Trying to increase website traffic is a marathon, not a sprint.
But sometimes you just need a quick traffic boost right?
That little bit of growth that’s going to take you from this level, to the next which is really helpful when you are figuring out how to start a blog.
So I’m going to teach you 10 quick-hit methods that will increase website traffic in 30 minutes or less.
What Will I Learn?
And many, many more…
As a Freelance Blogger, I get emails like this all the time:
Because clever Bloggers know that having guest authors is great for traffic.
Why?
Well here’s just a few of the benefits:
Nichehacks managed to grow their traffic month on month by hiring guest posters.
In fact, Stuart rarely creates any content for himself anymore. It’s usually written by talented Guest writes (or his awesome writing team).
So, how do you get these guest bloggers on your site?
The best place to look for this is on your competitor’s sites.
Take a look at the top sites in your niche and scroll through their content.
Click on the articles that appeal to you and take a look to see who wrote them.
Be careful skim reading the blog page for author names though. Because some site owners will display their name as the post author:
But inside you’ll find it’s a guest post:
So be sure to click the content and do your research into who actually wrote it.
Once you come across a guest blogger, add their name and contact details to an excel Spreadsheet.
In reality, this should take you no more than 15 minutes max. Because you don’t have to read their content.
Also look at the impact it’s had:
And make your decision from that data.
Then spend the next 15 minutes getting in touch with them.
Getting a blogger to write for you (especially for free) is all about how you frame it.
Tell them you’re doing it to get traffic for yourself and they’ll pass.
Frame it as an opportunity to grow their own site. Their client base. Or, their portfolio.
But instead of telling you how to do that, I’m going to do it for you. Because I’m just a swell guy.
Here’s a customizable email template you can copy and paste to any Blogger:
Hey [NAME],
I’m [YOUR NAME] from [YOUR SITE]. I saw your guest post on [SITE] and completely fell in love with it! They way you [INSERT SOMETHING AWESOME THEY DID] was incredible.
I was wondering if you’re open to creating a guest post like that over on my site?
I’ve got [INSERT SITE STATS] which will let you [INSERT BENEFITS].
If you’d like to bounce some ideas around, let me know!
Look forward to hearing back from you.
Thanks for your time,
[YOUR NAME].
Now all you have to do is sit back and wait for the responses! Then, that lovely spike in traffic when you get them online.
Most bloggers take this view of sharing their own content:
Share it on the day it’s posted. Share it again a few days later. Leave it at that.
And be honest, you’re guilty of it. Because it feels like if you do any more, you’re over sharing your content.
But the research says that’s wrong.
Wisemetrics looked at how frequency affects the impact of a tweet:
Your second tweet has 86% of the performance your first tweet does. And, even on your sixth tweet of the same content, it still has 67%.
That’s because less than 14% of your followers will ever actually see it twice.
Your tweet only has a half-life of 24 minutes max. So unless someone is glued to Twitter, it’s rare they’ll see it again.
Which means it’s time for you to cash in on that knowledge and boost your traffic.
With tools like CoSchedule and Hootsuite, you don’t have to do this the manual way either.
Bulk upload your tweets, and set them to release at specific times throughout the day or week. Add a striking image for best results.
It’s every blog owners dream to be able to rank for keywords like:
Or whatever the shortest keywords in your niche are. But, these are the most competitive keywords to fight for. And it’s not a battle you’re going to win.
Why not spend 30 minutes tweaking a few of your blog posts to rank for long tail keywords instead?
Neil Patel wrote about how 90% of QuickSprout’s traffic comes from long tail keywords.
And most of yours will do to.
Hit some long-tail research in Keyword Planner. Then see what best fits the content you’ve already got.
If you need any help with this you can watch Matthew’s mini video series to uncover every easy to rank for keyword in your niche easily.
Once you’ve done that, update your content to feature these less competitive, more accessible keywords.
Do this a couple of times to a couple of different pages, you’ll start to see a noticeable spike in your traffic.
Using Reddit is one of my favorite growth hacking techniques.
But Redditor’s are a real pain.
And, they hate spam.
Well, more to the point, they don’t like people coming onto their patch, promoting their own work. If you’ve ever posted to Reddit you already knew that.
What you didn’t know is that getting Redditor’s on your side isn’t hard at all.
You just need to become one of them.
And that’s easy to do, in less than 5 minutes a day, once you know how.
