Are you wondering “how to increase your page views and why it’s so important?” Who wants to continue writing when no one is reading your blog? We want people to engage with our blogs. Because we know that the more engagement we get, the more affiliate sales, ad revenue and conversions we’ll make.
As you know, I am working my ass off on this blog so I can leave my freelancing business and work full-time on this blog.
It’s definitely been a challenge and a long journey, but I love it. Although, I am like any other blogger. The last thing I want to do is spend all my time in my WordPress blog only to see that no one has visited or shared my posts.
If you don’t know anything about me, then you should know that the techie side of blogging is a lot easier for me.
It’s easy for me to set up a WordPress blog on Desktop Server and play and play. I love messing with WordPress.
In fact, I currently manage over 30 websites for a client. I love freelancing, but I’ve realized that I’m just trading my time for money.
So that’s how this blog came into being. My goal is to use this platform to share my knowledge with you, all while moving away from my freelancing business.
Today, I thought we’d talk about how to increase page views and why you should. If you have been thinking about starting a blog, I’ve created a tutorial that will help you get your blog started today.
Why?
Well without page views and traffic, you’re not going to make any money. It doesn’t matter how great your blog content is. You need to get your content in front of the right people who want what you have to offer.
No, I am not talking about investing in a software program that blasts your new blog post everywhere. Instead I am talking about doing some daily tasks every time you hit publish on a new blog post.
How to Increase Page Views and What I’m Doing
As you know, I’ve never really taken the time to grow a blog. I’ve had several blogs in the past, but always found myself jumping on something else.
This blog is different, it’s now over a year old and I’m working hard to grow it into a profitable blog.
I’m not a traffic expert and I can only share which blogging tasks I’m using to help me increase my traffic.
Hopefully, by sharing my tips and personal journey, it will help you understand and see what it takes to grow your blog.
So take what you will from this post and use it if you want. If you don’t think that it will help you grow your blog, don’t do it 🙂
What Are Page Views
If you’re a brand new blogger you might have heard so many people talking about page views.
In fact, you might have gone to Google and typed in:
- how to increase my page views
- Increase website traffic tips
- how to get 100,000 page views
- how many page views do I need to make money
- how to get more pageviews on your blog
You get the idea. I’ve done those exact searches when I started my blog.
I wanted to know how many page views I need to be able to walk away from my freelancing business.
Now I realize that it doesn’t really matter about just any page views. Yes, I want page views, but more importantly, I want targetted page views.
If you’re checking your Analytics on a regular basis, you need to make sure that you filter the views from bots and remove yourself from your own Analytics.
A page view is nothing more than how many times has viewed a page or post on your blog. (that’s my layman term.) Here’s a more technical answer, in case you want to know.
Why Bloggers Chase Page Views
Personally, I think it’s because we don’t want to work your ass off and not see any comments or shares on our blog posts.
We want people to read our blog posts. Every blogger wants the time on blog per visit to increase instead of just bouncing away in a second or less.
Nothing is more frustrating than working on a blog only to realize that no one is reading it.
Ask any blogger and they will tell you that the hardest part of blogging is growing your following. It’s easy to learn how to start a blog.
Even if you’re not the most techie person, you can eventually learn how to use WordPress without tech skills.
The Hard Work
Comes when you’re trying to turn a blog from hobby to profits. You’re going to have to start treating it like a business.
This means that you’ll have to spend time promoting those blog posts. If you don’t promote them, no one is ever going to know about them.
Yes, it’s okay if you write a blog series one month so you can have a lot of content that you can promote via Pinterest or other social media channels.
I still find myself writing blog series or publishing a batch of content once in a while. After all, I really enjoy writing and don’t really enjoy the promotion part. (but I know that it’s an important part of growing a blog)
One of the biggest mistakes I made when I started this blog was I waited 5 months before I started promoting it.
Big mistake and you definitely don’t want to do that. As soon as you start your blog, it’s time to get busy and promote it.
How do I Promote My Blog?
There are so many different ways to promote your blog. All you have to is do a quick search on Google and you’ll get bombarded with tons of different methods.
While I am sure that most all of those methods will help you improve your blog traffic.
The truth is that you won’t accomplish anything if you try to implement all those traffic methods.
Why?
If you’re a new blogger, you’re a one-person band. This means that you do all the content writing, image creation, video creation, social media marketing, blogger outreach and etc all by yourself.
You won’t have time to implement all those possible traffic strategies. If you try, you won’t accomplish a thing.
What You Should Do
Instead of trying to implement 20 traffic strategies, choose 1-3 of them and do those things day in and day out.
This is what I’ve done and it’s working.
There have been some days that I’ve wanted to throw in the towel. But what I’ve learned is that it takes consistent action on a daily basis to get the results you want.
