Blogging Advice #6. Tips for increasing your views

Hellooo all my lovely readers! 

Okay it is official. I have moved from freezing to absolutely frozen and I can’t wait for this cold front to end. I was warmer living in the north of England during winter and that’s saying something! 

Anyway, I’ve had this blogging advice series in the background that has slowly been going on and considering one of the main reasons I started this blog was to share advice with others, I really want to try and finish this series and get it up to 10. 

One of the key things I think almost all bloggers look for are ways to grow your views. After all, we all want our blogs to do well and one of the ways we know that is to see people reading it. Increasing traffic (not the car-related traffic) is a big deal for bloggers and slowly growing that traffic as you develop your blog can be one of the most satisfying feelings ever. When I look back at some of my first blog posts and the traffic I was getting then, I remember how magical it felt to just get 10 views. Now I feel over the moon if I get 100 views in a day. 

Traffic is the fuel for any blog because you need readers, right? If there’s no traffic, then there’s no life, so finding ways to grow traffic towards your blog is always relevant to think about. The key though, is making sure it’s right for you. Traffic will naturally increase on its own, but that can sometimes be a slow process (really really slow sometimes). Still, there are ways for you to give it a boost on your own and that’s what I’m learning now. Just remember though that traffic also naturally increases the more time and effort you put into your blog, and please be aware that my tips are not a quick fix and they don’t work for everyone. These are just things I’ve found to help me but you know your blog best so always remember to adapt tips so that they fit you and your blog. 

Blog regularly 

Posting frequently and regularly is one of the easiest ways to help establish an audience and grow your views. For instance, when I participated in Blogmas last year, my daily traffic increased because I was posting everyday. Logically, because you are sharing my content, more people will find your blog and read it. Also, sharing regularly is always important so that your readers know when they can read your posts. If you post irregularly, your readers won’t know when to be on the lookout for a new post but if you have a regular posting day or time, it’s much easier for readers to follow your posts, which will inadvertently grow your traffic because you have a steady readership. 

Quality over quantity 

HOWEVER… remember that posting as much as you can may work for some as you’re generating more content and may then get increased traffic because of frequency, but your posts have to be of a good enough quality. With so many blogs out there, you need to have content good enough to hold its own, and that’s sometimes hard to do when you’re posting so frequently. So, getting a good quality post out once a week is far more valuable than four meh posts. However, you can’t focus so much on content that you only post once every six months. You need to find that perfect balance (especially if you’re a part-time amateur blogger like myself) – good quality posts but frequent enough that you can build an audience and not fall to the bottom of the heap.

Use keywords (and SEO) 

I’m going to be very honest with you, because one of the foundations in all good relationships is honesty and I don’t want to lie to you, I do not understand SEO. SEO, for anyone who doesn’t know, is Search Engine Optimization and essentially it’s a digital marketing that helps improve traffic through search engines and part of how this is done is through using the right keywords. Keywords are the terms your audience might search for and using a few relevant keywords throughout your blog. This will help the post be well-indexed by search engines, allowing more people to find your blog, leading to more traffic. 

Now try as I might, I am still figuring out how to really use keywords and SEO, partially because I am not great at these types of things and partially because I don’t always have a lot of time to dedicate to really working on this so I can implement it properly. 

So, because I don’t want to leave you all with a tip you can’t fully utilise, here are some posts by other bloggers with some really really helpful tips and knowledge about SEO.

Olivia Lucie Blake wrote this incredible guide for SEO you can check out here 

Shelly DS from Growing with Spawn shared an awesome SEO guide for beginners here

There are many other great blogs that give SEO tips but these are just two examples I’ve found quite helpful!

Networking is super important 

An important thing that I’ve realised is blogging is so much more than writing posts. It’s about the community you’re in. The blogosphere is one big family, especially the bloggers that I’ve started networking with on WordPress. Networking may not sound valuable, but it is – I guarantee it! Networking helps you to spread your blog (thus growing your audience) but also to make friends and connections and learn things from other bloggers. The fun used to always be coming up with topics, but now more than half the fun is reading other blogs, commenting on their work and creating friendships. 

Networking like this makes you an active blog-community member and not only is it fun to read other’s work and learn from them but taking the time to appreciate someone else’s work makes them more inclined to look at your blog and so the relationship develops. It’s like a giant positive cycle of growth and the best part out of it is you get to meet and make friends with so many new people, who may become sources of inspiration for you. Essentially, there’s never a bad reason to network. 

Throw your net wider – share your blog on other platforms

All of these points above are great, but it’s important not to forget about all the other tools available to us that can help share our blog with more people and increase views. Sharing with your friends is always great, and using your social media can also be super helpful. I’ve started posting my links more frequently on Whatsapp, and now I’m using social media (I know that I have wayyyy more lessons to learn when it comes to advertising/promoting via social media but hey what I’m doing now is better than nothing at least). Honestly I am very bad at posting on social media. I am currently trying to use Instagram just to promote my posts, but for many bloggers, Instagram is not ideal. You could also use Pinterest, or Twitter but it’s all about finding a platform that works for you. I have my wordpress account synced up to a facebook page that shares my posts on Facebook as soon as they’re published, and there are apps that can do this for you on other social media platforms too if that’s something you feel you need. Remember, the key to social media advertising, much like blogging, is being consistent so you can establish your presence and brand and it doesn’t float into the background (sort of like my Instagram account…)

And there you have it! As I said, these are tips that have worked for me but everyone’s blog is different and I still have so much to learn about blogging. However, I really hope that these tips are helpful to all of you and you can find ways to adapt them so they work for your blog and can help you increase your traffic. 

You can also check out my other blogging advice posts down here:

#1 Tips for writing a last minute blog post

#2 My ultimate pre-publishing blog post checklist

#3 Best blogging apps/tools to use

#4 Finding inspiration when you have absolutely no clue what to post about

#5 How to deal with blogging burnout

What do you think of these tips? Do you have any tips for increasing traffic that you’d like to add? How has your experience with views on your blog been? Lastly, what advice would you like to see in the next post of this series? Let me know your thoughts and what you want to read in the comments section!

Lots of love

Blondey on a Mission xxx