Updated March 1, 2025
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The Reality of Getting Visitors to Your Site
“Build it and they will come” may work for baseball stadiums. For driving blog traffic… not so much. Unless you already have a huge following on another platform, be prepared to build your visitor traffic over time. How much time depends upon a number of factors. Follow these 9 tips to go from crickets to gathering a crowd:
1. Consistently Publish Content
Think of your blog posts as buying a lotto ticket. Theoretically the more tickets you buy, the higher your chances of winning. Same goes with content. Search engines like Google and Bing look for new content to crawl. They index new pages (like static webpages or blog posts). When you consistently publish content, you’re training search engine bots to come back to your website more frequently. If there’s new content ready for them to crawl and index, the algorithm notices. That’s why inconsistent posting creates inconsistent indexing results. If your content isn’t indexed, it can’t be served up on a Search Engine Results Page — how potential visitors find you when searching for specific keyword phrases.
2. Encourage Comments
A marketing blog is an interactive medium. A great blog post can be as “chatty” as a Facebook stream, depending upon the content. At the end of each blog post, ask a question to encourage engagement. Reply promptly when someone leaves a response or asks a question. A comment stream can be very powerful in gaining new followers. The best type of comments are ones that challenge you; don’t leave scripted answers but ones that shows thought. Of course, don’t be afraid to delete spam (comments that are completely off topic and obviously ads).
3. Use Internal Links
It’s hard to build blog traffic if you have only five posts published. As you gain critical mass, it gets easier to link to related posts you’ve written. Internal links are a way to let your reader know you’ve got other interesting content for them to consume. It’s also teaching those search engine bots. By focusing on specific subjects, you’re establishing yourself as a credible source of quality content.
4. Get External Links To Increase Blog Traffic
We like to call links from external sources as link love. These are sites that are referring back to your site. If the referring site is also credible, your credibility (and SEO rankings) will rise. External link building hinges on both quality as well as quantity. Thousands of poor quality links will actually hurt you. Links from sites who have a large visitor base will help you build blog traffic.
5. Guest Blogging
This is somewhat related to number 4. If you know of a website that has strong visitor traffic that has a similar target market, ask to be a guest blogger. They may have a vetting process, and be willing to jump through hoops. Don’t be surprised if they ask for writing samples. It’s definitely worth the effort. You may either get a brief bio or byline link. Getting exposure on someone else’s successful blog is a great way to build blog traffic quickly.
We’re not done! Come back Tuesday for Part 2…
Blog Writing to Encourage Comments