Have business? You should blog. Want to learn how to increase blog traffic? Learn from bloggers who do it right.
If you’ve ever wondered How to Increase Blog Traffic (and hence traffic to your website), you are in the right place.
Most businesses think that blogging is fancy. They do want to hire someone to do SEO though.
Consider this:
A blog gets a business 5X times more leads than a business without a blog.
Content Marketing is King.
Blogs help get traffic, increase exposure, get you leads, help build your email list, create a brand, and build a community around your business.
Heard all of that and you still don’t blog, do you?
I know, since 90% of all my clients absolutely don’t have anything remotely connected to a blog anywhere on their website. Some of them pick a single type of traffic source — like PPC or SEO or Social Media — and focus on that alone.
It’s a shame when any regular business doesn’t blog. Every passing week is a lost opportunity to have slowly grown your brand, get traffic, make conversions happen, build an audience, build a list, and to finally make sales by using email marketing sent to subscribers.
I once wrote what businesses should learn from regular bloggers (those who do only blogging and usually don’t actually represent a business — the blog is the business, so to speak).
This time around, I think we should consider growth stories of individual bloggers just to prove the point that if a blog can grow to a point that it makes revenue for itself, what kind of potential does a regular business have with blogging?
Now, let’s find out how a few relatively new, ordinary bloggers did it:
Mindy of Coco and Ash
Mindy is a stay-at-home mom of 2 and she runs a blog at Coco and Ash. Mindy started her blog in March 2016.
By August, she averaged 70,000 views on her blog. She isn’t technically savvy and she had no clue when she started. She blogged everyday, and then she writes some more. Plus, she pins it up on Pinterest, adds her own photos, generates traffic from groups, follows other bloggers and comments on blogs, engages on Facebook and more.
Ramsay of BlogTyrant
BlogTyrant, at the time of writing this, is already a hugely popular blog. Ramsay — from Adelaide, Australia — is an inspiring story, to say the least.
By the time Ramsay was into his third week of blogging, he managed to get over 11,908 visitors.
How did he do that? Keyword research, writing specific and targeted content, balancing between high value posts but still not giving everything away, guest blogging, working with his existing network, and more.
I want you to read this again: 11,908 visits in 3 weeks of blogging.
If I had a regular business or an online business with that kind of traffic, I’d retire by now.
Ramsay still doesn’t. He continues to blog anyway. Plus, he is one of the best people around if you want to wrap your head around how to create a blog
Nagi from Recipe Tin Eats Blog
Nagi is a food blogger who went from zero to 1 million in 8 months flat.
Nagi is a cook and a photographer and she blogs at RecipeTinEats. Her blog focuses on my love of a lifetime: food.
Nagi started her blog in 2014. About 8 months later, she hits 1 million views. Following that, she started living off her blog (along with other perks that come with her publishing such as photography assignments, recipes, and more).
As on January 2016, she had an audience of 3 million.
It’s 2017 now, what might the number be at?
Jenny of Seasons In Color
Jenny Kakoudakis has an eye for Interior Design. On her blog at Seasons In Color, she is all about seasonal trends in Interior Design, colors, styling, makeovers, and more.
While I didn’t get to see how much traffic her blog gets, it also called up for an opportunity to go beyond traffic and talk about something else instead: fame and achievement.
Her blog wins the “Content of the year” award from the team at Joh Lewis AffiliateWindow.
Blogging makes bloggers famous.
What can blogging do for your brand, Entrepreneur?
Amelie of AWanderesAdventures
Amelie is from Canada and she helps college students thrive in college and beyond. She started with humble beginnings – as most blogs and bloggers do – and went from 300 views per month to a monthly average of 18,000 page views per month. She achieved all that in 9 months with a 60X increase in page views.
Quality content, a firm eye on analytics, a strong push on social media (especially Pinterest) and a whole lot of hustling was instrumental in getting Amelia where she is today.
If a 20-year old from Quebec can do it, what can your business do?
Chelsie Of HeyThereChelsie
Chelsie runs a blog called HeyThereChelsie on “beauty, style, and the pursuit of vibrant life” as she puts it. By the end of the year 2016, she amassed a total of 140,182 page views (a 33% increase since 2015).
Her major traffic sources have been social media (Pinterest, again?), sponsored posts, and Instagram.
