There are several reasons why you may want to use strategies that don’t involve social media to promote your blog and bring in more traffic. It could be that you are running the blog for the company you work for, but don’t have the authority to make official social media posts on behalf of the brand, for example. Alternatively, you may already be using social media for your blog, but not really seeing the results you want, so you want to consider what else you can do to get your target audience to find out about your site and check it out.
Here we look at some approaches you can use to get more blog traffic without using platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook:
Search Engine Optimization
The primary way to gain more traffic is via search, so when you are creating content for your blog, or ordering it if you outsource your content writing, it pays to have a good keyword strategy. Keywords and links are the main ways to make your content competitive when it comes to appearing in search results, and so as you generate new posts for your blog, you need to think about which keywords you use.
Keyword optimization is a little trickier than it sounds, because while it may be easy to come up with search terms you would like to rank well in search results for with each blog post you write, it is likely that the most common ones used on the topic you’re writing about will be too competitive, unless you are writing about a very niche or local topic, especially if your blog is new or has not really gained much of a readership yet.
You can use Google’s own keyword tools to gain insights about search volumes for keywords you are interested in, as well as suggestions for other keywords you might want to consider using. Always make sure the keywords you incorporate into your content really are relevant to your blog in general or the topic of the post, however, to ensure a good experience for people who find your site through search.
Guest Posting
Another good way to boost your SEO as well as guiding people to your site is to post guest articles on other blogs. Search engine algorithms consider backlinks to your site when evaluating search result position, so having posts out there on other reputable sites which link back to your blog helps with this. But guest posting does more than benefit you in terms of SEO. It also gives you an opportunity to win over the readers of other blogs with interesting or entertaining content, encouraging them to click your links and check out your site. Additionally, guest posts with a strong bio can help with brand recognition and your perceived authority on the topics you post about, either as a business or an individual.
Some sites charge you to post guest content, whereas others accept free submissions, so it pays to take a look at sites within your sphere and find out how to get a guest post onto them.
Always ensure the posts you submit are unique, rather than copies of content already on your blog or on other sites as guest posts, as unique content is important for the SEO benefits, and most sites won’t accept guest posts that match content that is already online. You can reword articles about the same topics, if there are only a limited number of topics you can really post about in your niche, but the content itself has to be unique.
Collaborations
Networking with other blog owners and businesses who are compatible with your niche can be a great way to find opportunities to boost your audience size. Once you have made some connections with other sites, collaborations can be mutually beneficial. You can for instance make a series of posts that cover an interesting topic, and alternate which of your site’s the next post in the series will appear on, giving readers a strong reason to visit both sites, and potentially check out other content.
You don’t even need to limit yourself to blogs – you can also consider collaborating with YouTubers in your field, by embedding their videos in a relevant post on your blog in return for them talking about your content and linking to it.
Blog Networks and Circles
As a final way to promote your blog outside of social media, you can consider joining a blog network or circle. These are communities of bloggers focused on the same field who link to each other in an organized way (blog circles), or managed networks of blogs that are promoted under a network brand, and receive quite a lot of benefits.
Joining a blog circle is usually just a case of finding one that is relevant and applying by email, but joining a network is a lot more official and will probably involve a contract where you have to pay a certain percentage of ad revenue from your blog to the network in return for the promotion you’ll get by being part of it. This may or may not be worth it depending on the network, your site, and its goals, so is something to consider properly, but it is worth knowing about as a promotion option.
All of these approaches will help you gain more traffic, but the most important ones that will get you the most noticeable results are keywords, and guest posts. This is because these are the ones with the biggest impact on your SEO, and most traffic to websites comes through search results.
Of course, if you have no practical reason not to use social media for your blog, it is well worth using these approaches in conjunction with social media. This is because while SEO may be better at bringing you traffic, social media is better at forming a loyal audience you can actually engage with.