Last updated on March 18th, 2019 at 05:53 am
I’m going to give you some tips that you can use that will teach you how to get people to read your blog. Not only that, but I am going to show you why these tips work and if executed properly, they will help you build backlinks to your blog without doing anything extra on your part.
I know that sounds too good to be true. After all, we know that it takes tons of work to build backlinks to your blog. But what if you could implement these tips and get people to link to you without you asking for anything? Well, you can because this is what I’m doing for my blog.
How to Grow Your Traffic
You’ll still have to make sure that you’re finding the right places to promote your blog. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to take the time to submit your blog to places like, Facebook Groups, Twitter, Pinterest and whatever else you do every time you hit publish.
Hopefully, you have a blog promotion checklist that you follow for every single blog post. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter how many blog posts you publish per week, it’s going to be hard to get views and increase your income.
After you’re done with your promotion, you will eventually have people sharing your content and even linking to you. At least this is what I am personally experiencing.
It’s Totally Possible
I’m NOT an expert when it comes to getting blog traffic. If you’ve followed me for some time, then you know that it’s been a struggle for me when it comes to learning how to increase my blog traffic.
The first year with my blog, I never made it past 3,500 page views. I know that’s sad, but it’s totally true. When I entered my second year of blogging, I figured it was time to start doing something different, especially if I ever wanted to increase my blog traffic.
After all, we’ve heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and and over and expecting different results.
Year Two
I decided to sit down and figure out what wasn’t working. Yes, I probably shouldn’t have waited a whole year before trying to tweak things on my blog. But the truth is that I wasn’t getting any organic traffic and I just thought that I was still stuck in the sandbox.
But the truth is that I had written a bunch of articles that either had too low of monthly searches, or were just too competitive. The best thing you can do is invest in SEMRush to start doing proper research.
I love my blog and enjoy writing, but no one wants to work for free. The sooner you can start understanding how keywords work and what it takes to grow blog traffic, you’ll reach your goals a lot faster.
If you’re completely new to Google then you need to know that the Sandbox is real. It’s not the kind of sandbox that you let your kids play in, that would be the fun type.
The Google Sandbox is the type where no matter what you do to your blog, it’s not going to show up in the search engines. Not until your blog starts to gain some trust with Google. Unfortunately, I am not sure how long that lasts.
For me, it seemed like it lasted an eternity. I’m sure if you’re a new blogger then you feel the same way.
That’s why so many people say that all new bloggers should start with Pinterest. While it’s NOT an overnight success system, many niches do very well on Pinterest. Here’s a list of some popular topics that do well on the platform.
But what do you do if you’re in the blogging niche? We all know that these blogs don’t do as well as other niches. Well, I’ll tell you what’s working for me and how it is creating passive backlinks for me.
But before I get into what’s working, I want to share some tips that will help you not only get visitors to your blog, but get people to read your articles.
How to Get People to Read Your Blog
If you want people to actually read your blog, then there are certain things that you can do to improve the retention of your readers. No, I’m not going to share tips like where to promote your blog to get more readers.
Maybe I’ll write another post on where to promote your blog to get free traffic later.
Instead, I’m going to give you some tips that you can start using today without having to focusing on more promotion or spending more time on social media. Because I don’t know about you, I don’t want to spend any more time on social media.
These tips won’t replace the amount of time that you spend on promoting your blog posts. You should have a blog promotion checklist that you use every time you publish a new blog post.
Let’s get started.
#1 Let Your Personality Shine
There are millions of blogs online and many more getting started everyday. I’m NO fool, and I know that there are tons of blogging tips blogs that you can follow.
It doesn’t matter what you’re blogging about. Chances are there are others that are almost like yours. So how do you make yours stand out?
Well, you inject your personality into your blog. This is what’s going to attract visitors to your blog. Yes, some people may not like your personality and may be turned off by it.
