Increase Your Blog Traffic by 20.95% In 28 days (No Backlinks)

In this new tutorial, you will learn how to increase your blog’s traffic without building backlinks, just like I did a while ago.

Yes, I was able to increase blog traffic by 20.95% within 4 weeks. Do you think you can also increase your blog traffic fast, less or more than 20.95%?

Well, it depends on your ambitions and how you work for them.

Before increasing blog traffic, traffic to my site was low-quality and not converting. But, after I used special techniques to increase website traffic, I was able to increase website traffic within a short span of time.

And my affiliate earnings also increased as traffic numbers improved.

The MOST beautiful thing about this traffic improvement is there was…

NO manual link building!

Yes, you heard it correctly. I improved my blog traffic without using any manual link-building techniques.

Hey Chamal, how did you increase website traffic fast without any link-building technique?

Well, I just followed these tips and tricks to increase traffic quickly to my post pages, so I increased overall website traffic by 20.95% within four weeks.

How to Increase Blog Traffic: 12 traffic building techniques that helped me drive more traffic

I didn’t use any black-hat SEO method to force my blog post rankings. I didn’t hire someone on Fiverr or SEOclerks to boost blog traffic within 24 hours. I didn’t pay someone to build thousands of low-quality backlinks to posts. I didn’t use old-school traffic-building techniques such as link exchanges to increase traffic to the blog.

So Chamal, how did you increase your website traffic? I want to learn how to increase website traffic fast.

Well, here are what I did to increase web traffic. Just follow one by one and check your analytics to see how your blog traffic increases daily.

Blogging strategy #1: I deleted many low-quality, non-evergreen, not-converting, and not-satisfying blog posts.

How did I increase my blog traffic by deleting posts? Is it possible to increase blog traffic just by deleting posts?

Even though more posts add more doorways to your blog, it doesn’t mean you must have thousands of posts to drive high-quality traffic. Just look at backlinko.com. Brian posts once or twice (rarely) a month. But, still, Backlinko gets thousands of targeted web traffic from Google and social media daily.

What’s the correlation between the low number of posts and receiving more web traffic?

Actually, there’s no correction. What really causes driving a lot of traffic to a blog/blog post is the quality, informativeness, usefulness, and authority.

Pitiya had 72 published posts. I sent 300+ blog posts to draft to maintain the blog’s quality. Here’s how removing blog posts can improve your website traffic.

• Improve website quality: Google likes quality blog posts and loves high-quality posts. If you don’t add visual content, link to other resources, and improve on-page SEO, Google might not rank your blog posts higher on SERPs. Check out this post on Fiverr Quick Money Making Ideas to Make Money Online Fast. It has 2000+ words, lots of images, and a few outbound links to authoritative websites. And this post on Video Game Tester Jobs at Home: Get Paid for Playing/Testing Video Games. It also exceeds the benchmark of the average word count of the top 10 posts on SERPs (more on that later...) and delivers more extra juice of tricks to make money with a computer that, on the whole, increases user experience and gives them more reasons to read the post.
• Increase overall keyword density: How do Google and other search engines determine what your blog is about? Yes, analyzing keywords and through outbound links, right? If your blog has many mixed articles on health, technology, finance, the stock market, wedding, fishing, camping, and cooking niches, how can Google determine your blog niche? Even a person? It’s difficult, right? I increased my keyword density by removing articles on Games and some low-quality how-to tutorials.
• Increase returning visitors: By increasing the website quality, I could easily increase the number of returning visitors. Remember, returning visitors is a strong signal of how much your website is popular and quality. At Pitiya, we can easily convert returning visitors into email subscribers. And many of them share posts on social media too.

Removing blog posts not only helped to increase blog traffic but also social mentions and backlinks too. Here’s how to find low-quality blog posts that dilute the quality and decrease the website traffic that used to be coming to your site right now.

Step #1: Go to your analysis page and filter last month’s (or three months’) post stats. Order posts from high traffic volume to low traffic volume. Scroll down the page to find posts with less than ten impressions past 30 days. They are posts that Google doesn’t want to send traffic to. Eventually, it influenced other high-quality posts too.

Step #2: To find search influence, go to Google Search Console and find the top pages that Google sent traffic to in the past 30 days.

If you found similar stats on your analytics page on the Google Search Console top pages (less than ten impressions and no clicks), they are the blog posts that prevent your blog from becoming successful.

Step #3: Now open those posts (in the editor) and find out how you can improve the quality of posts.