Karma is what you get when you post useful links, or comments, that add value to the subreddit.
And it shows up on your profile, like right here:
The more Karma you have, the more people will trust your links.
The more people who trust your links, the more people will click them.
Simple.
Now I’m going to be super honest here. I didn’t create this method.
I learned it from Ryan Stewarts guest post here and on Robbie Richards blog. Ryan was able to get 1691 visits in less than a month.
Now I’m not going to go into painstaking detail here, because you’re after quick traffic. So I’m going to give you a quick answer.
So here’s how to do it in a few steps:
Do this every week for the next month and watch your Karma grow.
In fact, it’ll be so high, you’ll never have to worry about being well received again.
Visual content is fast becoming the most powerful tool you can use.
Not only is it processed 60,000x quicker than written information. Your reader also remembers 80% more of it.
But on a traffic level, it’s an essential tool for you to use.
Even if your images don’t mean anything they can give you a huge boost in shares and page views. That is, as long as they’re relevant to your content.
Research from BuzzSumo found that blog posts with:
Take advantage of this in posts you already have, or make a commit to adding them to your upcoming posts. It’ll never take you more than 30 minutes to do.
This tip is so powerful that in February this year Matthew created 237 brand new featured images for every post on the blog
But if you’re not a graphic designer, where do you start with images?
My best recommendation would be Weekly Snaps.
Sign up for free, and you get 20 royalty free images into your inbox every week. That means you don’t need to give credit for them, and you can edit them in any way you choose.
And they’re super-high quality:
You can then take those images and load them into the 100% free editing tool Canva to make some great graphics for your blog.
It’s the same tool that Matthew uses!
Buffer recently ran an experiment where they posted no new content for a month.
All they did was repurpose and share their old content.
They added new graphics. Spruced things up here and there. And carried on like nothing had changed.
All they lost was 4% traffic.
In a month. Where everything was repeats and reruns.
Not a bad result, huh?
But you’re not looking to lose any percentage of traffic. You’re looking to grow it. So, what’s my point?
It’s this:
Your audience doesn’t care as long as they feel they’re getting quality content.
It doesn’t matter if it’s brand new or a rehashed old piece of content. If they feel they’re getting value, they’re going to be happy.
So why not try repurposing a piece of your old content and sharing it with them in a new light? Perhaps you can use my awesome website content or listicle tips for some serious upgrades.
Your audience is bigger and more engaged than when you first wrote it. Chances are its reach will be further.
You could:
The possibilities are endless.
The more unique you make it, the more traffic it’s going to drive.
You could even go as far to ask your audience new ways they’d like to see your content, and then repurpose it that way.
Or you could take the lazy option like Matthew has on SlideShare by syndicating PDF versions of his posts-
It’s not really the best method, but the proof is in the pudding.
Here’s a little known fact:
You can change the type of card you share with on Twitter.
And when you do the results are awesome. Because, as BuzzSumo’s research also showed, Large Twitter cards get three times more engagement.
That’s a lot of engagement.
If you’re not sure what a large Twitter card is, it’s one of those tweets that looks like this:
And all it takes is a little bit of change to the coding of your blog post. And, trust me, it’s easy. If I can do it, so could a well-trained chimp.
Matthew actually uses Social SEO Pro to achieve this and much more by improving his social performance on every network, not just Twitter.
But if you don’t want to use a premium plugin you can do it for free with Yoast SEO.
If you already have the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress installed just go to:
SEO > Social > Twitter
Just copy the settings from the screenshot above and hit Save Changes.
That is all there is to it!
Now just take any link to any blog post and manually put it in to Twitter. Share it and watch the traffic come rolling in.
I don’t believe you should beg for traffic.
I’ve also never seen asking Influencers to read or share your article to be begging.
If you think your content is valuable enough to help people you should be telling everyone about it. After all, it’s important to fight for your ideas.
This is a nice, quick way to get a boost of traffic. Because it works in two ways:
So it pays to get your post out there to influencers. Because that’s partly the way posts go viral. If you’re looking for great backlinks this is a great way to start a relationship too.
You can definitely send your post to 20 influences in half an hour.
Get out there, say “Hi!”, tell them about your content, leave. It’s that simple!
Website speed is an important factor in Google’s algorithms, your conversion rate and how much money you make.
If your site is slow, you’re going to rank lower. That’s just a fact nowadays.
