Traffic Blueprint For Blogs

I have two different traffic blueprints for beginner bloggers and

intermediate bloggers.

If you’re an intermediate blogger, skip to my long-term traffic

strategy.
If you’re a beginner, you can continue reading.

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As a new blogger looking for ways to make money blogging, setting up
your blog can be very exciting.
Until you’re done, and you realize there’s little or no traffic coming to your blog.
No traffic equals no sales and revenue, no matter how fancy or professional your blog
design looks.
I was in this exact state some months ago. My baby blog had gone live, with traffic stats
on the low end. That’s why I want to show you what I did to quickly generate traffic for
my blog.
One mistake I made was paying for Facebook Ads. Jeez, I blew a lot of money.
The results, not much.
I was spending almost $1 for a click. That means if I wanted 100 visitors to click through
to a post in my blog, I had to spend roughly $100.
I didn’t like that at all. Being a newbie, I was low on budget. Like you, I didn’t have that
much cash to throw around.
Looking back, I could have spent that amount of money to purchase a Tailwind App
subscription to grow my traffic in a cost-efficient manner, as you’ll find out in this short
guide.

Grow Your Traffic on Pinterest Right Away

Let’s get started.
Pinterest is the most frugal and surest way to grow your traffic right now. Just by joining
some group boards on Pinterest, using Tailwind, and following a consistent pinning
schedule, I’m already generating traffic to my new blog.
I’m going to explain all the strategies here.
First off, get a solid Pinterest business account. To do that, follow the steps outlined
below.

 Turn Your Pinterest Account Into a Business Account: Create a business account
on Pinterest here.

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 If you already have a personal Pinterest account, you can easily convert it to a
business account by logging into your account, clicking on the three dotted
menus at the top-right corner and click “Upgrade Now”.

 Claim your website: After registering a business account on Pinterest, go to

“Settings” to claim your website.

Type in your website in the box provided and click “Claim Website”. After that
two options of adding HTML to your blog will pop up.

Go with the option of “Add HTML Tag”. Copy the code somewhere, open a new
tab in your browser and install Yoast SEO on your blog.

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 Go to SEO >> Social page from your WordPress admin area. Click on the Pinterest
tab. In the Pinterest confirmation field, paste the HTML tag code you copied and
save changes.

Go back to your Pinterest screen and click the “Next” button. Pinterest will now
ask for your site to be submitted for review.

Click “Submit”. Pinterest will take 24 hours to review your website. Once it’s
done, you’ll receive an email that your site has been verified.

 Enable Rich Pins: Rich pins add extra details to Pins you post on Pinterest,
differentiating you from the normal Pinterest user, and providing more credibility
to your brand.

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 To do this, head over to the Rich Pin Validator, scroll down and insert a link to any
blog post on your website.

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 Before doing this, you should ensure that you’ve added the HTML tag to your
Yoast SEO plugin, then your request for rich pins will be approved.

Now, you have an official business account on Pinterest. You’re ready to compete with
the big boys and send traffic to your blog.

Where the Magic Happens

These are the strategies I use on Pinterest that give me steady traffic to my new blog.

Join Pinterest Group Boards

Pinterest group boards are boards owned by individuals (usually with a decent
following), where you can request to join so you can pin your images as well as re-pin
the images of others.
The exposure of your pins to many people is enough to cause a spike in your Google
analytics traffic graph. You’ll drive significant traffic to your blog by pinning your images
to group boards.
Here are some Pinterest group boards that accepted me. Read the rules before
requesting to join. Usually, the rules involve following the board, following the owner of
the board (hint: the owner’s picture is the first you’ll see).
You can start by joining my group board here.
List of Pinterest group boards that still accept contributors so you can join today to get
more re-pins, traffic, and exposure are:

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  Top Blogs – Pinterest Viral Board
 Share Your Blog With The World
 Make Money Blogging Group Board
 Entrepreneurs With Heart
 Social Media + Blogging Group Board
 Best Tips For Blog & Biz
 Not A Mom Group Board
 Post Your Blog! Bloggers Promote Here
 Sunny Days Blog Group Board
 Share Your Blog Group Board
 Post Your Blog! Bloggers Promote Here
 Mostly Blogging Group Board
 Group Board For Bloggers
 Christian Business And Blog Tips
 Blogging Tips
 Bloggers Unite – Let’s help each other
 Blog Community Most Repinned
 *Blogging
 AGAHP Blogging Group Board
 ::Better Blogging Tips Group Board

Join Tribes in Tailwind

Tailwind is a place where you can multiply traffic coming to your site. If Pinterest group
boards can shower your blog with trickles of traffic, Tailwind will direct a running hose
of traffic to your baby blog.
Tailwind is traditionally known for scheduling pins for Pinterest. But behind that is a
traffic generating feature waiting to be used by a smart blogger. It’s one of the big guns
those bloggers with thousands of Pinterest followers use.
It’s called Tribes. Tailwind makes use of Tribes.
Tailwind tribes are similar to group boards on Pinterest. Request to join a tribe, share
the pins of other tribe members, and post your own pins. Your pins get shared by even
more tribe members. More re-shares, more impressions, more traffic, more reach.

