EXPLODE your traffic in 1 month!

I never imagined writing one of these “explode your traffic” posts. Mostly because I started this blog as a way to decompress during my second year of medical school. This blog began on wordpress.com and I switched to self hosted in August. Other reasons I never imagined writing this was because I did not have a specific niche. Also I blogged about things that I love and find inspiring, and my traffic originally grew little by little. In 2018 after a 4 month-ish blog break due to circumstances out of my control, I decided for a new start in 2018.

I began writing and putting out content. Kept changing certain things hoping I would see some change. In the beginning I was frustrated because I did not notice a difference. Then, halfway through February I was going through my stats and to my surprise I was about to break 1000 page views! I could not believe it. In January my traffic increased from 300 – 600 page views. Realistically, I hoped to reach 800 and steadily grow 200 per month. Never in a million years did I think I would jump from 600 to over 1800! Knowing there are SO many of us out there looking to increase our reach I wrote this guide hoping it will help YOU explode your traffic. So pin and share this post if you feel it could help YOU.

Redirect

This is only if you, like me, started out on another platform like wordpress.com. If this doesn’t apply to you, feel free to skip to the next point.

When I first bought my domain, theme, and did my transition in August I did not think the WordPress redirect purchase was necessary. Oh how wrong I was. I can write a whole blog post on all of the mistakes I made early on. But of all of them, the most shocking one was that little redirect purchase. My .com blog had really good traffic and engagement and failing to get the redirect really made an impact when I went self hosted. It was basically like starting from scratch. It made it really hard to gain traffic in the beginning, and then when we were struck and disconnected I basically disappeared off the grid, only made it worse.

So if you started out on another domain and you are struggling to build your traffic, GET THAT REDIRECT. It will really be worth it, trust me. The day that I got mine, my traffic when from about 20 views per day up to 60, and then it kept rising every day after.  Redirect can be set up through your host site, like Site ground. They can even set it up for free, and you do not have to do anything. If you went like me, then it has to be done THROUGH WordPress itself. The price is like 13 euros for the year. So, in summary, don’t be like me and purchase your redirect ASAP.

Own Your Link Page

Link pages are apparently all the rage right now. This is most useful if you have an audience coming from Instagram where you can only post 1 URL on your bio. If you don’t know what a link page is, it is basically a place where you can link several pages at the same time, like this.

Link.tr is the most popular of these because it is very user friendly and you can set it up in a couple of minutes. A lot of people really like it and it works great. The problem with this is that what you are trying to do with a link page is drive traffic to your blog. By using a link tree website you are driving traffic to someone else’s page rather thank your own. I hadn’t even thought of this until someone in a group board mentioned it. She posted about a super easy way to create your own, and drive your traffic to your own page. Trust me, like with the redirect, I started seeing results right away! Building my own link tree page took me like 15 minutes and I feel like it really helped EXPLODE my traffic.

Engage with others

I know this is something you see on EVERY single post like this. But it’s there for a reason. You can expect to have a million people reading your content and commenting if you do not reciprocate. Not only is it about “give to receive” but also putting yourself out there.

Read, like, and comment on other bloggers content. Oftentimes, they will check out your blog and leave some love back. Also other people visiting THEIR blog will see your url and maybe click and browse. It’s a win-win situation. Someone gets engagement and you get exposure and engagement. This is especially helpful if it’s another person in the same niche(s) as you. Also remember, it’s not just about you gaining exposure, it’s about enriching the blogging community and maybe making new friends. I have gotten to know several people from this wonderful world of blogging and they are absolutely amazing (you know who you are!).

Use Your Social Media

This is another popular one, but do not underestimate to power of social media. Like with the point above, the key to growing on social media lies in engagement. In order to grow with the ever changing algorithms, you need to engage with others within your niches. Enjoy the process, make friends, and find out what your audience wants. For example, a lot of my traffic comes from instagram. My biggest audience there is fellow medical students and health professionals. But I have also begun to branch out a little bit and attract fashion lovers from professional careers. Pinterest is very popular, but I haven’t fully figured it out and it doesn’t drive as much traffic to my blog. My facebook page and personal account are another big source of traffic and I try to keep the page up to date and engage there as much as possible.

So you see, social media is a great way to drive traffic to your blog. The key will be to figure out which platform you can best manage and attract your target audience. To balance everything you will have to analyze your time and see how you can best divide your time for each thing. Pinterest is a great resource and Lauren Duclos from ellduclos.blog has amazing resources to help with understanding it. If you are interested in using specific social media, a quick Pinterest search can give you many posts to help you explode your traffic using X platform.

Be Patient

This might be the most important point of this whole post. The best advice I can give is do your best and BE PATIENT. Nothing in life happens overnight, and blogging is something that takes time. Start out with small goals and do the best you can to achieve them. Love the content that you put out, and constantly seek criticism on how you can improve it. If you are looking to succeed in anything you need to find your happiness in doing it. Celebrate your achievements big or small and trust that what you are doing will pay off in the end. Slowly you will start to see growth and improvement and then modify to continue on that path. Figure what works, what doesn’t, and focus on what works FOR YOU. One day something will click and it will explode your traffic. That day you will feel like a million buck! In the meantime, celebrate and love what you do.

Patience is an amazing virtue and we really need to take every journey one day or step at a time. These are some of the things that I do and that I believe helped me grow in a short period of time this 2018. Keep in mind, some of these might not work for you, but some might. The best way to grow is to be genuine, love what you are putting out there, and find what works FOR YOU. I cannot stress this enough.

There are many copies of things out in the world, and what will make you stand out is your unique style.

I would love nothing more than for you Pin and share this post if you enjoyed it and found it helpful. Let me know in the comments if you did!

What ways have you grown your reach and engagement? Let me know below!

Thanks for stopping by.

XO

Jani