How I Grow My Website Traffic to 100,000 Monthly Page Views
I still remember the first few weeks I started my blog.
I kept checking my Google Analytics daily, hoping to see just a handful of new visitor to my blog.
Anybody can relate?
Weeks after weeks, I became tired of checking my Analytics and decided to just put in the work, grow my traffic, and engage with my audience…
Never did I expect that the efforts would pay off eventually…
After months of not checking my Google Analytics, I was surprised that I finally hit 100,000 monthly page views.
This happened after blogging for less than 2 years (I started my blog on August 2015).
Are you wondering what I did to reach this number?
In this article, I will share 7 tips that I used to grow my website traffic to 100k monthly page views.
How to Generate Traffic to Your Website
1. KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
Do you know exactly who your target audience is?
I know it sounds cliché, but the more you understand about your target audience, the easier it is to write posts that resonate with your audience.
You know exactly what they are struggling with…
You know what they want to achieve…
You know their dreams…
So you can address their pain points…
Point out their mistakes and educate them…
These are gold mines for your blog post topics.
2. USE LOW-COMPETITION KEYWORDS
Whenever I write a post, I always target on a low-competition keyword.
How to do this?
For example, I would like to write an article about power pumping. Don’t worry if you don’t know about this term, it’s just one popular technique in my niche.
First, I would check Google for keyword recommendation.
Sometimes I also look at the ‘related keyword search’ that appears once I search on a particular keyword.
From here, you already get a handful of keywords that are related to your topic.
Next, I would check how competitive the keywords are.
To do this, I recommend you to use a keyword research tool.
I personally use Wealthy Affiliate Keyword Tool (you can use other tools as well, such as Jaaxy or Long Tail Pro).
I love this keyword tool because it tells me exactly how much traffic that I can get from a single keyword PLUS the exact competition that I’m facing for that particular keyword.
I typically choose a keyword with less than 100 competing pages (some even less than 50), while still having a decent monthly traffic.
By choosing a low-competition keyword, my content ranks very easily in Google (I’m talking about first page of Google here).
Now, here’s the thing.
Sometimes people are reluctant to use a low-competition keyword because they may attract less traffic.
But, you know what…
Once your content ranks for a particular keyword, it is very easy to rank for similar keywords (even the more competitive ones), and thus you’ll gain a lot more traffic from those keyword searches.
As a proof, my power pumping post ranks not only for the keyword I was targeting but also the other 20+ keywords! Here is my Google Search Console screenshot, showing the related keywords which rank very well.
Powerful, right!
And just to let you know, using this technique alone, I have at least 20 posts listed in the Google’s first page.
- 3. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR ON-PAGE SEO
Obviously, on-page SEO is a must to help your post ranks in Google faster.
Once you have chosen your keyword, don’t forget to use it in the following places:
- Post URL
- SEO title and SEO description (these are the title and description that will show on search engine result page). I use All in One SEO plugin to take care of my SEO stuff, but you can use another plugin such as Yoast.
- Alt-image text
- Good to have: headings, beginning and the ending of your post.
4. CREATE INFOGRAPHICS
An infographic condenses a lot of information into a short visual summary that is easy to digest.
Additionally, infographics are highly shareable across social media platforms.
When I created my first infographic, I didn’t ever think that it would be one of my biggest traffic sources.
It was ‘ugly’, full of text, and weird icons.
But 6 months later, my ‘super-simple’ infographic has been shared more than 10k times and the post it is linked to is becoming one of the top 5 posts in my blog.
So it is a no brainer to create the second one, and more…
If you are thinking that you need to be a good designer to create an infographic, fret not.
There are so many free infographic templates that you can readily use.
I personally love Canva and create my infographics with it.
Here are some of my infographics, and the numbers below them are the proof that infographics surely attract traffic.
[Read: How to Make Infographics That Will Repeatedly Boost Your Traffic]
5. GROW YOUR PINTEREST TRAFFIC
I only started getting serious with Pinterest last year and today Pinterest has contributed to 25% of my traffic.
I believe Janice has covered a lot of details on how to gain traffic from Pinterest, but I want to add a few more things that you can implement in your Pinterest strategy:
(1) Incorporate keywords into your Pinterest profiles, boards, and pins.
Yes, Pinterest is not just another social media.
Think of it as an image-based search engine.
By inserting relevant keywords to your profile, boards, and pins, you get higher chance to be found by other Pinterest users.
For example: my target audience is new moms / expecting moms who plan to breastfeed/pump at work.
So I inserted ‘breastfeeding’ into my profile name, ‘breastfeeding tips’, ‘pumping at work’ in my profile description and I also have relevant boards for each of the keywords.
You can check out my Pinterest profile here.
(2) Use Branded Image.
