how to increase blog traffic ??

You've been working hard on your blog, you feel established. Now it's time to get serious about traffic. We're right there with you friend - here are five easy steps you can start taking to increase blog traffic! Hi-Ho Silver!

Create Evergreen Content For Your Blog 

Try to make sure that most of your content is evergreen. Evergreen content is the kind of content that can live forever on the web and that time won’t make irrelevant. For example, a post about this year’s Oscar nominations will become useless in a few months time. A post about the greatest movie classics will continue to be relevant over the years, making it evergreen. 

Create a Newsletter To Showcase Your Best Blog Posts

Promotion needs to be a big part of your content strategy, so that your hard earned blog posts drive that traffic you so desperately desire!

One quick and easy way to start driving more traffic to your blog is to start collecting emails for a blog newsletter. Once you’ve captured those contacts, you can send them weekly or monthly emails featuring your best posts, bringing already familiar visitors right back to your website. Since these users are already comfortable with your blog, chances are they might explore a bit more on their next visit. Who knows what they’ll find?

Don’t Fear the Keywords 

If you really want to drive big time traffic to your blog, keywords and SEO have to be a part of your strategy. People get really nervous these days when you suggest doing something in the name of SEO, but remember, search engine optimization is fine when done right. More than fine  - it’s wonderous! You get targeted traffic from Google, and users find the information and answers they’re searching the web for.

So go ahead, shout it from the rooftops, “I care about keywords!” Be loud and proud my friend.

They key thing to remember with SEO is all good things in moderation.

Focus on your design. The first thing people notice when they visit your blog, is the way it looks. And although the old adage goes that one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, the same isn’t always true for a blog. If you want people to stay on your blog, you’ve got to hook them with an eye-catching design; once they’re interested in the appearance, they’ll start reading to see what you’re all about.

• Create a title/header that matches the theme and content of your blog. A clean, well designed header will tell readers a lot about your blog, and hopefully have them sticking around.
• Keep your color scheme to a maximum of three hues. Too many colors can appear overwhelming, and distract readers from content. Choose at least one or two neutral colors, and one or two bright/bolder colors.
• Create a small logo or image to represent your blog, if applicable. Having a ‘brand’ will make your blog memorable, and help others to recognize it when they see the logo around the internet.

Add interesting images. People are visual, and they’re more likely to read an article or blog post if there are images to accompany it. If you’re a photographer or graphic designer, use your creative know-how to prepare images that fit the content of each individual blog post you create. If you’re not so artsy, use images from the web (with permission/linked sources) interspersed throughout your writing.

• If you add your own images, add a small watermark with your blog’s name or URL on the bottom. That way, if your images get circulated around the web, people will see that they came from you and make a stop by your blog.
• Write a small disclaimer on your blog that notes that people can share your images as much as they want, so long as they source them back to your article/home page.

Enhance your writing. So now people are hooked on the appearance of your blog, but now you’ve got to provide stellar content to keep them around. In general, blogs should be written with a light-hearted tone and easy to understand vocabulary (unless it’s an academic or otherwise specific blog). Get your blog optimized for search engines (SEO optimized) by using common search queries throughout your writing. This will move your blog closer to the top of search engine result pages, and make people more likely to read your posts.

• Always check your writing for proper grammar and spelling.
• Avoid writing long paragraphs with no breaks. People have a hard time keeping their place on the page when reading block text, so break your writing into small sections, phrases, and short paragraphs.
• Use a recognizable tone when you’re writing; readers gravitate towards someone whose writing is memorable and creative.

Avoid overwhelming your readers. When you’re full of inspiration or you have a lot to say, it can be easy to create blog posts, designs, images, and content that are overwhelming to viewers. Try to keep each individual post relatively short, breaking up broad topics into multiple, concise articles. Additionally, avoid having tons of contrasting ads, images, and links spread around the borders of your page.

• Keep in mind that the longer it takes for your page to load, the lower on the search results page it will appear. Therefore, it is in your best interest to keep your posts relatively brief.
• The old saying ‘less is more’ certainly applies to writing blogs.