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Want to know how to increase blog traffic for free and fast? Here’s everything I did in April 2022 to grow my small blog!
If you know anything about blogging, it’s that it takes time, patience, and consistency to grow. And that’s totally true! But around here, I’m your friendly neighborhood impatient introvert copywriter.
The Google sandbox actively adores older content and sites with strong domain authority, so the odds of my newer, smaller blog posts organically ranking for the next few months are slim.
Super slim!
I’m on a mission to grow my business and brand impact on as much of my terms as possible. That’s why I want to check in with you each month to show you everything I’m doing that landed me more than 170 pageviews in my first month of taking my blog seriously.
In this post, you’ll learn how to increase blog traffic for free and fast.
How to increase blog traffic for free and fast
If you’re also a new or small blogger, you know the importance of free: resources, strategies, and methods we can use to grow our blogs.
In this blog post, I’ve condensed a lot of cool data and insights in my first month of taking my blog seriously. I hope you can walk away from these posts with a few ideas on how to bolster up your blog strategies.
Here’s how to increase blog traffic for free (and fast) when Google doesn’t know who you are.
Table of Contents
SMALL BLOG GROWTH REPORT APRIL 2022 summary
Around the middle of April 2022, I felt called to do a double-take at my website. So, I audited my entire business: my social media platform, website content, freebies for my micro email list and other digital product offers, copywriting services, etc.
The whole thing needed a makeover — Clueless style!
This month I mostly focused on staying in my research and planning bubble and building less shameful, guilt-provoking habits while I pick up the pieces of this blog one step at a time.
The Copy Sloth blogging stats
We all have to start somewhere. I’m mostly excited to capture this information on a monthly basis, so I can track my blogging journey for next months and years to come.
I think we should all embrace those very small wins when they come in. Celebrating the fact that I made $0.05 my first month of blogging might sound silly to most people.
Sure, it is!
But I believe in actually accepting the idea of progress over perfection. My life isn’t an Instagram post. I’m not an aesthetic photo you see when you scroll on your phone. I’m that sweaty, sweaty gal struggling to pick up her pace on the treadmill next to THAT girl at the proverbial gym in this scenario.
I fall. I will fail. But never will I give up.
So here’s what I’m working with this month as of April 30, 2022:
The Copy Sloth blog:
- Current Domain Authority (ahrefs) – 5
- Total Email List – 64 subscribers
- Total Blog Posts – 6 posts published
- Total Words Written – 13,485 words
- Total Keyword Ranking – 5 keywords
- Total Backlinks – 86 backlinks
- Total Pages Indexed – 86 backlinks
- Monthly Pageviews – 172 pageviews
Earnings & expenses (monthly):
- Ad Earnings – $0.05
- Digital Product Earnings – $0.00
- Affiliate Earnings – $0.00
- Sponsorship Earnings – $0.00
- Ad Expenses – $0.00
Social media presence (in order of priority):
- Pinterest – 1 follower
- Twitter – 0 followers
- Instagram – 841 followers
- LinkedIn – 626 followers
- Facebook Page – 68 followers
Time management & productivity (Avg. Hours):
- Researching – 40+ hours
- Planning – 10+ hours
- Writing – 6 hours
- Email List – 2 hours
- Social Media – 15+ hours
Most popular posts:
- IMPROVE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CONSISTENCY – read more here
- HOW TO CREATE VALUABLE CONTENT FOR SOCIAL MEDIA – read more here
My current blogging strategy
Going into April, I had no real game plan for my blog. There were a lot of back-end issues going on with Google Adsense that I was so focused on troubleshooting. I tend to get sidetracked from my major goals as little things pop up, so I knew I needed to get tough with myself if this blogging thing was going to work.
So here’s what I drafted!
Blog post content plan
Right now, I’m not concerned with quantity. I’m in a phase where I want to build positive habits and create a comfortable routine to give myself the room and space to write as I am able.
With this in mind, I set a goal of writing one blog post per week with at least 1,500 words in each blog post.
I think this is more than achievable for me given that I’ve spent so much time in research mode. I’ve learned so much about:
- The way I want to blog
- How I will show up to market it
- My personal content boundaries
It’s just time I focused on the true queen of blogging: writing and posting content!
I’m zeroing in on what I call content stacking — or posting intentional content that builds up layers of a niched or general topic. This will basically allow me to naturally refer back to some of my previous posts to create a robust content ecosystem.
I aim to be much more specific with my exact blogging process and strategy in future blog growth reports, but this is where I’m personally starting!
Monthly growth goals & expectations
Because I only know what I want to happen right now, it’s so hard for me to nail down a specific growth goal. I don’t have much to compare my traffic to.
That’s why I’m simply focusing on seeing growth increase month-to-month by at least 10% for now.
Not only do I think this is more than achievable, I believe it’s a good way for me to manage my expectations with this blog.
Marketing & advertising
Toward the end of April, I went through everything in my marketing plan and basically threw it out. It wasn’t going to work. Mostly because I’m in a part of my life where I’m tired of showing up in ways that don’t make sense to my inner lazy-girl, introverted nature.
So, I chose to embrace that part of me. I’m running with full force and working out a strong marketing plan that doesn’t involve clocking in so many hours on social media and Canva (hello, graphic design sessions).
