How to Grow Your Blog Traffic in Kenya

As a blogger, the key focus should be to grow your blog traffic. This is because that’s how you derive value from the many hours of creating content. No one wants to create content without consumption.

However, growing blog traffic doesn’t come easy. You have to put in the hours in creating quality content consistently. Only through this you can create value and attract traffic to the blog.

This article will focus on giving you a few tips on how to grow your blog traffic.

Blog traffic comes from various sources. Some of these include direct traffic, referral traffic, and organic traffic. The ultimate goal of successful blogging is getting organic traffic. This is traffic that comes naturally through various search engines such as Google.

Below are some of the ways how to grow your blog traffic.

1.  Guest Posting

Guest posting involves writing a blog post and featuring it in another blog. This is among the key strategies you can use to grow your traffic especially if the blog is new.

This is a great strategy for a new blogger to attract interest in your blog. When you guest post on an established blog, you market yourself to the readers. If you are producing good content, they will take an extra step to visit your blog to learn more. Hence, increasing traffic.

The best strategy for guest posting is to focus on blogs in a similar niche as yours. For example, if your blog is in the health and fitness niche, you should consider doing a guest post in highly ranked blogs in the health and fitness niche.

This ensures that you can reach relevant that you could convert to your traffic easily.

How to get a guest posting blog

The first step of guest posting is identifying potential blogs that you would like to do guest posts on. You could do this research by identifying the blogs that rank on Google’s first page or researching popular blogs in your niche.

Once you identify the blogs you would like to work with, go ahead and contact the owner. Most blogs have the contact information on the website, you can either choose to email, make contact on social media or use a phone call.

You should expect many declines when starting this process. However, you should persist until you have a few blogs accepting your request.

Some blogs might even require you to pay a small fee to guest post on their website. If this is the case, consider the amount they are charging you before making a choice.

Once you find a blog, ensure to write an appealing and quality article for your guest post. Remember it should add value so that you can retain the relationship and the privileges.

Doing one guest post is not enough if you are aiming to drive high and consistent traffic to your blog. Reach out to other bloggers and keep doing more guest posts.

Finally, always consider the reputation of the guest posting blog. Writing for a reputable blog gives you credibility while associating with a not so reputable blog can damage your blog’s reputation.

2.  Creating visitors’ contact database  

The aim of collecting visitors’ contacts such as the email addresses of your blog visitors is to turn them into returning readers. Most website Software has plugins that help you collect visitors’ email addresses.

The most efficient way of collecting the reader’s email address is by using an email address collector pop-up. This enables the willing visitors to leave their email addresses. As the list grows, it gives you a good base to contact your readers regularly.

Hence, you can occasionally share with them new articles and newsletters. This helps to bring them back to the blog and grows your traffic in the process.

Although the customers will subscribe to your email newsletter, it does not mean they will be reading your emails. Hence, it is important to engage the audience using various approaches such as using catchy emails.

You should also limit the number of emails you send to your clients to avoid spamming. In handling this, you should come up with a strategic plan on what to send and when to send it.

3.  Creating high-quality content consistently

The rule of blogging is that quality content will always win. You need to ensure the content you are producing is relevant and of importance to your readers. This will act as a motivator for them to come back and recommend others.

Readers also like the convenience of finding all the information in one blog post, rather than having to visit many posts to get the same. Hence, you should ensure to cover your niche comprehensively to satisfy this need.

Writing lengthy and comprehensive articles helps you avail all the relevant information to the reader in one post. Doing this will increase your credibility with your readers.

Before you write any blog post, ensure you look at available articles on the same topic. This should give you an idea of how to structure your article. After identifying the contents of the given article, aim to deliver a better article than the ones available.

As you write your article, include high-quality images and videos to further boost your article. You can find free high-quality stock images on sites such as  Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash to use on your blog.

Writing a long article also makes it easier for you to rank highly on Google, which is every blogger’s dream.

What is the correct article length?

Various experts have different opinions on what counts as the correct length of a blog post. However, aim to have a minimum of a 1500- 2500-word article. Especially at the beginning stages.

A point to note is, that the higher your word count, the higher your probability of search engine ranking.

You would rather post one high-quality article per week than post 2 low-quality articles. Having a high-quality blog post will also make other bloggers and authors use your blog post as a reference.

This helps with back-links. A factor that is key in the blog’s growth as well. The more back-links you get to your blog, the more traffic.

