Gaining traffic on your blog is one of the most popular topics I see in forums, Facebook Groups, and hear from other bloggers. Most of the responses or advice you see to increase your blogging traffic is SEO. Yes, SEO is incredibly important. If you’re writing great content and following proper steps for SEO on your blog, you will gain traffic. However, for those people who may find SEO a little intimidating or are looking for more immediate changes, today I’m going to give you a list of Small Changes You Can Make To Your Blog Right Now that will make a huge difference in your traffic.
These tips may be more useful for smaller blogger as most larger bloggers are probably already utilizing all these tips on their blog, but if you’re a beginner blogger or looking to increase your traffic, following these tips will definitely grow your traffic and views on your blog.
Optimizing Pinterest
Pinterest is my number one source of traffic. If you haven’t optimized using Pinterest on your blog, you’re really doing a disservice to your blog. I mentioned in my Beginner’s Guide to Blogging, Pinterest is a great platform to get a ton of traffic from because the images have a long shelf life compared to other platforms. This means that your images re-circulate over and over again on the platform for people to keep finding the image and therefore allow you to gain continuous exposure.
I’ve found that posts like my Picture-Perfect Spots in Acadia National Park, gets thousands of repins during the months leading up to Summer but slows down during the Winter months. This is due to people planning a coastal Maine road trip in the Summer and not so much in the Winter. This means that if you have specific posts for specific locations or times or year, they can continue to get popular and viral as time goes on.
So now you know that you should be optimizing Pinterest on your blog, but don’t know necessarily where to start. Below I’ve included a few, easy Pinterest steps you should follow to ensure that your blog is properly optimized on Pinterest.
Creating Engaging Graphics
It’s actually pretty easy to utilize Pinterest on your blog. First, you want to create great, engaging graphics. I remember once reading in a Facebook Group that I’m apart of that someone said they didn’t have time to use Pinterest for their blog, but wanted to increase your traffic. To be completely honest, if you want to increase your traffic on your blog, you need to at least put in some time and effort in Pinterest if you’re really serious about growing your platform.
If you don’t have a lot of time to devote to Pinterest, there is still certain small steps you can do to optimize Pinterest for your blog, that requires little to no effort on your part.
I love using Canva to create fast and easy Pinterest Graphics. Canva is completely free and they have tons of templates to choose from, including pre-made Pinterest templates. Just add your photo, change-up your text and you have a super easy Pinterest Graphic.
You can upload your Pinterest Image directly to Pinterest and link it back to your blog post, but what you really should be doing is including a Pinterest image in every single blog post as I have at the bottom of this blog post. This encourages your readers to pin the image for later to keep as a resource but also increases your traffic by exposing your content to their followers on Pinterest as well. This is one of the ways to help ensure your image circulates over and over again.
Pin It Button Plugin
Another additional step that you definitely want to have on your blog to increase your traffic and increase your likelihood of getting repined is adding the ‘Pinterest Pin It Button on Image and After Post & Page Content’ plugin which automatically displays a little “pin it” button when readers hover over any image on your blog, which you can see when you hover over any images on my blog. This is great because it’s another reminder for your reader to share or save the blog post for later and therefore they share it with their followers. You can easily install this plugin by finding it on the WordPress Plugins Marketplace and searching for it.
Join Pinterest Group Boards
My last Pinterest must-have is getting involved in Group Boards on Pinterest. Group boards have definitely increased my repins and monthly viewers and are a great resource to have. There are tons of group boards out there, you’ll just have to look at ones for your specific niche. There are travel boards like Travel Trips from Travel Bloggers and The Travel Bloggers Board, and beauty and lifestyle boards like Beauty, Lifestyle, Fashion, and Lovely Bloggers.
I have my own personal Group Board, Our Wandering Mind Bloggers, which is super easy to join if you’re interested. All you have to do is follow the directions in the description and you’ll be added. You’ll want to remember to pin every blog post to all applicable group board to maximize your exposure and therefore increase your site traffic.
Scheduling Pins
People swear that by using an automatic pin scheduler their Pinterest traffic dramatically increases. Although I’ve dabbled with Pinterest automatic schedulers in the past, I haven’t seen a huge difference in my views solely because of the schedulers, which is why I’m not currently using one right now. Pinterest, like many platforms, rewards users who are active on the platform. So as long as you’re checking in on Pinterest every day and repining images, you should be fine. Personally, for me, I find that I spend too much time on Pinterest, so being considered an active Pinterest member isn’t too difficult for me, but if you don’t have the time to be on Pinterest regularly, maybe looking into a Pinterest scheduler would be very beneficial for you.
Join Facebook Groups
Facebook groups are not only great to increase traffic on your blog, but they’re a great resource for blogging in general. I’m apart of multiple Facebook groups that are blogging focused like Boost Your Blog and Your Pitch Life. Both of these Facebook groups are great for increasing my traffic and sharing my posts, but they’re even better for connecting with like-minded individuals. Especially when you have a question about blogging, working with brands, and increasing your blog traffic, these groups are a great resource to connect with a lot of helpful people who will give their experiences or advice on those subjects.
Boost Your Blog and that Pitch Life are two of my favorite Facebook groups for blogging, but I encourage you to explore the Facebook Group blogging community and find a group of like-minded people where you can not only ask questions but share your content with them!
Adding Photos To Your Posts
Part of increasing your traffic is producing great, engaging, content and photos are a huge part of creating great content. This means that every single blog post should have at least one good quality photo. Something that captivates the reader and makes them want to save the image on their Pinterest board is the goal. However, there are times that you can’t always take the best quality photos for your blog. Stock photos are a great alternative to taking your own photos. Since you can’t use someone else’s photo without their permission, using sites like Pexels allow you to find royalty-free stock photos that you can use on your blog and social media to help create great, engaging content.
Although stock photos are great to have and use from time to time, having original photos that you took yourself, in my book, always do better than stock photos that could have been used thousands of times before. If you can, take original photos on your camera or even iPhones take amazing photos for blogs. Browse on Pinterest and gain inspiration on how to create great, engaging photos and your blog posts will improve immensely.
Sharing on Social Media
I feel a little silly adding this, but in case you’re not already doing it, if you’re not sharing your posts on social media, you’re missing out on tons of potential traffic! Sharing your posts on personal social media accounts is okay and can bring you a good amount of traffic from your friends and family, however, what I recommend you do if you don’t have it already, is set up social media accounts for your blog. I have an Our Wandering Mind Facebook page where all my posts and Instagram photos are shared to automatically. I can also share other updates, special offers, or repost an older post back to my audience. Having social media accounts for your blog will just allow you to have another platform to promote your posts and therefore increase your traffic.
I hope you found this post helpful of Small Changes You Can Do Right Now to Increase Your Blog Traffic. As I mentioned, SEO is very important and creating great, engaging content is really key to have people keep coming back to your blog, but little changes like the ones above and implementing them on your blog will definitely increase your traffic and exposure to your content.
What’s your number 1 way you increased traffic on your blog? Let me and the others in the comments down below know!