I decided I would supplement my overwhelming social media presence for two new things I had a lot to learn about:
- Being a guest on strategic podcasts
- Connecting with other bloggers for genuine engagement/community
Stay tuned for May’s check-in. I plan on unpacking exactly what I did and how I got these two efforts going.
Social media
Now let’s address Ellie the elephant chilling out back in the corner over there. The tea is simple (and not that exciting). I don’t enjoy social media as much as I feel like I should.
That’s why I decided to trim the excess and focus on two platforms — Twitter and Pinterest.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ll still be active on Instagram, my Facebook page, and LinkedIn. However, the difference is that I am trying to cultivate and grow my community on Twitter and Pinterest.
Eventually, I plan on adding in YouTube, but that’s much later down the list of my marketing priorities.
I’ll check back in with how this goes for May!
General action items
Here is the (mostly) complete list of items I focused on in April 2022 (strikethroughs mean I did not complete the item):
Find a writing routine that works for me- Find an introvert-friendly marketing strategy
- Get Google ads on my site
- Create a long-term blog post template
Develop a sustainable, solid blogging processFinalize my email list optin
My current blogging strategy results
This blog post is only the beginning, so admittedly, I don’t have much to say for this portion of the post. As time progresses, I hope to have a clear idea on what I’m doing right and what I need to improve on.
What’s working
I found a great way to connect with other bloggers. I’m not sharing details about that group just yet because I’m still testing out to see if it’ll stay in my marketing plan.
For now, just know that in the last 10 days of April, my monthly pageviews went from only 35 in March 2022 up to around 170 at the end of April. I’m still working to understand just how to decipher Google Analytics, but for now that’s about all the progress I have.
What’s not working
I decided to start my blog in January 2022. By not taking my blog seriously, I’ve wasted so much time and made all the excuses in the “book” about why I can’t do it (or why I have to wait a little longer).
Just start. It won’t be perfect, but that’s okay! My blog will never grow if I never show up.
Steps for next month
Here are things I plan to focus on in May 2022:
- Getting more consistent with my blog post schedule
- Develop a sustainable, solid blogging process
- Finalize my email list optin
- Find 1 podcast to guest for
- Work my introvert-friendly marketing plan
Goals for growth
I want to see that 10% growth in pageviews and engagement by the end of May 2022.
Things I plan on testing
I want to test a few different ways to expand my reach online:
- Less social media
- More connections
- More guest chats for podcasts
- Possibly purchasing blog advertising
What I’m planning to change
At this time, I’m not planning on changing anything. However, I remain ever open to bettering my game plan.
How to increase blog traffic for free
I aim to have a better understanding of what marketing techniques actually get my blog traffic and engagement going.
SEO and ranking on Google are two very critical things; however, I’m determined to find the best strategies to grow my blog without having to wait an eternity to get noticed online.
This post was all about how to increase blog traffic for free and fast.
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I feel your pain. I’ve been at this for 3 years and it’s a slow process. This was a great read. I love your writing style and I’ll be watching out for “introvert” social marketing strategies!
Great information and tips. These definitely will help a lot of bloggers to increase their blog traffic. I will follow them myself as well. Thank you for sharing!
I love the way you break this down and are open about your experiencess blogging. It is very helpful!
This was a really great post to read! It seems that we are at similar points in our blogging journey. I really relate to trimming down on social media. I find it so time consuming and exhausting sometimes but I also know it has its importance. I really only focus on Pinterest and Facebook, and use twitter lightly. Thanks so much for the great post!
This was great to read. It felt like I could have written a lot of it as we started at similar time. So much resonated with how I feel and I have decided to cut back on social media as there are only so many hours in a day.
Thanks for sharing! I will totally be following these tips.
I can feel the pain too..I am also struggling to drive traffic..
Very helpful article..
Congratulations on your $0.05! Because that is better than $0.00, it’s a start.
I agree with you 100% that the efforts toward creating consistent and high-quality content will be more useful for growth rather than hours spent on Social Media.
I ‘m also working on that balance and trying to focus on just a few.
I need this one. My interest in blogging is back and planning how to do it seriously. As of now, I am still using a free one because I don’t have time to blog regularly due to my schedule. I am a freelance writer by the way, which is ironic since I write content for others. Anyway, I am getting more motivated now and this helps me a lot. Thank you.
Thanks for a realistic pov of the blogging world. This post is definitely helpful, as I just started blogging two months ago. I feel like I need a roadmap of what to do next and where to focus my energy the most.
This is hands down JUST what I need! And I’m motivated to celebrate small wins and get my stats together like you did. Thank you so much!
I, too, feel the pain of waiting for Google to see the content on my new blog. It’s important to keep generating content even when you feel like you’re spinning your wheels– it will come!
I enjoyed reading this post. I launched my blog at around the same time and have also found excuses not to just write the posts. Today for example, I spent time applying to affiliate programs and fixing a glitch on my site. Why is that stuff so much easier? I’m inspired to write a similar blog post like this for my blog in May to help hold myself accountable on growing the blog and goals for the next month. Thanks for sharing!
This is awesome! I LOVE how strategic and organized you are about your content planning. I have 0 ideas how much time I’ve poured into my blog except that it’s just a. lot. 100% looking for introvert marketing techniques….I am the most social on the internet. I have some collabs coming up like a podcast interview and I can feel myself WITHERING inside of my skin at the social pressure. Definitely following you, friend!