4.  Social Media marketing

With billions of people using social media daily, they have become key marketing platforms that you can use to grow your blog traffic. Currently, there are many social media platforms available that you can tap to grow your traffic.  

However, you need to identify the best platform that suits your needs and niche. Using the wrong type of social media platform will give you poor results in the form of low traffic to your blog.

Below are some of the commonly used social media platforms include:

·        Twitter

Twitter is a platform best suited for blog posts, especially those dealing with trending topics. You can create a Twitter page for your blog, where you can be tweeting statistics that you come across doing your blog writing.

You can also use Twitter to conduct polls and get opinions on different matters from the users. This will help you in identifying the topics to write about.

·        YouTube

YouTube is a social site that supports video content. If you have a blog that deals with a niche that requires demonstration such as fitness workouts and beauty & makeup ideas, you might consider starting a YouTube channel.

It is free to start the channel making it suitable for beginner bloggers.

·        Pinterest

Pinterest is also a major platform that is specifically designed for blogs. Pinterest is a visual platform; hence all your posts need to have a very appealing image to attract an audience.

Linking your blog to an appealing image on Pinterest helps you increase the chances of someone visiting your website.

This makes it among the top ways how to grow your blog traffic.

·        Reddit

Reddit allows you to join different subreddit communities on this related to your blog. You should ensure to read through the group guidelines to ensure compliance with the community standards.

The best way to promote your blog on Reddit is by recommending it to people interested in articles in specific niches.

·        Facebook

Facebook is among the most used social media platform globally with over 1 billion users. This makes it among the top platforms to consider on how to grow your blog traffic.

To promote your blog on the platform, you can start by creating a Facebook page that you can use to update content regularly.

Another way is by joining Facebook groups with a relationship to your niche. Similar to Reddit, ensure you read the group guidelines before you post anything. With time, you can promote your blog in these groups/communities and watch your blog traffic increase.

·        Tumblr

Tumblr is a free blogging platform, which also doubles as a social media platform. You can create a Tumblr account for your blog that you can use to update your post and grow your traffic.

It suits beginner bloggers that lack capital and utilize its free services. You should follow niches with related content as a way to increase your network.

·        Instagram

Instagram is a popular platform among millennials due to its appeal in supporting visual content such as videos and photos.

Growing the following and traffic through Instagram requires constant posting of high-quality visual content. This helps attract followers in return to visiting your blog to get more.

·        LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social media that connects professionals across the world. It is more formal in comparison to other sites.  

You can link your blogs on your LinkedIn profile where profile visitors can access them. However, you need to grow your connections on the platform to have more visitors.

This you can achieve through sending connect requests and posting regularly. Due to the nature of the audience in the platform, you should target to post quality and relevant content.

Once you identify the social media platform that best suits your blog, it is time to add social media buttons to your blog. Installing social media share buttons on your website makes it easy for readers to share your content with other readers.

The key is to include social media buttons that are relevant to your blog. You should avoid overdoing it to avoid confusing the visitors. The type and content of a blog are what determine the social sites to use.

5.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is the best way to gain organic traffic for your blog. Search engine optimization helps in ranking resulting in traffic growth.

SEO is the process through which you make your blog comply with the search engine rules. In return, they recommend it more to potential readers. This process entails meeting some conditions such as using the correct grammar, blog length, and having the right keywords.

Optimized blogs rank higher. Remember blogging is a competition. Hence, every day should be a struggle to ensure your blog is ranking better than the competitors.

Various tools help to optimize your blog. These include many available plugins both freely and at a cost that you can use. Else, you can also engage the services of an SEO professional at a fee.

Search engine optimization is the best strategy on how to grow your blog traffic in the long term. This is the best strategy that most successful bloggers employ.

6.  Paid advertisements

This involves paying advertisers to market your blog. This strategy is key because it offers instant traffic growth.

However, it comes at a cost. You need to do budgeting before you can embrace paid advertisement strategy.

The most common form of paid traffic is Pay per Click (PPC). It means that you pay a certain amount of money every time someone clicks on your ad.

However, paid ads are not a long-term strategy. In the long run, it will become expensive to maintain this type of marketing strategy.

You should also do adequate research to identify the best advertising platform depending on your niche and audience. With this, you can get maximum value from the advertisements.

7.  Optimizing the blog user interface

When customizing your blog site, you need to keep your user in mind. Your blog interface needs to be as simple as possible to ensure easier visitor navigation

Having a complex interface discourages the users and ends up lowering the blog traffic.

