Blogging Tips to Dramatically Increase Your Traffic as a New Blogger

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While we’ve outlined how to create good content and ways to schedule it in our Start a Blog series, this post is a quick recap of the top 7 blogging tips to help you increase your traffic as a new blogger dramatically.

There are a few things that you can do to start attracting readers and keep them hooked on your words.

7 Blogging Tips to Increase Your Traffic Dramatically

1. Research Your Topic and Keywords

Keywords are one way you can begin to show up on search engines. Using a plugin like Yoast can help you improve and adapt your writing to make that keyword or group of keywords register on search engines.

Keywords also help you focus on your expertise and post’s content. People are coming to your blog for a reason – don’t go off on a tangent.

Finally, keywords can help spark new ideas that can lead to a series or additional posts for your blog. Check out our tips on batching and using an editorial calendar to plan on keywords.

2. Use Attention Grabbing Headlines

Headlines are often why or why not someone clicks to your site. You have to capture their attention. There are a few things to keep your headlines fresh! Using Yoast will help you create search engine optimized (SEO) headlines and titles too!

The difference between a headline and a title is how it appears in the code of your site. The headline can be reader-friendly whereas the Title Tag needs to include SEO ideas. It needs to describe what the page is all about.

Titles and headlines can appear in the browser, search results, and social media sites.

Tips to Awesome Headlines

Include keyword(s) in your headline
Use personal pronouns like You, Your, I or Me (How You Can Start a Blog in 10 Minutes)
Other powerful words include: How to, DIY, Easy, Win, Ways, Why, and The Most
Including numbers like 7 Blogging Tips to …helps as well, and it outlines the post for you!
The best headlines are 70 characters long because of search engine optimization
Keywords should go at the beginning like “7 blogging tips” the keyword is Blogging Tips.

3. Length of the Post

As a general rule, SEO posts will be 300+ words; however, each blogger’s style may be different. It also depends on the type of blog post you’re writing.

Your audience may also show you which length they prefer. You may notice this based on their engagement on different posts.

Sticky or evergreen content is often must longer because of the specifics they offer. Either type of post may be 1000+ words.

With that said, there are a few blogging tips to keep in mind:

Search engines really like 300+ words and index posts faster that hit that number.
It’s important to include an image to boost SEO and social shares.
The organization of content is critical in longer posts.
Every post needs to be SEO optimized with Yoast and include keywords.

4. Images

Images can capture your reader’s attention and keep them engaged in the post. It also can strengthen your topic visually and allow a reader to understand the content better.

It also adds in SEO juice to your blog post.

A few blogging tips about images:

Don’t take someone’s image or Google images due to legal issues.
Assume every image is copyright protected.
Use images that you create or use an image bank like Canva.
Make sure images include a Title and Alt tag.
If you’re using Pinterest to promote, Alt tags will be the pin’s description.
Optimize images’ speed with a tool like Optimizilla.
For more tips on images check out Tentblogger’s guide.

This picture shows the Title and Alt section under “Add Media” on a Wordpress Blog.

5. Make Your Posts Scannable

People are busy and will often just scan your post in 15-30 seconds. It’s important that your content is able to be consumed easily and quickly.

Blogging Tips to Make Content Scannable

Break content down into a list and bullets to outline tips or steps
Emphasize points using bold, CAPS, italics, and underlining
Utilize headers and sub headers to outline your content
Use pictures to draw in readers and outline main topics
Allow white space within content to guide a reader’s eyes
Paragraphs should be 1-2 sentences.
Be clear and concise in your points
If you have too much going on in a post, break it into multiple posts.

If you’re not sure your content is scannable, ask a friend to scan it for 15-30 seconds and explain back to you what the post is about.

6. Increase Engagement & Comments

Engagement can play a role in SEO. In addition, if you’re able to connect and engage a reader, they’ll be more likely to share it on social media — bring in more traffic.

Blogging Tips for Engagement