If you find it difficult to increase the quality of a blog post, simply send the blog post to draft or delete it. No worries, No problem.

Not only me, but some professional bloggers such as Harsh Agrawal also saw a similar improvement in organic traffic after trashing low-quality posts to the basket.

Blogging strategy #2: Paid close attention to Keyword Research a lot

One of the biggest mistakes I made earlier was not researching prominent keywords. If you don’t do keyword research, you don’t know your target audience and who will read the posts.

Keyword research not only helps in driving more blog traffic but also targets quality traffic.

In a previous article on The Importance of keyword research, I explained a few keyword types based on their length, intent, and value and what you should choose for your next blog article. If you didn’t check it out, read it now. It has a lot of helpful information on keyword research.

When I audited my website, I found some important information regarding keyword selection.

• How-to articles are good at driving more web traffic but not converting easily. Ex: How to install WordPress on BlueHost
• You should pay close attention to buyer keywords if you want to get buyers to read your posts and purchase products. This traffic is very easy to convert into email subscribers and social followers. Ex: product + review, cheap web hosting packages, premium WordPress themes.
• Free + keyword traffic is the hardest traffic type to convert into buyers. Do you think people who want to play free games (the keyword is play free games) will easily buy a product from you?
• Long Tail Keywords are what I should use on posts. Long Tail Keywords is really easy to rank on the #1 page (and #1 spot). I used long-tail keyword research tools such as Semrush (my favorite SEO toolkit), WriterZen (cluster keywords, check allintitile, and more. Learn more.), and Google Autosuggest to find profitable long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are low in competition and so easy to rank without backlinks.
• LSI keywords are what’s next keyword generation. Latent Semantic Indexing keywords or LSI keywords are what many people use on search engines to find information. Ex: what’s the capital of Australia? Can you make money with logo design on Upwork in 2022? Etc. It’s hard to use these keywords in blog posts, but you can optimize your blog posts for semantic search by changing words and using synonym words and phrases.
• Just like keyword selection is very important, keyword placements are also important for blog search engine optimization. Add your primary keyword in the first 100-150 words to get the most from your SEO content.

When it comes to keyword research for blogging, there are lots of keyword research tools. Here are a few of the best keyword research tools every blogger must know about.

One of the best ways to increase blog traffic is by utilizing search engines. And one of the best ways to find SEO keywords is by spying on competitors’ traffic reports and stealing their content SEO keywords.

Here is how to find competitors’ keywords to increase site traffic.

Note: I have explained this method in more detail in this post: Competitor keyword research: How to find competitors’ SEO Keywords that drive more traffic, sales, and authority. You may read this post to find the other three ways to steal your competitors’ website traffic.

Traffic Strategy Step #1: Go to Semrush and put your competitors’ website address or target web page’s permalink in the search box. If you want to learn more about this SEO tool, read this Semrush review from here.

Traffic Strategy Step #2: Under Live Organic Keywords in the overview dashboard, click on the full report link to find other keywords that drive targeted blog traffic to a competitor’s web page.

Traffic Strategy Step #3: Exports competitor’s keywords and sprinkle those keywords in your blog posts, and optimize them for search engines.

I have compiled two excellent guides on On-page SEO. Read those SEO guides to optimize your blog posts for search engines.

1. How to increase blog traffic on Blogger – Effective BlogSpot SEO Techniques that work
2. How to increase Tumblr blog traffic – Tumblr SEO Optimization Guide 1st time on the Internet

By engaging in keyword research and competitor analysis, I could add more buyer keywords that convert breeze. As an example, take the “URL submission on Google” keyword phrase. When someone searches this keyword on Google or any search engine, he/she should be new to SEO; hence, I can teach them basic SEO while making money.

A person who googles this keyword intends to increase organic traffic to his or her site or sometimes learns more ways to generate more organic or inorganic traffic. Either way, those are high-quality traffic that I can strategically convert into loyal readers and buyers.

Because of this, I utilized this particular keyword phrase and made a whole new post – https://www.pitiya.com/how-to-submit-site-to-search-engines.html

That’s the beauty of proper keyword research.

If you want to find highly-targeted keywords like these, use SEMRUSH. I recommend this SEO tool to any serious marketer. Read my review on Semrush to learn how this tool can rapidly hack your blog growth.

As you can see above screenshot from Google Search Console, every day, many posts are ranked for new keywords that I optimized and did not optimize. All that is because of well-researched keywords.

