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Updated: April 30, 2024
11 min read

How to Get More Traffic to Your Blog in 7 Steps

Lauren McManus avatar
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Most articles on how to get more traffic to your blog are about shortcuts and short-term strategies. We’re going to tell you some of our best strategies that will get you sustainable, long-term results.

We have now started two successful blogs in two different niches that we drive traffic to using Pinterest, Google, YouTube, and Facebook.

We’re on Instagram, but we use it more for our personal accounts – not as a traffic driver to our websites (not yet anyway).

With our blogs, we have been able to grow the following social media accounts:

We started a health and wellness blog first. After making $103,457.98 in our first year with this blog, we started Create and Go to teach others how to start an online business. You can see our blog income report for more info.

One thing that we have learned from growing these various accounts is that it doesn’t matter WHAT platform you are using to drive traffic to your blog…

Many of the most important strategies for how to get more traffic to your blog are all the SAME – regardless of which platform you are using!

Traffic is OH-SO-IMPORTANT to your blog. I think it’s a more difficult piece of the puzzle than monetization, to be honest.

Anyone can create a product or apply affiliate marketing strategies on their blog, but it takes time and a LOT of work to get a considerable amount of traffic to your blog on a consistent basis.

Below are some of the best strategies that we have learned and personally use on our blogs to grow our traffic.

1. Stop Trying to Do Everything

I think it’s important to start here because this is a common blogging mistake that we see ALL the time. We made this mistake in the beginning as well.

Many new bloggers begin designing their blogs and when they get to the part where it’s time to link social media accounts, guess what they do? (I bet you’re guilty of it too).

They sign up for an account on every social media account they can: Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, and Instagram, etc.

I think YouTube is still a little too scary for most new bloggers, so I imagine they let that one go.

And then they try to post new articles on every platform and wait for the traffic to roll in.

still waiting meme

This is EXACTLY what we did. We posted on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, AND Google Plus every time we released an article. *facepalm*

How. Exhausting.

Stop trying to master every potential platform for blog traffic and instead focus ALL of your attention on mastering ONE platform first.

If you’re a real go-getter, you might be able to handle two platforms – but no more! If you’re able to drive traffic from two different sources, they can help each other grow.

(i.e. Google recognizes when tons of people visit your site from another site like Pinterest or YouTube and this can help increase your ranking in Google search results).

Only when you are driving some consistent traffic to your blog from these 1-2 sources should you even attempt to focus on incorporating another form of traffic into your strategy.

Diversification is a good thing, but you need to learn an entire platform inside out if you really want to drive SERIOUS traffic from it.

Focusing on multiple at once will only leave you time to barely scratch the surface on any of them.

2. Focus on CONTENT – Not Followers

Everyone always gets so worked up over follower counts. I get it. It’s a social proof thing. It’s a popularity contest. Hell, I started the article with our social proof because I know that it MATTERS to people.

I get it. Sometimes you don’t get taken seriously if you don’t have a certain amount of followers. They are important for these reasons. You have to be careful though.

Followers aren’t always a sign of success.

They can be bought or gained through spammy methods like following and unfollowing (I’m looking at you, Instagrammers!). Following and unfollowing totally WORKS, but guess what?

It doesn’t give you ENGAGED followers!

Most instagrammers who do this have terrible engagement rates, which only makes their content seen LESS in the Instagram algorithm.

Pinterest, like Instagram, also has limits on how often you can do this on their platform. Do you need any more proof that it’s BAD BUSINESS to try to game the system this way?

Here’s the deal about followers as they relate to traffic.

The content that you produce matters infinitely more than followers do when it comes to actually driving traffic to your blog. Followers are useless if they aren’t engaging with your content anyway.

Social media platforms and search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to support this model. Pinterest has reduced its emphasis on following boards and accounts, and Instagram has done the same by introducing new concepts like following hashtags rather than entire accounts.

If you have some of the best content out there and you work at getting it in front of people, your social media accounts WILL grow quickly!

And if you still aren’t convinced, read our article on how to get more followers on Pinterest as it better illustrates the point in this section.

pinterest traffic avalanche banner

3. Stop Searching for Shortcuts

I’m going to tie this one right into what was just said above.

  • Shortcuts = short-term results.
  • Real work and solid strategies = long-term results.

I’ll let you decide which one you’d like!