While I am still a long way off from 100,000 pageviews. It’s nice to see my page views climbing in an upward position.
If you’ve seen my blog traffic reports, then you know that my page views don’t always increase every month.
That’s the thing about blog traffic. It can be inconsistent month by month. That’s why it’s important to keep track of important blog metrics to see if you’re actually growing your blog.
Don’t worry, I’ll share which blog metrics you should pay attention to on a monthly basis than just increasing your page views later on 🙂
What I’m Doing to Increase My Page Views
Just a reminder, I’m not a traffic expert. Take what you want from this post and leave the rest if you don’t find it helpful.
When I started getting serious about promoting my blog, I sat down and made a strategy.
I wanted to do the easiest promotional techniques for my blog without spending a lot of time. As I mentioned, I am a freelancer and I have clients who need me to mange their WordPress sites.
This means that I don’t have a lot of time for my blog promotion.
However, if I want my blog to grow, I need to be doing something to grow it everyday.
These are the blogging promotion techniques I’m using to help me grow my blog. If you do decide to use any of these techniques, let me know if they help you increase your page views.
Blog Commenting
I picked up this book to help me learn how to leave great comments. The last thing I want is to spend time reading blog posts and leaving comments.
Only to realize that my comment has been deleted. It’s not hard, in fact, all you need to do is make sure that you add value to the comments.
Most of the time the blogger has a comment policy. Make sure that you take the time to follow their rules if you don’t want your comment deleted.
I have a comment policy on my blog. Yet it still amazes me at how many bloggers don’t follow it. I’ve found myself having to delete several comments because people don’t follow it. Here’s my comment policy, in case you don’t know about it.
Guest Posting
I love guest posting and I try to guest post on 2-3 blogs per month. I can definitely see why people say that guest posting is a great way to get more eyeballs on your blog.
I’ve found some great guest posting opportunities just by taking the time to build relationships with other bloggers.
It does take time, but in my opinion, it’s so worth it.
Oh and one of the things that I’ve realized is that choosing the right blog to guest post does make a difference.
Here’s how one of the guest posts increased my page views in just a day after I had just written a guest post.
I couldn’t believe it when I saw that I got 93 page views that day. No all the page views didn’t come from that one guest post.
However, when I checked my Google Analytics I had gotten quite a few referrals from that guest post. Not to mention that was the day that I got the most email subscribers.
So yes, guest posting does work. It also makes a huge difference on what type of blog you guest post on.
I didn’t start out guest posting on top blogs. In fact, I still haven’t guest posted on a lot of top blogs.
This doesn’t stop me from guest posting. I realize that we all have to start from somewhere. I’m happy whenever someone allows me to guest post on their blog.
It gives me the opportunity to share my knowledge with their audience. Plus it’s just another way to get my name out there.
So don’t turn down those guest posting opportunities when you’re new. We all have to start somewhere.
You can’t expect to start guest posting on the top blogs right away. At least I wasn’t able to do this right out of the gate.
Update: At this time in my blogging journey, I am not spending a lot of time on guest posting. Instead, I am focusing on increasing my traffic through Pinterest and SEO.
While I still think guest posting can be a great way to grow your blog. Personally, I haven’t found it to be extremely helpful for me at this point and time in my business.
Pinterest Traffic
I have to admit, I am not that great at Pinterest traffic. I’ve really started taking the time to learn the ins and outs of it.
Yet, I’m still not able to get the type of traffic that other bloggers get with it. Either I’m not doing something right or I haven’t given my new methods a chance to work long enough.
As you know I am using Tailwind for my automated pinning. I’ve even started using some manual pinning, thanks to this ebook.
However, I still can’t seem to build the type of traffic that other bloggers have.
pic Pinterest Traffic
I have managed to gain some traffic from Pinterest and it’s nice to know that my traffic has improved.
Maybe I just need to focus on creating better images. By no means am I a graphic designer.
When you look at my images, they look alright. However, compared to some other images on Pinterest, mine look like they were created by a kindergartner.
Oh well, just like this blog, it’s all a learning process and a journey.
Related Pinterest articles:
- 5 Unknown Pinterest Tips for Bloggers to Grow Your Blog
- How to Grow Blog Traffic With Pinterest What You Need to Know
- 2 Pinterest Scheduling Tools You Need to Take A Look At
SEO Optimization
I’m such a huge fan of organic traffic. With my last blogs, I focused 100% on Google. Let me tell you, if you’re able to get a high ranking on Google, your blog will make money.
I still take the time to do keyword research for my blog posts. In fact, I use Long Tail Pro to do all my keyword searches.
However, the difference with this blog and my past blogs is that I am NOT focused on Google traffic 100%.
I’ve been there and done that. Let me tell you, while it’s nice to have top rankings on Google.