Blogging strategy #3: I analyzed Keywords and Backlinks Deeply

One mistake many bloggers make is not tracking keyword positions and checking their backlink profile. I was also in that group some time ago. However, I understood the importance of checking keywords rankings on Google and analyzing the backlink profile.

Keyword Position Tracking

Before tracking keyword rankings, you should analyze the organic keywords on Google search console and other webmaster tools accounts. Here’s a great technique to get more SEO keywords in your blog posts. But, the downside of this technique is when it comes to adding sitemaps. However, you’d find a handful of content keywords through Google Search Console and other webmaster tools (Bing, Baidu, and Yandex).

Find whether your posts rank for irrelevant keywords. You’d find keyword prominence by navigating to Google Index >> Content Keywords.

How to Track Keyword Positions on SERPs

There are lots of search engine marketing tools out there. However, Semrush provides excellent SEO tools for bloggers and SEO experts. The Keyword Position Tracking of Semrush is an amazing tool that can track every keyword you rank on SERPs.

Traffic Strategy Step #1: You must create an account to track keyword positions. Use this Semrush coupon to create a Semrush GURU trial account. (or read all information from here.)

Traffic Strategy Step #2: Log in to your Semrush account and go to the Semrush Position Tracking page.

Traffic Strategy Step #3: Now, create a new project and start adding your website, competitor websites, keywords that you want to track, search engines, etc.

Read: How to Monitor SERP Keyword Rank Positions – Beginner’s Guide

Backlink Profile Checking

The backlink is one of the top-ranking factors that search engines such as Google uses to rank web pages on SERPs. If you want to increase blog traffic fast, you have to have high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites.

Conversely, if your blog’s backlink profile is filled with irrelevant backlinks and spam backlinks coming from adult websites, gambling websites, etc., that practice will surely hurt your blog’s SEO performance.

Here’re a few tools to check the backlinks of your website.

• Semrush Backlink checker tool
• Ahrefs
• Majestic SEO
• Monitor Backlinks
• Webmaster tools: Google Search Console Links, Bing Webmaster Tools

When I checked my blog backlinks, I was amazed by how many copycats have stolen my content and linked it back to my blog. I informed a few of them to delete those posts from their blogs, and I used Google’s Disavow tool for others who didn’t react to my message.

Maintaining a clean and quality backlink profile is essential when it comes to search engine optimization. Else your website will be in the area of Google Penguin eye.

By analyzing keywords and my blog backlink profile, I could rank my posts higher and get more blog traffic.

Blogging strategy #4 Wrote Longer Content

Long-form content, in most cases, beats short-form content. After I started auditing my website, I realized that most of my blog posts ranked in Google’s #1 spot had lots of comments and included more than 3000 words on average.

A survey conducted by serpIQ found that the average word count of the top 10 results in Google SERP is more than 2000 words. So don’t predict to rank on the #1 page if your blog posts’ average word count is just about 500.

And also, a survey conducted by Okdork and Buzzsumo found that the most shared content ranged between 3000-10,000 words.

And Moz found that long-form content receives more backlinks than short-form content.

Also, there are lots of case studies that prove that long-form content yield better results in terms of user behavior.

Why you should write long-form content:

1. Rank for more keywords: The more words your blog posts have, it increases the potential to rank for more keywords.
2. Ability to add primary keyword(s) repeatedly: The longer your content is, you don’t need to worry about keyword stuffing or optimization. It’s enough to sprinkle your target keyword/keyword phrase in the body a few times.
3. Rank for long-tail keywords: This is one of the top reasons you should write longer-form content rather than shorter-form content. With time, your post will receive traffic from more long-tail keywords that aren’t even in the post body.
4. Rank for competitive keywords easily: Another reason why I like to write long-form content on my blogs. It’s easy to rank on the first page for competitive keywords. More about ranking for broad keywords in blogging strategy #11.
5. More social shares and backlinks: As you saw above case studies and surveys, the longer your post is, the more social shares and outbound link your post will receive.
6. Converts: Have you ever thought about why many niche websites (ex: ClickBank affiliate product pages) have lots of content, including testimonials, case studies, benefits, etc.? It’s because long-form content converts better than short-form content. Also, Neil Patel, a popular SEO expert, found that leads coming from long-form content are more quality than leads acquired from short-form content (or concise marketing).

If you want to build a high-traffic blog fast without backlinks, consider writing long-form content with proper research. I increased the authority of Pro Blog Tricks after publishing a few longer pieces of content.