Plus, if your site is slow to load, readers are going to bounce. And if they’re not reading your content or enjoying your site, they aren’t talking about you.
And if they’re not talking about you…you lose.
This is one of the simplest ways to boost your traffic with zero marketing. If you have your SEO in place, and some solid content behind you, you can’t lose now.
So how do you speed your site up?
That’s down to your site, I’m afraid. I can’t be specific. But if you’re running Wordpress checkout my WP Rocket review which did wonders for my sites speed and is what is powering the blog.
Otherwise you can look at Google Page Speed Insights.
Search your site:
It’ll tell you exactly where you’re going wrong on desktop and mobile. And, what you can do to fix it:
As a rule of thumb, you want to be anywhere above 85/100, because there are some factors you can’t control. At least not in 30 minutes.
Even if you just fix one of these in 30 minutes a week, in a month your site will be flying – and ranking higher.
If you have a Shopify store, take a look at my Shopify speed optimization tips to increase your e-commerce site speed.
Canva’s design school has a solid content strategy.
They know their users inside out, and they create great content for them. And, they get a lot of social shares.
But what I want to talk about is their first viral hit. Or, more to the point, how it happened.
The first time they ran this post on walking it flopped. The headline read, “Why Steve Jobs Took Long Walks, And Why You Should Too”. Nobody shared it.
Fast forward a few weeks and they launched it again with a new headline.
“Why Everyone From Beethoven, Goethe, Dickens, Darwin To Steve Jobs Took Long Walks and Why You Should Too”.
The post took off.
In fact, at the time of writing, it’s got over 85,000 shares.
Not a bad result for changing a few words of copy, eh?
They’re not the only people to do this either. Take a scroll through some of your favourite Facebook Pages or Twitter Timelines. You’ll see for yourself.
People update and share the same posts, under new headlines, to attract different people.
Now I know you have a few posts on your blog that you think, “Man, these should have done so much better” about.
Take them and retitle them. Give them a new, sexy, wonderful headline that’s going to grab lots of attention.
Even give it two or three and share it on different platforms.
This little test wont just get you more traffic now, either. It’ll carry on well into the future. Because you’ll get a better idea of the types of headline your audience likes to click as well.
Matthew uses this free plugin to split test titles on every single post on the blog-
As you can see this makes quite a difference, especially when you consider he is split testing every single post title across the blog – it all adds up.
Cool, so you’ve got your 10 strategies to increase website traffic in 30 minutes or less.
Let’s do a quick recap, you can:
The only question that remains is…
Which one are you going to choose to increase website traffic first?
Let me know your results in the comments…
245 Responses
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Nice strategies to increase the amount of traffic a website is getting. I would like share one thing.I had a post published on my website which was ranked at #4 but as I started getting the user comments on it.Within few weeks after it crossed 20 comments the post was ranked at #1Even comment engagement helps us to keep the content fresh and rank high to get more traffic.
Yes engagement all around helps!
Great post, Matthew. I’ve been working on re-writing old content instead of updating the old one itself and it is working like a charm.
That is great to hear, what kind of results are you seeing?
Nice, this article is very useful for me
I hope it helps you grow!
Really informative
No problem John
Very informative and briefly written Matthew thanks for the efforts to compile this valuable information
No problem Hasnain
Great post and thanks James for usefull tips. Reddit and twitter are a awesome tool specially in facebook. Agains thanks for sharing!
No problem Nestor!
Hi Matthew,Great tips. A note on Reddit based on my personal experience; Redditors are notoriously wary of new people. So if you want get traffic from Reddit, you better take a long time to establish yourself first before even thinking about promoting your own stuff. And if you think you can fool them, think again. Some of them go to great lengths to find out everything about you.That said, once you establish yourself, it becomes a great way to get instant traffic. Although traffic from Reddit doesn’t seem to stick around for long. But the good thing is that they tend to share stuff they like on other social media sites.
Yeah they are a tough community to crack 🙂
Great post Matt, I am just getting more into traffic and seo so reading through most of your content… Just tested my site and it wasnt too good 54/100 mase some changes on the images and now 68/100 with more suggestions to improve on, which I will need to learn more about … I have also added a large image on Yoast seo for Twitter so will see how that goes too… Thanks Again 🙂
Great job Martin, keep up the good work!
An article I post on my website, which I then share on Reddit.
