I’ve been reading recently about ways to generate more traffic to my website, because I’ve decided that it’s time for me to stop living under a rock about this stuff. For the past four, nearly five years, I’ve been writing without any thought toward actually sharing my content. If that describes you as well, then you’re in good company. Here are 7 tips I found helpful when I was learning about the topic!

Post regularly – at least twice a week.

Oops… guess I need to work on this one, because I post once a week! If a massive company like American Express talks about how you should be posting at least twice a week in order to be ranked more highly in searches, then there’s probably some truth to it.

The reason for this is that Google gives higher priority in search rankings to sites with fresh content, compared to sites that haven’t been updated in a while. Apparently, “in a while” means a week. This can be hard to do if you’re just one person writing for your site like I am, but it’s something to keep in mind as a way to get more traffic!

Post longer-form, quality content.

This one kind of goes against the conventional wisdom you probably read somewhere on the internet. That wisdom usually reads something like this: “People have short attention spans, and don’t want to spend a ton of time reading your posts. Therefore, keep your blog posts short, averaging about 500 words.”

Here’s what I’ve realized in reflecting on my own behaviour online: it’s true, I do have a short attention span. But when I’m trying to find information on a topic I care about, and I come across a post that has really good information on that topic, it’s amazing how much time I’m willing to spend consuming that content.

In other words, if you’ve got good, comprehensive content in your posts, people will spend more time reading them and Google will then give your pages a higher quality score and better search rankings. Aim to cross the 1,000 word mark at a minimum, but don’t be afraid to get to 2,000 or even 3,000 words. Just remember, it needs to be useful content!

Moving forward, you’re going to see me experiment with these longer-form posts more often, based on what I’ve learned in my research.

Check out sites like Quora or AnswerthePublic

These sites will give you a sense of what people are asking about within your niche. Take that info, then build content specifically designed to answer those questions. For example, if you’re a Personal Finance writer, maybe you might write a post that offers an answer to the question “How much money do I need to retire?” That’s a tricky one, by the way 🙂

The key here is that you’re removing some of the guesswork around what people are interested in reading. Rather than just shooting a shot in the dark and picking a topic at random, use sites like these to make an informed choice on your topic of the day.

It’s a simple numbers game: if you write about a topic that more people are interested in, then you’re going to get more traffic, all other things being equal!

Get your SEO game polished up.

You don’t have to be an SEO expert in order to be good at SEO. There are a number of free tools out there that will help you up your game. If you’re a WordPress user, I like the YoastSEO plug-in. The free version gives you pretty much everything you need to create content that stands a much better chance of getting ranked well in searches.

For each post, it gives you a checklist of things you should be doing in order to improve that post’s SEO score, and it checks them off automatically as you complete them. Easy as pie!

At a minimum, you’re going to want to pick a keyword that you’d like to rank for on each blog post. That keyword should be something that users will almost always include when they’re searching for your topic. Then, make sure you use that keyword in your title, your headers, your image tags and at least a couple times within the body of your blog post (don’t go overboard, though). Doing this will greatly improve your chances of being ranked well.

Beyond that, try to make sure each post links to at least one other page on your site, plus one other page outside your site. That doesn’t always make sense, and don’t force it; but having those links does make a difference to your page’s SEO score.

Again, a plug-in like Yoast SEO will help make sure you’ve got all of these bases covered – these are just a few examples of the things it can help you get right!

Make your posts more readable.

What does readable mean? It means shorter sentences and smaller words. It means using proper grammar and spelling (you can use a tool like Grammarly to help keep you honest on this one). It also means breaking out your copy into paragraphs, and avoiding the dreaded full-page block of text.

Beyond that, you’ll want to make good use of headings. Like I said, they’re huge for SEO, but they also play an important role in making your content more readable. This gets more important as your posts get longer. The longer they are, the more headings you should have. Try to make it so that each heading has no more than 300 words under it.

Again, this is something that YoastSEO can help with (they’re not paying me for this, by the way – I just like them). Beyond giving you SEO recommendations, the plug-in also gives you suggestions to help improve your post’s readability. Following these can make a big difference to the likelihood that someone will actually read your post from top to bottom.

Lastly, countless studies have shown that adding images to your posts greatly improves their appeal, and makes them more readable by helping to break up blocks of text. I’m really bad at this, and I don’t know why, because it isn’t hard.

There are plenty of royalty-free, attribution-free sites out there where you can get fantastic stock imagery for your posts. My personal favourite is Unsplash. Of course, if you’re in the food or hobbyist niches, then you’re probably going to want to get good at taking photos of your own work, because you won’t find images of them online!

Write a great headline to drive more traffic.

Which one are you more likely to click on? This headline:

Ingredients that can be Hazardous to Your Health

Or this one:

These 5 Ingredients are Proven to Kill You in Months

Most people would choose the latter of the two. Does it feel like clickbait? Yep, you bet. But it’s only clickbait if you don’t actually give people what they came for when they click on your headline. There’s nothing wrong with writing a compelling headline and then backing it up with real, meaty content. Talk the talk and walk the walk, and all that.

The reality is that your headline is almost as important in driving traffic as the actual content of your post. After all, how can someone appreciate the content you wrote if they’re not motivated to click and get to the page in the first place?

If you want more traffic, you’ve got to write compelling headlines that make people click. If you need inspiration, check out other blogs and news sites and see how they’re crafting their headlines. You’ll pick it up in no-time!

Make sure your site is clean and easy to navigate.

If your homepage looks Yahoo in the late 90s (if you know, you know), you’re going to lose people before they even have a chance to experience all of the great content you’ve created. Make sure your website has a design that’s easy to navigate, and for god’s sake stay away from the link salad that dominated the early internet.

Remember, the fewer options you give someone on where to click, the more likely they are to click on the link you want them to! The same goes for leaving some blank space in your site’s design. You don’t need to fill every corner of every page with stuff. If you do, chances are you’re losing traffic to your other pages!

By the way, if you don’t remember or weren’t around for the good ol’ days of the internet, here’s that Yahoo homepage I was talking about:

Wrapping it Up

Driving more traffic to your blog is a combination of art and science. The art is the personal flavour you bring to the table – that needs to be there. The science is all of the things we’ve walked through in this post. Sprinkle in both together, mix ‘em around a bit, and you’ve got a recipe for traffic-driving content!