If you don’t get enough Pageviews even though you spend hours and hours writing a blog post, you maybe need to improve promotion methods.

Many bloggers give up blogging sooner because they don’t quickly see the results they want. Blogging is a low barrier to entry. But it’s a real online business. It needs to be treated as a business if you really want to monetize it.

In this post, you’ll learn 10 effective and proven ways to promote a blog to grow your readership.

DISCLOSURE: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a small commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no additional cost to you. Please read my full disclaimer here for more info.

Optimize Your Blog’s SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to rank high in google search.

Starting from May 2021, Google will add new considerations for the SEO approach. The new SEO approach is called Core Web Vitals. What does it mean to bloggers?

How long your website takes to display all of the contents? How long your website takes to submit a form, click a link, or tap on a button? How long your website takes to display all of the fonts or images?

All these will matter to website rank in google search. How to check your site speed? There are several ways to check your site speed, but the most common way is PageSpeed Insights developed by Google developers.

It’s free and easy to use. You just need to type in your website URL and click Analyze. You can switch desktop and mobile on the left side. The mobile score is usually lower than desktop.

How to improve the site speed? If your website is built by WordPress, use plugins like Autoptimize and Monsterinsights.

Autoptimize makes optimizing your site really easy.  Monsterinsights provide you site speed reports that include issue and solution to it. 

Use SEO Friendly Headline

To drive traffic and improve google search rankings, you’ll need to create SEO-friendly headlines that attract your audience.

Usually, these are important factors to create SEO friendly headlines:

• Balance between common, uncommon and emotional words
• 6 words tend to drive more click-throughs
• Uncommon words get more attention from people
• Power words stand out
• Combine common and uncommon words
• Emotional words usually get a lot of attention from people
• Headline length
• Sentiment like positive, negative, or neutral
• Make sure your title doesn’t cut off in search results

I use the MonsterInsights plugin for my WordPress site because it has a headline analyzer.

This headline analyzer provides a word balance score and recommendations to improve the score. It’s very easy to install and use.  Moreover, very helpful.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of finding popular words that your target audience searching for on Google. The easiest way to do keyword research is using a search engine.

For example, type “make money” on the google search bar. You’ll see related searches at bottom of the search result like:

• make money online PayPal
• how to make money on YouTube
• real ways to make money from home for free
• ideas to make money
• creative ways to make money
• online platforms to make money
• creative ways to make money
• make money online with google
• make money instantly

These words are most googled on the internet with the keywords “make money.”

HOWEVER, Google’s search result factor is keeping changing based on Google’s rule. There is no right answer for SEO since it’s keep updating.

My best advice is to focus on your audience. Did your audience make some action when you share your content on social media? If they comment, like, or share it then your audience has interested in that topic. Approach to the topic from a different point of view could be better than keyword research in some cases.

Engage with your audience. Monitor their reaction to your content.

SSL Certificates

SSL certificate is a security certificate that allows a secure connection between a computer and a web server.

Now, internet users can browse site information before they access the website. How? On the search result page, users can click three vertically line-up dots to open site information like the security of the connection to the site and also when the site was born. Most people don’t want to visit your blog if the connection is not secure.

This security builds trust in your website and protects your site visitors. Google’s ranking factors also included “security.” So, it’s pretty important.  

I use Positive SSL Certificates to protect my website. Positive SSL is one of the most popular SSL certificates on the market because it’s an inexpensive and hassle-free cert. I highly recommend Positive SSL Certificates by Namecheap for bloggers, portfolio websites, and small businesses.

Some web hosting like WPEngine and Bluehost includes SSL Certificates in the package. In that case, you can save some money!

Rewrite and Republish Old Blog Posts

Rewriting and republishing old blog posts can improve your blog’s traffic. Google loves fresh content. Create a new title, add new images, update information, and then re-publish it with today’s date.

You don’t have to do this with all of your blog content. Pick some contents that you want to promote it more.

Guest Blogging

Guest posts also called “contributions” are the act of writing content for other bloggers or websites. It is consistently cited as one of the best ways to build high-quality backlinks and generate more traffic to your blog or social media. Backlinks also boost your Domain Authority score. (DA)

Blog owners get new high-quality content and guest bloggers get backlinks. It’s a win-win-win situation for both. Find some blogger similar writing style to yours and being a guest blogger is by far the highest return investment you can make for your blog.