• How to Create a Free Blog using BlogSpot.com – and How to Make it stand out from other spam blogs: exceeds the 8,000-word count.
• Gist Guide and Review – more than 5,000 words
• Grammarly Review: more than 5,000 words
• Search Engine Submission Guide – rank in every search engine, NOT only Google: more than 3,000 words
• ContentStudio Review: More than 4,000 words, plus lots of images

These posts added more keywords, strengthening Pitiya’s content foundation and ranking them on the first page in less than one month. Still, Tumblr SEO tips and tricks guide to rank on Google #1 page for Tumblr SEO, SEO for Tumblr, and Tumblr SEO optimization competitive keywords.

Have you ever wondered why authoritative websites rank the first page for almost every competitive keyword? Ex: Wikipedia?

Because the articles on those authoritative websites are longer and longer, if you don’t believe me, go to Wikipedia and open any wiki page.

Start writing lengthy content if you want to build a blog that boosts website traffic every day from search engines, social media, and other websites.

Yes, you’ll have to spend more time and work hard to compile a particular blog post with lots of words. However, long term, they will bring traffic to your blog.

Blogging strategy #5: I audited my website thoroughly

A website audit is something that you should do quarterly or monthly. When I first audited my website, I found lots of errors, warnings, and mistakes I made on my blog. I thought I did everything right on my blog. But, after I received my website audit report, I found that I had been doing many flaws.

There are lots of website audit tools to examine your website. Some blog audit tools are free, while others are premium but worth using.

Semrush has a website audit tool that makes it easy to audit any website to find weak points and poor SEO practices. Alternatively, you can use the Website Auditor software of SEO Powersuite. Learn more.

Here is a screenshot of the website audit report I received from Semrush.

Even you can find internal nofollow links using the Semrush website audit tool. That’s an excellent way to find out whether you add the nofollow tag to important internal pages. Not to forget that, with Site Audit, you can find images without the ALT tag, broken links, broken images, pages with slow speed, and much much more. Learn more about Semrush Broken link checker from this guide.

You cannot drive traffic to your site if you don’t take care of small on-page SEO settings on your blog. Using a good website audit tool will help to find poor SEO practices on your site that you can’t find easily using other SEO tools.

Blogging strategy #6: Leveraged On-page SEO Practices

This is one of the top reasons I could increase my website traffic by 20.95% within four weeks. On-page SEO is very important when optimizing blogs for search engines for better exposure.

Every minute, two new blogs are created anywhere in the world. And every day, two million new blog posts are published on the internet to get web traffic.

So, how do you make changes to your website to stand out from others? It is so simple. Properly follow white-hat on-page SEO techniques. Here are a few of them.

1. Tweak Page Title for both search engines and people
2. Clean and clear Page URL structure
3. Increase the page loading speed
4. Reduce website bounce rate
5. Proper interlink strategies
6. Responsive design
7. Meta tags
8. Heading tags

Now let’s discuss how these on-page SEO settings help increase website traffic quickly.

Tweak Post Page Title for Both search engines and people

The page title holds a significant part of the web page, so in search engine optimization. I increased the CTR (click-through rate) by 103% and 75% of two blog posts after a simple tweak of the post page title.

As you see above blogging case study, after tweaking the page title, the CTR, total impressions, and Avg position on the SERP also increased dramatically. The second blog post in this screenshot (Add JavaScript and CSS files on Tumblr) is a little too old. That’s why its search exposure is decreasing dramatically. But, it ranks on the first page for highly competitive keywords such as Tumblr javascript.

The best way to find the most converting titles for your blog post is just by doing testing. I tweaked the post title in creating a virtual bank account tutorial over seven times to find the optimal post title.

8 out of 10 people will read the post title. But, only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. So, to get more blog traffic from social media and search engines, you should craft titles for search engines and people.

Copyblogger has published a great article on Magnetic headlines that teaches you how to write enticing blog post titles that force people to click and read the blog content.

And read this section on Blogger SEO tutorial to find the structure of a great, intuitive headline that people and search engines like.

Clean and clear Page URL structure

I have seen many blogs that don’t care about the importance of a clean URL structure for SEO. Still, Google gives more weight to permalink structure when ranking web pages on SERPs.

Choose what’s the simple, straightforward, and easy-to-remember URL structure in your opinion.

1. www.example.com/article/aaffs15372682_saf582.html
2. www.example.com/361458425
3. www.example/seo-for-blogging

The third post permalink is clear and easy to understand from a person’s and the search engine bot’s perspective.

When structuring post permalinks, make sure search engines meet your primary keyword.

