How to Build a High Traffic Blog?
Do you want a blog that gets a lot of traffic? I have done two big blog projects in my life. The first one was a motorcycle blog that I was able to take it to more than 1 million page views per month. The second major blog project I’ve taken up is this blog: DigitalDeepak.com.
This blog now gets more than 100,000 page views a month and I would be taking it to more than 1,000,000 page views a month soon. You can see from Analytics, that in the last one year, I’ve got more than 1.4 million page views. Now I want to get this much traffic every month. That would be 12+ million page views a year.
In my 12+ years of blogging journey, there are a lot of things that I learned about blogging. I will share the top tips for blogging so that you can also build a high traffic blog and the content in this blog post will help you gain confidence in blogging and yourself that you can also build a high traffic blog.
1. Consistency
When the whole world is searching for secrets to everything, consistency might not look like a secret. But the real secret is: consistency is the No.1 required skill for becoming a successful blogger. Growing a blog is like growing a tree. They say “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years back and the next best time is now.” We can say the same about blogging. The best time to start a blog was 5 years ago and the next best time is now.
If you look at my blog, I have not posted too much content. I’ve posted 2-3 articles a month and in some months I haven’t posted anything at all. But I have been doing this since 2013.
When you start a blog the process is like planting a seed. For a long time, you will not even be able to see the seed sprout into a plant. But you have to keep nurturing it. You have to keep publishing posts in your blog, at least once in a week even if you are not able to see any results.
You will start seeing some results in a month or two, but the results might not be motivating. A plant sprouts but it doesn’t bear fruits. The sprouting is just an indication that it is capable of bearing fruits in the future. When you start a blog and write consistently, you will not be able to make any money out of it for almost six months. But you have to keep nurturing your blog if you want to make it grow into a big tree.
When you are growing a tree, you will not be able to see any difference in the growth on a daily basis. Sometimes even when you see the tree after a week, you will not be able to see any difference. But with months and years, you will see that the tree is growing big and one day it will be big enough for you to take fruits from it.
If you water a tree, you will not be able to get any gratification out of it on the same day or the next day. When you are publishing a blog post, you will not benefit from it anytime soon. That’s the hardest part about blogging. Everyone in the world wants to do something and get results immediately. Wanting instant gratification for the work you do is the greatest enemy of blogging.
This blog post took some effort to write and publish. And I will not see the benefit of this hard until years later. But it’s ok. I am going to grow a high traffic blog slowly. Because that’s the only way you can create anything big. Nature doesn’t force itself for growth. Nature always takes its time to build magnificent things. You cannot make a baby in one month by making nine women pregnant. Somethings take time and you need to understand it very deeply if you have to become a successful blogger someday.
Write one useful blog post a week. Be consistent. Do not do work for the rewards. Do work for work’s sake and the rewards will come. If you do work for the rewards and don’t enjoy what you are doing, you will hate yourself for doing something and the results also will not either. Because when you hate to do something, you have to push yourself to do it. If you have to push yourself to do it, you will not be consistent enough with it and you will not do it long enough for the rewards to come.
I am writing this blog post right now because I enjoy writing. Writing is the most therapeutic thing I do in my life. I have tried so many things to relax. Meditation. Walking. Yoga. Partying. Travelling and a lot more. But writing gives me more satisfaction than anything else. I can write all day, all week, all month, all year and all my life. That’s why I am consistent. That’s why my blogs grow the way they grow.
Writing consistently is just like going to the gym. You build your amazing body over time with consistent exercise. You will not see any chance on a daily or weekly basis. You just have to repeat the same thing over and over again for a long period of time and then the effect of compounding sets in. All big and magnificent things in life come with the power of compounding. Health, wealth and traffic to a blog.
2. Write For One Person
The second most powerful thing that has helped me grow my blog is that I connect with my readers well. If you are reading this right now, do you feel connected? Do you feel like I am writing this blog post just for you? Do you feel like I am talking directly to you? Yes, you. I am pointing at you.