That’s okay, that just means that they are NOT your people and will never be true fans of yours. Sure they might stop by and read an article or two, but they’ll probably never buy anything from you.
How Do You Inject Your Personality?
Well, it’s actually very easy. You can tell stories about yourself something that relates to the blog post you are getting to write. Another great thing that I have used is being transparent about my failures and lessons.
It doesn’t take long to realize that people love reading about your successes and failures. I still haven’t figured out which ones they like reading more.
Don’t be ashamed to share bits and pieces with your audience. People want to know that you’re an actual human, not a perfectionist who never does anything wrong.
It does take time to get used to opening up to your readers. Especially, if you’re an introvert and don’t really like letting people in. The cool thing is that you can share as much or as little as you want with your readers.
The important thing is that you want to make sure that you start letting them get to know you. Here’s a great post that will help you blog with personality.
#2 Be Thorough On Your Topics
When I started this blog, I was still using SEO tactics from 2012. I would focus on one keyword for every blog post and that was it. However, after learning how Google Rankbrain works, I’ve realized that I needed to be more thorough with my blog posts.
One of the things that I’ve been doing each and every time I write a new blog post is trying to the topic from the inside out that I am writing about.
If you browse my blog archives then you know that most of my content is long-form content. A lot of my blog posts range from 2,500 – 3,000 words long.
I’m sure that there’s a lot of work that I can still do to get noticed by Google and drive more traffic. The cool thing is that I am noticing that it’s definitely working.
The only way to do write thorough content is to put yourself in your readers shoes. What would they need help with to take your blog post and run with the ideas and implement them?
Does your blog post take them from Point A to Point B? If so then you are doing a great job with your content and you’re well on your way to getting passive links.
For instance, this blog post is meant to share some tips that you can start using right now to get more people to read your blogs. I’m sharing some tips that are working for me.
Will They Work for You?
I do believe that if you start implementing them they will definitely work. Even if your new way of writing articles doesn’t attract passive backlinks you’ll still be writing amazing content that gets the attention of the search engines.
If you can do that, then you’ll definitely start improving your organic traffic. The cool thing is that even if you don’t do it right the first time, you can always go back and fix it later.
Most new bloggers don’t really know who their target audience is. This is why so many people say that you shouldn’t box yourself in to a narrow niche when you’re first starting.
You need to give yourself time to find out who you’re writing for and what they actually enjoy writing. This will help you determine if you’re on the right track or if you need to tweak and pivot your blog.
#3 Use LSI Keywords
Gone are the days where you could just repeating your keyword that you want to rank for over and over. That’s how you used to rank back in the day.
Today, it’s a lot different and using the old SEO standards will just cause a red flag with Google. Trust me, you don’t want to be the blogger who gets banished by Google.
I’ve been there and did that. It’s no fun being penalized and you’ll see all your hard work just vanish.
Whatever you do, don’t stuff your keywords over and over. In my JumpStart Blog Traffic, I discuss exactly how I find low competition keywords for my blog. If you’re still struggling with coming up with content, then you definitely need to pick it up.
I love using LSI Graph to help me come up with some LSI keywords that I can sprinkle inside of my blog posts. I’ve also started using SEMRush to help me with improve my SEO.
Google will also show you some related keywords at the top when you’re typing in your query and at the bottom of the page. It took me a while to understand what Google Rank Brain was and why you should use it instead of focusing 100% on long tail keywords.
If you’re still not sure how to do your keyword research, it’s time to start reading everything you can on it. I recommend reading the Moz blog.
#4 Be Consistent
It doesn’t matter if you publish content once a week or 3x per week. The important thing is to choose a blogging schedule that you can maintain.
You don’t want to publish a new blog this month and then nothing for 3 months. It’s true that people are not sitting around waiting for you to publish a new blog post.
However, as your blog starts to grow, people are going to know when you publish blog posts. This means that if you’re consistent for the first 6 months but then stop for 4 months.
You’re going to lose the readers that started following you because they loved your content.
