Two years ago, when I started writing Mochi Mommy, I was expecting a grand total of one person to read this blog. (My mom. I expected my mom to read my blog. Not even my husband.) Lo and behold, somehow now I am averaging about 15,000 page views a month! When I mentioned this to other new bloggers on Instagram, they were shocked. I hadn’t realized I was doing anything special, but maybe I was on to something. To narrow down my blogging strategies, I recently sat down with my friend Tammy, who has been working in SEO consulting for three years now. She helped me audit my site to teach me allllll about growing my blog’s traffic. So now, due to popular request, I am passing on that knowledge to you! Buckle in, this may be a long blog post. But keep reading to learn all about where my blog’s traffic comes from, how to get more traffic to your blog, and all about SEO for beginner bloggers!
Where Does the Most Blog Traffic Come From?
Once you start googling “how to grow my blog” you’re going to start seeing a LOT of ads for blogger workshops. Half of these workshops are going to tell you the secret to blog traffic is Pinterest. The other half are going to be pushing something called SEO. So what’s the real deal?
Pinterest Vs. Google Search for Getting Pageviews
Did you know that I get the LEAST amount of pageviews from Instagram? But that’s not uncommon. Instagram is NOT one of the main ways to get traffic to your blog. With the amount of bloggers on that platform, it’s surprising, right? Instead, Pinterest and Google searching are the biggest drivers of blog traffic, both for me and, it seems, for most blogs in general.
Unfortunately, Pinterest and Google require very different strategies for getting your blog seen. That means, if you’re going to use both, you’re going to need to learn two different platforms. It can be a lot of work. I know a lot of bloggers prioritize using Pinterest over trying to rank on Google, because it’s easy to see quick results. In the beginning, I also was definitely getting most of my pageviews from Pinterest. However, over time, I shifted my priority to working on ranking on Google. Here’s why.
Pinterest is both a search engine AND a social media platform. And like other social media machines, you need to be consistently active in order to become and maintain your popularity. In other words, you’re constantly making new pins and pinning material. It’s a huge time suck!
Now, you definitely should not ignore Pinterest altogether. It’s definitely a great way to get blog traffic, and you never know if a pin will go viral. However, my advice to get the most blog traffic with the least amount of work is to rank on Google. And in order to rank on Google, you need to be using SEO.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It means you are making your site optimized for a search engine, i.e. Google. How Google works is that it sends out “crawlers” to your website to basically see if it’s any good. The crawlers’ job is to look at two general things:
1. Is your website GOOD? and
2. Is your post relevant for searched terms on Google.
If your blog satisfies these two demands, your post will pop up in the results when someone Googles a question.
This is called ranking.
When you rank on Google, that’s when you get a lot of blog traffic.
So How Do You Rank on Google?
Like I mentioned before, Google sends out crawlers to check your site. There are two main things you need in order to rank on Google: 1. A generally good website and 2. A post that actually answers a question that someone Googles. When you implement SEO strategies, you are using tips and tricks so that your site meets these demands. Let’s first tackle the second point – having a post that answers a Google-able question. The SEO strategies that will help your blog do this are all about keyword research.
What is Keyword Research?
In order to rank on Google, you need to actually write about things that people will search for. That’s the bottom line. If your blog is your personal diary, where you write your philosophical ponderings, that’s great. But it’s probably not something that people are searching for on the internet.
So how do you know what people are searching for? KEYWORD RESEARCH!
Let’s say that you already know a certain topic that you want to write about. That’s perfectly fine. What you need to do is take the topic and then find the most Googled search terms around that topic. That way, when people search for those terms, your relevant blog post will pop up.
How do you do this?
One easy and free way to do this is by literally Googling a bunch of different terms that are related to your topic. When you Google, you can see how many results pop up. The more results there are, the more widely searched that term is.
If you’re looking to be even more strategic about it, however, you can use the free chrome extension Keyword Surfer. When you Google a word, the Keyword Surfer will show you related search terms by volume. Not only do you get ideas for more common keywords, but you can also decide how big you want to go. The most commonly searched term might have SO many results, you’re in for a lot of competition. If you’re a newer or smaller blog, it might be smarter to target a keyword that has a slightly smaller volume. Get my drift?
Once you decide on the keywords you’re going to use in your post, then you need to strategically place them in your post. The way you do that is by using your headers.
What Headers are Important for SEO?
According to my SEO consultant, H1 and H2 are the headers you need to use for SEO. When you write a blog post on WordPress, you can see different headers, H1-H6, that are available to choose from. H1 is always the title of your blog post. The other H2-H6 headers not only change the size of the font, but also tell Google how your post is structured. I.e. H2 is seen as a bigger topic, with the subsequent H headers being seen as subtopics. In order to rank on Google, you want to put your main keyword(s) in your blog title (H1) and H2, as well as within the body of your text.
So if you’re not using headers within your blog posts, this is your sign to start.
Other Ways to Get Your Blog to Rank on Google
Alright, so we just went through keyword research, which was point number 2 on how to rank on Google. Now let’s go back and focus on point 1 – having a well-run website.
There’s a lot that goes into this, and I’m not the most techy person in the world. But what I’ve learned from Tammy is that generally, a good website provides a good user experience. Here are some factors that will play into user experience and legitimize your website in Google’s eyes:
- Having your own domain name (i.e. www.yourwebsitename.com)
- Good site speed (i.e. quick loading time)
- No intrusive ads or spammy features (like popups every second asking you to put in your email)
- Having backlinks
What are Backlinks?
Backlinks are URLs that link back to your website from other people’s websites. Why are these important? Well, besides the factors listed above, Google also needs a way to see if your website is legit. And one of the best ways to see if a website is real or just spam is to see if other legitimate websites reference yours. So the more that other, non-spammy websites include links back to your blog, the more authority your blog has in Google’s eyes.
If you’re a blogger, and you’re reading this, this is your sign to reach out to me and collaborate on including backlinks to each other’s websites.
More Help With Blogging
Whew, we finally made it to the end of this SEO lesson! I’m still learning about SEO myself, so I’m sure I missed some things. But I hope that this post was still helpful for you. If it was or if you have more questions, I’d really appreciate it if you left me a comment, or pinned this to Pinterest.
Are you new to blogging? Still trying to learn how to start a blog at all? My friend Kaya from Comfy Girl With Curls has a great post all about launching a blog. Definitely go check it out!
As always, you can find me on Instagram to reach out to me as well.
Happy blogging!