Reddit is the mutts nuts for driving traffic. I have a strategy of writing a quick article about something trending and relating to my niche, with a catchy title, it’s great click bait. 1,000 visitors from little work.
Do you post that on article on reddit or on your blog?
Great article to increase website traffic with detail explanation and ideas given. Thanks
No problem Kishor!
Hi Nice article and valuablle information ..Keep it up !!Thanks
Great piece of tips, I’m glad to have come across this Web page.
No problem Kwasi 🙂
Do you have to teach you affiliate marketing promotion programs
What do you mean?
This is arguably the best ever article on traffic generation that I have come across. I only just came across your blog and the simplicity in which your message was passed across made me fell in love with your blog.
Thanks for your kind words – I hope every post gives the same feeling!
Indeed a great post about website traffic.Nowadays It is very much hard for a blogger to drive targeted traffic to their website and without having targeted traffic, We can never drive customer and sales.Getting website traffic is the most important thing for any website.To have high website traffic, We must have to write high quality content which is very much important to hold the readers on our website for long period of time.We have to write engagging content which can help readers.I am glad that You can covered an amazing article on website traffic. Will definitely follow what you said in this article.Thanks for sharing it with us. 😀
You really like website traffic huh 😛
Never had any traffic from Reddit in 4 yrs but i think twitter is quite giod fir SEO.Many times i see that pagespeed is important factor if any site is slow to open i never open it again. So many factors are their to see and follow
It depends on your niche really – Twitter isn’t great for some niches
wow.. what a nice article i have found ever.every things has mention in simple short and very comprehensive.its very helpful for me atlist. i will really workout on your method and will revert back you after few month.lets see what i will get ?? :-)thanks Matthew
No problem Sudhir 🙂
Like this tips. Congrats!
No problem Robert 🙂
Hi Matt, Loved your article & your writing style. I am still in the begining stage and will implement these as soon as possible. cheers 🙂
No problem 🙂
Great list Matt!Won’t deny, I’m a novice blogger and it is a pain when you’re great at content writing but all the techie stuff (although I am a IT Analyst myself) just eats into your time!And then if you’re like me, you wanna be staunch and trust your content to work. But people nowadays believe in numbers and shares! So cheers to your post and all the amazing info you’ve put in there :)Thanks!
No problem and doing the techie stuff yourself with the help of Google is the best way to learn 🙂
Thanks for so many great ideas. I didn’t realize those things are called Twitter cards – I’m gonna try that out. And thanks for the helpful link on the site speed analysis!
Hi Matthew! Thanks for the awesome tips. I wasn’t expecting several tips that I haven’t even considered. It’s been a while since I have read your blog. I must say that it’s good to be back.Have a wonderful week:)Stacie
Thanks Stacie – glad to have you back!
Excellent article, James. There’s so much “fluff” out there on this subject and even the ones that offer similar suggestions don’t offer HOW to do it. I really appreciate this.
I hope you put it into action 🙂
Nice post Matt , thanks for quick ideas!
No problem Adnan!
Good tips. i will definitely try them especially #8: Tweet 20 Influencers About Your Latest Article
Hey Matt/James!Great post as always!I found #10 to be the most useful one as I definitely have a couple of posts I’m proud of that might’ve flopped because of the headline. We’ll see.For #4 having karma is great, but it’s also important to not break Reddit’s 10% spamming rule. Basically if more than 10% of your posts are of your own content then you can be considered a spammer and banned. Just something to be aware of.Cheers!
Yeah Reddit can be tough, but the tough cookies are the best ones, kinda
Great, thanks James for usefull tips. Reddit is a awesome tool, but not for non-english countries. 🙁
Solid article on traffic techniques.If you’re looking for some more specific Reddit tips:Here’s my Case Study on how I used Reddit to generate 1,032 visitors to my blog in less than 24 hours!http://filmlifestyle.com/reddit-visitors-website/
Thanks for the extra share!
So many good methods here. I just did the speed check and my website is doing terrible actually :/ will try to sort that out for now and then focus on some of your other points!Thanks,Esteban
Uhhh ohh patch that up asap!
Nice one Matthew .i will try it out,this article came when i needed it the most.
No problem!
Nice tips, especially the Reddit one! I will spend 5 minutes daily to see how it goes 🙂
Good luck =D
Nice post! The thing with Reddit is that it really takes time to build trust with the community. I’ve used it in the past, but you’ve really got to have a relevant, non-spammy approach or you’ll be called out in a second.
