Every blogger wants to be an industry pillar, but it’s hard to stand out amid the noise online. There’s a million and one writers out there, and you’re just one person. Feeling intimidated is completely normal.
While trying to boost your blog’s traffic can feel like trying to pull a rabbit from a hat, it’s actually somewhat of a science. We’ve spent years studying the strategies for growing blog readership, and we’re happy to share the secret to success.
In this article, we’ll break down how to boost your website’s traffic and attract new customers for your online courses. These tips are great for beginners, but they’re also perfect for professional bloggers who want to take their monthly views up a notch.
Let’s dive in.
17 easy ways to increase your blog traffic
1. Focus in on your niche
Having scatter-shot interests is totally okay—but setting your blog’s focus too wide can actually hurt your traffic. You can absolutely talk about trends in SAAS and your home baking recipes, but if you want higher traffic, don’t write about both on the same blog.
The rationale? Visitors to your blog want to know what they can expect when they visit, and if you don’t deliver on those expectations, they’ll bounce. We’re not just using “bounce” colloquially. The technical metric associated with people leaving right after arriving is called the bounce rate.
Your bounce rate is the percentage of people who visit your website, visit only one page, and then leave. If you narrow your focus and keep all your content relevant to the same audience, you’ll lower your bounce rate. (And that’s a good thing!)
Related: How To Find Your Niche in 4 Simple Steps (Expert Tips)
2. Use simpler language
The writing level on your blog does actually affect your search rankings, which in turn affects your blog traffic. Simplifying the language you use in your blog posts tells Google that you deliver information in a way that’s easy to understand, and they respond by showing it to more and more people.
You’ll want to keep your language simple, accessible, and direct, and your sentences short. Say “use” instead of “utilize” and “do” instead of “operationalize.” Go ahead and write with some flair, but don’t use language that’s too far above a grade 8 level. (We do this, and we look at it as a creative challenge, not a restriction!)
3. Write a little bit more
Adding a little bit of extra length to your articles can go a long way in terms of boosting your traffic. Once you know what you’re writing about, do a quick search of your title, and read the first two or three articles that come up.
Copy and paste the text from each article into a word counter, and then aim to write 15-20% more than them. Google will see that you’ve gone further in-depth, and reward you with a higher ranking. Be careful, though—you don’t want to repeat sections, add unnecessary fluff, or veer off topic. (That doesn’t help, either.)
Related: How to Write a Blog Post (10 Foolproof Tips)
4. Including images and videos
Including images and videos in your blog posts is another smart way to increase your blog traffic. These forms of rich media make your articles more engaging to readers, and will increase the time they spend scrolling through your articles.
In turn, Google will recognize that people are sticking around longer, and give some extra mojo to your search rankings. You might not have thought that including links to pictures and videos could go so far, but it really does.
5. Choose better titles
Your article title is the very first thing people will see about your article. Those impressions count, and they can make a real difference in whether people actually open your blog or just skim past it on Google.
Ideally, your article title should be short and punchy—the opposite of a PubMed title. It should have some intrigue, and contain one keyword you’re talking about in your article. The right balance is important. Go too SEO-heavy, and you’ll look like you’re just writing for the robots, but neglect keywords, and people might not ever find your article.
Looking for inspiration? Look through some major news websites, and see how they choose their titles. Our favorite source of inspo is The Atlantic. They pick interesting, SEO-friendly titles like “Kelp Is Weirdly Great at Sucking Carbon Out of the Sky” and “Men Is a Brutal Film With Pathetic Villains.”
6. Incorporate keywords
Keywords are the words and phrases (a.k.a. search queries) that people enter into Google when searching for information about a specific topic. Including keywords in your article title, your opening paragraph and a few of your headlines is a great way to show Google you’re answering a specific search query, and they’ll reward you for it by bumping your article closer to page 1.
Keywords are usually not complete sentences or the exact question you’re answering Search for keywords relating to your industry, if you’re stuck, and keep a few of them in mind the next time you’re writing. Your traffic should start to rise.
