How Do You Drive Traffic to Your Blog in Free of Cost?

Fun, knowledge, promotions, work demand – whatever the reason behind your blog creation is, it is useless if no one reads them. For a fruitful blog, you need a loyal audience that regularly reads your blogs and interacts through it. The common annoyance for bloggers is not achieving the expected reader count. It would be nice if there was some spell to attract an audience. But in reality, there is no other spell apart from manual efforts. Generating traffic to your blog in a cost-free way includes many more factors than just writing good content.

This is the time where there is overcrowding of blogs on the internet. Loads of articles show up for a single Google search. Thus, getting your blog to the top of a search engine result page is a major task. But do not get demotivated just yet! The majority of these pieces are in-actionable and irrelevant. Created just for the sake of it. Thus, by sieving such topics and steering away from making such articles – is a great start to getting ahead on Search Engine Result Pages.

Once you get a hold of the best blogging practices, you will notice that your blog will make a huge difference in commerce. Not only will it drive free online traffic to your blog but also it will help build up social media clientele and build a strong brand impression. The unrevealed secret behind successful blogging is “not following the sheep”. Do what others are not doing. You can magnet attention by using a metaphor or beginning with a story.

Let’s explore some techniques to drive more free traffic to your blog without emptying your pockets.

Time Investment

You need to slow down your ticking time-bomb of impatience. Earning readers will take time. Waiting is hard. You can invest these days in crafting and uploading actionable content consistently. Earn the interest of the viewers.

Recommended for you: 5 Things that Maybe Driving Your Blog Traffic Away.

Content Quality

Interest and usefulness are the two main reasons why someone would get hooked to your writings. Similarly, search engines also appreciate content that is appealing to its users. These engines note when users share or interact with the content. Even when surfers consistently return to the same blog, web crawlers are impressed.

Now, the question is; what sort of content is considered as good quality? A simple example would be Nike vs a local brand. It is obvious that consumers would prefer to buy Nike shoes rather than those from a local brand. Despite its higher pricing, the guarantee of originality and uniqueness is what attracts buyers.

In the same way, your blogs need to have authentic content on a topic that has not been covered by your competitors. The write-up must contain at least one good takeaway. But “the more the merrier”. You must clearly know who your audience is. And when you do, you will understand what is their curiosity. Based on this data you can draft insightful topics.

Google is the best platform to find out what your target group is searching for. Other content tools like Semrush and Ahrefs will help you to find the best topics to write on. Moreover, attractive titles and important keywords can also be searched here.

The data must be easy to digest. Break your information into smaller portions. Make paragraphs of 3-4 sentences. And divide content under subheadings. Use numbered or bulleted lists for data or steps. Include facts. Also, statistical data is a bonus. You can use images or even videos to get your points forward. People love sharing data that makes them look smart. Videos and images can be shared online very easily.

An author’s bio is also essential. The readers would like to know the writer for a good piece. Articles without an author description are often considered spammy.

Visual Appeal

Two very well-known facts are “An image is worth a thousand words” and “The brain processes images faster than text”. Use this to your benefit. Not only will the pictorial representations make the blog post attractive, but also the alt tags on them will help in the SEO part. Include keywords and keyphrases as alt tags of images and post videos.

Also, visual representation makes the reading process quicker. These days no one has the time to sit back and peacefully read the whole article. But memes, videos, infographics, gifs, comic strips can help get viewers to browse more of your content. Give these a try. I bet you will not be disappointed.

Title is important

Before everything else, what visitors will notice is the heading. If you want people to click on your article, the title must be catchy. There is no right or wrong way of creating a title. Research what’s in demand. You can use Google trends to find out what would work best for your audience. Choose crispy but easily understandable words. Do not confuse attention with complications. The topic must be easily understood by the search engines and their users.

The number of clicks on “read more” will depend on how compelling the name of your article is. You can refer to magazines or news for ideas. A majority of people read compositions with titles based on solutions or trending topics. Keeping updated about the industry trends will help your title-making. Also, be careful that your article must include what you promise in the heading. Don’t make an assertion you cannot abide by. It is very possible to include hashtags, usernames, or a polite slang if your subject is relevant.

Link for connection

Linking is a great way of building connections. When you link to another page, service or product you are making contact with them. If you mention a product or page, insert a link to them. The site that you link to will definitely appreciate this. If you are lucky, you may even get a mention on their page or a backlink in return.

In addition to this, Google loves outbound links. Readers also like it when they have more details about the references. It is easier to get more information without having to search intensively for the same.