Following and unfollowing will get you tons of followers quickly, but it will lead to poor engagement and ultimately hurt your traffic in the long term.

It’s much better to grow organically at a slightly slower pace than to grow quickly using cheap tactics. ENGAGEMENT is what drives sales. Not followers.

It’s okay to search for tips on how to get more traffic to your blog because that’s how you found this article – duh! But make sure that you are implementing the right strategies to help you achieve long-term, sustainable results.

The bottom line is that you will get results based on the amount of work that you put into it. 

4. Publish New Content Regularly and Consistently

This one might seem obvious, but did you know that social media platforms and search engines actually favor users that post more often?

It’s true, and we’ve tested it ourselves. Over the last couple of years, there have been points in time where we stopped publishing content for as long as 2-3 months at times.  

We didn’t do it on purpose, but we got really wrapped up in creating products, sales pages, and other parts of monetizing our blogs.

Every single time we stopped publishing new content, our traffic dropped. And every time we started publishing more content again, it rose back up again.

In our experience, posting more often does help to increase your traffic to some extent. We have gone through periods of posting as often as 3x a week.

Now, this is a little crazy and something that most of you probably can’t keep up with. That’s okay.

But make sure you’re utilizing AI to help you produce content whenever possible. For example, Jasper is what we use to help us write blog posts better and faster.

Find a posting schedule that works for you and your blog and stick to it. Publish at LEAST 1-2 new articles each week while you are trying to actively get more traffic to your blog.

A good way to help you stick to this schedule is to write and edit articles in batches.

You can try spending a week writing and editing content and have it ready to go a month in advance to free up your time to focus on other tasks.

And remember that this only works when you are writing quality blog posts. We’ve hired writers to help us publish more often and the content (and our traffic) suffered because of it.

You can use an AI tool to write blog posts but there is still no substitute for your own experience!

5. Try Doing Some Outreach

Regardless of which platform you are using, outreach is one of the BEST ways to help you get more traffic to your blog organically.

Let’s elaborate by going over a few examples:

  • Google: Guest posting can give you backlinks to your blog, which can help boost your SEO and increase Google search traffic.
  • Facebook: Getting other accounts to feature you or networking in Facebook groups can get you more exposure.
  • Pinterest: Joining group boards and other strategies like using Tailwind Communities can help you get more traffic to your blog before you get your own followers.
  • Instagram: Using hashtags, tagging other accounts, and sponsored posts can help you get featured on bigger accounts, which can get you exposure and new followers.

Outreach helps your accounts and your blog get more exposure organically and can help increase your engagement by bringing in new followers that actually choose to follow your content because they truly like it.

Outreach also has other benefits like helping you build relationships and partnerships with other bloggers in your niche.

We have developed a great relationship with some other bloggers and content creators in our niche that have led to a number of different collaborations, including guest posts on their websites:

Outreach can be SUPER powerful and impactful for your blog in the short and long term!

6. Consider Spending Some Money on Ads

I know, I know. Nobody wants to spend money on advertising. Starting a blog is costly enough.

But spending money on advertising to get more traffic to your blog doesn’t necessarily mean spending hundreds or thousands of dollars every month.

Try shifting your thought process on how you normally use advertising. Instead of using it for the sole purpose of driving traffic to your blog, consider using it to test out new ideas.

When we first started out on Pinterest, we often spent only $5 at a time on an ad. We bid low and only used it to see what pins received the most interest and the most clicks.

This helped us alter our strategies with our pin creation and figure out what type of content people were interested in.

Some of the promoted pins received a LOT of engagement and some of them bombed. We didn’t bother to waste much more time with some of the pins that bombed.

Spending even just a few dollars on advertising can help you determine how people respond to your content and ultimately help you improve your social media content over time.

I encourage you to test this out on any platform to see how people respond to your comments. Forgo that Starbucks latte this weekend and spend $5 on advertising for your blog instead.

7. Get Help From the Right People

Lastly, get some help, y’all!

Buying courses taught by people who have put in the work and learned the real strategies behind what it takes to grow a social media account is one of the quickest ways to get ahead.

We started off no differently than you. Our first blog failed and it took us several months to start making money with Avocadu.

We started at the bottom too. We grew all of those social media accounts from 0.

Here are a couple of courses that we can recommend on growing social media accounts:

We bought courses too!!! Boy did we ever. We spent THOUSANDS on courses in those first few months trying to learn different traffic and monetization strategies.

