How I will Double my Blog Traffic in 6 Months - And You Can Too

Last week I did an update post on how business was going, and I mentioned I had a target for my traffic.  The aim is to get 20K views a month by the end of the year.  Last month I exceeded my target of 10K by over 10% and I am really hoping to keep the momentum going.

Anyone can set a target, but achieving it is a different ball game.  It involves setting a plan and implementing strategy.  I learned the hard way, and you probably did too, just because you build it, doesn’t mean the people will come.  Getting traffic to a website is a little harder than its cracked up to be, especially the right type of traffic.

On Page SEO

The strategies I use have been tried and tested.  They have worked for other and have worked for me in the past. 

So far this year I have focused on content.  The aim of that was to feed Google and the many other search options people use these days.  On page SEO. Keyword rich, and plenty of long tail keywords too.  I published a number of ‘cornerstone article’, which are basically long form articles. Cornerstone articles are your best content that is informative to your audience

You can see an example here  and here and here  of the cornerstone content I published this year.  Obviously every article can not be a cornerstone article and where possible you should have plenty of internal links between cornerstone post keywords and other post on your site.

With On Page SEO good, the strategy for the second half of the year is off page SEO.  I need more people talking about The Excel Club.  I need more people linking back to The Excel Club and the published cornerstone content.

Influencer Networking/Marketing 

Have you ever had an influencer share your content?  It’s a really awesome way to get views and traffic.  And what’s even better is if you can get an influencer to do a guest post on your blog or to accept a guest post from you.  

For the next number of months I am going to heavily focus on influencers.  I spent a good portion of yesterday compiling a list of influencers that I would like to work with.  I collected their websites, social media accounts, real names and emails.  I’m interested in those producing content on the same topic as me.  Those with more traffic, more followers and a better ranking.

The strategy is rather simple.

Every day I will share their content.  Retweet their tweets and share their Facebook posts.  Content sharing by itself is not worth too much so I will ensure I add a comment too.  Something useful, maybe that adds a little value.  If the opportunity arises, I will ask them questions and just really engage with them and their content as much as I can.  Form a relationship, build a little trust.

If you are new to influencer networking, it can take a few months before you strike that relationship and build trust.  However, once that relationship is formed, you can then ask the influencer about guest posts.

OFF Page SEO

Producing guest posts on someone else’s blog is a fantastic way to get backlinks, and if you have selected your influencers well, these backlinks will probably have a higher ranking than your own.  This is awesome for building off page SEO.

Having influencers publish a guest post on your blog is also fantastic for traffic.  This influencer is going to share this content to their followers bring new and fresh eyes to your site.

I won’t be waiting months to ask all these dudes about guest posts.  I am both confident and experienced and well to be honest, before I found steem, I was in contact with many of them anyway.  So, for me its re-establishing relationships I let go off when I found steem.  

I am hoping within 3 months I should really see a good impact from this, and I look forward to reporting back and letting you all now how it is going and if it's looking like I will reach my targets.