Credit: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/242-how-to-drive-massive-traffic-to-your-blog-and-website-2

Driving traffic to a blog has been an important issue for any blog or website. Traffic generation continues to feature prominently for any blogger and this will remain so as the better the traffic, the more relevant any website will become. In this post, we will take a look at some traffic generation methods that works, but some of them have not been widely acknowledged in many cases.

1. Drive traffic from SlideShare

SlideShare is a website that allows you to upload and share PowerPoint presentations online. However, did you know that SlideShare can also be one of the best sources to drive an insane amount of traffic to your blog?

Bloggers like Mauro D'Andrea and Ana Hoffman have been generating massive traffic to their blogs. By creating just 9 presentations in 30 days, Ana Hoffman has turned SlideShare as her second largest referral traffic source. If you can learn from her success, you can implement the lessons on your traffic acquisition strategy.

Before jumping in to create your first slide, below are a few things you'll need to know as a prerequisite.

In order to drive huge traffic from your slides, obviously, you will need to get more views for your presentation on SlideShare. According to Ana Hoffman, you'll need to get about 900-1100 views for your slides to be featured in the featured box and 1200-1500 views to be featured as the Top Presentation of the Day. It is recommended that the best time to upload your presentation is between 11 pm and 2 am EST.

Step by step guide to driving traffic from SlideShare

Step 1- Create a SlideShare presentation

Create a SlideShare presentation based on your blog posts. For example, if you're writing a blog post about 10 weight loss tips, you can create a Slideshare on the same topic.

There are many ways to create a presentation. Let's look at a few of them.

Create it by your own: Creating a presentation isn't a rocket science. If you're on PC use PowerPoint; if you're on Mac use Keynote to create a presentation. Alternatively, you may try using free software like OpenOffice.org to create it.

Download a PowerPoint template: Instead of creating a Powerpoint template from scratch, you may download a PowerPoint template online and start customizing it on your own. By this way, you can make sure that your presentation is good looking.

Hire an expert - Hire an expert designer from Fiverr.com to create a presentation for you.

Step 2- Choose the right images

Make sure you're using beautiful images in your presentation. If you're not sure how to find free images for your presentation, read my article on how to find and use a creative commons licensed image using Google.

Step 3- Embed links/call to actions and publish it

The best thing about SlideShare presentation is that you can embed links and even call-to-action buttons into your presentation. When all are set, you can move ahead and publish your first presentation. Once it is live, start promoting your presentation on social media and other channels.

2. Driving traffic from StumbleUpon

When I tell someone that StumbleUpon has the potential to drive massive traffic, I'll often get asked- do people still use StumbleUpon? Is StumbleUpon still capable of driving traffic to your blog as in the early days?

The answer is yes. Some of my recent posts have attracted hundreds of stumbles from SU.

In fact, various studies show that SU can provide 3 times more traffic than Reddit and is capable of driving more traffic than Google+ and LinkedIn combined.

Without taking a lot of efforts, how can you still drive traffic to your blogs using StumbleUpon?

By spending a few bucks on advertising. Now you might be asking- is it worth spending money for advertising on SU to drive traffic? Let'look at it this way- would you rather test the so-called recommended tricks on StumbleUpon, only to end up with disappointment down the track or spend a few bucks and multiple the traffic to your blog? When done right, advertising can open a steady stream of reliable traffic from StumbleUpon to your blog

What kind of content works on StumbleUpon?

People visit SU to discover all types of content. However, not all types of content can drive an enormous amount of traffic to your blog. Below are a few types of sure-fire content on SU.

Epic tutorials

Entertaining videos

List posts

Beautiful images and infographics


Driving traffic from SU- step by step guide


Step 1- Create the content to promote (blog posts, video, infographics)


Now you know what types of content works well on SU. Before jumping in to create content and promoting it by advertising, it is always better to conduct a demographic research on SU interest groups. Look at the stats, learn what the hot topics are and build content that is optimized for SU sharing.


You can also try creating a customized landing page specifically for StumbleUpon audience and start driving traffic to it. If you're on WordPress, simply install a landing page plugin and start creating a StumbleUpon optimized landing page on your website.


Step 2- Spend a few bucks to promote your content


Once the content is created, it is the time to promote it through advertising.


Step 3- Evaluate your advertising campaign


The goal of the campaign is to drive earned visits not the paid visit. If the campaign doesn't work well to drive traffic organically, you'll need to check why it doesn't produce the results that you were looking for. Rinse your strategy and repeat it.


3. Drive traffic from Facebook using Retargeted pixels


If you've been promoting your blog posts using a Facebook page for a while, you might have noticed the decline in the reach of Facebook posts. There can be many reasons for the fall. Whatever the reason maybe, undoubtedly, now it becomes harder to improve the reach for free because there's more competition in the News Feed than ever.


As a sure-fire method you can use advertising to improve the overall reach of your Facebook page. Again, it is always better to spend a few bucks to increase the reach than letting your Facebook traffic die by testing all sorts of tricks that won't help.


What kind of content works on Facebook?


When it comes to sharing posts on Facebook, a general rule of thumb is to make your posts stand out in News Feed, so it grabs the attention of the users easily. Like any other social network, rich media like photos and videos get more attention on Facebook than any other types of content.


However, if you're looking to build traffic to your blog posts, you'll need to focus on sharing links and constantly reviewing the performance using Page Insights.


Increasing the reach and driving traffic from Facebook


Facebook offers different types of advertising options. Since our goal is to drive more traffic to your blog and ultimately increase the reach, you can try boosting your posts, which is also the easiest way of advertising on Facebook. All you need to do is to click on the Boost Post option in the lower right corner of your post. You'll be asked to choose from advertising to people who liked your Page and their friends, people you choose through targeting


You can choose the second option and set up a retargeting pixel on your blog, which allows you to target the audience on Facebook who has previously visited your blog. Which one is your favorite traffic generation method? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section.