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 How To Maximize Pinterest Traffic
When you sign up for Tailwind, it gives you an option to add Tailwind extension to your
browser. Please do, so that when you hover over images on Pinterest, a Tailwind icon
will appear on the image, and you can schedule it conveniently.

Build Your Tribes Network

Start by joining as many tribes relevant to your niche as possible
Head over to Tailwind and find a tribe to join.

Then you can choose to join as many tribes relevant to your niche as possible.

Create a Board List

After joining as many Pinterest group boards as possible, you want to be able to
schedule pins using Tailwind to all your boards (as well as group boards) at a go. It saves
you valuable time instead of manually scheduling pins to each board.
In the right side of your Tailwind dashboard, click on Publishers >> Board Lists.

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Create a new board list and start adding your Pinterest boards to that Board List.

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Now, when you want to schedule a pin using Tailwind on Pinterest or on Tailwind tribes,
you can select your Board List, and the pin will be posted to all the boards in the Board
List. Like this:

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Cool time saver.

Create A Pinterest Graphic For Your Blog Posts

You increase the viral coefficient of your blog posts when you make it easy for your
visitors to pin vertical Pinterest images from your blog.
After writing a blog post, it’s good practice to create a Pinterest image for it and place it
at the top of your post. Something like this:

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Then you can install Pinterest Pin It Button On Image Hover plugin so that when a user
hovers over your Pinterest graphic or any image on your blog, a Pinterest save icon
appears on the image.
Chronic pinners will love this feature in your blog posts, leading to more repins and
traffic back to your blog.

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Create Multiple Pinterest Graphics For A Single Blog
Post
You’ll be under-utilizing the traffic potential Pinterest is capable of supplying to your site
if you settle for creating just one Pinterest graphic per blog post.
I strive to create up to 10-15 different pins for a single blog post on my blog. Sounds like
hard work, but its well worth it.
And hey, you’re not spamming. Pinterest says it loves fresh pins, not fresh blog posts. So
you could create a couple of fresh pins for a single blog post, you dig?
You’ll do well to spread out the pins for a week. Two pins to your posts per day and pins
from other people’s content.

Schedule Pins Consistently

To supercharge your Pinterest following and speed up resulting traffic to your website,
you need to pin images consistently. Some bloggers report noticing a significant increase
in traffic when they started pinning up to 80 pins a day. Whoa, really much if you ask
me.
Use the old 80/20 rule. Pin 80% of other people’s content and 20% of your content.
Personally, I like to use Tailwind to schedule pins for the week on weekends. That way I
don’t have to manually pin every day. To tell you the truth, pinning every day is hard.
You got blog posts to write, lead magnet offers to create and craft, and a whole lot of
other things to do.
That’s why Tailwind is invaluable. You can schedule all your pins for the week in one
sitting and join an unlimited number of tribes to spike up your traffic.

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 TRAFFIC BLUEPRINT FOR INTERMEDIATE BLOGGERS

Beginner bloggers rely on social media to drive traffic to their website,

advanced bloggers rely on Google.
There is only so much traffic you can get from social media platforms.
Majority of blogs that grow above 100k monthly visits do so with organic traffic.
Take a look at the Google Analytics traffic source for the blog of Robbie Richards, an SEO
expert.

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Organic search made up 52% of his traffic and direct made up 25.74% of his total traffic.
Direct traffic usually grows as organic traffic grows.
The growth of direct traffic is tied to an increase in organic traffic.
So let’s add organic and direct traffic and we’ll have 77.74% of traffic coming from
organic and direct.
Traffic from social and referrals are 8% each.
As it is for Robbie Richards, so it is for most established blogs.

I’m going to show you how to optimize every blog post to get as much
organic traffic from Google as it can.
Remember that this is a long-term traffic strategy.
You’ll see results in months, not weeks or days like social media marketing.
Let’s go.

1. Find Keywords You Can Rank For

Unfortunately, it’s not every keyword you can rank for right now, especially if the
Domain Authority (DA) of your blog is not that high.

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Some keywords are dominated by big brands with domain authority of 70 and above.
Install Moz extension on your browser and log in to see the domain authority of your
site and that of competitors.
Look at how the Domain Authority (DA) for websites will look like when Moz is running.

