3 Ways to increase blog traffic for beginners

Have you heard that blogging can help drive traffic to your website? Are you hoping to build a blogging business and become an influencer? Do you want to sell your products through an e-commerce website and use a blog to help drive traffic? No matter why you’re blogging, you probably want to increase the traffic to your blog. So, let’s get started with 3 ways to increase blog traffic for beginners. Whether you’re brand new to blogging or you’ve been doing it for a while but not getting many people to your blog, you’ll learn things you can do to help.

What are you blogging about?

The first way to increase traffic to your blog is to make sure you’re writing about topics people are interested in. Writing and editing blog posts takes time, so you want to ensure you get people reading what you’re writing. One of the most important things you can do is make sure you have a content strategy for your blog. What are you writing about, and how do your topics relate? You want to make sure your blog posts will appeal to an audience. There’s no point in writing about topics no one is interested in if you want to grow a blogging business.

How do you find out if anyone is interested in your topics?

You can use an SEO keyword research tool such as the Google Keyword Planner to check for search volume for the topic you’re considering writing about. Now, it’s possible that if you put your entire title in the research tool, you will see no search volume because people don’t search for that specific title, but if you take the most important words in the title and search them, you may find data. This is called an SEO keyword. It’s a keyword or keyword phrase that someone would search for in Google.

You can also use Google Suggested Search – this is one of my favorite tools for finding blog post ideas because the results are based on what Google thinks you might be searching for because other people are searching for that information. It’s relevant, it’s current, and sometimes, it’s in Suggested Search before we see any search volume in the keyword tools. Start typing a few words related to your niche and see what Google suggests. I did that, and that’s how I found the keyword phrase – blog traffic for beginners. 

Listen to the podcast episode here.

Write a great post to increase blog traffic

Always write for your reader. It’s important to provide value and have your content be helpful. Google wants to show people content that will help them make decisions, learn about a subject, etc. They don’t want to show blogs or websites readers go to and think – well, that was a waste of time. The best way to increase blog traffic is to create great content that your readers are interested in and will want to read. 

Google has a grading system for content on the web. It’s called E-E-A-T, and that stands for Experience – Expertise – Authority – Trust. Essentially, Google wants you to write about what you know, show your readers that you are an expert, and have first-hand experience with the subject matter. They want you to build your authority and trust in your niche. It’s easier to do this if you stay in your lane – choose core topics you blog about and go deep rather than broad. For example, I focus on SEO (search engine optimization) for websites, blogs, and podcasts, mainly on my blog. I also have posts on email marketing and content marketing, but even though I love to bake, I don’t blog about homemade bread or sourdough starters. I’m also a mom, but I’m not a parenting blogger. It’s important to choose your niche and topics and focus on them. Google doesn’t want to rank my SEO website high for a sourdough bread recipe because even if I have a great recipe (and I do!) I’m not an expert at baking sourdough bread the same way I am at search engine optimization. I have hundreds of blog posts about SEO that go back 7 years. You’ll have a better chance of getting traffic to your blog if you choose topic areas related to each other and stay consistent. 

Do Blog SEO every time

The best way to get traffic to your blog is to do SEO on every blog post you create. Doing this helps Google understand your blog content better, and when they understand it better, they’re more likely to show it to people for you.

What do you do for blog SEO as a beginner?

Step 1—Choose an SEO keyword for your blog post. Look for one that’s not super competitive, so you have a good chance of ranking at the top of Google and getting traffic to your post.

Step 2—Do blog SEO on your blog post. Use your SEO keyword in your blog title, URL, and copy. Create a title tag and a meta description that uses your keyword, too.

You can request a copy of my Beginner’s Step-by-Step SEO Guide here and follow it to optimize your blog post.

Get started with blog SEO and increase your blog traffic without ads or spending all day on social media.

Step 3 – Watch your blog’s analytics to see when your efforts start to pay off. Track your SEO keyword ranking and organic traffic numbers. If you’re not sure how to do this, I teach it in Simple SEO Content.

Bonus – join me in Simple SEO Content, and I’ll help make this process a whole lot easier and show you how to do it step-by-step. From brainstorming topic ideas to using AI tools to speed up the process, to writing content that Google wants to feature, to optimizing that content for Google so it gets traffic all the way through tracking your performance – I guide you every step of the way. In only 5 modules, you’ll go from being confused or frustrated to having a traffic and revenue-generating blog that is easy to run and fully SEO-friendly.

