How To Get Traffic To A New Blog And Make More Money

by James Sowers | Last Updated:  December 12, 2019

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Starting a new blog and getting traffic to it can be a challenging task, especially when you’re totally clueless.

It also means you’ll be competing with the “already established” blogs out there, which the audience is already familiar about.

So, how do you make way and push your blog through the crowd? It’s not as difficult as you might think it is.

At least not with these 11 strategies I’ve mentioned in this post. You’re about to learn how to get traffic to a new blog and hopefully make MORE REVENUE.

If that sounds interesting, let’s hop into it.

Start By Checking Your Blog

Before you start stressing about generating traffic, you need to make sure your blog looks professional.

There are over 1.94 Billion websites on the internet, so you need to put in the effort to stand out from the crowd.

I see a lot of people spending a great deal of time and money on getting visitors without even realizing that the appearance of their blog also matters.

Also read: 5 CRUCIAL Things To Do Before Launching Your Blog

Sorry to say, but if your website looks like this:

People won’t bother coming back again. They’re gone forever.

So, how do you avoid losing visitors? There are quite a few ways and some of them are listed below.

#1 Your Blogging Platform

If you’re using a free blogging platform like Blogger, you’re going to have a tough time customizing and “beautifying” your blog. It has a lot of limitations.

On the other hand, WordPress.org has great functionality and is super easy to use. You can customize it to however you like and apply professional-looking themes as well.

#2 Colors

The colors of your blog matters a lot. I’ve seen many blogs that uses too many colors just to make it “fun”.

I believe that’s not a great idea as it makes your blog look unprofessional. You need to stick with only 2-3 main colors that define your brand.

#3 Theme

With great theme, comes great functionality. There are many themes out there that are either too confusing or offer less customization options.

I recommend checking out the Divi theme as it has everything an ideal theme should have.

It comes with a drag-and-drop builder so you don’t have to mess with any coding.

If you’re not ready to spend money on a premium theme yet, then you can search for free themes that offer wide range of customization options and obviously, look great.

#4 Content Quality

What’s as important as having a great-looking blog? Having quality content that delivers.

No matter how thoughtful your blog posts are, if it doesn’t pass the minimum quality standards, you might have to straighten things up.

Here are few things that enhances content quality:

• Error-free, grammatically correct (Use Grammarly)
• Solves the reader’s problem
• Well formatted
• Broken down into smaller portions
• Answers most of the (if not all) questions of the topic

Make sure your content has all of the above factors.

#5 Responsiveness

If your blog looks incredible on a computer but not on mobile, you’re missing out on a majority of users.

This is another reason why you need to pick a theme that is responsive.

HINT: Divi theme is highly responsive and looks great on all devices.

How To Get Traffic To A New Blog Without Spending Money

In order to attract readers to your new blog, be sure to make use of these 11 strategies mentioned below.

1. Write “Viral-Worthy” Blog Posts

One of the main mistakes I did while starting out was writing blog posts as if they were going to be published on Wikipedia. Boring and robotic.

My main goal was to just publish a ton of blog posts. That’s it. No intention of making it interesting or enjoyable.

And the result? Terrible. I had a big bounce rate and struggled keeping readers engaged.

That’s when it hit me that I might be doing something wrong. After a lot of trial and error, I came up with this idea of writing “Viral-Worthy” blog posts.

These posts are aimed at forcing the readers to share the content and make it go viral. Though you don’t directly force them, but you write your content in a way that they can’t resist sharing it with others.

So, how can you make your blog posts “Viral-Worthy”? Use these 5 tactics.

#1 Have an intriguing title

I am sure many of you have already heard about the importance of having a great title. It is a factor that decides whether or not the reader will read your post.

BuzzFeed is a brilliant source of inspiration.

They always write their titles in a way that makes you curious to know what’s inside the post. You just can’t resist opening it.

You need to pick a title that arouses curiosity and ensures benefit as well.

For example, “Teach Your Dog To Sit” isn’t that great, but “Why Your Dog Won’t Sit – And How to Teach Him in Just Five Minutes.” is AMAZING.

I hope you get the idea. You can analyze and come up with a great title by using the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer.

#2 Pick a controversial topic

If you can create content that’ll get the reader thinking, then you can get a ton of viral traffic.

Picking a controversial topic over something that is plain and monotonous creates curiosity and the urge to start a conversation on it.

