40 Ways: Make Your Blog Popular in 2016

40 Ways To Make Your Blog Popular in 2016

40 Ways to drive more traffic to your blog

40 Ways: Make Your Blog Popular in 2016

Got a new Blogger or WordPress blog? Want to get more traffic or increase visitors as quickly as possible? Whether you're owning a sub-domain or a full domain, these tips will help you a lot. While it's not possible to instantly get tons of traffic to your blog, however, patience is the key. There are several ways to get more readers on your blog. I'll be describing you the Top 40 ways to achieve that in short.

1. Let Search Engines index your website

There is no batter way to get real traffic than from the search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu, etc. Search Engines help you to get Organic traffic. (Learn the difference between Organic and Inorganic Traffic here). Therefore, submit your website or blog address to the search engines on the very first day of your new blog! There are many websites that can help you submit your website to the search engines for free. Here is one, for example:
http://www.entireweb.com/free_submission/

2. Check status of robots.txt file

Robots.txt is a hidden file in your website or blog. It allows or disallows the search engines from indexing your blog. You can access this file by visiting www.YourBlogName.com/robots.txt
The default configuration should look something like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Allow: /
Sitemap: http://www.YourBlogName.com/sitemap.xml

3. Generate and submit a sitemap

If you don't have a sitemap for your blog already, you can easily generate one from here:
https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
After generating the sitemap, submit it to Google Search Console. (Learn how to submit sitemap to Google Search Console here).

4. Get an SEO-friendly template

You should use a template that loads quickly and shouldn't have any errors. The website or blog templates that are slow to loads affects the Google Search Results ranking adversely. You can easily get one by searching on Google with terms 'SEO template for Blogger' or 'SEO template for WordPress'.

5. Use light-weight images

When you upload pictures to your blog, use GIF extension. .GIF files are usually smaller in size than JPG, JPEG or PNG and helps your blog load a little quicker.

6. Test your site performance

Check how fast your site is, and how good it is in Google's eyes by using the PageSpeed Insights offered by Google. All you have to do is, enter your site URL on the PageSpeed Insights page and click 'Analyze' and check for errors if there are any. They'll give you a score out of 100. You can increase the score by improving and fixing the errors they show. Here's the link:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

7. Ping your site URL

Let the whole world know the presence of your blog. This service, for example, submits your website to 1418 other websites. Enter your site URL on their page and click Submit.
http://www.pingmyurl.com/

8. Publish appropriate contents

Don't publish anything irrelevant to your blog category. You should always focus on the main topic of your blog and publish posts accordingly. Also, always maintain a good Text-To-Image ratio. You should always try to have more text than pictures or images in your blog posts. Try to make posts with at least 500 words. This is necessary because the search engine crawlers only feed upon texts for information. Pictures only help the reader better understand the topic, but not to web crawlers and spiders.

9. Avoid duplicate contents

If something has already been published on your blog, avoid re-publishing it. Search engines hate to see duplicate contents. Instead, write as much as unique contents as possible and this will help you get better page rankings.

10. Maintain regularity

Regularity is highly important in blogging. Search engines often send their crawlers and web spiders to check out on new contents being published regularly. If they don't find any new content for a long period, they might mark the site irregular.

1) If you're regular and only write one post per day, you're doing it right.
2) If you write ten posts on the first day, and then rest for ten other days for the next posts, you're doing it wrong.

11. Learn link-building

Link some keywords or sentences to your other posts on the same blog. This will help you generate more Page Views out of less visitors.

12. Never ever copy-paste

In the eyes of Google, your best friend for traffic, copying and pasting is seeing as a crime. No matter whether you copy-and-paste from within your own blog or from external sources. You should avoid to copy paste contents altogether. However, if you think you're going to write a post, that, or something similar, has already been posted elsewhere, then try to use different words (maybe synonyms), sentence structures etc.

13. Create an E-mail subscriber box

Create an E-mail subscriber box and let the visitors re-visit your blog when you read about the latest posts delivered to their mail inbox. Google's own FeedBurner can help you do that.

14. Use Intelligent Hyperlinking

When you link a word to a different website, let the link open in a new tab. This will help your visitors not to part from your website while trying to learn something new. However, if you link something within your website, it may or may not open in a new tab.

15. Get Back-links

This is highly important. Sometimes, you should visit other blogs of same categories, read their articles, and make comments describing about your own blog. This will help you get traffic just through your name (which has a link). Don't put your blog address in the comments; that might be marked as spam and your comment may not even get published. You may realize the importance of Back-links from the fact that Google's original name was 'Backrub'!

16. Enable RSS feeds

Many people use RSS Readers to read articles. Make sure not to disappoint those readers. Enable RSS feeds on your blog through this method explained by Google. Read the steps entitled under "Share your content using Blogger feeds":

https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/97933?hl=en

17. Boost Alexa Rank of your blog

Better the Alexa Rank of your blog, better the search visibility. If you can't see your blog listed in Alexa.com search, submit your URL to them by signing up. Also, get the Alexa Toolbar installed on your browser for a better ranking possibility.
http://www.alexa.com/

18. Broadcast through WhatsApp / Telegram

Create a WhatsApp group dedicated to your blog. Join as many of your contacts as possible. Frequently post links to the group. When you make a very good post, that you're really proud of, broadcast it to your WhatsApp friends through the Broadcast option.

