Learning how to get your blog noticed is something many bloggers struggle with. Blogging is incredibly competitive, and it’s no longer enough to just write blog posts and share them a few times to grow an audience.
There’s no single best way to grow your blog and build a readership. Additionally, many of the methods I’m going to cover take months or even years to see complete results.
But if you’re serious about blogging the following tips on how to get your blog noticed will set you down the right track.
1. Write Awesome Content
Nothing you do to grow your blog will work well until you are creating content people care about. If your articles are lackluster any promotion or optimizing will fall flat. Even if you bring a reader to your site they will not stick around.
You'll never generate any momentum. You'll have to fight for every new reader because you won't have many repeat visitors.
Writing blog posts is different than any other type of writing you do. Figuring out how to connect with your reader while giving them the answers they came for is a skill that you will build over time.
They didn't teach you how to write blog posts in school but you can learn it. You can learn it like I did, by writing thousands of articles over a decade — or you can have someone teach you.
Here's a cheat sheet to writing great content.
- Find the questions that your ideal readers are asking
- Answer the readers question fully yet succinctly
- Format your blog posts so they are scannable
Learn more with the Hit Publish Course.
2. Learn SEO
Learning search engine optimization, or SEO, is a foundation of successful blogging.
With SEO, you can write blog posts that attract readers from search engines like Google without having to spend time promoting your blog.
This form of traffic, known as organic traffic, is also engaged. I mean, think about it: these are readers who actively search for questions online and then stumble across your blog.
Now, SEO is quite complex. In fact, Google has hundreds of ranking factors for determining how articles rank on its search engine.
However, some critical SEO skills to lean include:
- Keywords you can rank for
- Writing proper titles, meta descriptions, and URLs
- Spacing out your content with headers
- Getting backlinks, which is when other websites link back to your blog
If it feels overwhelming, start out by using my SEO checklist. This guides you through writing a blog post that follows on-page SEO best practices.
As for getting backlinks, I’ll tackle that topic in a moment.
Learn more: How to Use Your Keyword — An On-Page SEO Checklist
3. Build Your Email List
As a blogger, your email list is one of the most powerful tools you have to get your blog noticed.
This is largely because you own your email list. So, while social media trends and Google algorithms can change and impact your traffic, you can always rely on your email list to reach readers.
If you want to start building an email list, you also have options. Email service providers like Mailerlite and ConvertKit let you grow an email list to send out newsletters to your subscribers. Both platforms are also free for your first 1,000 subscribers and then scale affordably with your subscriber count.
To actually start building your email list, give away a freebie to encourage people to subscribe. Many bloggers use free ebooks or digital downloads to entice subscribers, but create content that makes sense for your blogging niche.
Learn more: What You Need to Know Before Starting an Email List
4. Use Social Media (The Right Way)
Social media is one of the most straightforward ways to get your blog noticed. You write content, you share it, and you cross your fingers that people take the time to visit your blog.
When used correctly, social media can obviously be pretty powerful. Plenty of bloggers actually get most of their blog traffic from Pinterest or Facebook groups, not Google.
However, one common mistake bloggers make is trying too many social media platforms at once. In reality, it’s usually better to excel at one thing than to do multiple things poorly. If you want to get people to read your blog, pick one social media platform and nurture it into a traffic source.
This doesn’t cost money either. For example, you can use Canva, a free design tool, to create eye-catching Pinterest graphics for your blog posts.
You can make an eye-catching graphic in just a few minutes on Canva. Then manage your social media accounts with schedulers such as Tailwind and Social Bee to help drive more traffic without spending a ton of time on social media.
Learn more: Tailwind Review — Features, Pricing, Pros and Cons
5. Start Guest Posting
Guest posting involves writing blog posts on another website on behalf of your blog.
While this might sound like extra, meaningless work, guest posting has two major benefits:
- You usually get a backlink or two
- You get to reach a new audience with your writing
Getting backlinks alone makes guest posting worth it, provided you’re posting on a blog of a similar or larger size and that both websites are in similar niches. Plus, if readers like your writing, there’s a chance they check out your blog and even become email subscribers.
You can usually find a blog’s guest post policy on their contact page or “work with me” page, so search around in your niche for some guest posting opportunities and make them happen.
6. Try HARO
Speaking of backlinks…it’s time to talk about HARO.
HARO, or Help A Reporter Out, connects journalists and knowledgeable sources to collaborate on articles.
In a nutshell, here’s how HARO works:
- Journalists submit requests for pitches to HARO
- HARO sends out three daily email blasts to sources that contain pitch requests from dozens of journalists and publications
- Sources respond to pitches with their insights
- Journalists pick pitches they like, publish them, and usually include a backlink to the source’s website
So, if you’re a fitness blogger, you might see a request come in from Health Magazine asking for expert tips on the best weightlifting shoes.
