When it comes to growing a blog, it is the search engine giant Google that apparently plays the key role, right? Wrong! The survival of your blog in this World Wide Web is not only depended on Google. In fact, there are way too many reasons to think beyond Google if you have been trying to pull targeted traffic to your blog. Let us help you discover 25 more ways to grow your blog’s traffic without Google search:
1. Produce Highly Shareable Content
No matter whether you want to grow traffic with or without Google search, content is always the ‘king’’. It is crucial that you produce ‘epic content’ each time in order to encourage your readers to engage with it. The quality of every single piece should be high enough to make them feel an urge to comment on it, link to it, and share it with others in their networks. Though there is no ‘winning formula’, you must come up with ‘bigger and better’ posts that are really actionable. Consider ‘how to’ guides, in-depth articles, listicles, video tutorials, etc. for increasing traffic significantly.
2. Crowdsource Your Blog Content
As a blogger, you might find it tough to come up with new post ideas every now and then for fueling your content production. But updating the blog with high-quality content in a regular manner is essential for increasing both its visibility and credibility. Here comes the importance of crowdsourcing content. Well, ‘sourcing’ content from ‘crowd’ is all about nurturing your online relationships to have your content produced accordingly. This can range from remarks by industry thought leaders to user recommendations, and all of them are absolutely relevant, highly targeted, and able to provide lots of insights. Needless to say, this is a surefire trick to attract more traffic to your blog.
3. Pay Attention To Guest Blogging
A strategic guest posting campaign can work as an easy and viable method for generating tons of visitors to your blog. Find authoritative blogs in your niche that accept guest posts and add value to them by contributing absolutely unique, highly informative, and extremely engaging articles. Make sure that you follow the editorial guidelines carefully during the process. Leveraging the guest blogging opportunities will not only strengthen your backlink profile and branding but it will also help you reach out to more number of targeted audience, thereby boosting your blog traffic. You should also interact with the readers on the comments sections of those blogs in order to make the most of the opportunities.
4. Add Reference Of Niche Authorities
Find authority content in your niche and link out to them. When you mention experts and key players in your niche to back up your content, you get on their radar quite easily and make them feel compelled to share it with their audience. The trick is to create something really worth sharing and mention the most influential blogs in it. Also, let them know that you have linked to them through social media. The chances are high that your content will earn backlinks, social shares, and comments from prominent names, thereby driving lots of traffic to your blog.
5. Rely On Top Content Aggregators
If you are yet to explore content aggregation, you are certainly missing out a big chunk of traffic to your blog. The practice of aggregating content can turn out to be one of the most convenient ways to augment your blog traffic as it provides a broader as well as deeper perspective. There are quite a few popular content aggregation platforms including Alltop, BizSugar, Growth Hackers, Hacker News, Inbound, Flipboard, etc. Getting your blog listed on these aggregators is a hassle-free procedure and you can attract tons of visitors easily by doing so. However, create distinctive and functional content instead of the self-promotional ones and try to stick to the submission guidelines always.
6. Syndicate To Niche Blogs And Sites
Syndication is a simple and hassle-free technique to build a buzz around each time you publish a new piece of content on your blog. There are many syndication sites across the web including Inbound, Kingged, BizSugar, AffPosts, etc., which allowe bloggers to syndicate their content to them. You need to pick the appropriate ones depending on your niche and share your posts on them to ‘steal’ their internal traffic.
7. Focus On Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is the hottest trend in digital marketing and you simply can’t help but try your luck in it. This is basically the process of getting wider exposure and more referral traffic through the topmost bloggers or ’influencers’. It all starts with finding the right ‘influencers’ in your niche and making an effort to connect with them. Join their social conversations, leave meaningful comments on their posts, seek guest writing opportunities on their blogs, and do all those things that can convince them without making you look too desperate. Then, ask them for favors, which can help you tap into their huge audience base. This is a delicate method, but mastering it will skyrocket the growth of your blog for sure.
8. Try Infographics For Strong Visuals
Nothing can have a greater impact on the human mind than interesting visuals. Hence, it is no surprise that presenting complex information and vital data in a visually digestible format is one of the best ways to educate people easily, engage them quickly, and entertain them highly. Convert your long textual pieces of information into captivating infographics and share those on specific community platforms. It will offer an amazing user experience and your readers will feel compelled to share the visual content with others in their networks. As a result, your credibility will increase and your blog will get lots of new visitors.