19. Remove / Don't use copyrighted materials

If your blog contains images, or other media from other sources without their permission being concerned, it's a web crime. You should immediately remove such contents. Instead, get your own media contents from PhotoShop, or stock photos websites like shutterstock.com, 123rf.com, fotolia.com, bigstockphoto.com, etc.

20. Use 'Related Posts' under posts

Related Posts help your visitors know about other posts that are related to the one they're reading. This helps you in two ways:
1. You get more Page Views
2. Your visitors stay at your blog for more time

21. Use Alt tags for photos

If you blog posts contain pictures, make sure to use Alt tages describing those pictures. Alt tags help search engines identify the picture for better search result visibility.

22. Try and get a Google PageRank

Google gives Page Rank to websites depending upon the age and quality of contents on the websites. The better the quality of posts on your website, the better the chances of getting a Page Rank from Google. Page Rank finally helps you get your site listed on the top of Google Search Results. Furthermore, even Bing now follows Google PageRank to rank websites. You can check the Page Rank of your website anytime here:
http://checkpagerank.net/

23. Use Google Search Algorithms

This is science. The more you understand, the better you get at it. Learn how Google Search algorithm works, what people want to know from Google searches and what not. Follow the rules strictly to get on the good books of Google. Learn about Algorithms here:
https://www.google.co.in/insidesearch/howsearchworks/algorithms.html

24. Be right on time with your posts!

They say "Nothing is worse than an old newspaper". I won't judge whether or not the saying is valid but, you must be on time depending upon the category your blog falls under. If you're running a News blog, you need to be active all the time and be ready to write stuff. If you're running a blog related to festive products, never miss to update and make offers during the festivals.

25. Use Google Analytics to monetize traffic

Google Analytics is a great tool that helps you understand your traffic sources, mode of visit, the keywords they used to visit your site, their languages, the pages they visited on your site and almost everything. In short, this powerful tool can help you track down your visitors in every possible way.
https://analytics.google.com/

26. Let your colleagues know!

While you're so busy making your blog popular across the web, you may miss out the near and dear ones. Let everyone in your college, office, business or company know about your blog. Stuff like these, goes viral real quick!

27. Share buttons are ice on the cake

Don't forget to add share buttons to your blogs. People who like your posts may want to share them with their friends. Unavailability of share buttons on such posts make it difficult to let their friends know about your contents.

28. Keep your reader engaged!

Always interact with your readers. Answer their queries on comments, Email or other places. Make a separate forum for your blog if possible, where your readers can discuss ideas with other readers and share their experiences.

29. Facebook is your good ol' friend

Got a lot of friends on Facebook? Time to use them! Let Facebook help you drive more traffic. Create a Facebook page for your blog share all your blog posts (along with previews) on that page. They'll help you get more traffic to your blog.

30. Let the birds do the talking!

Create a separate twitter account for your blog. Follow a lot of people or companies that fall under the same category as your blog. Let some of them follow back you. Then use #hashtags and share links to your blog posts every time you make a new post. This will help you get Twitter users visit your blog.

31. Time to take YouTube seriously

If your blog falls under some category that can make some video illustrations to demonstrate certain topics, products, how-to, then make a YouTube channel exclusively for your blog. Make videos on the specified topics and link them to your blog using the description box of your YouTube channel.

32. Instagram for photos

If you got a blog with tons of photos, you don't want to miss this option. Make a separate Instagram account with the same name as your blog and share your blog photos there. Make sure to add the links to your blog posts along with the shared pictures.

33. Popularize through Reddit

Submit the best of your blog posts to Reddit. They've got millions of page views every day and can help you with your traffic. Visitors who like your articles on Reddit may visit your blog in hope for more such articles.
https://www.reddit.com/

34. Join Bloggers (different from Blogger)

Bloggers.com is a huge community focused on unifying like minded bloggers from around the world. Make an account on Bloggers.com, share your blog their. Visit others' blogs. They'll visit yours in return. All without spending a penny.
http://bloggers.com/

35. Submit to StumbleUpon

This is one amazing website that shows the "best of the web, one click at a time". Meaning, it shows random cool stuff to their visitors. Submitting your blog to their directory gives you a good chance of getting hit by visitors.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/

36. Join LinkedIn Groups

Create a separate LinkedIn profile for your company / blog. Join other groups of similar interests. Make topics and link them back to your blog.

37. Use Pinterest for pins

If your blog contains a lot of photos, Pinterest s a great choice for publicity. Pinterest helps users discover blogs, websites and other sources through the photos they find on Pinterest. This website also supports Re-Pin which means other users can also pin your pin and spread the word to others. This is a diverse multiplying medium for advertising. Check them out:
https://pinterest.com/