Have you hit a page views ceiling on your website? That’s fairly common among people with newer blogs. You get everything set up, you fill your site with content, you add to it on a regular basis and at first you grow…to about a hundred or so page views per day.
And then, things seem to stall. You get stuck at the “around a hundred page views per day” mark and struggle to grow much beyond that.
If that’s the problem you’re facing, you’re in luck! You’re in luck because a) it means you’ve done the basics right, and b) your site is more-or less working, just on a smallish scale.
That means it’s time to enter a new phase of traffic growth and that requires a very different strategy than what you’ve been doing to this point. Here’s a quick overview and a list of strategies you can employ, starting today, to take your page views to the next level.
Spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally).
First Step: Killer Articles (1-2 hour per day)
Killer Posts are generally time consuming to write, so don’t be surprised if you struggle to generate one per week. If you do, shoot for one every other week. The point is, you want to add a big, meaty post like that to your blog at regular intervals.
Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on).
Killer Posts are generally time consuming to write, so don’t be surprised if you struggle to generate one per week. If you do, shoot for one every other week. The point is, you want to add a big, meaty post like that to your blog at regular intervals. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work .
So what makes a killer post?
Well, as you might expect, they take numerous forms, including:
- Compiled lists of high value resources for people in your niche (“Ten free art programs that will take your digital art to the next level” – or similar)
- Detailed tutorials – This assumes you have a certain level of expertise in your niche and can teach others to do something they may be struggling with.
- Solve a problem in your niche – Again, this assumes you’re an expert in your niche (and you should be!). Think back to one of the problems you encountered early on and explain how you solved it. Or, identify a common problem that others are having in the niche and demonstrate how to solve it. Either approach lands you in the same place.
When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my social media account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”
Second Step: Networking (30 minutes per day)
To execute #2 successfully, you’ve got to understand your market. That means, you’ve got to know at least a little something bout demographics.
Who are the people most interested in your niche? Are they predominantly male or female? How old? Do they tend to be single, married, or an even mix of the two? What are their preferred social media channels?
Some of this, you can find out just by exploring the corners of the internet related to your niche. Where do you look for content about your niche? Odds are, that’s where most others who are interested in the topic are looking too, and that’s the social media channel you want to embrace.
Build a presence for yourself there, both by sharing your own content, but also by liking, commenting on, and sharing the content of others who have a strong presence in your niche. Form a kind of “virtual posse” with 5-8 of these people and become an active presence, both on their websites and on their social media channels.
When you write one of your “Killer posts,” share it with them. If they agree that it’s high value, you’ll start getting backlinks from them, and you’ll be able to increasingly tap into their followers. That’s when you start seeing really rapid, next-level growth.
Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:
- commenting on other blogs in your niche,
- linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
- interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.
Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together.
Your blog is your blog, but if that’s all you’re doing, you’re missing huge potential traffic streams. Your killer blog posts make a great starting point for a video script. You can essentially record yourself talking about the same topic and upload the video to YouTube or other video sharing repository.
This gets your content in front of a different set of eyes and plays into the fact that different people learn and use the web in different ways.
Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day)
The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:
- letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
- letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
- getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
- getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
- posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.
If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.
Fourth Step: Normal Posts (30 minutes per day)
Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles.
In addition to your periodic “killer posts,” you should be regularly adding lesser content to your site. This is no less well written, but these smaller posts are much more narrowly targeted. If your killer post is the steak, these are the potatoes and side salad that go with it. You need both for a good, well-rounded meal.
“The Basics” also includes making sure you’re hitting all of the basic SEO Best Practices, including the little details like good interior linking, image tags and the like. Never lose sight of these details!
There are, of course, plenty of other things you can do to take your pageviews to the next level, but even if all you do is execute these four things on a regular basis, you’ll find your pageview count growing at a steady clip!
For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:
- a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
- a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
- a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
- a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers
While killers articles are essential to promote your blog and bring new readers aboard, normal posts are the ones that will create diversity in your content and keep your readers engaged.
About Daniel
Daniel Scocco is a programmer and entrepreneur located in São Paulo, Brazil. His first company, Online Profits, builds and manages websites in different niches. His second company, Kubic, specializes in developing mobile apps for the iOS and Android platforms.
Thanks Daniel, this is the exact article I was looking for.
This is a Killer Article!
This actually boosted my confidence
Nice article , I am learning new things from you buddy thanks
Very useful tip. The only thing which people miss here is commenting and promoting their well written stuff on social bookmarking site.
Readers should take an example of your post which is well promoted on Twitter. If not 100 even 10-20 nice tweet will help to get good traffic.
I was Sent this article from a friend, I think its informative and really boils down to commitment.
This is one article that I read thrice at work (normally won’t do it). It just struck me to the core and right on target.
Man, This article has come to me in the most needed time.
I kinda have stuck with my blog… only publishing normal articles… and having 100 page views for 2nd week now… no increase at all..