Chelsie made sure she remained consistent with her blogging efforts, focused on growing her email list, utilized video to grow her YouTube Channel, got involved with her local blogging buddies, and more.
Apparently, she isn’t going to compare herself and her spectacular growth anymore. So, even if you start a blog today for your business and do some passionate corporate blogging, she isn’t going to bite you.
She just might come back to say hello when your blog works for your business though.
Kecia of OnlineIncomeMom
Kecia is a mom of 2, a blogger, a writer, and an online entrepreneur. She started OnlineIncomeMom in February of 2016 and started like almost everyone else does – befuddled, lost, skeptical, and with half-assed attempts with new themes, social media, and some writing.
But then, one day, she decided to hold herself accountable. Her best month before the hustle was about 64 page views.
About thirty days later, she pumped up her page views by 7,392 % (Not a typo). Again, consistent blogging with 2 posts per week helped her grow. She also used Pinterest, Content Interlinking, boards on Pinterest, and more.
Carol Byrant Of FidoseofReality
Carol Byrant manages her own blog at Fidose of Reality. I, however, discovered her at BlogPaws.
She grew her blog by a whopping 100% in a span of 365 days. How does she do that, you ask? Conferencing, networking, constantly testing her blog (along with her progress), social media, reciprocating with other bloggers, and using a clearly defined plan for growth.
Her tattoo (and mantra) is “My Heart Beats Dog”
I ask you this: Is your heart beating blogging, eh?
Dominique Of Well, Dominique
After seeing some starts and restarts, Dominique depended a lot on Social Media to get some traffic to his blog. He well understood the risks that come with Google’s mighty algorithms, the dicey nature of SEO, and the low shelf life of Social media.
He wanted to diversify his traffic sources, and boy, did he?
From April to May of 2015, Dominique grew his traffic by 352%. He poured in probably every ounce of juice off the entire spectrum of digital marketing channels available to him.
His secrets (are they even secrets anymore?) include consistently blogging 3 posts per week, focusing on writing the right kind of blog posts, Internal linking, list posts, and also editing old posts (since these posts still get gobs of traffic).
Maryea of HappyHealthyMama
Maryea started her blog in September 2014 and it was already average about 50,000 to 60,000 views every month. In a single year (2015), that number grew to 146,620 views. I suspect that the blog is still growing, as I write this.
Let’s talk about income too (since businesses are almost always in unquestionable love with revenue).
When Maryea started, she averaged about $100 per month from her blog. She doesn’t reveal her present income from the blog but she says “full-time” and we are going to assume it’s more the annual revenue of a regular business, where I come from.
Elna of TwinsMommy
Elna is a millennial mom of two twins. She works from home as a freelancer writer. She started blogging in March 2016. It wasn’t until April that she decided that she’d focus on growing her blog (and hence her business).
Between the end of March to April, and then from end of May to June of 2016, she tripled her traffic to the blog. As on December 2016, she managed to reach 11,641 page views (that’s over 60% increase in page views per month).
Her visitors increased overnight.
How did she do it?
First, she made sure she cached her site using a CDN (Content Delivery Network). Then, her excellent content got her some natural inbound links from other bloggers. She also spent a lot of time with Pinterest Marketing, participating in group boards, growing her email list, doing blogger outreach, etc.
I am impressed.
What Will You Take From Here?
All of these lovely moms, work from home freelancers, fashionistas, marketers, online entrepreneurs, and regular bloggers grew traffic to their respective blogs, focused on consistent blogging, and some of them even make a full-time income out of their blogs.
I’ll say it again: Their blogs make money. At least, they are on the right path to make some money.
Why can’t your business – with resources, teams, marketers, venture capitalists, and even monkeys – on your team do what these spectacular individuals do?
Hey Donna,
I actually discovered each of those bloggers long before I planned this post. I read each of their stories on how their relatively new blogs grew so fast.
My point was that if bloggers could do this — being single person entities and that they all had limited resources — every business should pick a leaf of these stories to plan for their own blogging journey.
It’s always a pleasure to see you here 🙂 Did you notice my humble Infographic? It was created after reading your post on the same topic.
Ash
Ash
Hi Ash,
Nice collection of bloggers to emulate.
They’re obviously doing something right, so hey… there’s a lot to learn from them.
Each of their stories read like a mini-case study.
-Donna