Yeah they are a very self policing community
Cool article, i always enjoy your post because of the details and much research put into creating it. Thanks especially for the free online editing tool you suggested (canva) much appreciated. God bless you
Thanks Abdul!
Thanks James and MatthewGreat post, great tipsI’m doing some of them but certainly will give the reddit thing a go, even though it can be a problem dealing with a difficult community.The Twitter card strategy looks good too, so will try it.Same comments apply to the 20 influencer tweeting strategy, and the headline revamp idea. Love them.Like I said all the strategies are good. One step at a timeThanks guys!
Just don’t forget to take action 🙂
Hello James,This is an incredibly awesome post, I have a question – can I outsource freelancers from fiverr, freelancer or odesk to write a guest post for my blog because most of them are not bloggers but freelancers. Please lemme know your thought on this.Namaste, Edos Ubebe
You can do whatever you want!
Good tips. Will definitely try the schedule tweet tips. Mass Planner will be the go to tool for me to schedule those tweets. Again, thanks for the content and great tips.
Glad you enjoyed it!
An awesome article James, I was looking for some ways to get some guest posts on my blog and this article is going to help me a lot, once again thanks James and thanks Matthew for publishing it.Regards,Your Silent Reader. 😉
Haha thanks Ali 🙂
its nice how to start my own no idea so pls tell me how to creat my own web site
Here you go https://searchlogistics.com/blogging/how-to-start-a-blog/
Nice article but the real pain is reddit working over it from 2 months but still no success. But i like your slideshare and twitter part. keep it up good going
Great Article, I Just need to know Matt that how should i find influencers in my niche?
Excellent post! But have a query in mind. As i am working on Internet Broadband website so how can i do the Guest Blogging? Will it be a feasible way to do this or do i need to follow some other approach to drive more traffic on my website?Thanks in advance, awaiting your response.
No reason you can’t apply any traffic strategy you find to that niche
Matt Cutt??????You really boom again with the awesome article.The writing style you have is really awesome.Thanks for sharing such simple steps for new & old blog posts.
Haha I can’t take the kudos for this one 🙂
Awesome content as always man. The best thing about your blog is that it is pragmatic! That’s why people like me who are thousands of miles away are able to learn from you and rank for keywords like anything man.Really appreciate the effort man and may your blog become the best in the business.I have put into action a couple of your techniques and I am reaping the benefits inside a month. Heaps of thanks ! No exaggeration !I am currently onto the russian newspaper backlink thing. Hope it works like a charm too. Thanks for everything and keep posting stuff like that.
Thanks Sohaib I’m glad it makes a difference to your life 🙂 If you would like to submit a testimonial I would greatly appreciate it https://searchlogistics.com/submit-your-testimonial/
Great Article, James. Really appreciate it! This reddit karma points method seems pretty good. Definitely gonna implement this. Cheers, Yordi
Thanks for the amazing suggestions Matt! I have heard of reddit before but never really played with it. I might even have a account, think I’m going to give it a go. Looking for new ways to drive traffic other than Google. I did just speed up my website by moving it to a VPS. It helped a lot, Hostgator sucks! I’ll check out the page speed analysis too.Thanks a ton bud. Love your site, you’re a true leader in the IM world 🙂
Here is a little bit more info for you as well https://searchlogistics.com/blogging/traffic/how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-website/
Excellent article, James. There’s so much “fluff” out there on this subject and even the ones that offer similar suggestions don’t offer HOW to do it. I really appreciate this.
Hey Matt, Excellent post. This is a comprehensive guide on how to start a blog and hack your way to get free content and traffic.Just want to add a few more points.. One can use ‘Email Hunter’ to find email address of guest bloggers. It’s free and easy.The other thing I wanted to say is, instead of wasting time to build Karma on Reddit, one can buy an account with high karma for $5 on Fiverr.Cheers!Harsh J. Das
Thanks for the extra tips 🙂
Great post Matt, the Twitter tips look pretty great. I didn’t know about the 3x Twitter card stats.
Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
I’m not personally a blogger but there are some great tips here for any internet driven business.Nice one Matt.
No problem mate 🙂
Great article. I’m using almost all of them, reddit is really a pain for me too when ever i share a post from my site i got some really bad comments, even if the resource is free 😀
Yeah it can be a tricky community at times!