In the ever-evolving world of blogging, driving consistent traffic has always been a bit like chasing a moving target. Just when you think you’ve caught up, the game changes. Over the years, I’ve faced my share of challenges – algorithms that shifted like quicksand under my feet, fierce competition, and the constant evolution of digital trends. 

For bloggers, traffic growth is not merely a vanity metric; it’s the lifeblood that sustains and amplifies their digital presence. Think of it as the bustling crowd in a marketplace – the more footfalls you have, the higher the potential for engagement, sales, and brand recognition. 

A surge in visitors often translates to increased authority in a niche, which further attracts advertisers, partnerships, and monetization opportunities. But beyond revenue, growing traffic indicates a blogger’s ability to resonate with and cater to their audience’s evolving needs and preferences. It’s a sign of relevance, adaptability, and the sheer impact of the content shared. In essence, for a blogger, thriving traffic isn’t just about numbers; it’s a testament to the value they bring to the digital table.

This year I set on a transformative journey that culminated in breakthrough growth for myself as a blogger and digital entrepreneur (inspiration behind the name female blogpreneur!). I was determined to growth my traffic; mainly to unlock the next level of my journey and also so that when I share tips and advice to my audience it’s coming from a place of not just knowledge but experience too.

So without rambling any further, here are the 10 things I focused on that drove a traffic surge of over 400%.

1. Focused on keyword research

Keyword research is one of the most underrated aspects of SEO and a secret strategy many pro bloggers use to grow and scale their blogs into multi-figure businesses.

If you’re new to SEO and wondering what keywords are.. Keywords are the terms that people search for on search engines to find what they are looking for. For example, if you’re planning a date and are looking for restaurants to go and eat with your partner, you’ll type something like “best restaurants near ‘insert your location’ ”. This is called a keyword. It can be one word or phrase with a couple of words.

Keyword research is a skill and process of finding the exact keywords people are searching for in your niche. It ensures that you are creating content that your potential audience is searching for on Google and not just what you think they will like.

At the beginning of the year, I focused on keyword research and found thousands of high volume keywords I could write content on. Goodbye writer’s block!

If you’re new to keyword research then I recommend using Keysearch to do your keyword research. It’s easier to use than most of the SEO tools on the market and way more cost effective.

In my Scale with SEO course, I share the exact strategies I used to find thousands of keywords to write content on and drive traffic to my sites.

2. Published more content

After I created a bank of keywords I could write on for the next months, my next focus was the content. You’ve probably heard the saying “Content is king”. Well, bulk publishing is queen. Let’s break down what this means if you’re a blogger looking to grow your traffic and ultimately your revenue.

Let’s say right now you have 20 posts published on your blog, and you’re getting 1000 monthly views in total. That’s an average of around 50 views per post. But what will happen if you post 20 more articles? You’ll probably double your total monthly traffic, right?

And what happens if you publish them in one month instead of over the course of a year?

You’ll most likely double your traffic in a shorter amount of time instead of waiting months or years.

This is what my main strategy was for both this blog and my other niche sites this year. To publish high-quality content as often as possible. I went from averaging 3-5 published posts a month to more than 2 times that in certain months.

But how did I manage to accomplish this without burning out? Good question. That leads to the next thing that I did to grow my website traffic.

3. Built a blog management system that works for my current season of business 

In order to publish more content without sacrificing other aspects of my business and without burning out, I had to revise my blog management system to fit the current season I’m in for my business.

In any kind of business, there are different seasons. Seasons to build, seasons to maintain what is, and seasons to scale to the next level. And in each season, you need to know what to focus on in order to get the best results.

If you are in a season where you’re not generating any income and you’re not getting any traffic to your website, then you can’t focus your time and energy on tasks that aim to scale. Because the scaling season comes after growth has happened, and you’ve seen some results from the work you’ve put in to build your business.

This is exactly what I help my coaching and consulting clients with. I help you identify which season of business you’re in, what tasks to focus on so that you can grow and scale to the next level of your journey.

Check out my services here to book me for a consulting call or to hire me as your blogging coach. You don’t have to do this journey alone, and you don’t have to spend years trying to figure things out like I did.

4. Hired virtual assistants

After I did keyword research, I came up with a content plan for the year and developed a strategy for how I was going to execute. I needed to get help executing the vision I had for my business. So I hired some virtual assistants to help me manage and grow my business.