Note: This site, Happier Freelancing welcomes guest post applications from other bloggers! If you are interested, please contact me here.

Related Post: How to Write a Guest Post Offer That Will Accept

Social Media Marketing

Share your blog post on social media!

Social media marketing is one of the most cost-effective strategies for bloggers to spread blog posts, create community, connect with readers as well as learn about competitors.

To maximize your social media marketing strategies, it is important for you to understand each social media’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, Facebook is great for word-of-mouth marketing. Instagram is good for building a community/fan and generating leads on sale. Pinterest is an excellent tool to help increase links back to your website for some categories. Twitter is good for promotions, campaigns, and broadcasts.

You don’t have to create every single social media account. Pick some of them that will help your blog traffic (:

And also, don’t forget to add social sharing buttons on your blog! Make readers share your content easily. 

Social Media Content Presentation

To promote your blog content on social media effectively, you need many followers.

To get many followers, your social media content needs to be useful, interesting, informative, and entertaining. Create something people want to share with others.

Here are some examples of social media content:

• Your blog posts
• Motivational quotes
• Infographics
• Tips & tricks
• Holiday posts/Seasonal posts
• Behind-the-Scenes
• Freebies
• Product reviews
• Emojis
• How-To video
• Use daily hashtags 
• User-generated content 
• Polls
• Industry news
• Share other bloggers content

I used the free online-based graphic design tool Canva to create Instagram content. This tool has a lot of free templates, so you don’t really need design skills. It’s very easy to use and navigate.

I upgraded to Canva Pro ($9.95 a month for the annual subscribers) after using the free plan for 6 months. Here is a full review of Canva Free vs Canva Pro.

Use Pinterest Effectively

Pinterest is social media service designed to enable the saving and discovery of information on the internet using images. Users create pinboards and pinned information or images they like.

Many bloggers use Pinterest for their blog marketing, but to be honest I couldn’t see any benefit of using Pinterest at first.

I started to see the benefit of using Pinterest after switching to a business account and started to use Tailwind. (Business account is free)

With your business account, you are able to see the Overview of your Pinterest account.

The overview includes top pins and total impressions of each, engagement rate, pin clicks, etc. These are really helpful for keywords research! In my case, “How to Make Money with Amazon FBA” and “Investing for Beginners” are the most shared contents. In other words, my audience is interested in these topics.

Tailwind is a content marketing tool that includes scheduling, analytics & monitoring, content discovery, hashtag suggestions for Pinterest & Instagram. (It’s free) My Pinterest impressions increased by 120% within 5 days after I started to use Tailwind Communities.

Tailwind Communities has 4,000+ niches to share relevant content and grow your reach. You post your blog content here, then community members will share your content on their Pinterest accounts. In return, you also share community members’ content on your Pinterest account. Helping each other’s blog marketing. You’ll get a lot of “content shared” in this community.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is also a great idea to drive traffic to your site, but convincing your visitors to give you their email addresses are not easy.

If you want to collect site visitors’ email addresses, you have to offer something they want in return. Therefore, most bloggers use lead magnets such as:

• eBooks
• Mini-courses via email
• Checklist
• Cheatsheet
• Template
• Swipe File
• Planner
• Worksheet
• Printable
• Tutorial
• Report
• Guide

Again, Canva is one of the best tools to create these lead magnets at no cost or little cost. You’ll find tons of free templates!

If you don’t want to create graphics for email marketing, use your blog post as lead magnets. WordPress plugin called Content Locker allows you to hide part of your content and make them available when users sign up for your email list.

It will look like this:

To learn about Content Locker here is a how-to tutorial.

Oh, by the way, I use Mailchimp and ConvertKit for my email marketing. If you just started email marketing and have no subscribers, I recommend Mailchimp. If you want to do segmentation and have subscribers, I recommend ConvertKit.

ConvertKit allows you to send PDF files automatically after people sign up for your email list. This automation is very convenient. Mailchimp can do similar things but you need to integrate with other software. Yes, it’s time-consuming…

Wrapping Up

These are all proven ways to promote a blog, but the most important thing is consistency.

Don’t try everything at once. Step by step and little by little promote your blog post EVERY DAY. Don’t expect massive traffic to your blog overnight. Don’t expect many subscribers to your email list overnight.

Quality is more important than quantity. You are not buying your audience; you are building a relationship with your audience.

Happy Blogging!