Increase the Page loading speed

What’s the last time you waited a long time to view a web page online? And when did you visit that forever-loading web page again?

No one likes any web page that takes a lot of time to load, even Google. That’s why Google has clearly stated officially that they utilize page loading speed as a Google ranking factor.

Google ranking factor? Yes, so what do you do to improve website speed?

There are a lot of reasons why your website takes minutes to load. Here are a few treatments to decrease page loading time.

• Reduce HTTPs Requests: This is a major reason to increase the page loading time. If you can reduce HTTPs requests by using CSS sprites, removing unwanted widgets, plugins, etc., you can greatly increase the page loading time.
• Compress images: You should compress images to load them faster on slow-internet connection places.
• Load JavaScript asynchronously: You can increase page loading speed by loading JS files asynchronously and placing them below the HTML content (right after </body> tag).
• Combine all CSS files into one file: More HTTP requests increase the load time. So why not try to combine all CSS code files into one file and load it?

Use the Google Page Speed testing tool to check your website and web page loading times.

Not only search engines like fast-loading web pages but also people too. Look at how Amazon does a great job of increasing the page loading speed. They have found that they lost millions of dollars every millisecond late to load pages. In fact, one second late costs $1.6 billion in sales.

Reduce website bounce rate

If people bounce off your website right after loading the web page, it’s a strong single that is not the post they were searching for. I always take care of the Bounce rate on my website. That’s why I compiled a detailed guide on How to Reduce Website Bounce Rate.

What will Google think and understand if someone clicks the back button after visiting your web page? That’s simple. I will not show this page on this spot for this keyword again.

Here are a few tips to reduce the bounce rate to improve website traffic fast.

• Interlink relevant articles in blog posts.
• Open external links in a new window.
• Add a related posts widget to your blog.
• Add images to take the reader’s attention before bouncing off.
• Use proper calls to action.
• Use relevant keywords that drive relevant traffic. (an important factor)
• Prominently show the search box.
• Use an intuitive navigation menu.
• Encourage people to click on the links. (diversify links, use buttons and link images)

Decreasing the bounce rate will increase page viewers and return visitors and user engagement.

Proper interlink strategies

Interlinking is more powerful than you thought. I increased the rankings of some of my web pages on the Google SERP for highly competitive keywords by utilizing proper interlinking strategies.

Use these interlinking best practices in this post to boost blog traffic and increase user engagement.

Responsive design

It’s not a secret yet that Google uses Mobile responsiveness to rank web pages on Google for mobile devices. Google tested a few different things in the past several days to improve the Google interface for mobile users.

Google has clearly said that they use Mobile responsiveness to rank web pages on Google. So why not use a mobile-friendly theme for your blog?

Use the Mobile Testing tool in Google Search Console to find the issues on your website interface. Here are a few common issues in responsive design.

• No gap between two links: You should add more spaces between two links in order to click on the exact link clearly.
• Small fonts, buttons: Test changing font sizes to determine the optimal font size for your blog.
• Popups: If you use popups to collect the email addresses of your readers, get them to follow you on Twitter, Pinterest, etc.,   so you should stop showing them on mobile devices. They are really irritating. Instead, use mobile-friendly following widgets.

If you want to get an attractive, responsive theme for your website/blog, check out the following resources:

1. Best places to buy affordable WordPress themes (Recommend: GeneratePress)
2. List of top premium Blogger templates
3. Best paid Tumblr themes collection

Meta tags

If you misuse meta tags, that will cause you not to show your website on SERPs. So use meta tags cautiously.

Meta tags help search engines to understand what your web page is about. Ex: meta description tag. So when using meta tags, don’t spam to trick Google into increasing your blog posts’ ranks if you don’t know how these work, don’t use them.

These days, Google doesn’t use the meta keywords tag to rank posts for keywords. Although you can use other essential meta tags such as meta description, canonical tag, hreflang tags, next and prev tag, and author tag to improve the on-page SEO performance of your blog.

Properly using meta tags will help search engines to understand your website. So get more web traffic from search engines.

Heading Tags

Heading tags are another important part of your website that helps search engines understand your site’s structure.

Use the H1 tag for the blog post title. Use the H2 tag for your blog post headlines and other H tags for sub-headings, minor headings, etc.

Don’t overuse heading tags on a web page. A well-structured web page doesn’t have H2 tags under H3 tags. Googlebot indexes heading text as an important text on your web page. So add long-tail keywords in your heading tags to get more benefits.