Podcast Episode Transcript

Hi, and welcome back to the Simple SEO Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Lindteigen, and I am so glad you're here with me today. Today, we're talking about three SEO tips you can use today to help get more traffic to every blog post that you write. I am so excited to dig into this with you and help you learn how to get more traffic because if you're taking the time and putting in the effort to create blog posts, I want you to get traffic to them. I don't want you to ever feel like, "Oh my gosh, I keep doing this, and the only person who ever reads my blog is my mom or my grandma," because while they are awesome, they are not going to buy from you. Your business isn't going to grow if they're the only people reading your blog posts. So, let's jump in and talk about three things you can do to get more traffic to your blog posts. Stay with me to the end because I have one bonus tip that's going to help you monetize your blog posts, and I know that's something we all want to do.

Alright, the very first thing I want you to do is to think about your reader. What are they interested in? What would they want to read about? What could you tell them that would be helpful? What questions do they have? Because I want you to create content that is going to have an audience. There's no point in spending the time and effort to write a blog post if no one is interested in it. So, how do you determine if there's interest in the topic that you want to write about before you write about it? That's by doing some SEO or search engine optimization keyword research.

Now you've heard me talk a lot about keywords and the fact that you really need to be careful that you're choosing a keyword that your website can rank for, that you have a good chance of showing up on Google's first page, and all of that still applies here. What I want you to think about when you're creating blog posts, or you're trying to come up with blog content is what would my ideal customer be interested in. What questions do they have? What questions do you get asked all the time where you feel like, "Oh my gosh, if I have to answer this question one more time," ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, that's probably a really good blog post for you to write about. If you're in a group and there are lots of people who would be your ideal customers in that group and they're asking questions, that might be a really good idea.

You can also go to Google and start typing in a sentence that's related to your ideal customer or to your particular niche and see what Google gives you in the suggested search box. So, when you start typing, what does Google suggest? Because that's based on current information, and Google thinks that you're asking that because other people are asking for that same information. Use some of these tools to learn how to spot opportunities where you can find potential blog topics that have interest.

If you're familiar with keyword research, if you've taken Simple SEO Content with me, you really understand how to do the keyword research and choose the right keyword. Then you probably already know how to do this process because this is module two of Simple SEO Content, where we really get into what type of content we're creating, how we're creating, and how we're finding all the opportunities and all of that. What I want you to do is use whatever keyword research tool you're comfortable with. Honestly, I get questions like, "What about this one, this one, this one?" You can use any of them. They should all have the same data because they should all be using the Google API, the Google information on the backend. So your search information, your competitiveness, all of that should be the same from one tool to the next. Use whatever tool you're comfortable with, and do a little bit of research. See where you can find opportunities for keywords.

A lot of the searches that we see are in question format. Very often, my blog posts are based on this exact type of research. They're formatted in a question, or they're using a keyphrase of three, four, or five words altogether that make up a keyword. That way, I know there's an audience out there looking for this information. That's what I want you to understand. We need to verify that there's an audience looking for the information before we take the time to create the blog post because when you create content that has an audience or has search demand, and you can rank for it, you have traffic coming into your site. It's much easier to grow your blog and to get traffic when you write about topics that people are interested in. That makes sense, right? It seems really super simple, but there are a lot of people who create blog posts that have no audience, there's no search demand, there is no interest in that subject. So that's how they end up feeling like they're wasting their time and their effort. And I don't want that for you, my friend.

Alright, number two. I want you to always, always, always write for the reader because you have to be really careful in making sure that you're providing helpful content. These are some key buzzwords for Google, okay, you guys? "Helpful content" was the name of a separate algorithm update that they ran; it moved into the core algorithm update in 2024 - March 2024, so very recently. You need to make sure that your content is helpful, that it provides value, and that it gives your reader, your searcher, information that they can't get somewhere else. If you just have a regurgitation of somebody else's information or you have a listicle, they're probably not going to rank you very high because that's what Google is trying to get away from, because it's not super helpful to the reader.

Google is really honing in on this and really focusing on this. Google has been focused on high-quality content and fresh content and all of that for more than a decade, but Google is seeing more competition, okay? With the birth of AI, there are rumors that ChatGPT is going to have a search function. Some people are starting to use it. We already know that Gen Z is more likely to search on social, like TikTok and Insta, versus Google. So Google is seeing some competition. They want to make sure that they maintain their threshold and their market share. And the way that they maintain their market share is by continuing to give really great results, really great and helpful information, that's got information you can't get somewhere else in the search results that they're serving up on the first page.

The other thing that you want to understand is the grading system for Google: E-A-T—your experience, your expertise, your authority, and your trust. This is how your website, every single page on your website, is graded now from Google's perspective. So they don't want you just to write about something you've heard about; they want you to write about something that you have been involved in, you've done, you have that background, you have that one-on-one experience, something that you can provide a different perspective on. Because, again, Google wants to maintain its market share. They're seeing more competition. The way that Google works as a business is Google sells ads to businesses who are then hoping to connect with searchers through ads. Well, if fewer people are searching on Google, they're not going to be able to sell as many ads, and they're not going to make as much money. That's why Google has so much focus on the quality of the search results and really making sure that people are not able to game the system and rank with crummy content. So you, my friend, need to include things that are going to be helpful to your reader. You need to show how you set yourself apart. What experience can you bring to this? What authority do you have? How do you build trust? All of that is so that your reader starts to build a connection with you, and Google starts to trust you and want to show your content to more people. So make sure you're always writing for your reader.