9. Create SlideShare Presentations
Creating eye-catching slides can be another great way to bring new traffic to your blog. Prepare a slide presentation by converting your posts into simple yet enticing slides. Ensure that each of the slides in your slideshow is informative enough. If you are a design expert, you can do it yourself easily. Otherwise, seek help of a professional designer. Once your presentation is ready, share it on SlideShare for better exposure. It can actually swell the number of visitors to your blog almost overnight.
10. Make The Most Of YouTube Videos
If you have not considered niche YouTube videos yet, do it now. Being the second largest search engine, YouTube processes over 3 billion monthly searches and you must get the most out of it in order to make your blog grow fast. Conduct your own research on what others in your niche are posting on the video platform and come up with something highly useful for the targeted audience. Simple tutorials and easy how-to guides are the most common video topics that are known to generate significantly high number of views as well as blog visitors.
11. Build A Robust List Of Subscribers
Developing unique strategies for generating new visitors will be of no use if you do not make a provision to capture their email addresses during their visits to your blog. There are several popular email service providers, such as MailChimp, AWeber, etc., which are super easy to use and can enable bloggers to benefit from mailing lists. You can prepare a robust list of subscribers, manage it efficiently, and broadcast emails in minutes with the help of these email marketing automation tools. Focus on the subject of your email and try to make the content as catchy as possible. Not only this will turn a random visitor into a regular reader, but you can also enjoy lots of links and shares by adding social share buttons to your emails.
12. Go For Online Advertising
Online advertising is a surefire trick to grow your blog as it helps in generating clicks almost instantly. The effectiveness goes even higher when you chose to leverage various social media platforms for this. It helps you place your ads in front of the right set of audience without any hassle. All you need to do is build a robust ad campaign and find the most suitable channels to run it. Try to develop an insight into how your competitors’ are targeting their ads for driving qualified traffic. However, make sure that you hit the right chord with your audience through advertising. Creating something of very high quality is also crucial and hence, you must pay attention to the design of your ads as well.
13. Learn Facebook Advertising Tricks
Facebook has great positive impact on internet users. So, knowing the right ways to get the most out of it can help you get lots of daily visitors to your blog and grow it considerably. Facebook advertising is one of the easiest as well as cheapest techniques to work smart and achieve your goal. You can create carousel ads to revive some of your old posts and make viewers feel interested in your blog. Tell exciting stories through your ads and compel people to click on the link provided. Conversely, retargeting ads by Facebook can help you drive your old visitors back to your blog. In short, if you can target the perfect set of audience for your Facebook ads, the success will definitely be yours.
14. Take Video Advertising Into Account
If you want to go a step further in attracting traffic to your blog for growing it, give video advertising a try. It is one of the cheapest methods you can opt for this purpose and the procedure is also quite simple. Most of these platforms are known to have huge numbers of internal audiences and you can always make an effort to take advantage of it. They ensure an expanded reach to audience by simplifying the task of targeting and offering a wider placement control. You need to setup your promotional campaign within the interface of the specific platform by targeting the right set of people. Channels like YouTube even allow users to create ‘clickable overlay CTA ads’.
15. Think About Freebie Marketing
Freebies are loved by everybody. They become even more interesting when they are really useful. So, grab the attention of your target audience by offering really beneficial freebies and encourage them to share the opportunities with others. You just need to promote your freebies actively via social shares, guest posting, and so forth and you will be surprised to see how it helps you grow your readership. Also, try to think out of the box and be as creative as possible while strategizing your freebie marketing campaigns as these will make the job of reaching out to your target audience and getting new followers much easier.
16. Comment On Relevant Blogs
Commenting on other blogs can be a very good way to generate new traffic to your own blog. All you are supposed to do is spend time in finding out as well as posting comments on blogs and sites that are uploading informative content in your niche. It is important that you analyze the details including traffic, page view estimates, authority, social influence, comment statistics, etc. to identify the best blogs to comment on. Needless to say, your preference should be the ones getting thousands of visitors as well as lots of relevant comments per day. However, your blog commenting strategy should not be a mere lazy attempt to promote your blog. Go through the post thoroughly and leave insightful comments instead of dropping a link randomly. You should also comment by using your real name in full.