If you’re knowledgeable, you can write a HARO pitch in reply. If the journalist likes your pitch, next thing you know, your blurb is published in a Health Magazine article and you just scored a free backlink.
Learn more: How to Write a Successful HARO Pitch
7. Contribute to Forums
Another reliable way to get your blog noticed is to share posts on relevant forum groups.
Reddit is a blogger favorite for this trick. This is because Reddit has thousands of micro-communities, known as subreddits, that neatly divide users into various interest groups.
Subreddits don’t always allow self-promotion or link sharing. However, ones that do are a blogging traffic goldmine.
For example, r/Money has over 50,000 members. On this subreddit, there’s a mix of questions, pictures, YouTube videos, and blog posts being shared every day.
If you’re a finance blogger, sharing a link here occasionally is an fast way to promote your blog.
Just remember to add value by engaging with people in the comments and to share other content as well, not just your own. Forums are all about building a community and adding value, so keep the focus on helping others.
Check out my free training “How to create a blog that gets attention, even in an oversaturated niche”
8. Network with Other Bloggers
This one is my personal favorite and something I think is often underappreciated in new bloggers. Building relationships with other bloggers is an excellent way to grow your blog and, more importantly, to learn from other bloggers.
Usually, bloggers stick with other bloggers who are in their niche. These relationships form naturally as people guest post on different sites and stumble across each other’s blogs in the wild.
Join a blogging mastermind group to get to know other bloggers and support one another. In fact, I believe in this so much that have free mastermind groups you can join right here. These are small groups of bloggers who meet regularly to discuss their successes and challenges.
Joining blogger groups on Facebook is another great way to find other bloggers. A quick search of “blogging group” yields hundreds of results, with many groups having tens of thousands of members.
My advice is to only join a few and to look for ones that focus on your niche if possible. If you join dozens, you’ll be overwhelmed, so there’s no point.
Blogging conferences are also an excellent way to meet other bloggers. Depending on where you live, there might even be blogging meetup groups at a local cafe or library. Whatever the case, make an effort to meet other bloggers and start nurturing those new relationships.
There are numerous advantages to meeting other bloggers, including:
- Finding new guest post opportunities
- Exchanging ideas and tips for new posts
- Learning new skills from others
- Finding new projects to collaborate on
- Landing freelance blogging opportunities
Plus, if you connect with bloggers on platforms like Twitter, you’ll find bloggers asking for round-up posts or shouting out their fellow bloggers in weekly threads, all of which can help you get more readers.
9. Repurpose Content
Another trick to get people to read your blog is to repurpose your best content on other platforms.
This actually makes a lot of sense. Researching and writing a blog post are the two most time-consuming parts of a blogger’s routine. Once that work is done, why wouldn’t you squeeze every drop of value out of your work?
One popular method is to syndicate your content on Medium.com.
Medium is a free blogging platform with over 60 million readers. You can also import your blog posts to Medium, re-publish them, and tap into this massive readership.
And don’t worry: this isn’t duplicate content since Medium adds a “canonical tag” to imported blog posts. This tag informs Google that your blog is the original source and not to treat Medium’s post as original content.
Another content repurposing idea is to convert your posts into YouTube videos.
Granted, this takes time, and you have to learn how to record footage, edit, and upload a decent video to YouTube.
However, the referral traffic you get from YouTube to your blog helps move the needle. Plus, it’s very engaged traffic too; just check out this snippet from one of my client's site of Google Analytics data to see YouTube’s bounce rate:
I wouldn’t focus on repurposing content if you’re a new blogger since you should focus on building out your site and evergreen content first.
However, if you have a rich content base and want to grow your audience, this strategy is worth the time it takes.
10. Do More of What Works
If you’re still wondering how to get your blog noticed after reading this list, it might be time to take a step back. Like social media, if you try every trick at once, you’re likely setting yourself up for failure.
My tip here is to dig into your Google Analytics data to find what’s working for your blog and what just isn’t cutting it.
Where is most of your traffic coming from? What type of content are people most interested in?
Ask yourself these questions.
If you’re spending all your promotional efforts on a traffic source that doesn’t bring in new readers, you need to reevaluate your strategy.
Similarly, if you run a multi-niche lifestyle blog but find readers only care about one kind of content, it might be time to niche-down.
Related: How to Choose a Blog Niche — 6 Critical Questions + 60 Niche Ideas
Summary
Anyone can start a blog and put their written thoughts out into the world, which is pretty awesome if you ask me.
But, while anyone can start a blog, learning how to get your blog noticed takes time and practice.
The good news is all of this has been figured out already. People have been blogging for more than two decades, and if you want to get more blog traffic, there are plenty of options.
Pick an idea or two, put in the work, and keep testing what works. Blogging is a dynamic game, but if you’re consistent, your growth will be as well.