If you're not sure how to do this, I go further in-depth in Simple SEO Content module two, where we really talk about how to write content for Google, what to do, and how to make all of this work. Then, the third step, which is the magic step to get the traffic, is to do proper SEO or optimization on that blog post. When you're writing a blog post, if you're not doing SEO on it, nobody's ever going to find it. That's just the bottom line. You have to do SEO. Your content deserves to be optimized because without optimization, without SEO, Google doesn't really know what it's about. They're not really going to trust you, they're not really going to like you, they may not even know who you are, and they're not going to show you to their customers, and their customers are the people who could become your customers if you could get them to your site.

So, this is where we go back to keyword research. If you started with keyword research like I teach you to do, and you have an idea of a keyword that your website could rank for, you've now written a blog post that should be pretty much about that keyword. So you should have naturally used that keyword in your copy in your headers and in your title. Then, you're going to do the optimization. You're going to continue the optimization, which means you're going to write a title tag and a meta description that follow Google's best practices. If you don't know what those are, do yourself a favor, run to my website, etchedmarketing.com, go to the freebies tab, so etchedmarketing.com/freebies, and request a copy of the Complete Beginner's Guide to SEO. That's going to walk you through how all of this works and what happens, and it has a checklist on the back page to make sure that you've done what you need to for this blog post. You're going to write a title tag and a meta description following Google's best practices. You'll use your keyword in your image file name, your alt text, your header, and your copy—all the different places that Google is going to look. So get that guide if you don't have it yet; it will walk you through it.

Now, I promised you a bonus tip on monetization, not optimization, but monetization. When you are writing your blog post, there are a couple of things you can do. I'm going to give you two bonuses. One is from a monetization standpoint. Make sure the content that you're creating, the blog posts that you're writing, ties somehow to your business, your product, or your service because we want to drive really targeted, relevant traffic to our website from our blog. And when you do SEO, you do blog SEO, every single blog post that you write is another opportunity for you to drive targeted, relevant traffic to your website for free from Google. So if you write ten great blog posts that target keywords that your website can rank on page one of Google for, you now have ten chances to be found by your ideal customer and have them come visit your website, start to know who you are, begin to like you, and begin to trust you because they're starting to see you as a resource. Now, when they're ready to purchase, if the content that you've been writing about ties to your product or service, they are more likely to want to buy from you because now they've started to feel like they have a relationship with you. They know you, they trust you, they read your content, and you're an authority for them.

The next thing we can do, we all know we've got to be building that email list and growing that email list. So, your second bonus tip here is to add an opt-in to your blog post. So, if you have an opt-in, like I've said, get the free SEO guide. That SEO guide, Complete Step-by-Step Beginner's Guide to SEO, is an opt-in. It's also very helpful for you, my listener, who's new and learning about SEO. It's a little bit of love that I'm giving to you in exchange for your email address so that I can send you that guide. And then, each week, you'll start to get some information from me—another tip, another SEO 101 lesson, a podcast episode—something that's going to help you grow your website's SEO and grow your traffic. That's the same thing that you can do, my friend, on your blog using an opt-in. So make sure if you don't have an opt-in yet, you work on creating one that will be helpful to your ideal customer and add that to your blog so that as people come and they find you from Google, they read your blog posts, they start to connect with you. You have something that's of value to them that can help them. They're more likely to opt into your email list. All you have to do is have it there as an option. Some who are interested will opt-in; they will request that guide, that downloads, that PDF, watch the free class, whatever it is.

So that, my friend, is how you can both monetize your blog post and use it to grow your email list. There’s so much you can do with a well-optimized blog post. If you are ready to do this, or maybe you're thinking, "I don't want to blog, but like you, Rachel, I have a podcast. I do show notes." Hello, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Your podcast show notes page can be done as a podcast show notes blog post, where you get all the same benefits from Google by doing Google SEO or blog SEO on that show notes page. I teach how to do that in Simple SEO Content. I'm also working on Simple Podcast SEO, so if you're a podcaster, stay tuned. That class is coming soon, and man, is it going to be exciting because I'm going to teach you how to grow your downloads and how to grow your Google traffic, both from your podcast. I know, isn't that amazing?

Alright, that's it for today. Make sure you join me back here. If you're not following the show yet, make sure you do that so that you get new episodes when they release each week. And I will see you back here next week. Bye for now.