How to Increase traffic to your business blog
Building a business blog is simple, but building a successful business blog that brings you a steady flow of leads is another story altogether. Whether you’re a small business owner running your own company blog or an in-house employee helping to manage your employer’s blog, these tips may help to take your business blog from unknown to internet famous.
Participate in Communities Where Your Target Audience Hangs Out
Explore different social media networks, forums, and blogs to determine where your target audience gathers. Create accounts at all of those sites and start participating. Be a good community member for a while without trying to hawk your wares. Eventually, people will be eager to visit your site and learn more about you because of your valuable contributions to the community.
Make Your Blog’s Content SEO-Friendly
There are more than three billion searches performed each day on Google, so it’d be silly not to get a sliver of that traffic to come to your site by optimizing your blog posts for the search engines. Contrary to popular belief, SEO doesn’t affect the quality or creativity of your content. When done right, SEO is virtually unnoticeable. With simple on-page SEO tactics and link-building techniques, you’ll be able to boost traffic levels and get your content in front of more people.
Target Audiences That Are More Likely to Share Your Content
People who are extremely active in social media and/or who have blogs of their own are generally more inclined to share content, so create content that they’ll be eager to spread. By targeting groups of people who are likely to share your content, you’ll be able to expand your audience and reach.
Sign up for Major Social Networks
If you’re not already a member of major social networks, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+, sign up now. Fill out your profiles completely, follow the who’s who in your industry, share your content on a regular basis, and ask thought-provoking questions that engage your followers. If you consistently share relevant, high quality content and interact with people in a positive way, you’ll build trust and credibility.
Link to Your Own Posts and Those of Others
Continue giving the gift of traffic to older posts on your blog by linking to them in your newer posts. In addition, link to other bloggers’ content in your blog posts to attract their attention and build relationships with them. They may even link to your content in the future if they like what they see.
Write Guest Articles
Write articles for other sites with links back to your site, so you can build your brand and reputation in your industry. You can also accept guest contributions on your own site to attract more traffic and build relationships with other content creators.
Participate in Q&A Sites
Participate in Q&A sites like Quora and Yahoo! Answers by answering questions that are relevant to your industry. Include a link back to your site in your answers. As long as you provide helpful, in-depth answers to people’s questions and provide a relevant link, no one is likely to accuse you of spamming or link dropping.