9 Ways to Drive Massive Traffic to a Blog Overnight

Ever since blogging blew up on the internet, driving traffic has been a primary goal for many.  For new businesses, the more blog traffic, the better. Why is this the case? Because traffic equals making a profit and to help a company succeed, driving traffic is vital. Sometimes it takes time to get a substantial amount of traffic that will help a business thrive financially and in other ways, but these 9 techniques can help. While researching how to drive traffic a lot faster than most, keep these tips in mind to make growing traffic more feasible. And don’t forget to join us during our free webinar training where we offer tips every week on how to build and maintain a profitable website!

Be strategic

Wordstream says to drive traffic; you must have a strategy in place. Setting up a plan will help you create content that your audience will love reading. Keep your content fresh and focus on material that your readers respond to the most to increase website visits.

If you want to increase blog traffic, the best thing you can do is quite simply create better content. You’ve probably heard this before – the term “content is king” is thrown around more than a funnel at a frat party. But creating “better content” isn’t just about quality. It also means being more strategic with your content marketing efforts.

The most successful content is the kind that meets a specific need. Think about your audience and what they love. Content these days almost always falls into one of two categories: cool and funny or useful and educational. Choose either and you’re probably off to a good start.

If you need ideas, check out Quora and see what questions are being asked that relate to your industry subject. Also try using Buzzsumo to see what others have written about in your field, then make something even better. Or use one of these eight handy blog topic generators.

When it comes to content style, shoot for shocking statistics, beautiful infographics, and rich storytelling via video. Create stuff people want to link to and share.

Go visual

Having visuals on your blog is another powerful way to bring more traffic as Jeff Bullas points out. Many people are visual learners which is why you should work on implementing more visuals — whether it be through featured images or infographics, for example — to your blog.

Why? Because the human brain craves visuals. The last time I checked, humans had a shorter attention span (8 seconds) than that of a goldfish (9 seconds). The proof lies in the wildly popular visual platforms such as Facebook Timeline, Instagram and Pinterest.

We’re drowning in words and don’t have enough time to read every single blog post out there. If visuals, such as memes, videos, infographics, comics etc, can help you retain attention, why not give them a try?

Visme, Canva and Vine are just a few tools to get started in under minutes. For example, using templates in Visme, you can create stellar infographics for free within minutes.

Slideshare Presentation

Shout Me Loud recommends doing a SlideShare presentation based on successful posts. You can also work on topics that will resonate with your audience and bring more traffic to your site.

Create a SlideShare presentation based on your blog posts. For example, if you’re writing a blog post about ‘10 weight loss tips’, you can create a Slideshare on the same topic.

There are many ways to create a presentation. Let’s look at a few of them.

Create it by your own: Creating a presentation isn’t a rocket science. If you’re on PC use PowerPoint; if you’re on Mac use Keynote to create a presentation. Alternatively, you may try using free software like OpenOffice.org to create it.
Download a PowerPoint template: Instead of creating a Powerpoint template from scratch, you may download a PowerPoint template online and start customizing it on your own. By this way, you can make sure that your presentation is good looking.
Hire an expert– Hire an expert designer from Fiverr.com to create a presentation for you.
Step 2- Choose the right images
Make sure you’re using beautiful images in your presentation. If you’re not sure how to find free images for your presentation, read my article on how to find and use a creative commons licensed image using Google.

Step 3- Embed links/call to actions and publish it
The best thing about SlideShare presentation is that you can embed links and even call-to-action buttons into your presentation. When all are set, you can move ahead and publish your first presentation. Once it is live, start promoting your presentation on social media and other channels.

Change your blog design

Sometimes a new blog refresh is all that you need to make current and new readers more interested in your website. Small Business provides some tips below on how to do that and why it’s so important.

Tweaking your site just a little can make huge differences to your traffic over time. Effective cross-linking, for example, will help Google to index your content, and help your human readers to see what other relevant content you have. These changes will also make a better visitor experience and keep your readers on your site longer – which is never a bad thing.