These courses were an investment in our blog and look how it has paid off! Ahem, social proof. But more importantly… TRAFFIC!

We’re at the point now where we always look for paid courses when we’re learning new skills because it ends us saving us time and money in the long run.

No one enjoys spending months in the dark trying to search for free information across every nook and cranny of the internet.

Remember that the most important aspect of learning how to get more traffic to your blog is actually TAKING ACTION. Get focused, decide where you need to spend your time, and PUT IN THE WORK!

We hope you enjoyed the article on how to get more traffic to your blog! Please feel free to leave us a comment below if you did or if you have any lingering questions!

Lauren McManus avatar

About Lauren McManus

Lauren has been a professional blogger since 2016. With a degree in accounting, she has taken her life experience and business knowledge and used it to grow two blogs, Avocadu and Create and Go, to 6 and 7 figures. She spends a lot of her free time traveling with her husband. Read more about the team.

41 responses to “How to Get More Traffic to Your Blog in 7 Steps”

  1. This is all so helpful (and a little overwhelming!) Thank you for all these great tips. I have been blogging for less than a year and still new to it all, but determined to make this work! I requested to join your FB group just now. I really appreciate your site and all you have to offer!

    • Hey Jackie! It looks like we approved your request into the group this morning! Yes, it can all be very overwhelming in the beginning. And truth be told, every time we have to learn something new, we get overwhelmed all over again, lol. Our new podcast was SUPER overwhelming and we put it off for years because of that. Keep plugging away! It’s all so worth it 🙂

  2. Longer content (2,000 to 2,500 words) attracts more shares than short posts. In fact, more words means more opportunities for SEO. This means a higher conversion rate.

    • True, but it’s a little dependant on the niche as well. Food bloggers (and their readers) don’t necessarily want to write a 2000 word recipe article, but they do want to add more images, which is also good for Google SEO and Ad Revenue.

  3. Hey guys. I have followed all the steps and got the blog going. I need help with learning traffic and Pinterest in greater details. Is there one and one training?

  4. Hi Alex & Lauren,

    Thank you for sharing the fantastic information.
    I need your help please – I have personal finance blog and it’s been more than a month I am struggling to get traffic. I have a Pinterest profile for my blog but don’t know how to get real traffic.
    It’s been around a year now and sometimes I think let’s give up but I don’t want to as I have invested a lot of time in it.
    Could you guys please help me this situation?

    • Hey Sam. I took a gander at your Pinterest profile for Top Inception and it still looks very new with less than 100 pins. I would not expect a lot of traffic with so few pins. Keep creating content, optimize for Google SEO (for the long game), and consider taking a Pinterest course, IF that’s where you want to focus your traffic strategies. Starting a YouTube channel or Podcast would also be a great idea to increase exposure to your website.

  5. Holà Alex and Lauren, thanks for the beautiful article cause I’ve been wondering how I can get traffic too. But how can I get traffic on my first blog actually.

  6. Hey guys. I just want to say thanks for all your free content on helping new bloggers. Thanks for being so honest about stuff, it really helps a lot.

  7. Hey thanks for the valuable content, I just wanted to let you know that your link to pinterest avalanche is broken in point 7 where you mention recommended courses. I think it goes to an old link you had. Hope this helps : )

  8. Hi there!
    What are your thoughts on using Linkedin as well?
    I’m in the personal finance niche and it seems like a great place to drive traffic from.
    It seems like Gary V is huge on Linkedin right now for driving organic growth and building your brand.

  9. Hello Alex and Lauren,

    Hope you’re doing well. I recently read and put into action a lot of instructions provided in your resources. I have spent around 300 USD so far to setup the blog and design it with the assistance of some freelancers on fiverr. Mostly I have written and posted articles as frequently as I can. Now I see traffic from around 7 countries and around 300+ page views since I launched in June 2020. The progress is very slow and I definitely need a lot more time and effort to monetize the blog. My blog is about yoga, mindfulness and meditation etc. I have also completed your free 5 day blogging bootcamp and do plan to invest in your six figure blogging course within the first year of my blog. I have also tried some tips on your Pinterest for bloggers article and am seeing an okay amount of visibility on Pinterest but very little link clicks to my blog. In the meantime are there any tips you can give on how I could potentially target and drive around 100+ page views per day?

