These 16 ways to increase summer blog traffic will help you (and your ad revenue) get through any seasonal drop in page views. Check out and share the infographic!
16 Summer Traffic Boosters for Your Blog
Every summer, the discussions on dropping traffic are all over the blogger groups on Facebook. Clients lament the loss of traffic (and ad revenue) and begin nervously biting nails.
Most of the time, the traffic drop is a good sign that people aren’t as tied to their devices and the Internet as some experts want us to believe. But, it can hurt our incomes so it’s natural we want to increase summer blog traffic!
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NOTE: If you’re looking for the shareable infographic, it’s here!
3 On-Site Ways to Increase Summer Blog Traffic
Sneeze Pages
Create sneeze pages for all of your popular topics. As a reminder, a sneeze page is just a popular category’s landing page.
Rework Posts
Rework older posts, taking 10 minutes to update the title (not the URL), make it a little easier to read (or add a new resource), and create a new image. Put it back into a heavy share rotation. Note: you can use both popular posts and ones that didn’t meet your traffic expectations.
Clean Up Your Site
Remove some of your advertisements and test traffic. Apologize if your site became commercialized – you know if it has. Apologize to your readers via social and your newsletter. Be honest with them and let them know you’ve made changes to better support their experience.
3 Ways to Use Social (and Your Phone!) to Boost Traffic
Micro-Blog
Micro-blog on a previously non-traffic-generating platform (move to Twitter for a while or micro blog on Instagram for a week).
Social Media Exclusive Series
I love these because it gives value to those who are loyal followers. Also, it’s a pretty good reason to promote the “See First” indicator on Facebook. CTT: These 16 summer traffic boosters for your blog will help the dip in page views!
The Change Up
Change it up or experiment: do live streaming, post question-heavy shares on Facebook, or only share tweets for an entire day. Changing things might help to reset an algorithm for your page/profile. Or more likely, it will give you the refreshing break you need from managing 5 or more social profiles!
5 Off-Site Ways to Increase Summer Blog Traffic
Advertise
Consider paying for promoted PINs or advertisements on Facebook to increase summer blog traffic. It’s a little bit of a tense situation to set them up initially, but when done correctly, paid advertisements on these two networks can boost a slow month for a small investment.
Guest Post
Yep, right for someone else and write something really, really good! Don’t “save” all the good stuff for your blog – get it out there and WOW new audiences.
Bookmarking Sites
Share to (or join a share group) StumbleUpon, Digg,and other bookmarking sites you might not be sharing to yet.
Get Friendly
Work on a collaborative project, focusing on the cross-promotion piece. If you and a blogging buddy see eye-to-eye on a particular aspect of your content pillars, work together and a. get it out faster b. cross promote and win new readers.
Link Parties
Investigate popular link party start times. As true as it was the day they were invented, the key to getting traffic from a link party is to get in early!
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Don’t forget about the VERY SHAREABLE infographic here. I sincerely appreciate it!
5 ‘Slap Your Forehead’ Ways to Boost Summer Traffic
Call to Action
Emails: Do each of your newsletters have a single, clear call to action in every one? Get really focused and write 20 different subject lines to find the best one to help you increase your open rates. Then, spend at least 15 minutes crafting a 3 sentence introduction to some of your popular posts. It’s best to start small if this is new to your audience, so give them no more than three options. You could even increase the number of emails you send.
Social: Can you reword your social shares to increase your social click-through rates? Are you sharing engaging images and copy in your shares or are you posting with, “A new article, *insert title here,* has been posted on *insert blog name here.*” #no #justno
Just Do It: SEO
Long-term focus to start NOW: search engine optimization (SEO). It will pay off, just not immediately. If you’ve just started or want to raise your game, I offer a free, pretty rad checklist on how to nail each and every blog post.
Psst: I have a super-duper SEO checklist that makes getting your post ready for people to actually find it. You get it when you get access to the Resource Library by signing up here!
Become a Private Eye
Check for stolen content (including hot-linked images, pingbacks, stolen PINs, etc.).
Evaluate Changes
Think back: did you change anything recently? Did you focus on one topic or stop talking about another? Did you highlight something controversial? Change email providers?
WRITE.
WRITE. The best way out of a traffic slump is to write content. Evaluate your content plan and REALLY dig deep. If you haven’t done an ideal reader map and surveyed your audience, now is a great time to do both.
Summary
Look beyond your analytics – analytics are great, but they don’t tell you the whole story. They never have and they never will. These 16 ways to increase summer blog traffic will have you breathing a bit easier soon.
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