How to promote your blog: 15 ideas to increase your page’s traffic

Are you dedicated to producing content, but don’t see your efforts being converted into results? You’re always on the lookout for the main innovations and try to address topics that are relevant to your readers, but your page’s traffic indicates that no one reads what you’re writing?

Believe it, the above situations are more common than you might think, especially with those who are just starting to write on the internet.

But before you ask yourself whether you should abandon your blog, keep reading this text because we’re going to share 15 surefire ideas to promote your blog (we have already tested most of them on Hotmart’s blog!).

1. Promote your blog’s link whenever possible

Think of social media as a huge virtual business card. Therefore, all online interaction is an additional opportunity to promote your blog.

A good way to increase your page’s visibility without much effort, is by editing your profiles to contain your blog’s link.

Certain social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook, already reserve an exclusive field so you can share a URL.

If you use email in your promotion strategies, another tip is to include the blog’s address in the signature. Therefore, every time you contact your base, you have the chance to get hits for free.

In all cases, we recommend that you standardize the link to be able to track where the hits are coming from, through Google Analytics.

2. Use emails to direct your leads to your blog

Those who read Hotmart’s blog probably know that we are big fans of email.

In addition to being a widely used tool around the world, email doesn’t rely on algorithms to get your message to the recipient, you just need the leads’ contact information.

We could spend hours talking about the advantages of email, but let’s skip to the part where you use the tool to promote your blog.

After users provides his/her contact information, whether by filling out a form or signing up for your blog, you are allowed to relate to them, and you can do so by sending relevant content to help them achieve a goal or solve a problem.

Those recipients who engage with your message – information you can deduce by the opening rate and number of clicks on the email, should be directed to your blog, and this cycle can be repeated until these users become active readers.

I bet you didn’t realize it was that simple!

Check out some of the content we have already produced about email:

Email marketing guide

How to use email marketing to convert clients and create loyalty

3. Create a newsletter

Within email marketing there are several formats aimed at conversion, and others that can provide visibility to your blog or brand, such as a newsletter.

Having a newsletter is an excellent way to keep your audience up to date on what you are sharing on the blog and to strengthen your relationship with these readers.

Here at Hotmart, we send out newsletter every Friday with the main highlights of the week’s blog.

“But I don’t know how to create a newsletter on my own, how do I do it?”

Most automation tools already provide ready-made layouts for creating a newsletter if you don’t have the money to invest in a designer or programmer.

Now that you’re here, subscribe to our newsletter to receive the best content on entrepreneurship and digital marketing directly in your inbox!

4. Exchange guest posts

Guest posts work as follows: you contact blogs in the same segment, or that target a similar audience as yours, and agree to write on each other’s blog.

This is one of the most used strategies by those who want to strengthen their authority in the market and attract new readers for free.

The only effort that the guest post will require is the production of content, but since you frequently write for your own blog, this shouldn’t be a problem.

In order for the practice to generate the expected results, it is essential to insert strategic links in the text, pointing to your blog. After all, links from other domains pointing to your own count points for your page’s ranking in search engines.

And, finally, be careful when choosing partners who create content that may be relevant to your readers.

Think of it this way: if you have a blog about a healthy lifestyle, it doesn’t make much sense to partner up with a blog about craft beer, right?

5. Create ads for your blog

Content marketing is still the best option for those who want to build a long-term relationship with their readers. However, it may take a while before you see the first results.

While the hits don’t grow, ads are the best alternative to increase your page’s visibility.

But in order for the ads to fulfill their purpose, you need to take care of certain basic requirements.

First of all, ads must have a thought-provoking title that arouses the immediate curiosity of the reader. Then, the description needs to summarize the type of content the person will find when accessing your page.

It is only after the user accesses the blog that the quality of the content will be determinant to make him/her stay, and even (why not?), add the URL to his/her list of favorite sites.

Many bloggers believe that merely creating an ad with a controversial phrase will attract more hits.

But this is where the danger lies!

Even if the ad in question receives many clicks, if the web user goes to the blog and closes the page immediately, Google and other search engines understand that the site isn’t relevant and this could hinder the ad’s performance.

If you’re in doubt about creating an assertive ad, check out our tips.

6. Leave comments on other blogs

Another practice you can adopt from now on is commenting on posts from other blogs.

This can happen in two ways: you can answer questions from readers or simply compliment to the author, remembering of course, to share the link to your page.

The idea is that you set aside at least one day of the week to comment on blogs that you admire.

Despite requiring some effort, your comments can catch the attention of readers of these blogs, and pave the way for the exchange of guest posts.

7. Create rich content in a variety of formats

In content production, every now and then, you’ll find themes that yield more than one blog post. In these cases, you can supplement the text and make it available in ebook format, record a video or create a podcast on the subject.

If the content you produce is truly valuable, the more chances it will have to reverberate, and consequently more people will access your blog for similar materials.

Also learn how to turn your blog posts into an ebook.

8. Make videos

A study conducted by CISCO, a global IT leader, estimates that by 2020, more than 80% of all online traffic will be generated by videos. This information alone should be a major incentive for you to produce content in this format.