For example, instead of writing about “How to cook fried rice”, you can write “Why fried rice is terrible for your health” or “The ingredient that decreases the taste in your fried rice”.

These topics are rare and not many people write about it, so you can benefit on that.

NOTE: I mean no disrespect to fried rice. This is just an example. I love fried rice.

#3 Write a list post

List posts tend to get more social shares than any other content form. In fact, as per Backlinko, list posts get 218% more shares than “how-to” posts.

This is just another reason why BuzzFeed is so successful. They focus mainly on list posts.

#4 Get on the trend

Usually short-lived, but very effective. If you can jump on the latest trending topics and write a well-written post, you’ll get a ton of traffic to your blog.

For example, when Christmas is round the corner, people are looking to either:

1. Decorate their houses
2. Buy gifts

If you can write posts revolving around these two topics, you might possibly land up on the first page of Google. Anything related to trends and events are easier to rank.

#5 Make it visual-rich

If your blog posts are nothing but huge chunks of texts with no images in between, it becomes quite boring to read.

And if it’s boring to read, you won’t get shares. As a result of not getting shares, your blog post won’t go viral or receive much of traffic.

Next time you write a blog post, make sure to include a lot of relevant photos or screenshots in it so that it becomes interesting.

Now on to the next strategy to get visitors to your blog.

2. Get On YouTube

YouTube is really huge and will continue to be in the coming years as well. In fact, currently it has over 2 BILLION monthly users.

If you can get even a tiny amount of traffic from that number, it’ll still be a lot.

Thankfully, you can. All you have to do is create and publish a brilliant video that is relevant to your niche and leave your blog’s link in the description.

A great way to make sure viewers DO click on your blog’s link is to include additional tips in your blog post.

For example, let’s say you have a YouTube video on “5 Best Exercises For A Flat Belly”.

What you can do is, write a blog post that talks about “10 Best Exercises For A Flat Belly” and then include the link on your YouTube video’s description.

This way the viewers have a reason to actually visit your blog and learn something.

3. Start Pinning On Pinterest

Hands down my favorite way to get visitors to my blog.

Pinterest has been a constant traffic source for my blog and the good thing is, the numbers are only increasing.

Back when I started this blog, I knew I wouldn’t be able to attract traffic to my blog right away via SEO because that takes time. And I desperately wanted something quick.

That’s when I turned to Pinterest. Within just one month, I was able to send in a TON of traffic to my blog. Though it’s still not as much as I would like to, but I’d take it.

So, how to get traffic to a new blog via Pinterest?

I wouldn’t say it’s simple. Pinterest is a little complicated platform and knowing the ins and outs of it takes time.

You can follow the below steps to get the ball rolling for now:

#1 Setup your profile for success

The first step is to of course set up your profile the right way. You can start by signing up for a business account or convert your personal one.

Keep in mind, Pinterest is more like a search engine now so you have to pay attention to SEO. Which means, using keywords wherever possible.

You can follow this checklist to complete your profile:

• Fill out your name and bio + add relevant keywords to it
• Add a profile picture
• Verify your blog URL
• Create relevant boards that are keyword-optimized
• Fill the boards slowly with others’ pins and then yours

A great way to make sure you do all these things correctly is to stalk other profiles in your niche.

Let’s say you’re in the “Weight Loss” niche, so you’d start by typing that into the search bar.

Now, select “People” from the drop-down menu.

Now you have a list of profiles in your niche.

Click on any on them and check how they’ve structured their profile for SEO. Taking the second one for an example:

Notice how the keyword “Weight Loss” appears multiple times throughout the profile? That’s called optimizing your profile for SEO.

This way it becomes easy for Pinterest as well as its users to discover your profile.

And if you check the boards of this profile, you’ll see this:

Everything is relevant to the niche. You need to do the same thing with your profile as well. Fill your name, bio and boards with relevant keywords.

#2 Design pins

After you’re done setting up entire profile, you need to create pins for your blog posts using this free tool called Canva.

Obviously, you can use any tool of your choice but Canva is probably the easiest out there. In fact, I personally use it for all of my pins.

Remember to only design vertical pins like the ones you see on the screenshot above.

I am currently using 600×1200 size but you can experiment and see what works best for you.

