In November, this blog had 48,000 monthly pageviews. By end of February that number increased to 118,000 and it continues to grow.
I’ll be honest here, I wasn’t actively trying to grow my pageviews (or monthly visitors) but I was constantly working on growing my blog, creating good content and expanding my audience.
As a result, my pageviews doubled within a month and then they increased some more. I think that two of the main reasons why this happens are: I started posting more often and I observed my audience. I paid attention to type of content that was popular and started exploring and touching on those popular subjects/categories a lot more often.
I also worked on optimizing my content and this post will talk about exactly how I did it.
CREATE GOOD USER EXPERIENCE
Make sure that your blog is easy to navigate and your content is easily accessible- that’s what makes your blog visitors to continue to read. Eliminate distractions- get rid of, or at least delay any pop-ups (like the ones to subscribe to your newsletter, or like your Facebook page- make sure that they don’t pop up right away as this creates poor user experience and a visitor is more likely to leave your website if these come up right away). Try delaying them for about 60 seconds. Also, if you are using pop-ups, make sure that they don’t come up on every single page your visitor lands on- it’s very annoying and 90% of the time it will discourage a potential reader from exploring your blog. Slow-loading pages are another problem- it can also turn away people from reading your content. Test your website speed, fix any issues that you might have, optimize it and remember to resize your images.
LINKS
Linking is great for SEO. Google rewards you for linking out to authority websites but you have to make sure that you don’t link just for the sake of it- do it to benefit your audience. Your links should answer a question, provide more insight and be relevant to what you’re talking about. This creates quality, lets your reader explore the topic further and, if you link to real, quality content- it builds trust. Whenever it’s relevant, remember to also link to your own content- this is another way to get people to explore your blog and increase your page views.
QUALITY CONTENT
Creating good quality content is probably one of the main reasons why I was able to increase my pageviews dramatically over the last couple of months. A lot of blogs and websites linked back to many of my posts (like Wix, Bloglovin‘ and other blogs) which led to me growing my audience and doubling my monthly pageviews. Good content is one that’s relevant and brings value to your readers.
MAKE YOUR CONTENT SHAREABLE
Social media play a big role in brining traffic to your blog- this is why it’s important to make your content shareable. Encourage people to share your content, if you don’t already use them, install share buttons for Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. Having great images and eye-catching titles also helps here- people want to share fun and useful content.
RELATED POSTS
This is a bit of a no-brainer, but linking to related content at the bottom of each posts also works great for growing your pageviews- especially for first-time visitors to your blog- it let’s them know what else you have to offer. Use tags on your posts to make sure that “related” content that is being liked on the bottom of your posts is similar and actually relates- this once again encourages your visitors to further explore your blog.
You spend a lot of time working on your blog- from photography, to research, to writing your posts, scheduling your social media posts- it only makes sense that you’d want more people to discover and read your blog.
As your blog grows, so will your pageviews but it’s important to keep things like user experience in mind as you continue to work on your blog. Keep checking your website speed and constantly work on optimizing your content.
If you have any questions, don’t forget to leave a comment below!