Let’s say you’ve started a blog for your business. You’ve been doing your best to deliver some quality content and to get the words out to your niche audience. But a few months into it, and you notice people aren’t reading your blogs as much as you expected. Leaving you wondering, how do I build a steady readership for my blog?
Well, the thing is, writing great content isn’t enough to build an audience.
Today when there are more than 570 million blogs online, only a few thousands of those manage to attract a significant and satisfying readership. Once it is up and running, the next big challenge you have is to bring more traffic to your blog or website, attract new readers and keep them coming back for more.
In this post, we will explain exactly how to do that and share some of the easiest and tested tips to build readership and increase traffic to your blog like an expert marketer.
So let’s get started!
- Build links to to your site
Once you have started creating good content, it is important to link your site to other blogs through link building. Link building works when you publish really great content that people want to reference as a valid source of information and it plays a huge role in your SEO.
And for that you may consider three kinds of links:
- Internal Link : That’s linking a page from one of your pages to another one of your pages. It helps Google understand the context and relationship between different blogs on your website. When placed strategically and in context, can help you increase page views and reduce bounce rate and use the information as ranking signals.
- External Links : Which is a link from one of your pages to somebody else’s page, website or another resource online. Linking to other sites can help you more than you might think. It becomes more valuable if it links to popular and relevant pages that are highly ranked and related to the content on your web page. Which in turn helps to improve the authority of your website, by providing a viewer with references.
- Backlinks : That’s an incoming link from somebody else’s website coming into your content, which is one of the most influential signals in Google’s rankings. You can generate some quality backlinks by – reaching out to influencers and reputable blogs in your industry, writing guest posts and of course adding a link to your website on all your social media profiles.
- Share your blog on social media
Leveraging social media can be a powerful tool for building your blog readership. But you should make use of the social media avenues in ways that best fit your own niche and style.
Some of the most popular social media networks that bloggers use on a daily basis are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest. You can start by integrating social media with your blog. People who visit your blog need an easy way to connect and share your blog content via social media integrated into your site.
These integrating elements could be in the form of-
- Social media buttons that help your readers engage with your blog (Facebook likes, Twitter follows) and share your content
- Social media logins that help readers comment on your blog
- Collaborating with influencers and so on
Let everyone know about your blog. Use every opportunity to get the word out about your new undertaking. Also-
- Include your blog name (URL) in your email signature, social media accounts or any online communities you are involved in
- Consider republishing the same or slightly repurposed content on different platforms. Make sure to link back to your original article as a source.
- And of course, ask and encourage your audience to join you on social networks.
- Answer questions on Quora/Reddit
Thousands of people are looking for answers on the web every day. And Questions & Answers websites are one of the biggest online communities on the internet, participating in sites like which can be a good help to build your blog readership.
You can create accounts on Q & A websites such as Quora, Stack Exchange, Reddit and similar and start helping people by answering their questions.The advantage of answering questions on these platforms is that your answer will remain live for a very long time which means that it can become a regular source of traffic to your blog.
The idea is to find topics that are related to your niche and be active in those sections. It will help you get your name out there and build authority. You can direct people to read more relevant content that you have created on your website. However, we don’t recommend you to just go there to post your links. Instead, you should write actual detailed answers with links to your blog posts only if they fit in the context.
Also you may – leave helpful comments and interact on your own, as well as other blogs. Engage with other bloggers on social networks. When you start networking in this way, you’ll notice you get more traffic, shares and engagement on your blog.
- Reach out to influencers
Influencers can help you promote your blog and can significantly boost your blog readership and website traffic. But as a new blogger it’s quite challenging to get their attention and get them to promote your blog. Here are some ways you can reach out to influencers :
- Start by having a conversation with them on social media. Share their content with your own commentary, reply to their threads, leave comments on their blog posts
- Make sure each of your interactions adds value to their discussion
- It’s likely they will notice and remember you. Once you have established a relationship, you can approach them to give you advice.
- Guest posting on popular blogs
Guest posting is when you write an article to publish on someone else’s blog. If done right, it’s still a great strategy to demonstrate your expertise and drive massive traffic to your blog. If you want to grow your audience, facilitate brand exposure, expand your reach, build authority in your niche – contributing guest posts to top blogs in your niche will be extremely effective.
Visit each blog that you think is worth posting an article for and then send them a guest posting proposal. Once you identify blogs in your niche with an engaged audience, it’s important you start by connecting with the owner of the blog before pitching to them, like we mentioned in the earlier topic. And when you do pitch it to them, make sure your idea is about the blogger and how you’ll help them. Make sure to effectively promote your post like you’d promote one on your own blog posts.
The host blogger will usually include a link to your site, thus multiplying your chances of getting noticed. And it will introduce you to new audiences that are already interested in reading more niche-related content.
- Host popular people to write on your blog
Similar to your guest posting on others’ blogs, you might get requests from others for guest posting on your blog. And it’s a good sign which means people see the potential in your blog . What’s important is to make sure these contributors are committed to creating high-quality content that relates to your niche. All you need is to have a process in place to review and publish this content on your blog.
Through this you’ll build valuable relationships with bloggers from your niche. Their article on your blog is a free ad, not to mention the fact that you’ll earn some support from fellow writers. Plus guest bloggers will also help you promote the content they wrote. They will share it on their social networks, and you will get additional exposure. It’s a win-win situation for both!
- Leverage SEO tools
Ultimately it all comes down to Search Engine Optimization.
While making great content for readers should be your first priority, it’s important to remember that you also need to write for search engines as well. That’s where SEO comes in to help search engines understand how to index your site properly.
SEO involves many different tactics and techniques. As a blogger, you will have to get familiar with these. At least the very basics, such as –
Keyword research : Simply put, keyword research/strategy means finding the words that people type into search engines like Google, and include them strategically in your content so that your content appears higher on a search engine results page (SERP).
There are head & long-tail keywords. It’s important to select the main keywords and related words that you want to target for each page and include them within the content. This way it will be easier for search engines to understand what a specific web page is about when they crawl it and you have a better chance to rank higher in search results.
Title tag : That’s the HTML code tag that allows you to give a web page a title. This title can be found in the browser title bar the length of which should be between 50-60 characters and the meta description tag can be between 50-160 characters.
Pro tip:
- Keep your website design clean, clutter free, and make sure it’s appealing and responsive
- Update and repurpose your old blog posts, and repromote your most successful content
- Stand out with visuals
These are a few tactics you can use to increase your blog readership. This way, sure it can be time consuming but you’ll become closer to your readers, create a stronger community and make a lasting impact.