17. Leverage Push Notifications
Push notification is the most recent digital marketing trend, which you simply cannot ignore if you are trying to grow your blog’s traffic without Google search. The technology asks visitors to subscribe to the updates from specific blogs or sites they are visiting and sends notifications in their browsers as soon as the new content is up. You just need to set it up for once and your subscribers will start getting notifications automatically. Push notification is undoubtedly an amazing opportunity to increase the number of passive visitors as it gives the click through rate (CTR) of the blog a significant boost.
18. Opt For Passive Forum Marketing
Make yourself available at various active online forums for conversations and discussions on your niche. It is somewhat similar to blog commenting and you need to add value to the community by either joining an ongoing conversation or starting a discussion afresh. However, stick to the niche, follow the forum guidelines religiously, and comment to engage rather than doing blatant self-promotion. If carried out the right way, forum marketing can help you become a valued member of niche forums so that you can reap the benefits and gain large volume of instant traffic.
19. Join Niche Communities On Google+
If you think that Google Plus is all dead, you are absolutely wrong. The social channel has immense potential to drive loads of traffic to blogs or sites and the best part is, you do not even need to put efforts in gaining followers for that. Google Plus has numerous niche communities where members can be considered as highly targeted prospects. Once you find the most suitable communities based on the niche of your blog, share your content there and engage with members. Your posts should be unique, informative, and useful enough to draw the attention of readers and make you a trusted member of leading communities. Apart from posting your own content, you should also actively participate in conversations generated from posts of other members.
20. Unleash The Potential Of Subreddits
You probably have never thought about exploring Reddit for growing your blog, but it can turn out to be really effective in giving you wider exposure. You can find subreddits in numerous niches, which allow users to share content with others and you can make use of it for sharing your own content as well. Find out a few subreddits according to your niche and publish your latest post there to reach out to tons of readers with minimal efforts. Do not forget to check the number of subscribers of the subreddits you are choosing for publishing your content as it will determine your potential for generating traffic through them. Each subreddit comes with distinct rules and you need to follow those consistently. Also, it is important to take part in conversations and develop a good reputation over time in order to raise your score and be successful in your endeavor.
21. Be Creative With Social Marketing
If you really want to go beyond Google search for the growth of your blog, push your social marketing hard. Let your creative juice flow and leave no stone unturned to craft a kick-ass social media marketing strategy. Start by ensuring your presence on all popular social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Vine, etc., and try to identify which ones work the best for your blog based on your niche, target audience, etc. Your social media posts must be very frequent, easily attention-grabbing, and highly engaging to stand out from the rest. You can use a wide variety of forms including links, videos, infographics, real-time thoughts, and anything that can add value to your followers. Additionally, each post on your blog should come with social share buttons so that your visitors can share their favorite posts with ease.
22. Utilize Question & Answer Platforms
Question & Answer websites, such as Quora, Stack Exchange, Yahoo Answers, etc. typically work as ‘organic traffic machines’ by providing useful information to readers. You can generate highly targeted traffic to your blog from there by offering genuine solutions to real issues. Hence, try to understand the value of these platforms and utilize them whenever possible. Choose the best fit for your niche, explore their working procedures, and follow the right approach to answer questions. Make sure that you add a link back to your blog while trying to solve others’ queries.
23. Use Social Content Sharing Hubs
Most prominent social media channels, such as Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, etc. come with content sharing hubs, which can be helpful in maximizing your blog marketing efforts. All you need to do is select proper groups and pages based on your niche, publish your content there by following the guidelines, and interact with others by joining discussions. Otherwise, you can create your very own content sharing hub too. In both cases, you will be able to drive huge chunks of internal traffic to your blog.
24. Share On Social Bookmarking Sites
Social bookmarking sites can be another weapon in your blog marketing arsenal and you must use it carefully to make best use of the opportunity. There are Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and so on, which can cause a spike in the number of your blog visitors when used strategically. It is vital that you follow proper submission guidelines and put correct information in place. Or else, you will remain unable to get your content to the front page, thereby losing a massive amount of traffic.
25. Do Not Ignore Offline Marketing
Are you done with all of the aforementioned online techniques to enhance the growth of your blog? Go offline now. Even though a blog is a digital publication, taking it to the offline world will certainly provide it a greater exposure. Try to get in touch with as many like-minded people as possible by attending seminars, bloggers’ meet, and other similar events specified for your niche. You can also plan offline giveaways to take your blog promotion to an all new level.
So, how many of these are you already following to let your blog grow seamlessly?
