I am really not a fan of the “traffic is everything” theory.
I mean traffic alone is worthless. It is just a number, showing how many people visited your blog the other day. But does that mean anything to you? Just in part.
What I believe marketers and bloggers should pay a lot more attention to is the actual conversion.
The conversion rate is what plays a role. You would make a lot more money if you have the right call to actions in place and the right kind of content that persuades people to either buy or subscribe than if you simply rely on the number of visitors.
So what’s the purpose of traffic in the end?
It’s simply a multiplier. In other words, you first need the right “funnel” to guarantee yourself a good conversion ratio. Once you have that in place, you use traffic to multiply the number of successful conversions.
And with that in mind, today I am going to talk about three simple elements and the difference they can make to your traffic numbers and hence conversions.
1. Social Media Marketing
I guess pretty much every blogger out there has at least a Twitter and a Facebook account.
That however simply isn’t enough. A successful social strategy doesn’t come down to being present on a social network. It is about participation. Participation both in terms of creating meaningful conversations with other folks in your niche and also sharing your content.
And you know what, it turns out putting just a little more effort into your social sharing strategy can make for a significant improvement to your social media traffic figures.
Here are some tools you can use to get the most out of your social profiles:
- JustRetweet
- Triberr
- ViralContentBee
- CreatorCollabs
And here’s a post you may want to read: 12 Dos and Don’ts To Improve Your Social Media Marketing
2. Guest Blogging
Have you ever thought about starting a guest blogging campaign?
Let me tell you straight – if you’ve never written a blog post and never got one published, you are certainly missing out. Guest blogging on relevant blogs with high rankings and a decent amount of social sharing is one of the best ways to be discovered by your target audience.
So what will all the effort bring, in the end, you are asking?
Well, it’s not just about traffic, but also new subscribers. That is the good thing about guest blogging – it drives highly targeted traffic that consists of people, who are actually interested in what you have to say, thus contributing to a high conversion rate.
But back to traffic…
- Organic traffic is really the winner here. With each guest post, you earn backlinks, which helps increase the rankings of your website. You should see an increase in visits from search engines, over time.
- Of course, there is also a good amount of direct traffic following a guest post, but that one lasts only a couple of weeks until your guest article gets buried under new content.
NOTE: Once you begin your guest blogging journey, I’d recommend you to complete at least three guest articles per month, for consistent traffic flow.
3. Web Hosting
Choosing a hosting provider is an important decision. No matter how big is your website, a poor choice of web host can lead to disastrous effects – and while changing provider is possible, it can also be quite a nightmare.
It’s not so simple to opt for a plan (I have a dedicated server with HostGator), and to really make a wise decision, you need to understand how your choice of hosting will influence your site’s traffic, engagement, and success.
Take site speed, for example. Almost 50% of visitors are looking for websites with a loading speed of two seconds or less, and approximately 40% will leave if it takes more than three seconds.
You surely understand, then, how loading time will affect your site traffic. And, from experience, I tell you that the number one reason for poor loading time is a bad web hosting. Taking into consideration that your site is properly optimized, the loading time of your web pages should be incredibly fast, unless your host is having issues.
Uptime is another important factor to consider. For every minute your site is offline, you are potentially losing traffic, conversions and sales. Look for web hosting providers that ensure uptimes as close to 100% as possible (HostGator has a 99,9% uptime).
Your web hosting choice will set the foundation for your online business success. So, it’s important to do your homework. Worry less about design, at first, and focus more on the details that matter.
In Conclusion
I really hope you found the information in the above paragraphs useful.
All in all, if you are able to work on those three aspects, you should expect to reach the high-point of your traffic and to convert a good percentage into subscribers.
Now I’d like to hear your comments!
How often do you publish new content on your blog?
Which hosting service are you using?
Which social network brings you the most traffic?
Please take a minute to share your two cents, I’d appreciate it!
There are most traditional but most effective ways, thanks for sharing.
Hi Erik, I try to have new content published weekly, every once in a while I may skip one especially around holidays.
I’ve been with Hostgator for 6+ years now and really love their tech support. I’ve been using their cloud packages of late as I needed more space 🙂
For me, it’s Twitter followed by Facebook, Flipboard, and recently Quora. I love Triberr, JustRetweet and Viral Content Bee.
Creative Collabs used to be CoPromote – they shut down and didn’t tell their users and never refunded their money! Not good. I haven’t tried them for that reason. I used to love Co-Promote too and had a post ready to go on how to use it and that’s the day the shut down 🙁
I think you are right, useless traffic is no good. I get that from StumbleUpon which I’m not even on – haven’t been in years but their bounce rate is 98%-99%.
I’m going to be working on my funnel more for 2018. Thanks for the tips Erik! Have a great day. It’s almost Friday 🙂
Hey Erik! Good post you got here, but you forget to add here blog commenting also adds traffic to a blog.
Hi Erik, definitely agreeing with you that “Guest Blogging” sure is a great way on how to earn more blog traffic. Thanks for sharing with us all these wonderful tips! Keep up the great work always! 🙂
Hi There!
Totally Agree with the fact that guest blogging can help you driving some quality traffic to your blog. Also, There are many ways to get traffic on your blog. But I personally loved the guest blogging strategy as there are many more benefits which you can get in return. Thanks for sharing these amazing tips and tricks. Great Share! Loved reading your blog… 🙂
A few days back, I have planned my social media strategies and taking a help on one of the popular social media management tools.
My blog is set up on Bluehost, and I think that is one of the most popular WordPress hosting service provider.
I am missing guest blogging, and I need a guide for that. Erik, if you have any guide to share with me than it will be a great help for me.
I love the idea of guest blogging, but I struggle when it comes to coming up with ideas for topics to write about for guest posts. I mean, there are only so many topics that I know enough about that I could write a nice article about them, so coming up with topics to write about for dozens or even hundreds of guest posts would seem to be impossible. Any tips?
Hi Erik! The tools mentioned for social media marketing are must-tries for me. I agree about participation and engaging the audience that way you get to know their problems, preferences and interests. Guest blogging is a good idea too, I can see you’re posts in popular sites and yes, traffic maybe necessary but it’s quality content that draws loyal followers. Would like to add blog commenting and forums, they’re effective as well. Thanks again!
These all are very effective tools for increasing a blogging site traffic. I will also use these ideas to increase my traffic. I like the Guest Blogging idea as this is new and much effective. I will also share these ideas with my friends who write blogs.
I have read a lot of blog post giving importance on guest blogging. Guest blogging is a reaaly good way for getting a backlink from a bigger website platform. Social marketing needs also lot of attention. We must try every step taking our blog to higher SEO.
Yes, totally agree that everyone should focus on improving the conversion rate. It will surely help achieve milestone while taking certain where it deems necessary.
Thanks
A few days back, I have planned my social media strategies and taking a help on one of the popular social media management tools.My blog is set up on Bluehost, and I think that is one of the most popular WordPress hosting service provider.
Hello there. YouTube can be a very good source of traffic to the blog. For example if in a video you leave a part of the content (tables, data, etc.) in the blog and leave links to it on YT.