You never want to put 100% of your efforts into SEO. By now you know that Google is known to change their algorithms on a regular basis.
I don’t even know what they are today. I just remember the day that Google released their Panda update years ago.
That’s when my niche sites crashed and burnt. It had taken me forever to rank those sites and in an instant, those sites were gone.
My income dried up and I couldn’t even find my sites on Google anymore.
That’s the day that I threw in the towel and called it quits on niche sites.
Now with this blog, I am still working on my SEO to get organic traffic. The difference is that I am not focusing 100% on SEO or on just any one traffic source.
Don’t Focus On Just One
As you can see, I am using 4 different methods to promote my blog. I didn’t even mention my YouTube channel.
This does make it a little hard to do on a daily basis. But all these tasks are easy and don’t take very long.
I get my blog commenting done in about 30 minutes per day. While I am commenting, I am building relationships as well.
This means that I’m knocking out two birds with one stone.
Every blogger should be optimizing their blog posts when they write them. I use Yoast SEO to make sure that my posts are properly optimized.
Related: How to Use Yoast SEO Plugin Everything You Need to Know
Sure it may take a little bit longer to write the post, but if you optimize it properly from the start, you don’t have to worry about it.
My Pinterest marketing takes me about 20-50 minutes per day. As I said it’s a work in progress. I am continually learning and reading everything I can get my hands on about improving my Pinterest marketing.
Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket
Don’t feel like you need to do the same 4 promotional methods that I use to learn how to increase your page views.
Heck you don’t even have to use any of them. There are a ton of different methods that you can use to grow your blog.
Most of the legit methods work. You don’t need any fancy tools or software to promote your blog.
Good old fashioned hard work will pay off. Just don’t expect it to happen overnight.
The important thing is to make sure that you’re not focused 100% on any one specific traffic method.
Take it from me, it’s never good to have your traffic coming from just one source. That source could be gone tomorrow and your hard work will have been a waste of time.
How Long Does It Take?
I wish I could ask my magic eight ball how long it will take to increase your page views. Unfortunately, that answer varies depending on so many factors like:
- Are you actually treating your blog like a business?
- How competitive are your keywords?
- Are you SEO Optimizing your blog posts?
- How many blog posts are you writing every week?
There are so many factors that can go into this question. I still can’t answer that question for myself, so I sure as hell can’t answer it for you.
The only thing that I can say is that you just have to keep doing those weekly blog tasks day in day out.
Keep track of your Google Analytics to see what’s work and tweak your strategy. Remember, it takes time to build a successful blog.
I know that we’ve been conditioned to believe that success happens overnight. However, if building a successful blog was easy, then so many more people would not quit before they see the success.
The only thing we can do is to keep working towards our blogging goals day in and day out. Before you know it, you’ll look back and realize that you’ve built an amazing profitable blog business.
The Secret to Increasing Your Page Views
I’m sorry to say that there is no secret. If there was, I’d tell you.
Unfortunately, it’s just going to take a lot of hard work on a regular basis to increase your page views.
You can’t expect to start a blog today and start seeing a boatload of traffic tomorrow. It just doesn’t work that way, no matter what you read.
If you’re willing to put in the work today, you’ll definitely reap the rewards 2-4 years from now.
I’m not saying that it will take that long to reap your blogging rewards. I’m just saying that many bloggers will tell you it took them years before they were able to see success.
Here’s a great podcast to listen to if you feel that you’re working so hard and not getting anywhere.
Final Take Away
Stop looking for that magic bullet that increases your page views and blog income. Unfortunately, there isn’t one.
The only thing that you’re doing when you’re doing those searches is wasting valuable time.
Most likely, you’re just a part-time blogger right now. This means that when you sit down to work on your blog, you need to work.
Don’t waste your precious time trying to get something for nothing. Instead, put your head down and just work.
No one is going to grow your blog for you. It’s 100% up to you to do the work.
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Are you doing any of these blogging tasks to help you increase your page views? If not share what you’re doing to help you grow your blog, I’d love to hear the methods that you’re using.
Hi Susan,
Thanks for showing us what you’re doing to increase your pageviews. I just relaunched my site after having it in maintenance mode for almost 3 weeks. You can imagine the big hit I took in traffic and pageviews.
I’ll definitely do some of the things you mentioned here like guest posting and commenting. Now that I’m back in the socialverse I can get back to doing that. 🙂
And I started using Tailwind more and just added some posts to the queue. I’m hoping it’ll give me the little push I need to get it going again.
Thanks for sharing! Hope you’re having a great week so far.
Cori
Hey Cori,
It seems like there is always something to do or improve our blog. Glad to hear that you’re out of the maintenance mode now.
I have no doubt that you’ll get your page views back in no time at all, especially if you are using Tailwind.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and comment and I hope you are doing well.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan