Are you looking to improve blog traffic in 2018?
This post will show you such effective blog traffic generation tips, you’ll be able to generate hundreds, yes, even thousands, of page views to your blog posts when you implement them.
This post examines my top 12 best-performing posts of 2017 so you can make a checklist of free, proven blogging tips.
However, the analysis in this post will focus on how my article wound up on the first page of Google within hours of publication. That was the day I received 1,007 page views to my blog.
How did I improve blog traffic generation methods in 2017?
This post will explain using screenshots so you can replicate my methods.
Tomorrow starts a new year. Do you make new year’s resolutions? Is one of them to improve your blog traffic?
We’re hours away from 2018. Bring on the traffic!
Year-End Results
The posts are listed in order from highest-performing blog post to the 10th-highest performing blog post of 2017.
Top Ten Blog Posts
- How Bloggers Like YOU Are Getting Paid $120 to $1,200+, Even Without Doing Any Work Note: The post was written only five weeks before the year ended and is already my best-performing post of all time. Page views are generally low during the time between Thanksgiving and New Years. During what should have been the quietest time of the year, the post generated more than four thousand page views in five weeks. Note: The post was written by a guest author.
- 18 Facebook Groups You Need to Join Today Note: Readers resonated with the post to such an extent, I turned it into a downloadable ebook. If you’re interested in having the links to 18 Facebook groups which allow daily self-promotion, you will see the place to request the ebook at the end of the post.
- How to Easily Make Money by Promoting Your Blog at Niume I use to rank for my Niume article, so I received thousands of page views from search engines. There was low competition for readers since there weren’t too many articles about Niume out there considering Niume was a relatively new site. When subsequent posts about Niume came out, some of them linked to my article as a source. For that reason, my article held the #1 spot at Google for the keyword term Niume. Unfortunately, this revenue-sharing website folded in October. While I expected my traffic to a post about a now-defunct site would stop, the opposite happened. Initially, when the site announced its impending closure, interest in Niume renewed and my Niume article experienced improved blog traffic. Note: The post was written in October of 2016. Why it is this important to note? The article had more time to pick up page views than some of my other posts.
- 123 of the Best Free Blogging Tools that Will Save You Time Blogging (2017 Update)Â I am so glad people found my tool list helpful.
- How to Get Paid in Affiliate Marketing Whether or Not You Make a Sale Note: The post was written by a guest author on December 30, 2016. Like entry #3, the article had additional time to generate page views in contrast to posts which were only recently published.
- How to Never Run Out of Blog Post Ideas: 45 Experts Share Secrets The post received thousands of social shares. At the time of this writing, my article is the third most-shared post for the keyword term “blog post ideas” according to Buzzsumo.com. Note: The post was an expert interview consisting of over 7,000 words.
- How to Get Your Blog on the First Page of Google for Free Seemingly within hours, the post went viral. “Viral” is defined as abnormally high page views. On November 12, within hours of publishing, my blog received 1,007 page views in just that one day, and yours can too if you follow the tips in the “Analysis” section.
8. 11 Free SEO Tips That Will Make You See More Traffic I find it interesting this post beat #10 for the year which offered 13 free keyword tools. I assume this article received more page views since it offered both free SEO tools as well as free SEO methods whereas #10 just offered free keyword tools.
9. $997 “Done-For-You” Christmas Giveaway For 1 Lucky Reader & $2,000+ More for 10+ Other Readers [Very Time Sensitive] Page views are usually low the last two weeks of December due to the holiday season. Although the post was recently published and published on December 17 within the last two weeks of the year, it was my 9th best-performing post of 2017. Note: the post was written by a guest author.
10. 13 Best Free Tools You Need to Improve Your Long Tail Keywords People still find this keyword tool list valuable. I frequently offer the post to users of Quora.com when they ask how to find low competition, high volume keywords.
Conclusions: This is a well-rounded view of the posts my readers found valuable this year. They include SEO, technology, monetization, and social media tips which are what you can expect to see on my site.
Honorable Mentions
11. How to Quickly Boost Blog Traffic from StumbleUpon, 7 Ways I am including Honorable Mentions because I wanted to show my Facebook article wasn’t my only popular social media post this year. (My How to See a 10x Growth in Your Blog Traffic Now with Flipboard article came in at #13.)
12. 47 Unusual but Effective Free Blogger Tricks You Will Love I’m so glad the post was well-received. I was moved by the overwhelming response. I do know I was particularly proud of the post when I wrote it and am glad it performed so well.
Interesting MissesÂ
I predicted the following posts would perform better than they did:
This Is the Article You Need to Grow Your Website Traffic to 100,000 a Month Everything was in place: a killer graphic, a high-scoring headline according to the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer, and a post that filled a need for bloggers: how to generate 100,000 page views a month. I am shocked it underperformed.
Starting a Profitable Blog: 90 Ways You Can Be Successful Did you notice 40% of the posts in my top ten were about how to make money? I actually conducted an experiment by publishing the post. I heard that long posts and posts about money do well on Flipboard. When my guest author wrote and offered me a monster list post about making money, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. The results: The post did perform well on Flipboard but received underwhelming page views on average.
Analysis: What Made The Top 12 Posts Receive High Page Views?
Important: If you know what factors made these posts successful, you will have an action plan to improve blog traffic.
1. The posts resonated with readers because they filled a need.
Based on this data, I can conclude that my readers need posts that offer them:
free tips #7, #8, #10, #12
money-making tips #1, #3, #5, #9
easy tips #1 and #3
time-saving tips #4 and #11
Don’t just take it from me that the post How to Get Your Blog on the First Page of Google for Free resonated with readers. Consider this comment from one of those readers:
From Stefan Alexander:
This is an amazing case study. It just proves that authority websites who have great content published on their blogs have a good chance of ranking without any link building. Also, the focus on keyword research is a great as well. Although the traffic coming from a long tail keyword such as “how to get on Google first page guaranteed” is really low, I believe this page will also rank for other longtail keywords that you haven’t planned for. Usually, Google Search Console reveals some awesome keywords that aren’t at all targeted, but the algorithm is smart enough to show your page on that. I’d love to read an update on how many keywords this post ranks in the top 10 for in a couple of weeks.
2. There was little competition on the internet for readers. Yes, SEO matters. How can you know if there is competition for readers? Keyword tools will tell you, and the good news: these 13 keyword tools are free to use.
3. Link building mattered. Since How to Get Your Blog on the First Page of Google for Free appeared on Google in the #1 spot within hours, I asked Peter Nyiri, the guest author, if he linked to the post knowing this could help explain that phenomenon. He answered, “Yes, I did link to it from my own post: https://yourexpireddomains.
The screenshot shows Peter’s guest post in the #1 spot on Google’s Page 1. Note: This is my article. The SEO title is different from the post’s headline.
Best-performing posts #2, #3, #8, and #12 were also linked to by other bloggers.
4. Promotion on social media sites helped. Look at Peter’s reaction to his post How to Get Your Blog on the First Page of Google for Free going viral:
“But you are not done with your traffic yet. I just posted it on the NicheHacks Mastermind group and the Boost Your Blog group, both on Facebook.”
Look again at the screenshot showing the page views for the day:
Do you see that I received triple-digit page views from both Facebook and Flipboard that day? Do not neglect the power of social media.
5. Domain Authority affected the outcomes. Peter continued his explanation of how the post could land on Page 1 within hours of publication: “If your blog didn’t have a DA of 48, it would have taken longer.”
When Peter heard I’d be blogging about the success of his post, he added, “You can add the data to your post that I tried this strategy on my DA 15 domain with other keywords and it took 3 days to index and then the post was slowly rising from Page 2 towards Page 1.”
6. Comments matter: I heard that Google prefers to give visibility to blogs with many comments. Why? It shows Google that the post is a quality post since the readers are engaged. When speaking about how his post landed on Google’s Page 1, Peter agreed: “I also tried the same keyword on my site, but it didn’t get very far because it is a fairly competitive subject and I get no comments like your posts do.”
An interesting question: Do page views lead to comments or do comments lead to page views? Comments lead to page views coming from search engines; they show Google you have an active blog.
7. Your niche matters: Peter explained, “The other reason why it did better on your blog is due to your blog subject – Mostly Blogging – is a lot more relevant to “How To Get Your Blog On The First Page Of Google,” I worded it to match “blogging”. Posts on your own subject always rank better.”
8. Urgency is important. Did you notice the last three words of the headline of #9 are “very time sensitive?”
The Facebook post, which came in at #2, told people to join the groups “today.”
9. Outreach helps. I sent the post recommending the 123 tools to the tool makers and asked them to share it out. Many of them retweeted my post on Twitter.
10. Giveaways are effective People love giveaways. The fact that there are 138 comments on  $997 “Done-For-You” Christmas Giveaway For 1 Lucky Reader & $2,000+ More for 10+ Other Readers [Very Time Sensitive] is a testament to this.
11. Dare to be different. My #12 best-performing post offered “unusual” blogging tips. People couldn’t find these tips on other blogging tips sites. I recall the post was linked to by a high-ranking blog.
This is what you need to do if you want to improve blog traffic in 2018.
Wrapping Up
