I have spent countless hours searching the web for relevant strategies that work in 2017 regarding growing your blog’s traffic. I am a conscious lifestyle and fashion blogger and write and co-run a blog called Sutton+Grove. Technology is advancing so fast and blogging is turning into a big industry that the concepts and strategies for starting and growing your blog are changing on a daily basis. What worked in 2015 may not work in 2017. So far I’ve managed to double the traffic on Sutton+Grove every month since it was launched in November 2017. While I have a long way to go as a blogger, I have found certain methods and strategies that work and will help make your blog relevant and available to more readers and start getting you, regular visitors.
Here are 5 simple things you can do today to boost traffic for your blog.
Blogger Tip 1| Be Active on Social Media and Present a Professional Presence
You need to have multiple social media accounts with consistent branding across these platforms. This means creating beautiful headers, selecting a profile picture that is inviting and professional and a logo that represents your blog and brand. Creating and maintaining a social media presence is key for increasing the traffic of your blog. Here are a few tips to optimize your social media accounts.
A| Create at least 3 social media accounts. I recommend Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram for blogging but Facebook is ok as well.
B| Create a consistent message and a specific tagline for your brand or blog and have it on all of your social media accounts.
C| Choose the same profile picture for all 3 of your accounts. It’s good to have the same picture on all accounts so that people recognize who you are.
D| Use Canva to create headers for Twitter and Facebook and text images for Pinterest. Canva is a great tool as it allows you to create cool looking headers and images and personalize them to fit your own brand and niche. Here is my twitter page: 
E| Post 1x a day. This helps you stay active and relevant.
F| Engage with people on social media. Start networking right away, comment, like pictures and give meaningful feedback to other bloggers and social accounts. Start with 15 minutes a day. Spend that 15 minutes a day liking photos, commenting on posts you enjoy and give a little love. If you want others to engage with your blog you must engage with others, it will pay off in the long run.
Blogger Tip 2| Use Yoast Seo and Google Keyword Planner
Optimizing your blog posts for search engine optimization(SEO) is a necessary evil to help boost your blog’s traffic. You can write the most interesting post but have no one read it if you select a poor keyword and haven’t optimized your post. You don’t need to be an expert in SEO but if you are going to be a blogger you need to have a basic understanding to increase your traffic. SEO is key to growing your blogs audience.
A| The first thing you need to understand about SEO is keywords. A keyword is a word or phrase that describes the contents of a web page. Keywords help people find your site. You want to choose a keyword that is searched often, how low competition and is relevant to your blog post.
B| In order to figure out how often a keyword is searched and how many other sites are using this keyword(competition) you can use a tool called Google Keyword Planner | This tool will help you decide which keywords to use for your post so it will score better in search engines and be better optimized for people to find it!
C| On your WordPress dashboard a great plugin to use is one called Yoast SEO which helps you optimize your post for a better SEO. You’ll need to learn terms and learn how to use Yoast tools such as keywords, meta descriptions, image titles and blog post title optimization.
Blogger Tip 3| Use Quality Photos
So you’ve created your social media accounts and optimized your SEO but you’re still struggling to get traffic, why? Well, one area to look at is the quality of your photos. In this digital age selecting professional clean photos is a big part of growing a successful blog. Even if your blog’s focus is not visual you will need some type of photography to grow on Pinterest, Instagram even Twitter and Facebook.
If you are a budding photographer or have plenty of your own photos then this section may not apply to you, however, if you need photos for your blog then you need to understand which photos you can use safely.
It’s best to use stock photos for your blog. Stock Photos are photographs available to be used either freely or bought for a fee that can be used for commercial purposes. You want to make sure that you have the rights to the photos you are using, especially if you’re looking to monetize your blog!
A| A couple of good free stock photography sites are:
Pexels
Pixabay
StockSnap.io
Blogger Tip 4| Submit Your Blog Posts to Networking Platforms
A great way to increase your traffic is through blogger networking platforms. This is a place for you to share your blog posts with other people and to share other people’s content you enjoy. You will notice a theme developing here, if you want others to share and read your blog you better be ready to read and share other people’s content that you find enjoyable. Here are a few of the blogger networking platforms that I use:
StumbleUpon, Viral Content Bee, Co-promote, Triberr, Niume, Just Retweet are just a few of the blogger networking platforms I use.
Blogger Tip 5| Join Comment Pods: Give a little and receive a lot
I feel the principle of giving and getting applies here. If you want people to care about what your write about and engage with your content you must be active online and engage with other bloggers and other social media accounts. There is no way to shortcut this process, a sure fire way to grow your blog is to increase your networking efforts. Comment on posts you enjoy, like those photos on Instagram and give someone a genuine compliment. Read people’s blog posts and leave engaging comments. A good way to regulate this is to join a comment pod for Instagram or facebook and join some Twitter chats. A comment pod is when a group of people in a similar niche share content with each other and comment consistently on all members of the group’s photos. This helps to kickstart engagement and shares unique followers with each other.
Here is a facebook group that will help you find a comment pod:
The Original Comment Pods
Don’t Quit | Keep at It
If you want to increase your traffic and become a better blogger it will take hard work. There is no magic shortcut to huge blog growth, despite what all the gurus and experts out there want you to believe. If you want to be a successful blogger you must select a good niche, educate yourself in SEO, social media and make a consistent effort networking online. Most bloggers fail because they quit too early. Blogging is hard work and can be incredibly enjoyable and exciting but you must be ready to put in some hard work.
This is why picking a niche you are passionate about is an easy way to ensure you won’t quit. Love fishing? Maybe there is a creative idea surrounding fishing that you can blog about. Be sure to choose a topic that you would love writing and be talking about even if you don’t earn a dime for your efforts. Creating a blog with money solely in mind is a surefire way to fail and get discouraged early.