    Thanks a lot for your help.
    Mirnan

    • Hey Mirnan…You are in a great niche for Pinterest, but it’s tough to give advice without seeing your articles and pins. Feel free to join our FREE Facebook Community where you can get feedback from the Create and Go team as well as other bloggers. The link was given in the 5-Day Blogging Bootcamp.

  10. hi there alex, pls help me in this situation.
    I want to write a blog on Pets, becz i love to write on them.
    I know the information related to it,but how i should present it in a beautiful manner? So that my readers love it.
    Should i DUMP whatever is there in my head?
    where i should start from?
    From intro ?
    PLS HELP BUDDY!

    • Hey Pranav. No, don’t just dump everything that is in your head, lol. Think about what type of valuable information you can provide to your audience. What questions might they ask that you can answer? What products for pets would you recommend to them and write a review article? What problems can you help solve for fellow pet owners?

  11. Hi Lauren, I stumbled across Create and Go a week ago and I dove head first into blogging. I’ve tried it in the past, so I’m familiar with the basics. I was thinking about your Pinterest Avalanche course because I’m struggling to think of the best way to get traffic for my subject matter which is under addiction/recovery. I’m not sure the demographic that uses Pinterest would be interested in my blog?

    Any thoughts would be so appreciated. Thanks!

    • Hey Owen, you definitely want to focus on the traffic source where your audience is. Figure out which social media platform your tribe hangs out and focus on driving traffic from there.

  12. Hey Lauren, thanks so much for this and all your other posts. Yours is my go-to site for blogging tips.

    On Tip 4 for publishing content. I post quality lengthy articles of 3,000 words on average, which take more time to publish. My target is 1-2 article per week. But due to my current full-time job, I can only publish every other week at most.

    I was considering to invite guest writers to reach the goal in terms of quantity, but you mentioned from experience that your blog’s traffic and content were compromised.

    Can you shed more light on the PROs and CONs of having guest writers for your blog?

    Thanks again in advance.

    • Hey Frederick. The pros are simply the amount of time it can save in researching and writing. The biggest con is that if you want the article to be in “your voice” then you end up spending a lot of time editing the article so it sounds like you.

  13. Hey Alex! I am EXACTLY the guy you described in your “From Broke and frustrated to 100k+” story…. I do want to start something as a side hustle apart from my 9-5..
    And Here I AM…
    NOW.. I have a basic (kinda silly) question…
    I wanted to know about what do you mean by being ACTIVE on your blog.
    I mean if i write something on my blog it will remain there always until i choose to make some changes..
    And if you’re saying to keep writing articles about the niche i chose to write about, it’s gotta end somewhere…
    So what does it really mean to be an “ACTIVE BLOGGER”…
    Thanks in advance..??…

    • Hey Rahul. An active blogger responds to comments on their website, engages with their audience on social media, and keeps articles and/or products updated with the latest and greatest information.

  14. Do you use Google SEO to get traffic on your blog,but ranking on Google is not easy any more ,so how do you get good traffic to your both blogs??

    • We focused on Pinterest traffic first. It’s easier to get organic traffic more quickly on Pinterest than through Google search. Google is a long game. We still rely heavily on Pinterest for Avocadu but have put a bigger focus on Google SEO for Create and Go the past year.

  15. Hello! Thank you so much for all your resources! I’m just getting started with my blog! How many posts to start a blog and how many pinnable images per post do you recommend?

    • Hey, Laura! We recommend having 5-10 posts on your blog before launching it, but it’s totally up to you. Also, you don’t need more than 1 pinnable image per post! Hope that helps!

  16. great article , i just started your free Pinterest course and will follow the strategy, thanks

  17. You have provided very useful information but I have one question – How can we use Instagram to get traffic on blog.?

    • We don’t use Instagram as a tool for driving traffic to our blog, so we don’t teach about it. I would recommend following someone who uses that specifically to drive traffic to a blog and teaches about it. 🙂

    • Actually, Instagram is not the right platform for bloggers as it is very hard to get the users off the platform and visit your blog.

      I have personally tried everything with Instagram and unfortunately, nothing really worked.

      • I think it works for some people to build brands and connections with the readers on their blogs, so there can be a lot of value there, but you’re right that it isn’t a great platform for actually driving traffic to specific blog posts.

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