Some great tips. I have been trying to increase my daily visits for sometime now and you have given me the 4 steps that I need to follow.
i takes 2 hours per day… thanks for sharing this artikel..^^
I’m going to take this into practice. I actually started last week a “song of the week” post, but now I’m thinking of planning a killer article once a week.
i found these tip helpful, thanks very much
Hey Daniel, this one is a killer article! I will implement your advices for my blog. Thanks
I guess this is really what Michael Dunlop did to earn more dollars online as a blogger. Isn’t it outrageous ? That at the age of 21 that’s he is.http://www.internetbusinesspath.com/podcasts/michael-dunlop-interview
Great & useful tip. I’ll follow this and increase the traffic on my blog.
Daniel, thank you so much with these useful tips. It would be of great help but I do need some more ideas about “killer articles.” Same with other new blogger, one of my constraint is how to drive traffic to my blog. Again, thanks….
Daniel, wonderful tips. Time constraints are one of the most common complaints we hear when we’re talking to potential clients about blogging and other forms of social media. Thanks for breaking it down into understandable and manageable chunks.
Good tips as always, especially like how you suggest the amount of time we should spend on all this. You should do it because you enjoy it not just to gain traffic.
Very well said. I like this. Killer articles can be in a few words but catchy. Few words, yet going straight to the details.
If only writing an awesome article like this takes 1 hr for me! Great advice and practical too.
I am going to take this on board.
I tried a routine similar to this, but in my observation, 30 minutes of networking seems not enough Content writing is really something that takes time, and it must be prioritize. I just have concerns on the times allotted for the other areas.
This seems simple and great…. I will try following this… Thanks for providing this fantastic article…!
@B. Durant, check the “Popular Articles” section on the homepage. Most of those are what I call killer articles, and they all generated a very good response in terms of traffic.
Great information. Really simple yet extremely effective advice. I shall be following this closely.
Top info Daniel. I like articles that are broken down into bite sized chunks to explain a few points and I’m going to print this off, stick it on my desk and use it as a reference for daily use.
Really simple but essential tips for novice bloggers. Thanks for these step by step guideline.
This is exactly what I was looking for. I recently started a blog and I am doing a lot to get traffic but the results are very slow. I’ll implement these ideas and I’ll think I’ll have some look. I’m feeling optimistic again, thanks!
I have a new blog which I made my first post on March 1st, 2009. It has been doing very well so far overall, it has web traffic and pagerank.
Great article! However you haven’t mentioned which are the best places to publish these articles to get in tons of new traffic.
This is a nice summary of blogging activities. My blog is about 3 weeks old and I was already practicing some of the titles from your list. But some of them are new to me and I will put them into practice asap.
So it takes 2.5 hours to do this. This is really interesting! Thanks for sharing them.
Fantastic Daniel. my blog is now going into its fourth month. your article seems to raise me up and do it in a more structured way.
Killer articles: Can you link to two or three of your own that you put that kind of time into and got the reaction you were expecting traffic wise? Also an example or two of ones that you didn’t get the traffic/reaction you had expected would be nice to see.
Well-written, and specific advice. Thanks!
Great advice! I’ll definitely be putting this into practice at my site!
This is me commenting on another blog to get more traffic to mine. That’s the point of blogging about blogging, right?
They are very good points. And they are only useful if they are executed. You need to be honset to yourself and set a time managment for these tasks.
I found this post very useful and inspiring for my new blog. Cutting tasks down in to manageable sections makes them a lot better to cope with. As always, an inspiring article to help keep going!
What I enjoyed about your thoughts here is that you point out that your blog needs some extra “killer” content to push it above the many blogs that are out there. Something to be recognized for is crucial. Great thoughts.
Hmm, I think I gotta start pumping more time into the primary articles. I’ve spend several hours on them, but I think I’ll kick it up a notch. Setting these tasks on daily todo-list and set/schedule time for’em will get’em done.
@Arun, for this article I believe I spent one hour.
Wondering if you wrote this post just for me. I’ve hit a glass ceiling with my traffic, and I’m having problems knocking through it.
This is really a nice recipe to have gr8 for the blogs f or sure . Especially I like about the Killer artic le and the time spend on networking others and writing comments .
Just wanted to add freebies and such stuff do not give success all the times .. So according to me be careful while giving free stuff ..
Sudeep
Daniel and Laura,
@Laura, notice that the 1 hour per day I mention is to be spent on the same article. So total time is from 5 to 10 hours for a killer article.
You and Darren at ProBlogger have consistent posts that get page ranks in the 3-4 range which is really good for a post.
I used to do one freebie release a month some time back. Freebies are crowd pullers and they get heavy re-tweets and stumbles.
Thanks Daniel,
This is a winning combo, short, sweet and effective.
Killer articles are great at gathering some traffic. I recently did a post on whether Coscto membership saves as much as everyone claims. It too some time to look at all the benefits, both popular and rarely used, and organize all our savings.
Thanks Daniel, this post is a good one! i will follow this four steps!