Research and use keywords

Without the right choice of keywords, you are getting further from your blogging goals. A blog including well-researched keywords has higher chances of getting online traffic in a cost-free way. Use phrases that you believe users will use to search for your post. Long-tail keywords are less competitive as well as more effective.

Prefer “get free traffic to blog” instead of “free traffic” Insert these keywords organically into the title, headings, metatags, URL, alt tags, and the post content. Do not stuff the single keyword in the whole blog. Instead, use similar keywords that you can get from Google searches. Such related keywords will be shown at the bottom of the search results when you make a search for the keyword or keyphrase.

Optimization

Without proper optimization, you are just wasting your writing time and labor. Enhancing the content and related factors will get you noticed by Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. The factors you should you must consider are:

Do you like pages that make you wait? No. So does the audience. Moreover, search engines too hate the pages that make inconvenience for its users. You need to get in the good books of search engines. Correct errors that cause slow loading of your webpages. You can learn how to optimize for page-speed here.

A majority of people surf the internet with their mobile phones. So it isn’t even a valid question whether you must make your site mobile-first. Mobile-friendliness is a bare necessity for websites today.

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Consistency

The childhood story of the thirsty crow teaches us consistency and will to achieve something. Keep uploading blog-posts on a regular basis. Make a content calendar in advance for this. You can decide the days on which you will publish the post. It could be once a week, two days a week, alternate days, or daily. Twice a week is an ideal frequency according to a study. When you have a fixed schedule for posting, users will re-visit your page to check for the new posts.

Secondly, search engines like sites that give the latest knowledge. You can influence them by posting consistently. This will also help the crawlers to reach and add your content to their data quickly. Thus, the blog posting frequency is directly proportional to the web traffic you will get.

Another way to keep the audience hooked is to cut long posts into short and post them separately. make readers wait for the next part. Or you can give a teaser to your next article in the present one. (Like Netflix).

Content Sharing

As we know, “Telling is selling”. Only when people are aware of your blog, will they be reading it. Promote blogs on social media networks. Pinterest and Quora are also great platforms for content marketing. You can add links to your article in the social media captions or share the post directly. You can show summaries of the write-ups on Quora. Videos of the blog can be shared on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Similarly, for images, these channels and Pinterest would be a good fit. Use Quora to discuss or debate on your blog topics to create more interest and then link to your blog for answers.

New traffic can reach your blogs through social media and akin networks. Make contact with other bloggers. Try to build a rapport with writers in your niche. For this, you can use these techniques:

Invest the waiting time in building networks and communities where you can talk about your content. Reach people that you think will benefit from your writings and will possibly share the resource with their acquaintances. Adding social sharing buttons is a great option too. This makes it very easy for the readers to share your work.

Commenting and Engaging

When you end your post, ask for opinions and questions. People love giving feedback. Immediate responses are even more profitable in this case. This will enhance personal branding along with raising the number of people visiting your website. Also, when there are more comments and responses on the page the word count will increase. Which is beneficial for SEO.

You can prepare a newsletter and get regular readers to subscribe. Asking users directly to share your posts is not a very bad idea. Interactions are done in a higher ratio when asked for compared to the opposite scenario, as per a study.

Keep an eye on competitors

Study the reasons behind your competitors’ success. Monitor their online behavior and try to understand their strategies. This doesn’t mean that you should do exactly as they do. But to determine where you need to put more work. Also, do what they have missed. Publish content on the topics they missed or a detailed blog on a topic that has missing tips or advice.

Guest Posting

Get your content on sites with good domain authority. You can find the domain authority by pasting the site URL in this tool. Getting posts published on famous pages is better said than done. You need to prove your expertise and worthiness to make them consider your writing. Send them your previous guest posts on good websites.

Target blogs that share a similar group of audience. If the audience gets appealed by your post, they will visit your website. This way you can drive free traffic to your blog. And you can lead them to engage with your blog. You can easily get potential readers on alike blogs and forums. You can search for these blogs through online directories. Also, google search is helpful. You can use paid tools like Semrush to discover homogenous blog pages.

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Final Words

Use these tactics to rocket the traffic to your blog free of cost or without any considerable amount of funding. Share this with your blogger friends.

This article is written by Krunal Soni. Krunal is the founder and CEO of Thrillax Private Limited, a digital marketing company in Ahmedabad. He holds expertise in diverse fields. His 15+ year spree in this field has earned him clients, and their faith in his tactics. His intelligent strategies have put Thrillax among the leaders of Digital Marketing as per the Clutch report of 2019. A systematic approach, transparent processes and friendly mentoring have allowed him to prioritize and manage a work-life balance.

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