By improving the Pitiya blog’s On-page SEO performance, I improved my Google search impressions by 27% and clicks by 21%. It’s not bad, considering just by setting a few changes on-site, my blog received free web traffic worth thousands of dollars.

Remember that I deleted hundreds of blog posts that sent hundreds of unique visitors daily. But quantity doesn’t matter. What matters is quality.

If you want to learn how to increase website traffic or how to increase traffic to blog, first consider improving On-site SEO. That’ll generate not only more search traffic but also improve the authority of a website.

Blogging strategy #7: Image SEO

Can you increase website traffic through Images?

Yes, absolutely. Why not? Here’s the proof of my Google Search Console’s report for organic traffic statistics that demonstrates how images on Pitiya.com received a lot of impressions and clicks from image searches.

Is image traffic worth it? 

There are a few parameters currently that cause where your images rank on search engines (even on the first page too). They are;

1. Image File Name
2. Image ALT tag
3. Post relevancy
4. Image Keywords in ALT attribute and post body

Here is how these things influence ranking your images.

Image File Name:

It’s like your post permalink. Search engine bots read the image file name and get an idea of what your image is about.

Ex:

1. www.example.com/uploads/cooking-recipes-step-by-steps-with-pictures.jpg
2. www.example.com/host/files/images/seo/seo-tools/blogging/wordpress/yoast-seo-plugin-installation-screenshot.png

When you upload images next time, make sure you add target keywords to the image file name. Don’t just upload them without an explicit file name.

Image ALT tag:

Image ALT (alternative text) attribute is one of the most influential parts of image SEO. After reading the alternative text, search engines find what your image is about.

Like in the image filename, add target keywords into the image ALT text.

Ex: <img src=”/white-hat-seo-definition.png” alt=”white hat SEO definition” />

If you don’t add ALT text to your blog post images, search engines will not be able to rank them on SERPs. So use the Semrush website audit tool to find images with no ALT text.

Post relevancy:

This is not a huge image SEO ranking factor. However, there are more case studies where SEO experts and bloggers have experienced that some images get more hits and drive more traffic because of their relevancy.

Look at these stats on Google Search Console. There are not lots of images on Best Social Media Sharing Widgets posts. However, there are several keyword phrases, such as add social media buttons to website and a share button for blogger widget on the post body.

Images such as ShareThis logo, AddThis Logo, and Monarch WordPress dashboard screenshot rank for these keyword phrases because of the post relevancy.

Google thinks that these images are related to keywords such as sharing social media and media sharing.

If you write long-form content, as we discussed in step #4, your posts will also receive more traffic from image searches.

Image Keywords in ALT attribute and post body

Above are SEO techniques to rank images on image search. But, you have seen some web search results that include images. So, how do you optimize images for Google web search?

It’s pretty simple.

Check the click-through rate. 4% CTR is excellent, considering it is a tough job to get people to come to a blog post instead of downloading the searched image.

I know some bloggers are getting less than 4% CTR for web searches. So these stats are not too bad. Isn’t it?

I increased the website visitor counter by properly improving images for search engines. I increased total image impressions by 2% and clicks by 22% within 28 days by following these methods.

Image traffic is one of the best ways to increase website traffic that many bloggers neglect. They are free website traffic. But, converts breeze and still adds numbers to the total website visitor counter.

Blogging strategy #8: Duplicate Content issue in Google Search Console

I will not talk about content thieves or canonical tag issues here. Instead, I will expose another hidden issue in Google Search Console that many bloggers neglect and/or don’t see.

What is it?

It’s URL Parameters.

What are URL parameters, and how do they matter to duplicate content issues?

In most cases, webmasters use URL parameters to track website traffic. Ex: Google Analytics UTM parameters.

Ex: www.pitiya.com/?utm_source=facebook-page&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=blogging-seo-1

And also, some blogs use session ids (for login details)

Ex: www.example.com/?sessionID=14628658785

Some eCommerce websites use URL parameters to store cookies too.

Ex: www.aweber.com/?438887
www.themeforest.com/?ref=chamal13

Although some URL parameters change the original content (ex: www.example.com/?productID=146&location=US&curr=USD&lang=US-EN), some URL parameters don’t change the original content on the page (ex: UTM parameters). So eventually, they may cause duplicate content issues. It’s not a good practice to increase website traffic.

Here are two URLs that render the same content and same web page but have distinct URLs.