When considering the blog interface, there are some areas you should pay close attention to as below;

• Place your search bar in an easily identifiable place – most visitors need easy access to the search button for easier searching of specific content. If the search button is not easily identifiable, it can be a very frustrating experience for the user. An experience that I believe you have faced regularly on different blogs.
• Ensure the mobile version of your blog is well optimized– some software offer optimization for computer versions rather than the mobile version. Every time you make a blog post, you need to view the mobile version to ensure that mobile users will have a smooth experience.

Nowadays, Google considers mobile-friendliness during SEO ranking. Do not let this aspect lower your website ranking.

• Ensure a smooth transition across the pages of your blog– you should ensure that the navigation buttons of your blog are working and in the right position.

In terms of blog optimization, you should ensure that your on-site speed is fast. There is nothing that annoys a reader other than a site that takes forever to load.

Sites that load faster attract higher traffic compared to those with slower loading speeds. Your website speed depends on many factors such as the size of the files, theme, and web hoster.

Page speed is key as it affects blog ranking on the search engines. The faster the loading speed, the better.

You can use sites such as  Pingdom to analyze and test your on-page speed score.

8.  Posting regularly

Consistency is a success factor in all business models. By staying consistent, you remind search engines and your reader of your existence.

The best way to maintain consistency is to come up with a schedule that you need to stick to religiously. Consistency brings predictability and also helps the advance in blog ranking.

The best way to achieve this level of consistency is planning in areas such as creating prior content. According to statistics, you should upload content at least once a week.

You should ensure to work with a schedule that you are comfortable with. Working at your pace makes it easy to stick to the plan. A factor that is key to the success of the blog.

Consistency should not only be limited to the blog content but also the marketing strategy. This ensures you are constantly in touch with your leaders helping to grow the blog traffic.

9.  Engaging with your readers

Human beings are social beings. As such, we respond better when we come across engaging content.

Your readers want to connect with you on some level when reading your articles and posts. Creating this connection with your readers will keep them coming back as brand loyalty grows.

One of the strategies to engage with your readers is to create engaging content with questions and humor. You can also offer prizes and discounts in case you are selling something on the platform.

Another important engagement strategy is responding to the readers’ questions and comments. When you take your time to respond to a comment, it reflects positively in the reader’s eyes. This helps build the connection and become regular visitors in the long term.

Try to respond to your readers even when doing a guest post even though the blogger of the guest blog never responds to comments

Always remember that a blog is a social tool. Hence, you should engage with your readers as much as possible.

10. Performing keyword research

A keyword is an important factor to consider is blogging. It is the key term that you focus on to create content. Mostly, keywords are useful to search engines when ranking your blog.

Keywords are into two main categories. The short tail keywords and the long-tail keywords.

• Short-tail keywords

Just as the name implies, these keywords are short. They are usually one or two words long.

Due to their short nature, most blogs tend to use them more. However, this creates competition making it harder for your content to rank.

However, they work better for those blogs that have domain authority. These are large blogs that have large visitors and are well known.

As a starter, you should focus on long-tail keywords to increase your ranking chances.

• Long-tail keywords

These keywords usually have 3 to 5 or more words. Concentrate on these keywords since they are more specific than short-tailed keywords.

For example, instead of optimizing for “yoga for women”, you can try optimizing for “yoga for women in their 50’s”. This helps you narrow down on a specific audience, making it easier to rank.

Once you identify a topic, the next step should be performing intensive keyword research. One of the ways to do this is using some available online tools such as SEMrush, Bluehost, Ahrefs, Google, Wordtracker, and Moz.

Conclusion On How to Grow Your Blog Traffic in Kenya

Upon using the above strategies, you require patience before you can enjoy the reward of traffic growth.  

It takes up to 1 year for your blog to rank. Hence the need for patience and consistency. The only sad thing is the majority of bloggers never get to 1 year. They give up on the way.

Slow but steady is the rule of the game. Great things take time, and your blog is no exception. These strategies on how to grow your blog traffic are well tested and as long as you stick to them, they will finally pay off.

To recap, some of the ways to increase traffic to your blog include:

1. Collect emails
2. Guest posts
3. Write lengthy high-quality blog posts
4. Leverage social media marketing
5. Search engine optimization
6. Paid ads
7. Simplify and optimize your blog interface
8. Post regularly
9. Engage with your readers
10. Perform keyword research