I recently posted this on http://www.pib.com.ng but wanted to share a short and sweet version with my fellow nairalanders


1. Write Attention Grabbing Titles:

This is 2016 and the internet has become more competitive than ever and lots of distractions. The first part of your content/blog post that audience see is the headline(title) if you fail to get their attention at this point you will loose lots of visitors.
Four tips to help you write attention grabbing headlines:

Your headline should be unique.
Your headline should be ultra-specific.
Your headline should convey a sense of urgency.
Your headline should be useful.

To learn more about writing catchy blog titles see how to write catchy headlines and blog titles your readers can’t resist

2. Unique and Engaging Content

This is straight and simple, if you don’t publish unique an appealing content your visitors won’t come back to your blog. Of course you might get visitors if you write just what every other blog your visitors will leave and this will increase your bounce rate .

See it this way:
Would you go to the cinema to watch a movie if the same movie is shown on a local T.V station everyday?

I guess not.

If you want engaging visitors that will come back to read your content and share it on social networks then you need to invest time in writing unique and engaging content.

3.Guest Posting

This is one sure way to get large amount of traffic. Guest posting is basically when you write article on other peoples websites/blogs and in return you get exposure, traffic and backlinks.

To find guest posting opportunities enter any of the following search strings on google:

keyword “submit guest post”, keyword “guest post”. Replace keyword with the term keyword with your site keyword.

For instance if your site is in the health niche a simple search string for quest posting oppourtunities would be health “submit guest post” or health ” guest post.

You can also get a list of sites that accepts guest post in various niches from Peter sandheens’s blog.

4. Comment on Niche Related Blogs

Comment on blogs that are related to your site niche. You will get little amount of traffic by commenting on niche related blogs but with the strategy am going to show you later on you will see how you can convert the little traffic into loyal subscribers that will always visit your blog.

Don’t go about leaving short comments like “nice post”, ” brilliant write up” e.t.c such comments won’t get you any traffic. Try throwing more light or contribution on the blog post , this way you show your expertise an other readers will like to know more and so they will visit your site.



5. Post in Facebook Groups

There is virtually facebook groups for different niches. No matter the niche you blog about you will find a facebook group for that niche.

Search for your site keyword on facebook then click group. Facebook will display groups with your keywords. Join as many groups in your niche as as possible become active in them, and promote your blog.

6.Target Low Search Volume Keywords

Many people see ranking for low competition keyword as a waste of time so everyone is targeting keywords with high search volume as a result keywords with low search volume have very low competition.

Take advantage of this and optimize your articles for such keywords . This has been a great source of traffic for me and most times i rank for small volume keywords without backlinks.



7. Ask Your Visitors to Share

The truth is: you might have the most engaging content on the internet but if your visitors don’t share your content you won’t get much traffic.

Many visitors wille read your blog post without sharing, sometimes you just have to aggressively make them do it.

Don’t get me wrong:
By aggressive i mean persuade them to share your content or limit the amount of information they get unless they share.

Sometimes simply asking my blog readers to share my content does the trick and in some cases i use the social locker plugin to block part of my blog post so they don’t have any choice but to share so as to be able to read the full post.

8 Build An Email List
Okay, so now you got traffic groups, from guest posting, blog commenting, facebook groups, social shares don’t let them be just at a one time visitors, convert them into subscribers by collecting their email this way you can share your new blog content with them, they will return to read your new blog post and share it, this way you will get more traffic. I use mailmunch forms to design subscription forms and mailchimp for managing my email list. You can use mailchimp its free until you get up to 2,000 subscribers.

9. M.A.R.C

Alright, you are wondering what’s M.A.R.C:

M.A.R.C is short for Most Active Reader Contest and its a very effective traffic generation strategy.

With this strategy (M.A.R.C) we were able to increase traffic of a website in the health niche by over 300% within 2 months.

M.A.R. C does not work on blogs without traffic so you need to have traffic then you use this technique to boost your traffic.

If you are just starting a blog first use the techniques have shown you earlier to get traffic. Get traffic from guest post, facebook groups, blog comments, twitter e.t.c then turn these traffic into subscribers after that you can use M.A.R.C to blow your traffic over the roof.

Now am going to show you how I setup this contest you can replicate it and get more traffic to your blog.

Here’s how M.A.R.C works.

Create a contest that only the blog subscribers can participate in
The contest is to reward the most active readers
At the end of the month the winner gets a price

The nature of the contest is that participant are to read all post published on the blog in a month, comment on all of them and share the posts on two of their favorite social networks.

On a given date questions will be set and participants are to answer the questions. Those that go through these steps and gets the answers to the questions becomes winners but there can be only one winner. So a winner is selected randomly from those that passed. The selected winner gets the cash prize and others just try again next month.

Let me break this down:

Alright just in case you feel lost about M.A.R.C here is a break down of how it works. The blog writers publish two post a week so in a month so a total of eight post is published in a month , participant of M.A.R.C are to ready all eight post comment on them and then share the post on two of their favorite network.

Of course anyone can comment on a blog post even without reading the whole content, to make sure participants read all eight post. They are to answer eight questions each questions each question comes from different post

That is:

The eight questions were taking from the eight post so inorder to get the answers they have to read all eight posts.

Of course there’s always more than one winner so I choose one person randomly from all winners.

Finally the winner gets the cash price and leaves a message on the M.A.R.C testimonial page so everyone knows the winner.

You are probablye wondering :

100$? Isn’t that a waste of cash. Well the site owners actually thought the same thing at first but within a short while they saw how powerful it is.

Here’s why M.A.R.C is so powerful:

First, it get’s you more email subscribers: When we used this strategy on the health blog within 2 weeks they got over 90% increase in email subscribers.
More Traffic: And within the same month the site traffic grew by over 130% due to shares on social networks by those participating in the contest.
More Revenue: The site made thousands of dollars from sales of affiliate products and adsense.

You next question would be:

Who can use M.A.R.C Strategy?
Anybody can use this strategy to get more visitors to their blog, as long as you have content worth reading. You get more traffic, sales, and more ads view, your visitors gets quality content to read and the winner gets the prize so it’s a win for everyone.

It does not have to be a cash prize. You could use virtually anything as the prize for the winner. It could be an ebook, render a service for free e.t.c.

And the best part is:
This strategy works in any niche. I used it on a niche site in what I consider I boring niche and it worked like magic. With just a simple form i got more email subscribers and tripled the traffic to the site.

Within a short while and the site was starting to make some cash but I sold the site on flippa when I found more profitable keywords.

I hope this helps you guys!

space booked in case..... cc lalasticlala

Great tips

Hello @BlessJentle,

Thanks for writing and posting this here.

The points you mentioned are all very relevant in driving traffic to a blog. My favorite is writing and publishing a great and engaging contents.

No visitor want to read what they can get from any other blog.

My mantra when creating contents is: Provide an actionable tip that will be beneficial to visitors.

It has not been easy but it's worth all the effort.

I also find this contest idea interesting. Will incorporate it, into my traffic generation strategy.

Thanks once again for sharing.


samsteve.

styca:
Hello @BlessJentle,

Thanks for writing and posting this here.

The points you mentioned are all very relevant in driving traffic to a blog. My favorite is writing and publishing a great and engaging contents.

No visitor want to read what they can get from any other blog.

My mantra when creating contents is: Provide an actionable tip that will be beneficial to visitors.

It has not been easy but it's worth all the effort.

I also find this contest idea interesting. Will incorporate it, into my traffic generation strategy.

Thanks once again for sharing.


samsteve.

@Samsteve am glad you found these tips helpful.