Think of your blogging schedule like your favorite television series. I personally love watching Queen of the South. If you start watching a TV series every week and you love it.
You’re going to tune in every week at the same time to watch it again. Sure you might DVR it and watch it when you have some free time. I know that I always DVR my shows because I don’t have time to watch them live, plus I hate commercials.
So every week you look forward to watching your favorite show, because you want to know what happens next. Now imagine that for some reason the show didn’t record on your DVR.
You might think that something was wrong with your DVR or maybe there was a holiday and the show didn’t air. But what if the next week and the following week you still weren’t able to watch the show.
Eventually, you’d give up trying to watch the show because you’d forget how great it was and why you liked in the first place.
Well, that’s how your blog is to your readers. You need to keep it fresh not only for your readers but for Google as well.
#5 Improve Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
One of the things that I’ve been working on and still struggle with is getting the click through when my post shows up in Google. Hopefully, you understand that Google looks at whether or not people are clicking through to your blog posts.
If your posts are coming up on Google and no one is clicking through to your article, that is hurting your ranking.
So you might be working hard on pumping out content and doing everything right. But if your call to actions on your title tags are not getting the clicks, then you’re only hurting yourself.
I’ve been working hard on improving my title tags and meta descriptions. Although, I’ve got to admit that I still have a lot of room for improvement.
How long has it been since you’ve reviewed your title tags to see how they look in Google?
#6 Write Great Content
We’ve all heard the term “Content is King” it’s actually been overused in the blogosphere. However, since I’ve started focusing on writing long-form content and promoting it it on different social networks, I can definitely say that it’s been worth it.
Yes, it takes a long time to write more in-depth content, but it’s definitely worth it. Of course it goes without a doubt that after your done writing your article, you’re going to have to promote it on different platforms like Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.
#7 Get Off Your Blog
Believe it or not one of the best ways to get more followers is to get off your blog. You need to know where your audience hangs out and start using that platform, that’s the best way to get targeted traffic that will find your content beneficial.
It’s so easy to fall into the trap that if you keep pumping out content that you’ll eventually get some followers. Yes, you can get some traffic as long as you do your keyword research using SEMRush or LongTailPro to find those hidden nuggets that don’t require a lot of backlinks.
But the truth is that you’re going to have to make it a point to start commenting on other blogs, write a guest blog at least once a month. While you won’t get a ton of new blog readers or grow your email list overnight.
All these blog promotion tasks will help you grow your blog over time. The important thing to remember when you’re promoting your blog is to pay attention to whether or not your efforts are paying off.
This means that you’ll need to set up Google Analytics to pay attention to where your traffic is coming from. If you’ve been guest posting on a specific blog and it isn’t driving your readers or helping you improve your blog rankings, then it’s time to stop giving them your blog content.
It’s okay to give your content to someone else if it’s helping you grow. We’ve all given away our content to blog’s that didn’t help us in any way. (I know that I’ve done it a few times.)
Focus On Your Most Popular Content
If you have hundreds of blog posts then the first thing I would do is focus on the most popular content first. Go to Google Search Console and see what’s driving the traffic to you. In my JumpStart WordPress eBook, I walk you through on how to set up Google Search Console for your blog.
When you log into your Console, go to Search Analytics >> Search Traffic
You’ll want to make sure the following boxes are ticked:
- Clicks
- Impressions
- CTR
- Positions
Scroll through and you’re looking for all the keywords that are ranking on the first page of Google. You want to make sure that you’re getting a high CTR on your posts.
If not then there’s definitely room for improvement that you can make. When I checked mine, I saw that there was a lot of room for improvement.
Not to mention I also saw more keywords that I was missing out on. I plan on writing more blog posts based on the information that I found inside of Google Search Console.
In my JumpStart Blog Traffic I cover how to find keywords that you can use to write blog posts that actually drive traffic to your blog. So if you’re struggling on writing content that just doesn’t get attention, it may be right up your alley.