Use Google Keyword Planner to find keyword ideas.

Before you run off with a keyword for your blog post, type the keyword in Google
search.
If there are more than four blog post titles that mention the exact keyword on page 1 of
Google with a significantly higher DA than your blog, I wouldn’t recommend you to go
with that keyword.
However, if there are less than four blog post titles that mention the exact keyword on
page 1 of Google with a DA that’s a little bit higher than yours, go for it.
Even if your domain authority is a little bit lower than those that are currently on page 1
of Google for that keyword, you can still rank above them.

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 2. Include Your Target Keyword In Your Blog Post Title And URL
Sprinkle it inside your blog post and include it in your headers too.
Three mentions of your keyword in your blog post are enough. Overdoing it attracts
Google’s penalty.
While writing, focus on user experience over the placement of keywords and include
your keyword only when it feels natural.

3. Create In-depth Blog Posts (Very Important)

In-depth blog posts can help you rank above posts with higher domain and page
authority than you.
After a visitor reads your blog post, he/she should have known everything there is to
know about the topic without further reading.
I’m talking of creating monster guides that mark the end of a user’s online search for
specific information.
As Brian Dean puts it, “create content that deserves to be on the first page of Google.”
For different niches and industries, the average content on Google’s first page differs.
Some are 2000 words, others are 3000 words, and some contain an average of 8000
words.
Here’s what I normally do before I start writing my blog posts.
I type my keyword on Google search and go through the blog posts on the first page of
Google.
Open each of these blog posts and copy the whole text inside a Microsoft Word
document.
Take a look at the word count.
If the blog post with the highest word count is 2000 words, I’ll create a 5000-word blog
post.
Most times, the domain authority of these sites are higher than mine. So creating a
‘value-bomb’ content is the surest way to rank above those sites.
This is content that Google can’t ignore.

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Content that’s more comprehensive, image-rich, easier to read and implement, and
lengthier works for me when competing with big brands.

4. Use the “land and expand” strategy

A month after you’ve published your blog post, head over to your Google Search
Console to see related keywords that are driving visitors to the post.
These related keywords can drive in hundreds and thousands of traffic even more than
your primary target keyword.
Chances are that your blog post is already ranking for some related keywords that you
mentioned naturally at the writing stage.
But there are also some keywords you didn’t mention that Google ranks your blog post
for based on search intent.
You’re going to find these keywords and weave it into your blog post.
The traffic to that post will go up in a matter of months.
That’s the land and expand strategy.
To find these related keywords you didn’t mention in your blog post, go to Search
Console>>Performance.

Scroll down past the performance graph and you’ll see all the keywords that your blog is
ranking for.
You’ll see a list of keywords under the “Queries” tab along with clicks and impressions.

Click once on a related keyword you want to investigate, then click on the Pages
tab to see the blog post that’s receiving traffic for that keyword.

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Most times, you’ll find that some keywords you didn’t include in your recently published
blog post are ranking and sending trickles of traffic to your post.
Now, find a way to work those related keywords naturally into your blog post.
After you’re done, submit the blog post to Google for re-indexing.
To submit for re-indexing, just paste the blog post URL into the inspection field at the
top of the Search Console dashboard.

Press Enter and click on the “Request Indexing” button at the next page that appears.

5. Update your blog posts every six months

Blog posts that are outdated or haven’t been updated in two years tend to lose their
Google ranking to fresher content.
If you notice a drop in traffic to one of your blog posts, it’s likely that it needs to be
updated.
Keep the traffic to your posts intact by updating it every six months or so.
To get the most results, make it longer by including new headings and sections. Also,
make sure to remove outdated information.

Old Blog Posts Receive the Most Traffic

The age of a post has a role to play in its rankings.
Keep publishing high-quality content consistently and you’ll soon have a bunch of old,
amazing posts sending you sweet organic traffic.
After you’ve published a post, promote it on social media so as to build social signals for
Google.
Then move on to the next post.

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But Bryan, are you saying I should spend 80% of my time writing blog posts and
20% promoting it?
Yes.
Haven’t you noticed that immediately you stop promoting your posts on social media,
your traffic drops badly?
Aren’t you tired of always promoting your post in order to maintain the fragile traffic
you get in your Google Analytics?
With the prolonged promotion, you’re only delaying the inevitable drop in traffic to your
blog.
What if you can get steady traffic without any effort in promotion on your part?
That’s what optimizing your blog post for Google is about.

Instead of promoting your blog posts, start ranking them.

When your blog posts start ranking, they’ll be receiving a constant influx of traffic
without you stressing about on different social media platforms.

This is the mindset shift a beginner blogger must make to become a pro
blogger.

Let me know how you’re progressing with your blog. Connect with me on Twitter.

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