Rather than creating a new design every time you create a new pin, stick with a template or two.
Choose a color theme, font types, and add your brand info (either a logo or URL of your website) to design your pin. Here are a few examples of branded images from my website.
Not only it is much faster to create pins this way (you just need to change your image and text overlay), slowly, your audience will easily associate you with your branded image.
They recognize you instantly the moment they see your pins. And the longer you produce helpful content for them, the more likely they will repin and share your new content.
Here’s an interesting case study showing how branded image can affect your traffic growth.
(3) Pin regularly.
Thanks to Pinterest scheduling programs, I only need to schedule my pins once a week (in less than an hour) and the scheduler will take care of posting my pins at the designated time.
Make sure to have a balanced ratio between your own pins and other people’s pin. Too much pinning only from your site will feel like spammy, while too much pinning other people’s content won’t give you traffic growth that you want.
If you are new to Pinterest or have not seen a promising growth, I highly recommend you to take Summer Tannhauser’s Pinterest FREE e-course.
Not only the course opened up my mind about mistakes I did previously, it offers a solid step by step guide on what you should be doing to gain not only more followers but more traffic from Pinterest.
6. OFFER FREEBIES
Who doesn’t love free things?
Convert your readers into email subscribers by offering relevant freebies.
And no, a freebie is not always an e-book.
It could be something much simpler.
I used to think I needed to create an e-book before collecting email addresses but boy, the thought of needing to create the book cover, lengthy content, and do the formatting made me procrastinate a lot.
Until someone told me that a freebie can be simple as a checklist or worksheet, something simple.
So I created one simple checklist, put it as a content upgrade for an existing blog post, and that’s when my email list started growing.
After that, I added more freebies. Most of them are simple checklists from existing blog posts, while others are free email courses (also created from existing blog posts).
So you see… there’s a lot of repurposing content here. You don’t need to create anything from scratch.
Once your freebie is ready, add the opt-in form to relevant blog posts. The alternative, you can use another type of opt-in form (such as pop up, banner, or pop-ups) to invite people to get the freebie.
I also revamped my homepage from the typical ‘blog roll’ to a static page featuring my most popular freebies.
This encourages the readers to choose relevant freebies based on ‘the stage’ they are currently at.
You can see how it looks here.
Also, don’t forget to add your freebie screenshot to your social media images.
People love visuals.
When they know that they can get something free right from your social media images, they are more likely to visit your post and sign up as a subscriber (see the example on the right-most pin image above).
I started growing my subscriber around May last year.
Now, my email list grows in auto-pilot, giving me close to 100 new subscribers every single week.
Now you may be thinking, how is this related to growing your traffic?
You know what…
Your email subscribers are your loyal fans.
The fact that they stick with you means that they truly enjoy your content, they love your work.
And that’s why, they will happily promote and share your blog posts, generating a lot more traffic for your blog.
Just for your Info, there were times that my posts went viral on Facebook (even when I don’t have a dedicated Facebook page/profile for my blog). So who did that? You guess).
[Read: How to Easily Get New Followers with Optins: an Update]
7. USE LONG-FORM CONTENT
Though there’s a lot of debate whether short-form or long-form content is better, my posts are typically beyond 1000 words, while my epic guides are more than 3000 words.
And so far, I received positive feedback from my readers because they appreciate the in-depth details that I presented in each post.
Here are a few tips to make long-form content more readable:
- use short paragraphs
- Insert breaks with headlines, quotes, or images
- Highlight important points with bold, italic, bullet points / numbered list, or different colors
- Use a table of content so that they can jump to the part they are more interested with.
- Break up a lengthy guide into a series of posts
[Read: 9 Tips for Writing Long-Form Content That Will Make You a Better Blogger]
RECAP
In summary, here are 7 things you can do to grow your blog traffic up to 100k per month:
- Know your target audience
- Use low-competition keywords
- Pay attention to on-page SEO
- Create infographics
- Grow your Pinterest traffic
- Offer freebies
- Use long-form content.
Now it’s your time to take action and implement some of these.
But please remember:
No matter which one you want to implement first, you need the very basic foundation, which is creating good quality content.
You need to provide value for your audience.
Your mission is to help them to solve their problems.
When helping others becomes the center of your business, don’t be surprised that you no longer need to desperately search for your audience.
They will find you instead.
What is your top traffic generation secret?
Have you been using any of these tips to grow your website traffic?
I personally have not exhausted all traffic generation tips but these are definitely working well for my website.
Which tips work best for you and which one is not?
If you have other traffic generation tips, please share it in the comments so that other bloggers can try them out.
Author Bio: Fiftarina helps new moms to prepare for breastfeeding and pumping at work. Visit her website at Living with Low Milk Supply.
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