That’s the thing about blogging, you have to continually learn how to improve your content. The cool thing is that this is a completely free tool that will help you with your writing.
Getting Passive Backlinks
Now that you have the 4 steps that I have started using to help me grow my blog traffic. I want to show you how this has helped me get passive backlinks and love from readers who are enjoying my blog.
A reader reached out to me asking if they could link to one of my blog posts because they loved the quality of my content. I have received a few of these emails and I love them.
I totally appreciate anyone who takes the time to link to my blog posts. The cool thing is that I am not spending time using outreach tactics to get people to link to me.
Instead, they are coming to me asking me if they can link to some of my blog posts.
Not only that, but I get emails from people who tell me that they are sharing my pins because of my high quality content.
If you’re taking the time to write high quality content that helps your readers, it won’t take long for people to start helping you build links. We all know that backlinks still play a major role in helping you get first page rankings.
The last thing that you want to do is spend a lot of time building backlinks. I don’t know about you, but that’s not one of my favorite blogging tasks to do.
I’d rather continue writing content. Yes, I know that I’ll still have to build some backlinks, but the cool thing is that my readers are helping me by sharing my content and linking to my blog posts.
It doesn’t get any better than that, at least I don’t think it does.
Give It Time to Work
One of the things that I always see in Facebook groups is people asking “why they aren’t making money or getting traffic to their blog.” When someone asks them how long they have been blogging most of the time it’s either a week or two.
It’s so hard to believe that it takes time to grow a blog, especially, when you see so many people talking about overnight success. It can be misleading for new bloggers and they make the mistake of thinking that they can get overnight traffic and make $20,000 per month in three months.
I’ve said it before and I stand by it. Some niches are going to do a lot better than others because they do extremely well on Pinterest. Then there are other niches that take a little longer to get traction to because they don’t do very well on Pinterest.
If you’ve ever wondered “is my blog working” step back and look at:
- Which blog promotion sites are you using?
- Are you paying attention to Google Analytics?
- How is the quality of my content?
- Are you treating your blog like a business?
- Have you been blogging for awhile or did you just start?
Blogging is a long term strategy and you have to give it time to work. Here’s a list of some of the most profitable blog niches. (some of them do extremely well on Pinterest)
Pinterest has helped thousands of bloggers grow their blog in a very quick time, especially, if you’re using Tailwind. I’ve been using Pinterest for over a year now and it seems that no matter what I do, I can’t get 100,000’s of visitors to my blog.
Maybe if I created new pins on a daily basis, I could, but who really has time for that? I know I don’t.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t use Pinterest, because I do. I just know that I’ll probably NEVER get the type of traffic that a lifestyle blogger gets from Pinterest.
Final Take Away
Instead of just writing content that you think your audience wants, spend some time finding popular blog topics that they need help with. Do your best to write helpful blog posts that actually help them.
This most likely means that you’ll have to stop writing 500 word blog posts. Most of the time, I can’t even get everything written in a 1,000 word article.
It doesn’t really matter how many words you write. The important thing is to provide all the information that they need so they can take action on your article.
If you continue to do that, then before you know it, you won’t have to worry about getting noticed on WordPress. You’ll have people not only reading your blog posts, but sharing your content as well.
Just make sure that you’re using a social sharing plugin that makes it easy for people to share your content. I personally use the Social Warfare plugin.
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Are you still struggling to get visitors to your blog? Hopefully, these tips will show you how to get people to read your blog. This is what’s worked for me and I’d love to hear if it works for you.
Let me know if you plan on implementing these tips, I’d love to hear what your plan is to get more readers.
Hi Susan,
Every time I visit your blog, there’s some freshly baked knowledge for me. Thanks for regularly updating the blog and sharing amazing ideas.
Hi Shafi,
Thanks for taking the time to stop by on a regular basis.
Glad you’re enjoying the content.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan