A well-tended blog can attract a wide range of people interested in your cause. And there are a variety of ways for you to increase blog traffic — traffic that may lead to new donors, supporters, media attention and more people using your resources, just to name a few benefits. Give your blog some TLC, and watch the number of visitors to your website jump up.

For most sites, the blog will contain your most frequently updated content. Adding new and fresh content carries all sorts of traffic benefits in and of itself. But, aside from regularly posting to your blog and sending recent posts to your email subscribers, we’ve come up with some tips you can be doing to increase blog traffic. Some of these suggestions will take a good deal of time, but others can feasibly be added to your routine.

Strategize Your Blog Content

Without good, quality content, none of the following tips will do you much good. This goes beyond thoughtful and well-written content (though that’s most definitely important) to content that actively considers your audience — the people actually taking the time to read your posts. Write content your readers are interested in, and they’ll keep coming back. Get to know your audience and supporters better by encouraging comments and discussion. You can also dive into your analytics to revisit your most popular posts and see what resonated with your audience.

Once you’ve got a handle on your audience, you’ll be able to write more strategically for them. This could mean creating content that your audience is willing and eager to share. Infographics, videos, gifs and other shareable components will add a more interesting and engaging component to your posts. This makes them more likely to be shared, stretching your reach even further.

Establish Your Authority

By creating quality content about your cause and the news, issues and discussions that surround it, you make yourself an authority on the subject. Participate in the conversation, even if that means going to forums, posting on social media, writing editorials or commenting on other blogs. Find out where your audience or desired audience is talking, and go there to get involved in the conversation and share your knowledge. In time, people will start coming to you for your take and opinion when your expertise is necessary or relevant to current events.

To start out, try joining Quora, a question and answer website where answers can be voted up or down by community members based on how helpful they are. Answer questions related to your cause and read what other people are saying on the topic.

Guest Blog

Guest blogging is a great way to expand your audience and collaborate with other bloggers or organizations. To join the conversation and kick-start the relationship, comment on or link to blogs you’re interested in writing for — blogs with trusted authority and decent-sized audiences. Once you get the conversation going, pitch a guest post to them. In your bio for the post, be sure to link back to your website! Your new readers will be able to head over to your blog for more. And voilà — increase blog traffic.

Link to Previous Blog Posts

Cross-linking throughout your site is an excellent habit to get into. It can send traffic from your new post to other relevant pages on your site and boost overall pageviews. Try out an in-line call to action (CTA) to drive readers to your most valued website goals — just make sure the linked page is relevant to the post and not jarring to readers. The example below demonstrates an in-line CTA for one of our guides.

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Placing CTAs and links to relevant content within the text ensures they’re read by interested readers and are thus much more likely to be clicked. But it’s also helpful for readers. They understand that you can’t include every possible scrap of information within a blog post without making it too long. Linking out to relevant information allows readers to learn more about the topic if they’d like or skip it if they’re not interested or short on time. It’s a common courtesy present in most quality web content.

Post on Social Media

Every post has the potential to be shared on social media and increase blog traffic. And when someone shares it that’s not you, it reaches all of their followers, too. Make it easy for your supporters to share on their social accounts with buttons.

Share every blog post on your social media accounts as well. A cool image or graphic will make it stand out to followers. And don’t be afraid to share content more than once on social media. With the amount of content on social media today, it’s incredibly rare that you reach your whole audience at any given time. Because of that — it’s perfectly acceptable to re-post content. Just write a new caption (for those who will be seeing it twice), and you’re set!

Make the Most of Search Engines

Blogs are the perfect medium for search engine optimization (SEO). Because you’re constantly posting and each post lives on a separate page within your site, every blog post you write has the potential to rank for a different keyword.

Use SEO on your blog to rank for a variety of long tail keywords (very specific, longer keyword phrases) that would be incredibly difficult to rank for through page content. Optimize each post for a new keyword, sit back and watch your blog traffic increase as more and more people find your site when they search the web.

Try one, two or all of these tips to increase your blog traffic. SEO and establishing authority will most likely take some time to see real increases, but other tips like social media sharing and linking to previous blog posts have the potential to begin working for you immediately.

Is your nonprofit looking to amp up its blog? Need any clarification on ways to increase blog traffic? Let us know in the comments!

Comments

  1. This is truly a masterpiece Christine. I like the way you blog and write your content.
    Thank you so much that I’ve learned so much from you. Currently, I’m building my blog using your tips and suggestions. I’m growing it. It’s slow, but it’s definitely growing.

  2. I love a helpful list and this couldn’t have come at a better time for me as i am just starting out. All of the posts i’ve read that you have written about this stuff are comprehensive and really useful. It’s great that you let readers know about valuable resources like the website speed test. I love these posts. Please keep them coming

  3. This is truly a masterpiece Christine. I like the way you blog and write your content.

    Thanks for the awesome blog post.

  4. Hi,

    I like all these advises, but what the Guest Blog always seems a bit stressful to me. Can someone whose blog is at the beginning try this method?

    What should someone do in this situation? Convince them they can attract traffic through their writing skills or write like in a studied style (academic) style?
    I guess this point gets me a little confused.

    Thank you,
    Cristina

    • Hi, Cristina. It’s definitely possible to guest post on more established blogs as a beginner. Rather than promising traffic or using a stiff academic voice (I’d recommend a more conversational tone for blog posts), try building a relationship through methods like social media and comments on their blog that position you as an expert on the topic you’d like to write about. Then you can make the ask without sounding spammy.

      I also wrote another blog post with a more in-depth tutorial on creating guest blogging opportunities. Give it a read and let me know if you still have questions!