How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

Driving traffic to your blog is far more important than you might have otherwise realised. This is because it’s a platform upon which you can present readily-available information that is of high-quality and encourages engagement. In turn, this will help to drive leads, increase conversion rates and improve sales.

Hence, having a blog is an integral part of your company and your website, but it’s only beneficial to you if you can drive as much traffic there as possible and we’re on hand to tell you exactly how to do that.

Why does my business need a blog?

As already touched upon, having a blog is extremely advantageous for your business and there are a number of reasons for this. A website alone cannot truly stand out without having a blog or news page. This is because it can provide information, enhance your personal brand, and improve your authority. 

Blogging can also be a lot of fun for those who are creating that content for you, or if you’re doing it in-house, but this is only one of the benefits having a blog can provide. According to Hubspot, businesses that blog regularly attract 55% more traffic than companies who don’t have a blog or news page at all.

So why else should your business have a blog or news page that’s regularly posted to?

• Keeps your audience updated about your business
• Builds long-tail traffic & drives general traffic
• Improves internal linking
• Enables your customers to provide feedback
• Ensures you’ll be able to build an email database
• Provides an opportunity to educate  people about your business and the industry
• Allows for social exposure across a wide range of different platforms

How to drive traffic to your blog

As previously discussed, driving online traffic to your blog or news page is essential for creating a personal brand, building trust and creating a solid reputation for both yourself and your business. But how can you do this successfully to ensure as many people as possible are clicking on your blog page and reading your articles?

Find the right writer (and it might not be you)

Writing blog posts and articles might seem easy, but it actually requires a professional to make the content as high-quality as it possibly can be. This is because they’ve specialised in it in some form or another. Whether they have a degree in the English language or are simply passionate about what it is they do, a copywriter by trade is the best person to employ to write your content for you.

It can be tempting to try and write your articles yourself, especially seeing as you’ll have specific industry knowledge, but pass this information onto your professional writer and they’ll include it within their well-planned, structured content.

You should also refrain from using AI tools or robots to write your content, especially if it’s long form. There are a three main reasons for this:

1. It will sound robotic, with no personality
2. It will contain grammatical errors or include Americanisms for your British business, or vice-a-versa
3. Google will not favour content that’s been created by a robot, meaning you’ll appear exceptionally low down in the SERPs

Hiring a professional writer might seem like an expensive outlay at first, but it will be well worth your while. They’ll also be trained in the art of creating content for SEO purposes, including keywords and phrases that’ll ensure your content is far more likely to be seen by a relevant audience.

The other thing to remember is, if you do not have the budget for a full time copywriter or an entire, outsourced digital marketing team, then you could consider hiring a freelance writer. They’ll work on an article-by-article basis, meaning you’ll only pay for one piece of content at a time, when it suits you. 

Do some keyword research

Keyword research is key to appearing in the SERPs, but you must be careful not to ‘stuff’ your content with keywords as, when Google crawls your content, it’ll consider it spam and push it further down in the search results, meaning people are highly-unlikely to come across your article. This also means that they won’t find your website, so they’ll have no idea that your business even exists.

Don’t include words and phrases that no one will be searching for, of course. Target words and phrases that people will be looking for. For example, if your company services boilers and you want to write an article that’s relevant to boiler servicing, then you should include keywords such as:

• Boiler servicing near me
• Service my boiler
• When should I service my boiler?
• The benefits of boiler servicing 

However, it really does depend on the article topic. The thing to remember is that you should include those keywords and phrases in more than just the body of your article. They’ll also need to be placed within the following things, either during the contents’ creation or when it comes to publishing:

• Article title
• Meta description
• Headers
• Alt text

Focus on creating long-form content

Long-form content performs far better than shorter, thinner articles and blog posts. The size and length of your content really does matter, especially if you’re going to be going into depth about the topic or subject. There are a number of different reasons as to why long-form content performs better in the SERPs, including:

• They’ll be naturally rich in keywords and phrases
• The longer your content is, the more likely your readers are going to leave your site satisfied that they’ve acquired the specific information they’ve been looking for

However, you should refrain from writing long-form content for the sake of it. This is because, without the proper planning, it could lead to duplication and even mistakes. Google doesn’t look too kindly on such things within online content, so you’ll be pushed further down in the SERPs, thus having the opposite effect. Google favours quality of quantity, but when the two are combined and executed well, you’ll soon be repairing the rewards. A professional copywriter can ensure this for you.

Update your blog regularly & edit older articles

Keeping a blog updated is imperative to building trust on your site. Fresh content is incredibly important as it shows your website visitors that you’re still very much operating and know a lot about the industry. This way, they’ll be far more likely to give you their custom over your competitors who might not have a blog or news page at all. 

You should also go back through your older blog posts and edit them to make them either timeless or more relevant to today. You should also pay particular attention to any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors and correct them as you go.

Add good quality images to your articles

High-quality images within your articles and your content in general is paramount for enticing readers and driving traffic. It shows that you care and have made an effort to produce quality material for your valued readers to enjoy. It’s obvious that you haven’t just thrown together some copy and added the first image you’ve found to show you’ve been doing something creative.

If you have quality copy and quality accompanying images, then this combination will have the desired results and sooner than you might think if done well. This is where a digital marketing team comes into play, such as us here at Kumo Digital.

Optimise your blog posts for the search engines

This is a highly-specialised practice within the digital marketing industry. Where you’ll be able to do some of the SEO yourself, there are some things that a business owner simply won’t have the time to do. Part of blog post optimisation includes:

• Creating articles with titles that contain keywords and/or phrases
• Including keywords in the URL that reflects the content written
• Adding keywords to headings, including H1s, H2s, H3s and even H4s
• Put keywords in the alt text and image file names

Something else to consider is the page loading speed. Google prefers sites and articles that are able to load extremely quickly and image size can hinder this, along with other things. Compressing your images is something that should be done and can be done quite easily on programmes such as Adobe Photoshop.

There are also several tools you can use and/or download that’ll enable you to optimise your blog posts and improve them in ways that would not be possible using any other programme or online tool. This being said, as well as taking into account image size, you should do the following:

• Register your business with Google Search Console
• Ensure image file sizes are as small but as high-quality as possible
• Refrain from using unnecessary scripts on the page itself
• Make sure your site conforms to Google’s ‘Core Web Vitals’ standards regarding stability and loading speed

Another part of SEO is ensuring that your content is reader-ready. Some of the ways in which you can do this includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Avoiding jargon and complex language
• Using easy-to-read fonts and text
• Ensuring the text is an appropriate colour in comparison to the background
• Making sure that your blog has a responsive design
• Checking that your blog posts are loading quickly, both on desktop and mobile

Encourage sharing & engagement on social media platforms

Once an article has been posted and you’re happy with its speed, quality and relevancy, then you should post it on all of the social media platforms you have. Within your post, you should also encourage people to share and comment on it as this boosts trust when it comes to ranking your content in the SERPs.

Google favours engagement on every level, so ensure you get as much of that from your readers as possible. Whether it be on Facebook, Instagram and everything in between, make sure your content can be easily shared.

Here at Kumo Digital, we have a highly-trained team of specialists who have over two decades of experience in the industry. Whether you’re looking for SEO and PPC services or are in need of content creation that can be done meticulously and to your liking, then look no further than Kumo. If you would like more information about how we can help you today, get in touch with a member of our friendly, knowledgeable team – we’re always happy to hear from you.