Do you want to know the secret to designing beautiful pins that gets you more traffic and sales? Download this FREE mini guide.

#3 Start pinning

After you’re done designing the pins for your blog posts, you need to go ahead and pin those images into your most relevant boards.

For example, if you have created a pin for “vegan dinner recipe”, you’d pin that to boards such as:

• Healthy food recipes
• Easy dinner recipes
• Budget-friendly meals
• Tasty recipes
• Dinner cooking ideas

You get the idea.

Now, once this “Vegan dinner recipe” pin goes through all the relevant boards, you need to restart the pinning cycle by designing a new version of it.

And keep in mind, you need to pin every day. Pinterest is a platform that favors those who’re consistent.

If you pin for a week and then disappear, then there is hardly any chance for you to get traffic from it.

I understand manually pinning every day can be very time-consuming, especially if you have a full-time job. Thankfully, there is a workaround for this.

With a Pinterest-approved scheduler like Tailwind, you don’t have to sit in front of the computer all day pinning on Pinterest.

You can schedule months or years worth of pins at one go and let the tool do the work for you, without you having to even log into Pinterest. It’s that convenient.

Most of the marketers use this tool to automate the entire process of driving traffic from Pinterest because pinning manually can get really exhausting and time-consuming.

Lastly, I’d like to add that the above steps are just basic.

Though you’ll be able to drive traffic from Pinterest by following the above steps, but there are still A LOT of things you need to know. I really mean it when I say “A LOT”.

I’d say I haven’t even scratched the surface because it’s nearly impossible to fit all that strategies and helpful information into a blog post. It would get a bit toooo long.

Instead, I recommend checking out this brilliant eBook called Making Pinterest Possible. It’s by my friend Ana who’s killing it in the blogging world and makes over $50,000/month.

It’s a beginner to advanced level guide that’ll cover everything you need to know. I like to call this the “go-to” guide for getting traffic from Pinterest.

Use code “TSA5OFF” during checkout to get $5 off original price.

4. Utilize Quora

It’s easy to say that forums are a thing of the past, but not many people know it’s still a brilliant source of traffic.

Quora has over 300 million monthly active users and every now and then you’d see people asking questions over there.

In order to get traffic from this beast, you’ll start by searching for queries related to your niche or just simply put your niche.

You’ll see a TON of questions related to your query.

There are high chances of you knowing the answers to most of the questions, because well, they’re in your niche.

Go ahead and answer as many as you can and don’t forget to leave your blog post’s link in the answer.

You need to do it in a very pretty neat and natural way. Here’s a good example:

As you keep answering those, Quora will get an indication that you’re interested in this niche and will notify you via email whenever a new relevant question is asked in the platform.

5. SEO Your Blog Posts

Given that Google receives over 63,000 searches per second every day, it’d be a shame to not utilize this source of traffic.

It’s probably the biggest and the best source of traffic any blog can have. And best of all? It’s free.

Also read: How Angela Drives 50K Pageviews Every Month To Her Blog

In order to attract visitors to your blog from Google, you’d need to “SEO” your blog posts, which stands for Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is the process of optimizing your website using different tactics in order to drive traffic from the search engines.

A great way to start optimizing your blog’s content is to do keyword research for every article you write and build backlinks.

Keyword research means finding out what people in your niche are searching for on Google. Keywords are basically the search terms.

A tool like SEMRush makes it super-easy to find profitable and untapped keywords in your niche.

All you do is enter your niche-related terms and watch the magic:

You can see the keywords, the exact monthly searches, the competition and what not.

Ideally, you want to go for a keyword that has low competiton and high search volume. However, if you have a new blog then you can even go for low competition and low volume keywords just so you can rank quicker.

Once you’ve found a nice keyword, go ahead and write an article on it. Don’t forget to mention the keyword at least 3-4 times in the article.

Doing this will help Google and its users find your blog in the search engines.

Talking about Backlinks, they’re simply link backs to your blog from other websites. Whenever another blog mentions YOUR blog in their content, that’s a backlink for you.

It’s very necessary to have a ton of them in order to rank higher in search engines. The more you have, the easier it will be for your blog to be seen on Google.

Keep in mind, the backlinks need to come from good sources. Quality matters.

You can build good quality Backlinks from a variety of sources but the easiest way is to use HARO. It’s a service that connects journalists with content creators.