7. Break up the walls of text
Having your whole article formatted as a massive block of text makes it intimidating for readers—and it can actually hurt your search rankings and traffic. Instead, break up your article with subheadings, lists, and bullet points, so your article is easily skimmable.
This works on two levels. First, it makes it easier for viewers to jump to the sections that are important for them. They’ll stay on the page longer, which decreases your bounce rate—and makes your article more likely to rank highly.
Google also uses section headers and headlines to scan for keywords. Adding more structure to your article can help you place keywords in the spots where they’ll make the biggest SEO contribution. That’s major.
8. Adding internal links
Internal links are links to other blog articles you’ve posted on your website. Links from outside your blog are the absolute gold standard (more on them soon), but links inside your blog are a fantastic starting point that can increase your search ranking on Google.
The reason? When search engines look for articles to bump up to the first page of search results, they look for pages that other pages have linked to. Those links show that you’re a trusted source, and that your content is more likely to be helpful to viewers.
You have full control over your internal links, so make sure you’re using them wherever possible—and wherever they’re relevant. And if you want more information on internal links, check out our article on link-building, where we cover this in-depth. (See what we did there?)
9. Get more backlinks
Backlinks are the opposite of internal links. They’re links that other blogs point to articles of yours. The more backlinks your blog has, the more credible it looks to Google, and the more highly you’ll get ranked in the search results. (That means way, way more traffic!)
To generate more backlinks, start by tracking your referral sources and your outbound links. You’ll know who’s sending the most backlinks your way, and which sources you send the most outbound links to. Reach out to whoever pops up, and ask if they’d like to collaborate on a guest post or case study.
This is win-win, because it means fresh content and backlinks for both of your websites. Plus, once the relationship is established, they’ll often point more backlinks your way—even on articles you’re not partnering on.
It’s worth mentioning: you should never try to game the system. While getting a backlink from a credible source (like the NYTimes or a top industry blog) can really boost your search ranking, using link farms will get you penalized. Nobody can outsmart Google, so it’s not worth trying.
10. Create pillar pages
A pillar page is an in-depth dive into a specific topic relevant to your industry, whether it’s power-lifting or content strategy. They’re also a powerful way to boost your traffic.
You build pillar pages that cover everything so that you can point other blog articles back to them. Those internal backlinks help build credibility for the pillar page, maxing out the chance that it’ll get a high ranking—and earn more organic backlinks. You’re probably asking yourself what this all means, so let’s break it down.
Suppose you’re a consultancy focusing on online marketing. Your pillar page might be titled Digital Marketing 101, and cover the whole field of digital marketing, from content creation through social media advertising. You’d then create clusters of related articles on subjects like Instagram Stories and TikTok strategy that point back to your Digital Marketing 101 article.
Linking back to pillar pages also provides a better user experience for viewers reading your articles, and it makes it easier for them to find all the information they need. It’s a no-brainer.
11. Promoting blog posts on social
There’s no simpler way to say this: don’t yeet your blog posts into the Google Search void on. Plaster them all over your social media accounts to ensure your blog gets as much traffic from each article as it can. Share them, promote them, and make sure you’ve got every bit of value out of them before moving on.
Two of the most effective places to share blog articles are on Twitter and Instagram Stories. For Twitter, you’ll want to include a short caption, a tag for anyone featured in your article, and a link to the article. On Instagram Stories, you’ll want to include a screenshot of your article, a swipe-up link, and a little caption adding context for your followers.
12. Repurposing blog content for social
Sharing your blog articles on social media is just the start, though. To boost your traffic, you should also be repurposing your articles for social media content. By doing this, you’ll build your brand across social media and redirect new viewers to your blog.
Repurposing content is slightly different from just sharing the link. When you repurpose blog posts, you’re turning them into forms of content that fit organically into each social platform, so they fit naturally into the scrolling experience.