Ex: www.example.com/this-is-a-post/
Ex: www.example.com/this-is-a-post/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=twitter

My experience with UTM parameters: I have a few blog posts that used to rank higher on SERPs and drive more traffic. Many of them exceed the 2000 word count. So, these should at least drive ten visitors a month, right?

Unfortunately, due to the UTM duplicate content issue, some posts, such as Image SEO, keyword research with Google keyword planner, and free Facebook comment box plugin to Tumblr tutorials, only received less than ten visitors a month.

How did I get rid of URL parameters, especially UTM Parameters? And how can you do it?

Use Google Analytics to track your website visitor activities, and you use and automatically generate UTM parameters. You can specify to Googlebot that UTM parameters don’t change the original content.

Step #1: Log in to your Google Search Console and choose the blog you want to change crawl settings.

Step #2: Go to Crawl >> URL parameters.

Step #3: Click on the edit link under UTM parameters.

Step #4: Under the pop box, choose the option: No, Doesn’t affect page content (ex: tracks usage)

Step #5: Do this for other UTM parameters.

If you use any other tracking parameters that don’t change the original content on the page, you might follow this method. If you don’t want Googlebot to crawl any type of content, you may use the Robots.TXT file. Here is more information about Robots.TXT and how to edit it.

Blogging strategy #9: Consistency

How can your readers connect with your blog if you don’t publish posts/update posts on an editorial calendar? Can you retain your potential readers by publishing rare posts once a month?

In some months, such as July, I didn’t post anything on Pitiya. That resulted in a decrease in new and returning visitors, which ultimately caused a high bounce rate and a low time on page and session.

Yes, writing a good, informative, lengthy blog post is difficult. But, it will reap in any day. Many bloggers such as Neil Patel and John Chow have said consistency is the foundation for their thrived traffic base.

On the other hand, Google loves regularly updating blogs. So, Google will crawl your website faster when you add new content.

Consider updating your blog regularly if you want to grow website traffic with a loyal fan base.

Blogging strategy #10: Utilized Social Media to Increase Engagement

Social media is the new SEO. Google uses social signals indirectly to determine how valuable your piece of content is. Not only for search engine optimization but also blogging, you can use social media to drive a lot of web traffic for free.

In my case study, Pitiya received 249 social sessions with many page views within this time. The social media conversion rate is 1.6%. That means 16 out of every 1,000 new social readers join my newsletter. Don’t forget that I used double-opt-in. So the email subscribers are engaged.

These are all because of social media. I used different social media sharing widgets on the blog. In many cases, I used AddThis, which allows me to track social shares and follow on one dashboard.

When I mention any brand on my blog posts, I add Twitter handle and inform them to check it out.

As an example, a few days ago, I updated Best free social media sharing widgets post and added a new social widget called Monarch WordPress social media plugin. I mentioned it when tweeting to the developer website of Monarch, ElegantThemes. They retweet it, so Pitiya got a traffic boost.

You can use a brand mention tracking tool like Awario to track who, when, and on which platform your piece of content is shared.

Social media not only helped to increase the number of visitors but also brand exposure.

Blogging Strategy #11: Revised older blog posts

Why should you update older blog posts? Is it actually helping in increasing website traffic fast?

Yes, indeed, it helps a lot. Post revision is my favorite method to increase website traffic to existing blog posts. First of all, take a look at these traffic stats got from Google webmaster tools. Notice how much search impressions and traffic increased to this post.

This is a new level of that post. That means when starting, it used to rank for only long-tail keywords such as “how to add a contact form on blogger” and rarely for a few broad keywords. You know that the “how to add a contact form on blogger” keyword phrase is an informational keyword that makes it difficult to convert into buyers and subscribers.

But, when I updated the older post a few times by adding new fresh data and, importantly sprinkling new keywords, I was able to boost blog traffic by 120%. The most interesting thing is that every time I update the blog post, the number of clicks and the total number of impressions, and average SERP positions for keyword phrases increase dramatically.

Now this post ranks for highly competitive and buyer keywords such as blogger contact form and blogger contact page. If I added a few more words and new competitive keywords related to the blogger contact page (ex: custom blogger contact pages, premium contact pages, etc.), my post would rank for these keywords too.

So, Chamal, it’s great. But what’s the secret behind this blogging trick?

Actually, there is not any trick. Take this citation. Google loves fresh content. Updating blog posts.

If you believe that you can rank on Google #1 for your target keyword forever without updating it, sorry, It doesn’t happen every time!

