Want to learn how to promote your blog and get more people reading your content? We’ve got you covered.
In this post, you’ll learn 35 powerful promotional tactics you can use to drive a ton of traffic to your blog posts.
To keep things organized, we’ve grouped the strategies into different marketing channels: SEO, social media, email, and paid ads (plus some bonus strategies that don’t fit into any of the above).
Start off by choosing which channel you want to focus on and go from there.
How to promote your blog through SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) is how most bloggers choose to promote their posts and get people onto their site.
It involves optimizing your content to stand the best chance of ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs) so that you drive more organic traffic.
Here are some actionable ways you can promote your blog through SEO.
1. Follow on-page SEO best practices
The best way to drive more traffic to your blog is to make sure you optimize every post you publish for search engines, following on-page SEO best practices.
There’s a lot that goes into on-page SEO, and it gets a little complicated. We don’t have time to cover everything here, but some things you should make sure you do for every post you publish include:
- Start with keyword research. You’ll need to write about topics that people are actually searching for in Google & other search engines. These keyword research tools will help.
- Use the target keyword (that’s the search query you hope to rank for) in the blog post URL, title tag, meta description, and first paragraph.
- Cover the topic in-depth.
- Make sure your content aligns with the other posts that are already ranking on Google for the target search query.
- Choose an appropriate word count – around 2,000-3,000 words is often a sweet spot, but it depends on what’s already ranking.
- Make the post as ‘readable’ as possible by separating it up into sub-headings (H2s, H3s, H4s, etc.)
2. Update your old content
If you’ve been blogging for a while, the chances are you probably have a ton of old posts on your website that you haven’t looked at in forever.
The problem is that Google prefers to rank fresh, new content. So if your posts are old and outdated, they’re probably not ranking as well as they should be.
An easy fix for this is to go back over them and update them to freshen them up.
If any information is outdated, remove it. Give each post a few new images, add some new information, and make sure they’re all optimized around a good target keyword, then republish.
This might be all it takes to trick Google’s algorithm into taking another look at your old posts and pushing them up the search rankings, thus boosting your organic visibility.
Related reading: How To Update Your Old Blog Posts For Maximum Traffic
Bonus tip: If updating all your old content seems too much work, consider using AI writing tools to speed up the process. You can feed them your old posts and enter some prompts to have them rewrite them in a way that adds value, then repost. But don’t rely on AI entirely. You’ll still need to edit the post and fact check everything. Publishing AI content without editorial oversight is a recipe for disaster.
3. Start guest posting on other sites
Guest posting involves reaching out to other blogs/online publications in your niche and asking them if you can write an article to be published on their site.
Typically, you’ll be credited as an author on the post, with a bio link that points back to your blog.
Plus, if the site you’re writing for agrees, you might even be able to directly promote your blog inside the guest post.
Not only is guest blogging a great way to build backlinks (which helps with SEO), but it also gets your blog in front of a brand-new audience.
The hope is that some of the people who read your guest post will decide to check out your blog and become regular readers.
You can use a blogger outreach tool to help you find guest posting opportunities.
Then, send the relevant contacts at each blog an email with your pitch—just make sure you read our guide on how to write outreach emails that don’t suck first.
Related reading: The No-Fail Guide To Guest Blogging Strategy
4. Sign up for Qwoted
Qwoted is another great tool for promoting your blog. It’s a similar idea to HARO which doesn’t exist any more.
It’s a service that journalists use to find experts to contribute to the stories they’re working on.
Bloggers can use it to get featured in major publications and news outlets.
Look for questions in your niche, then contact the journalists who asked them with thoughtful answers to their questions, alongside your details.
If a journalist decides to use your quote in the article they’re working on, they’ll typically credit you as the source with a link back to your blog.
Their readers might click this link and visit your blog, helping you to reach a larger audience.
Plus, backlinks on major news sites can really help boost your SEO, which also helps you to rank higher and drive more traffic from search.
5. Make the most of internal links
Internal links are links on your website that point to other pages on your website. It’s important to use them effectively.
If your blog is part of a larger brand website/ecommerce store, try linking to it in your main navigation bar. This should help funnel more of your site visitors to it.
Also, each time you publish a new blog post, try including some internal links within it that point to other, related posts on your site.
Not only does this help with SEO, but it also helps improve the user experience, and direct viewers around your site to increase your overall page views.
6. Focus on the right keywords
If you want to successfully drive organic search traffic to your blog, it’s vital to get your keyword strategy right.
Use keyword research tools like SE Ranking to find relevant keywords that your target audience is searching for.
The best opportunities are those with a high monthly search volume and low competition.
Try to target only those keywords that are relevant to your niche, that are likely to drive traffic, and that you stand a reasonable chance of ranking at the top of the SERPs for.
To analyze keyword competition, you can look at what’s already ranking. If all the posts that are in the top 10 results on Google come from very authoritative websites (with a high DA/DR), and are well-optimized, it might be tough to compete.
But if they’re from websites with a similar domain authority to your own site, and they’re not well-optimized, you might be able to outrank them.
How to promote your blog through social media
SEO isn’t the only way to drive traffic to your blog. Lots of bloggers have had success promoting their posts through social media. Here are some social media marketing strategies you can try.
7. Share new posts on all your social media accounts
Every time you publish a new blog post, share it on all the social media platforms you’re active on.
That might include Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
It helps if you have a large social following. And the best way to grow your following is to regularly publish awesome, engaging social content.
You can use a social media scheduling tool like SocialBee to plan your calendar, curate social content, and schedule posts months in advance.
Most scheduling tools also come with some sort of RSS feed function that you can use to share your new blog posts on social media sites automatically, so you don’t have to do it manually every time.