Turn the main takeaways from your latest post into a Twitter thread, and then link to the full article at the end. Create a carousel post with slides summarizing the key points of your article, and share it on Instagram. Or if you’re on TikTok, get in front of the camera yourself and break the story down live. There’s no rules, and the sky’s the limit.
13. Publish guest contributors—or interview them!
Know someone in your industry whose voice you’d like to spotlight? Ask them if they might be interested in writing a guest article for your blog, or doing an interview with you.
There’s two sides to the benefits of guest articles and interviews. For the guest, it’s a chance to flex their knowledge, reach a brand-new audience, and have your blog’s credibility rub off on them. For you, it means great content and guaranteed promotion from a third part who’s outside your normal network.
14. Use paid advertising
Now that you’re sharing and repurposing your blog content on social media, try investing in a little bit of paid promotion. This isn’t time-consuming. In most cases, you’ll just hit “boost post” on whichever social platform you’re using and watch the clicks shoot up.
Promote a post that links to your blog, so you drive new traffic directly from your ads. And you don’t need to advertise everywhere—just focus on the networks where you’ve already got the most traction, whether that’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or something else!
This doesn’t have to be a costly endeavor. The major social networks let you choose your advertising budget, so you can spend as much or as little as you want on advertising. You can also target audiences based on age, gender and location so you’re connecting with the right people and stretching your budget as far as it can go.
15. Start a mailing list
Add a form to your website and encourage readers to sign up for an email newsletter. Once you’ve built up a list of subscribers that aren’t your mom and childhood besties, start sending out bi-weekly or monthly round-ups. These email blasts remind people to check out your blog, which will add to your website’s traffic.
The newsletter format is extremely flexible. You can summarize your latest blog posts, shout out industry trends, or even include links to upcoming courses you’re selling. Plus, you won’t have to worry about if you’re annoying people—everyone will have opted in, so you’ll know they want to hear from you.
16. Optimize your website’s loading speed
Beyond content creation and promotion, there’s technical tweaks you can make that will help boost your blog traffic. The first and most crucial is optimizing your website’s loading speed, so that viewers can get straight to reading.
If your page takes five seconds to load, the probability of visitors bouncing rises by 90%… which isn’t good. As we mentioned earlier, that’ll lead to Google penalizing your blog in the search results.
Try measuring your page speed with Google PageSpeed Insights, and if you’re seeing serious lag, consider upgrading your domain hosting. Usually, page speed issues come from choosing a cheap host, so choose a performance-optimized host like Hostinger, SiteGround, or BlueHost.
17. Keep your blog’s design clutter-free
Last, you’ll want to keep your blog’s design simple and navigable. Web design plays an important role in SEO, and it also helps keep viewers reading your website—both of which will boost your traffic.
If your blog looks like a jumbled-up website from the late 1990s, readers will only read at most one article. They’ll get lost, distracted, or disoriented by all the clutter. But if your blog is sleek, well-designed, and easy to navigate, skimming an initial article can turn into binge-reading sessions and repeat visits.
So not only do you need to consider what and how you write—you also need to present it well. (P.S. Squarespace, Webflow, and Format are all great places to start, if you need a snazzy, clear web template to work from.)
Looking for even more tips on how to increase website traffic? This blog shares dozens of ways!
Other related educational articles on blogging:
- How to Start a Blog (And Make Money on It)
- What Is a Blog? And Why Should You Create One?
- What Blog Topics Should I Write About? (Ideas & Steps)
- How to Make Money Blogging: 8 Proven Ways to Monetize Your Blog
So, what’s next?
Now that you know how to increase your blog traffic, you might be looking for ways to turn the content you blog about into profitable online courses. (Especially if you’re an entrepreneur or educator.)
That’s where Thinkific comes in. We make it easy to scale your business by offering self-guided online courses and membership sites. Our easy-to-use course design platform helps coaches, educators, and digital content creators build engaging, custom eLearning experiences and grow sustainable online businesses.
Try Thinkific for free and get the course creation, marketing, and selling tools you need to take your business up a notch. (No tech skills required!)