If you’re in a place in your business where you’re able to hire someone to join your team then I highly recommend it. It helps to free up some of your time and allows you to focus on what only you can do in your business.

I’ll be honest I struggled with this a bit, because I felt that only I could manage my blog without compromising on the quality and excellence I aim to display in every aspect of my business. But once I learnt to let go, and found some people who I could train to do what I have been doing by myself for many years, the results were amazing.

I was able to focus on the strategic aspect of my business, I was able to do more in less time because there were people helping me, and I also had more time to enjoy my social life without sacrificing my business.

If you’re still in the early stages of your blog or business, then I recommend this job site for hiring out small tasks in your business.

5. Focused on the highest ROI tasks

Now that I had a team of virtual assistants to help me, I focused on tasks that produce the highest ROI, both for myself and what I delegated to my team.

ROI basically means return on investment. And while it’s a common finance term, it’s a great concept to use in determining where to focus your time and energy when it comes to your business (and perhaps life too!).

For example, when it comes to social media, I stopped posting content to my Instagram account for some time. This is because Instagram doesn’t generate much traffic to my site so I needed to focus on a platform like Pinterest instead, which drives a lot of traffic to my sites. However, this will change in the next season of my business where I’ll be using it more for branding and growing my community. And this may be different for someone who has a different business model or has built a large following and monetized their Instagram account.

6. Improved my website speed

This is something a lot of bloggers ignore. Recently Google, announced that this is no longer a ranking factor, however I highly recommend you still put in the effort to improve your website speed and keep it under 2 seconds loading time, for two main reasons other than it being a stand alone ranking factor.

1. It provides a better user experience for your site visitors when your website loads fast.
2. Most people will leave a site if it is loading too slowly. So you reduce your bounce rate if your site loads quickly. Bounce rate is still an SEO metric, because search engines track how long people stay on your site to determine rankings.

There are two things I did first to improve my site speed. First, I changed my web hosting provider. I changed from Siteground to BigScoots and saw a significant change in website speed. Secondly, I invested in a fast-loading theme from Bluchic. It’s not only visually appealing, but it is SEO optimized and has a fast loading speed. Both of these improved my overall site speed, but there’s more I did to add on to this. In the Scale with SEO course, I share the 4 other things I did to improve my website speed, that you can apply to your website as well.

7. Focused on my providing value to my audience

Next I focused on providing value to my audience, both in terms of content and digital products. I asked myself this question, ‘What is my audience struggling with and what kind of content can I create to help them?’

Then together with what I gathered from my keyword research, I created high value content that my audience resonates with and can find value in. I focused on creating content that is evergreen so that it can continue to generate traffic, long after I hit publish.

This is what also led me to create a set of digital products along with a course filled with information I wish I knew when I started my first blog many years ago.

8. Used AI to do more in less time

The recent wave of AI development took the world by storm. And if you ask me, there are so many new opportunities and different ways to leverage it in your business. There are many tasks you had to do manually before that you can now do quicker using AI.

Some examples of ways I use AI tools, like ChatGPT for my blog, are generating outlines for blog post content, social media captions, and writing sales copy. AI can become an assistant for your business and help you complete certain tasks faster.

9. Built more backlinks

Backlinks are the cherry on top of your ice cream when it comes to SEO based traffic. They can boost the authority of your website and give you a competitive advantage in your niche or industry.

Building backlinks can take a long time and most times it takes time for those links to be indexed by Google and grow your domain’s authority.

In my course I share some white hat SEO techniques you can use to build backlinks and improve your website’s domain authority and see results.

10. Diversified my marketing efforts

My main focus was SEO, but I decided to diversify my marketing approach, to compliment the SEO strategies I have in place. I also focused on other ways of generating traffic like guest posting, blogger shout outs, Pinterest, etc.

This in turn added to the traffic that was coming in from SEO and all in all I saw a boost of over 400% increase in traffic.

One advice I’d give to myself when I was just starting out on my blogging journey is to focus on two things, content and learning SEO. If you are just starting out or you’ve been blogging for a while and you’re not seeing results then I recommend you enroll in the Scale with SEO course so that you don’t spend years trying to figure it out like I did. You’ll also get free workbooks and guides to help you audit your site’s SEO and learn practical strategies to grow your website traffic.

Lastly, what has been your biggest challenge in growing your website’s traffic? Is it not knowing where to start? Or maybe you have the knowledge but don’t know how to apply it? Let me know in the comments below.