Select the right topic

Are you writing about topics that interest your audience? Jeff Bullas recommends writing down your interests and focusing on the topics that are in high demand.

Needless to say, if your topic is dull, you are not going to attract much traffic any time soon. Start with Google Trends, BuzzSumo and Feedly to research what’s in demand. I suggest the “three-circle strategy” to pick a topic/niche when you’re starting out.

Here’s how it works:

Draw three circles on a piece of paper. In the first circle, write down all areas you’re knowledgeable about. In the second, write what interests you. And in the third circle, pick topics from the above two circles that are in demand.

Your sweet spot is where the three intersect.

Create incredible content

This may sound like a no brainer, but don’t forget that you must have incredible content to succeed! That means, according to Small Business, that you can’t just slap together a bunch of posts. Resonate with an audience by carefully compiling posts you'd like to write.

Nothing will build your traffic better than great content. Regardless of if it is blog posts, video or audio (or a combination of all three) you need to consistently produce great content. Great content encourages visitors to share your posts – via social media and links on their own sites and blogs. This social sharing by your readers has more weight than any purchased ad could ever carry.

Reuse old content

If you have successful posts from the past OptinMonster says it’s a good idea to reuse them. You should also make sure they are up to date, especially if they’re about technology, for example. Technology, such as social media will always evolve, and even though you can’t constantly update it, make sure it at least highlights some of the changes.

Because our pillar articles are useful to readers and attract a lot of traffic, we make sure to regularly update them.

We add more information in our content to make it better and more relevant.

Google likes articles that are fresh and new. But rather than writing a brand new post, we simply take that old pillar article and freshen it up which makes it easy for users to always find the most helpful content.

In fact, we did this with our content upgrade post just last week.

Here’s how we like to refresh old content:

Improve the content
Add more content
Add more images/screenshots
Remove any out-dated information
Add more up-to-date information
Add LSI keywords– these are keywords that are related to our main keyword
To find LSI keywords to add to your post, simply type your main keyword into Google, and then scroll down to the bottom of the page…

All of these related searches are LSI keywords that you can weave in to your post.

Another great tool you can use to find LSI keywords is LSI Graph. Just plug in your main keyword, and it will generate a list of related keywords.

Once we’ve written a refreshed version of the older blog post, we’ll manually update the older post and move the publish date forward. This way, we don’t lose our social share counts–and the associated momentum–from the older version.

Incredible headlines

Writing headlines that really stand out and make people want to read your articles is also essential. Wordstream explains how creating compelling headlines will capture a reader’s interest and hopefully make them want to stick around and read other articles on your site.

As a blogger, you should always ensure that you’re creating irresistibly awesome headlines. Your headline is what gets visitors to your site and captures their interest.

Some even suggest that your headline is more important than your actual post! If you have a great content piece hiding behind a shabby headline, it’ll die a quick death. Appearances are everything, and just as you wouldn’t show up to a wedding wearing your stay-home-sick clothes, you can’t rely on lackluster headlines to promote your blog posts.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different headlines. Share your post multiple times with different headlines and see which style works best.

Contest marketing

You should also consider implementing contest marketing. Small Business suggests that it’s a fantastic way to generate inbound links. Plus, who doesn’t love having the chance to win a trip to Paris?!

One of the fastest ways to generate non-purchased traffic is to have a contest. It is a great way to generate hundreds of inbound links, as bloggers love to share relevant contests with their readers, being the one to break the news. Many site owners have found it most effective to give away one very large prize, rather than numerous smaller ones.

Everyone loves to dream about that huge trip to Europe, rather than the free song download. Big prizes create big results. In addition to the boost of traffic, be sure to require something of the visitors to enter. Consider requiring a simple newsletter subscription. That way you have their contact information should they win, and you also can keep them informed about new content as you publish.

Driving massive traffic can help a business in more ways than one, and these tips can give you an excellent starting point. Continue to learn more tips on how to develop a profitable business on our free webinar training. We can’t wait to see you there!

Sources: Shout Me Loud, Jeff Bullas, Wordstream, OptinMonster, The Balance Small Business