinterest SEO (search engine optimization) is crucial.

What that means is that you use good keywords everywhere on your account.

Make sure that when you are pinning something – anything – that you have your ideal customer in mind.

• Who are they?
• Why do they want to buy your product?
• What words do they use when they are searching on Pinterest?

Then fill your pin description with niche-specific and ideal-customer specific keywords that make sense for your ideal customer, and pin it to multiple boards (your own and group boards) where he/she hangs out.

All of this ensures that your pins show up in the right search results. By doing this you are signaling to Pinterest what your pin is about, so that Pinterest knows who to show your pins to.

And as a result, your pins are seen by your ideal customers. Whether your pin leads to your sales page, an affiliate product or your blog posts – Pinterest SEO can’t be overlooked.

Befriend and Collaborate with other bloggers

— Kristie Hill

It might seem contradicting to befriend the “competition” but getting to know other bloggers in your niche or complementary niches is one of the best things you can do for your blog. There’s a reason #communityovercompetition is a trendy hashtag.

Here are some really great, Pinterest and Instagram worthy quotes that go along with befriending other bloggers:

“A rising tide lifts all boats”

“Supporting another’s success won’t dampen your own”

“A candles never loses it’s light by lighting another.”

Get where I’m going here? When we come together, we can grow (and get more blog traffic) together.

You have similar target audiences with the bloggers in your niche and can share these readers with each other.

You can reach out to them and publish articles just like this one. You give exposure to other bloggers (win for them) and they are most likely going to share the article (win for you).

You can share and tag each other’s content on social platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Help other bloggers out and they will help you out in return.

Go out there and start making friends with other bloggers. They key is to be genuine in your approach and friendship.

Know where your readers are

— Lena Gott, What Mommy Does

When you’re a new blogger, it’s difficult to know how to get a good amount of traffic to your content. I did all sorts of things in the name of traffic….if another blogger told me it worked for them, I tried it, too!

But here’s the thing – the same strategies can’t work the same for everyone, because everyone’s audience is different. To get people to come to your blog, you have to present interesting information to them somewhere where they will actually see it. For me, that’s moms on Pinterest. For you, that could be older women on Facebook or a younger, more tech-savvy demographic on Instagram. For all I know, it could even be professionals on LinkedIn or creatives on YouTube!

Which platforms work best for you are UNIQUE to your blog. Go where your readers are and you’ll get far. If one platform doesn’t work for your brand then don’t be afraid to let it go, even if it works for other bloggers. Your readers will reveal their platform(s) of preference over time. Be on the lookout for those clues and meet them over there.

Go get more traffic

In conclusion, there is not one “secret” or “magic trick” that will get you obbs of traffic. But there are a lot of things you can do to help get that traffic rolling.

Start with the foundations: good content, content that your people are looking for and have questions about. That content needs a good headline to entice people so test out a few and chose a strong one. Then, know where your readers hang out and focus on one platform. Share, answer questions, and help people there.

You probably noticed that many people mentioned Pinterest. It’s a great place to share your content so that you can get more traffic and grow your audience. If you haven’t yet, might want to get started on Pinterest.

Don’t forget my tip: collaborate with other bloggers.

Good luck getting more traffic. I can’t wait until you see an increase in your Google Analytic reports!

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