Once you sign up for it, you’ll receive their emails three per day full of questions from different sources that you can answer.

Here’s what some of the questions look like:

If they like your answer(s), they’ll publish it on their blog post with a link back to your website/blog.

Now, all of these are just the basics. There are like 95% more to SEO and you need to learn a majority of it in order to start ranking on Google.

6. Jump Into Podcasts

One of the very unique methods in this list, jumping into Podcasts is another great way to get more visitors to your blog.

Also read: 8 Proven Ways To Make Money With Your Blog

If you have an inspiring story to tell or at least some really informative advice to share, then you can approach podcast hosts to get interviewed.

Most of the “Podcasters” (if that’s a word) including Pat Flynn will happily leave a link to your website in the summary.

All you have to do is deliver a great interview that people will be interested in.

7. Guest Post On Other Blogs

Guest posting is a brilliant way to build backlinks, but it’s also a very good source of traffic.

For those of you who don’t know, Guest Posting means writing and publishing an article on someone else’s blog. Most of the times it is done for building backlinks.

If you can guest post on bigger blogs and manage to get a link back within the content of the article, you’re most likely to enjoy a nice flow traffic.

A simple search on Google will land you a huge list of websites that accept guest posts.

I found this great list by Effective Business Ideas.

Alternatively, you can also search for (your niche + guest post) on Google and then contact each of the website owners for a guest post.

8. Join Facebook Groups

I am very active on several Facebook groups and by now I’ve realized that you can attract a decent number of visitors to your blog from it.

And no, it’s not the usual way most beginners try to do. I am not talking about joining a group 5 minutes ago and spamming it from the word go.

Instead, you join only a couple of best groups in your niche and then try to build a good relationship with the members, maybe for like a few weeks.

After that, watch out for any future posts from members that asks for some sort of solution, in which you need to jump in and leave your link.

Obviously, you don’t just leave your link and say nothing. You have to answer the question to some extent and then ask them to read your blog post in order to learn about it in detail.

In addition, most of the groups run promos every week where everyone can drop their blog links for other people to check out.

9. Feature The Big Guns In Your Niche

If you’ve written a brilliant blog post and mentioned any big bloggers in it, then you literally stand a chance to get some of that bloggers’ social traffic.

What I mean is, you can give those bloggers a heads up over email and let them know that you mentioned their blog on your post.

If they like what you’ve written, most of them will happily share it with their audience on social media platforms.

This way you can get a nice amount of traffic from their social following to your blog post.

10. Make Use Of Reddit

Not many people know that Reddit can send a huge wave of traffic if done the right way.

You can begin by typing your niche-related terms in the search bar and it’ll throw up a bunch of subreddits that you can join.

What you can do is, join them and then start interacting with the latest posts so you can earn some karma.

Karma basically means reputation points. The more active you’re on the platform by posting and commenting, the more you’re likely to earn karma points from users.

Once you have earned around 150-300 karma points, you should start posting your relevant blog post links in the subreddits, maybe like once in every two weeks.

In order to make sure a lot of people see your link you need to post at the right times. This subreddit has 193K members and about 200 of them are online currently.

Which isn’t a great number. I recommend checking the number from time to time and only post when there are a lot of people online. Preferably in the evening or at night.

Keep in mind: Every subreddit has its own set of rules, so be sure to read them before doing anything.

11. Comment On Other Blogs

This is something that I wouldn’t recommend doing on a daily basis because it’s a bit time consuming, but once a week is pretty good.

Leaving helpful comments on other blogs, especially when the post has JUST been published, can help your blog be seen by a lot of people.

But, it probably wouldn’t work out if you leave generic comments like “Great post” or “Very helpful”.

You need to go a little deeper and write something meaningful, which can only be done if you’ve read their blog post thoroughly.

Here’s a comment I came across on a blog that I thought was pretty good:

Don’t be afraid to ask questions related to the blog post or even share a couple of your own tips.

Final Thoughts

Remember, just knowing how to get traffic to a new blog is not enough. You have to put the strategies into practice and reap the benefits.

What do you think of the above strategies? Which one are you going to try out first? Let me know in the comments.

Meet The Author

Hey there! I'm James Sowers, and I run things around here. My mission is to create 1,000 self-sustaining entrepreneurs...and I'd love for you to be one of them! Have thoughts on this article? Reach out on Twitter and let me know.