But there are other factors:

1. Videos makes your blog content more visual, increasing the retention time of the posts and consequently, the evaluation of your domain.
2. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world; in other words, content that has a good position on the platform can generate qualified traffic to your blog.
3. James McQuivey, an expert from Forrest, estimates that 1 minute of video is equal to 1.8 million words, making it the ideal format for addressing more complex topics.

9. Update old posts

It is natural for bloggers to always think about producing new content. But while evaluating an older post, you can discover optimization possibilities that can help that post perform better, such as: updating information, inserting charts, images, links, etc.

This way, you can offer new information to your reader with less production effort.

There are several ways to find posts on your blog that have the potential to generate more traffic:

• Use online tools to discover the keywords that users search for before they arrive on your blog;
• Follow Google rankings to know the positioning of your blog and your competitors’ in SERP;
• Select posts that have more conversion potential and focus on optimizing them.

Remember that this strategy is valid for older blogs or, at least a year old.

10. Constantly develop your page’s SEO

There’s no use in writing amazing texts if your visitors don’t have a good experience on your page.

There are several factors that influence the visitor’s experience and most of them only depend on you, such as content quality, text organization, links (both internal and external), images/videos, text title, meta-description, among others.

Since the SEO is a very broad topic, I will provide you with our super complete content that we have on blog optimization tips that you can apply now!

11. Carry out research on keywords

Writing about random topics will not bring results to your blog. You must keep in mind which subjects are more strategic for your market and persona and then produce content about them.

Keywords are terms or phrases through which you want your texts and videos to be found.

A person who has a blog about vegan food can write articles using keywords such as vegetable milk, food without meat, etc.

In order to find good keywords for your blog, just follow our step-by-step process.

1. Create a list of up to 50 words that you think are relevant for your market;
2. Use the Keyword Planner to find out the search volume of the chosen words;
3. Opt for words that have a volume of relevant searches but have low competition;
4. You can also use the Keyword Planner to find other terms that are relevant to your blog, in the suggestions field.

It is worth emphasizing that the Keyword Planner is a free tool and provides real Google search data, which makes it a key part for any content strategy.

12. Try to relate your posts to the current hype

Hype here refers to a theme that is the “flavor of the month”. You can find out what these themes are with the help of Google Trends, a free Google tool that shows the evolution of searches for that term over a given period of time.

The only care you must have is, choosing topics that are related to your niche and that can be useful to your audience.

We’ll give you an example to make it clearer.

The World Cup is an event that takes place every 4 years and generates a lot of online traffic.

Let’s suppose you have a blog on animal training. How about writing a blog post showing how to control your pet when it becomes frightened because of the fireworks? This way, you’ll be talking about the World Cup but within your blog’s context.

13. Share blog content on social media

Direct traffic is when a person accesses a page of your blog without any previous search on Google; while organic traffic comes from queries made on search engines.

Usually, these are the main sources of traffic.

One measure you can take to increase your hits is to share your posts on other communication channels such as social media and a YouTube channel (if you have them).

Sparkle users also have the option of integrating their profile with a blog on WordPress. This way, whenever they post new content, people who are part of that network are notified and can access the site to check the full text or video.

14. Use internal links

One of the factors that count the most points for the Google ranking are links, both those from other sites pointing to your content, as well as those that point to other pages within a same domain.

In the case of external links, you need to convince other blogs that your content is relevant, and you can do this by exchanging guest posts, which we have already recommend in this text, or by establishing yourself as an authority on the subject.

However, many bloggers end up forgetting about the advantages of using internal links.

In addition to improving user experience, after all, you are delivering more content to him/her, internal links transfer traffic from one post to the other, increasing the time the visitor stays on your website, which signals to Google that your blog is relevant.

It works in two ways: if you have a highly accessed post, you can direct visitors to other pages, as well as use less-accessed posts to direct the visitor to a more strategic post and gain more visibility on Google.

15. Ask visitors to turn on notifications

With the evolution of smartphones and the excessive information that is shared every day, people are increasingly relying on notifications to stay connected to the information that interests them.

Therefore, another suggestion to increase your blog hits is to create a pop-up inviting visitors to turn on notifications. This way, they will be notified about each new post, either to their cell phone or desktop.

But in order for notifications to generate traffic, you need to create a specific text for the format that summarizes the subject and at the same time draws the attention of the subscriber, just as you do with the ads.

It is also important to post with a well-defined periodicity; otherwise, the reader will not see a clear advantage in subscribing to your content.

Keep blogging

If you’ve gotten this far, you may have realized that there are a number of strategies to increase your blog traffic, but be aware that they will only be effective if you are dedicated to producing quality content on a regular basis.

Once the reader sees value in the posts you share, he/she will become your blog’s biggest promoter, sharing links with family and friends.

It is also worth remembering that you need to be patient until the first results appear and that, even in the face of positive numbers, the optimization work never ends.

Hotmart’s blog is eight years old and to this day, we are always promoting improvements and reading about the best practices to keep it relevant to our readers.