I have seen a few brilliant bloggers who do this practice, such as Brian Dean (who inspired me!), Darren Rowse (master at this), Harsh Agrawal, Amit Agrawal, Jon morrow, etc. Their excellence can be seen by seeing their traffic reports and the quality of blog posts.

Have you ever seen any blog post older than two or three years on the first page for a competitive keyword?

I think you’re with my answer: NO. (if you have seen it, please let us know it.)

So, by editing older blog posts, you can increase your blog traffic really fast without backlinks.

Here is another great example of blog post revision on my blog: How to open a USA bank account online for non-US residents (I tweaked the title here)

These are money keywords. Some keywords have higher competitiveness (for advertisers), so their CPC exceeds $4.00. When I started creating the blog post, my target keyword was too long, long-tail: “how to create US bank account for non-U.S. residents.” But now, that post even ranks for highly competitive keywords such as virtual bank account.

Look at the above screenshot again. Determine how Google specifies the keywords for that post. Virtual bank US bank account >> Virtual Bank Account. Another important thing here is that I started targeting an informational keyword phrase but ended with a lot of broad buyer keywords.

Interesting enough, yeah?

Moreover, and regularly you update the blog post, it might rank for more broad niche keywords.

That’s the easiest method I know to rank for highly competitive broad keywords and drive a lot of targeted traffic. This method works well for older blog posts. You just need to give a boost by editing the old post.

Best Practices for Blog Post Revision:

• Choose an outdated post.
• Start auditing that post using the Semrush Site Audit tool.
• Remove older images and videos, and add new ones with backed-up data.
• Get the ranking keywords of the post. (use Google Search Console and Analytics tools)
• Find the best potential keyword phrase that you want to rank for.
• Analyze your blog post for keyword densities of ranking and targeted keywords/ keyword phrases.
• Add new text and sprinkle new keywords (you can find new LSI keywords using Google Search Console).
• Tweak the post title. Remember to include your target keyword in the post title.
• Change the post-update date. (Important)
• Wait until Google indexes new content and compares results.

After updating your blog post, follow one of these free, easy ways to get Google Index your web pages in less than 5 minutes. Yes, I do this to expedite the crawling rate and quickly improve search exposure.

I think the blog post revision is the best way to increase blog traffic to existing posts. Don’t worry about link building. Publish quality articles that have the potential to get natural backlinks.

Now you know almost everything I used to increase my website traffic by 20.95% and page views by 25.67%. But there is one more thing you need to follow up on to improve your web traffic.

Blogging Strategy #12: promote Blog posts everywhere you can

You have written an amazing article that everyone prefers to read and act on. But, wait, who is everyone? How do they meet your blog post?

This is where many blog posts out of two million posts that are published every day got wrong. If you don’t promote your blog posts to build blog post exposure, how will your post receive the social shares, outbound links, and sales you predicted?

Ever thought about why big technology blogs that receive millions of traffic every day from search engines and user-shared links such as Mashable and Techcrunch still use social media to promote their blogs?

Simply, It’s because to get the first start right. When they boost their new posts to all social media channels/accounts, they get tons of likes, retweets, pins, etc. These social actions help in driving more website traffic and generate more sales.

Generally, after I publish a new post, I share them on my social accounts and brand pages. Then send a broadcast mail to my email subscribers to inform them that I just published a new post.

If necessary, I continually share the post on online communities and other groups where my target audience settles down.

Here are a few great places to promote your website to get free traffic:

• Facebook Groups
• Twitter lists
• LinkedIn groups
• Pinterest Pin Boards
• Vkontakte Public Pages
• Reddit subreddits
• Tumblr

There are many ways to promote your blog efficiently to get more traffic fast.

But don’t forget to start building an email list if you don’t have an email list already. There are lots of reasons to have a quality email list. One of the most important things about email marketing is that people still check emails and buy from emails.

I recommend using an email marketing service such as Aweber (Try Aweber for 30-Days for free) to build your list.

Conclusion

Lots of information, yeah? Well done, you read it thoroughly. You now know how to increase website traffic fast without any manual link-building practice.

Today, I discussed how I increased my blog traffic by 20.95% and how you can replicate it. No hard work, No tricks, No black-hat SEO techniques. Everything is pretty simple to follow.

I am pretty happy to know your thoughts about this article. Please share your views, complaints, and suggestions in the comment form below.

P.S: Please, can you do me a favor and spread this post among bloggers like you? If you enjoyed reading this post and think it’s informative and helpful and your friends would like to read it, please share it with your friends on any social network. Thanks for your support. I really appreciate it.