That’s why I am able to engage you because I am writing this just for you. You will read this blog post and share it and come back to my blog for more content because when you read my content you feel you are getting a piece of me and you are able to have a connection with me – beyond time, space, my voice and the visual recognition of my face.
I am able to connect with you because I write just for you. Just you. Yes, 100,000 people read my blog, but every person out there who is reading this blog post feels like I am writing to them directly.
Just because a lot of people read your blog doesn’t mean you have to write to all of them. You have to write your blog for one person and you need to know that person well. I have a wide spectrum of audience but I talk to my central customer avatar. I know my target customer well. That’s you. I know you well. I have a fair idea about your dreams, goals, fears, aspirations, failures, mindset, attitude and more. I know you as a friend and that’s why I can write just for you.
When you write a blog post there is a feeling that you have to appeal to all the people who read your blog. But if you are appealing to everybody, you will end up appealing nobody. Relationships in the real world are done 1:1. Not 1:many. Do you think you can have 5 girlfriends (or boyfriends) at the same time and make everyone happy? You can’t appeal to a wide spectrum of audiences.
You just have to write to your target customer. You just need to appeal to one type of audience and everyone else will slowly start following you. Imagine that all your target customers are behind a big wall. You need to get to the other side. Will you break the entire wall, or will you just poke a hole in one section of the wall to get to the other side?
You just need to impress your target audience. You cannot impress everyone. But if your target audience is impressed, everyone will eventually follow you.
Writing for one person takes practice. Years of writing practice. To write like I am writing now, you need to write for at least 5 years consistently. The more you write, the better you will become in writing long posts, targeted at one segment of the audience and you will be able to connect with them better.
In an attention-deficit world, getting someone’s undivided attention for anything more than 10 minutes is a great achievement. If you are reading these words right now, I am sure you have been reading this for the past 10 minutes and I would pat myself on the back because I think I’ve done a good job in retaining your attention until this point in time.
3. Have a Desire to Help People
Blogging is not a marketing method. Blogging is not a business model. Blogging is a channel and medium to help people. To answer their questions.
You are reading this blog post because you want to build a high traffic blog. I am writing this because I want to help you become successful by having your own high traffic blog. I want to experience the rewards that I am experience with blogging.
I want to help you because I have got help from other people. I love mentoring and teaching people because I want to pay it forward. I also love to teach people because the more I teach people, the better I learn what I already know.
If you are consistent, enjoy writing, but no one is getting value from it then your blogging is just a personal hobby, not a business. Your blog will remain small and you will not have high traffic. You will have a few readers from your social circle, but that’s about it. It will not spread and get more traffic because it is not helping people.
Finding out what people want is not an easy task. It takes a lot of effort. This is where the importance of writing to one person comes in. Because if you are writing for everyone, you will not be able to find out all their needs and address all of them. If you are writing for one person it is easier to know what that one person wants.
During the initial days of my blog, I used to generate leads using a free ebook I gave away and I used to call 3-5 people a day. I used to speak to them for 10-15 minutes and that helped me understand their challenges better. I understood their desires and it also motivated me to help them.
The desire to help people will only come when you understand people. You cannot help someone who you do not understand. Spend less time understanding your own desires & serving yourself, and spend more time understanding other people’s desires and serving them. The people who you help will make sure that all your desires are served.
Final Words
There are tons of tips and tricks when it comes to blogging success. However, some things are more important than other things. You might think that the design of the blog is important, the domain name is important, getting good graphics and images for each blog post is important. Yes, they are important. But having consistency, writing for one person and helping people are even more important. If you focus on the above three, you will make profits and you can invest that money in other important things.
I hope you enjoyed reading this blog. I will be consistent and I hope you will come back to read my blog again. I hope you felt like I am writing this post just for you. And I want to help you. If you have read this blog post until this point, you have discovered the blogging secret. If I can capture your attending with a 2,000-word article… you should be able to do the same for your audience.
I wish you blogging success.
Cheers,
Deepak Kanakaraju