If you are an eCommerce business owner, your blog is one of the best levers to effect positive change for your organization.
Blogs can be anything from a simple source of pride to your primary revenue-generating engine. But no matter your blog’s purpose, you need people to read it for any of that to happen.
Therefore, you need traffic.
There are several tried and true methods for promoting a blog and attracting traffic that we’ll go over in this post. Some of them are free, and some will cost you a bit of money—but all of them are effective if done correctly.
Before we get into how to promote your blog, let’s first talk about one crucial thing that must be in place before anything else.
Your blog is often the prospect’s first impression
This statement seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many businesses still treat their blogs like an afterthought. If your content is satisfying the search intent of your target customers, your blog will actually be the first place most users land — not your homepage.
Therefore, the same amount of effort you put into making your homepage look professional should go into your blog.
This means:
- Consistent, high-quality imagery.
- Highly shareable content in multiple mediums (video, infographics, downloadables).
- No grammatical or typographical errors.
- All sources are cited with external links.
- Well-researched, deep content that matches the voice and tone of your audience.
Even if you’ve produced top-notch content, you may still be struggling with traffic. Don’t worry—you’re not alone. All blogs face the same challenges in the beginning.
In this blog post, we will discuss 22 ways (plus a bonus tip) that you can use to promote your blog and attract more visitors, along with other valuable facts that will help you get started.
Why do you need to promote your blog?
You need to promote your blog because today’s internet is a competitive place, and without proactive promotion, you’ll never reap the monetary benefits of high-quality content.
The days of “build it and they will come” are long gone (if they were ever here in the first place).
You may have the most intricate, automated revenue generation system on your blog, complete with lead magnets and perfectly-optimized content. But if you’re not sending traffic to the system, it’s pointless. And traffic only comes from promotion.
A blog is simply a vessel for content. This content can be purely informational in nature or hyper-focused on closing sales.
Businesses who understand the art and science of leading prospects down the funnel often see the lions’ share of their leads coming from their blog.
More benefits of promoting your blog include:
- Getting more email subscribers
- Increase your social media footprint
- Boosting your search engine rankings
Now that we’ve discussed why you need to promote your blog, let’s move on to the how of it all.
22 Ways to Promote Your Blog and Attract Qualified Traffic
Not all of these tactics will apply to your content, industry, or workflow, but stacking as many of them as possible will only increase your odds of success. Let’s dive right in.
1. Transform and repurpose your content
Writing good quality content is essential, but so is repurposing it. By transforming your content into different formats, you’ll be able to boost SEO and reach a wider audience, attract more qualified traffic and get more mileage out of your original content.
Here are some ways you can transform your content:
- Turn blog posts into infographics.
- Create an eBook from a series of blog posts.
- Repurpose video content into podcasts or transcribe videos into blog posts.
- Tweak blogs to meet the expectations of marketing channels (example: resizing videos to natively work with Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok).
- Turn long-form content into downloadable whitepapers, research reports, or whitepapers that serve as lead magnets for building your list.
2. Make sure your site abides by SEO best practices
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a broad topic that goes well beyond the scope of a single article. However, if you hope to get any organic traffic from search, there are some foundational SEO best practices you should know.
Roughly speaking, they fall into three categories:
- On-page SEO: Is the content on your blog targeting specific keywords that people are actually searching for? Does your content cover the topic as well or better than the competition on the first page of Google?
- Technical SEO: Is your blog clean and efficient, or confusing to navigate and filled with broken links? Is your site bogged down with plugins or does it load quickly?
- Content coverage: Does your blog thoroughly cover the relevant topics in your niche, and have you established logical interlinking between relevant content pieces?
Just fixing one of these things may not result in a massive jump in Google, but fixing them all will likely result in significantly higher organic traffic.
3. Use link-building SEO strategies
Speaking of SEO, link building is one of the most effective ways to improve your site’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s also a good way to drive traffic organically, especially when it comes to competitive industries.
The more trusted backlinks that point to your site, the more Google views your site as authoritative on a particular topic. Plus, you’ll be able to attract more qualified traffic and improve your chances of ranking for keywords related to your business.
There are many ways to build links, and we’ll touch on some of the main ones throughout this list.
4. Answer questions on forums
There are many online forums where people ask questions related to your industry.
In fact, it’s not uncommon for trends to form on sites like Reddit or Quora long before they register on search engines.
By answering these questions, you’ll be able to show off your expertise and attract qualified traffic back to your website.
Not only that, but you’ll also be able to build relationships with other experts in your field. And as we all know, networking is essential for business success.
So when you participate in online forums, be sure to include a link to your website if it doesn’t violate community rules.
Here are some popular forums you can participate in:
- Quora: A Q&A platform where people can ask questions about all sorts of topics
- Reddit: A social news site that has forums for every subject imaginable. You’ll want to post on subreddits to attract traffic that is interested in your industry
- Stack Exchange: A network of Q&A websites with forums for different topics
- LinkedIn Groups: Professional groups on LinkedIn that you can join to answer questions and start discussions
- JustAnswer: A platform where people can get answers to their questions from verified experts
Keep in mind that when you’re answering questions on forums, your goal should be to help the person who asked the question, not to self-promote. If you’re helpful and add value to the conversation, people will be more likely to visit your website and do business with you.
5. Collaborate with other bloggers
One of the best ways to attract qualified traffic to your blog is by collaborating with other bloggers. This can be done in a few different ways:
- Write guest posts for other relevant blogs in your industry and include a link back to your site.
- Participate in interviews or roundups where you share your expert opinion
- Do a joint webinar or podcast episode with another blogger
- Do a cross-promotion where you promote each other’s content
There are many benefits to collaborating with other bloggers. Not only will you be able to reach a new audience, but you’ll also be able to build relationships with other experts in your field.
When you collaborate with other bloggers, make sure that you’re promoting high-quality content that will be of value to your audience.
6. Reach out to influencers
Another way to get traffic juice for your blog is to reach out to influencers. But that word is thrown around so loosely these days, it can be hard to know what an influencer actually is.
An influencer is a person who has a large, loyal following on social media over which they can influence purchasing decisions.
There are many ways to reach out to influencers. You can start by creating a list of relevant influencers in your industry. Once you have a list of potential prospects, you can reach out to them and ask if they’re interested in collaborating with you.
Some examples of collaboration include:
- Guest posting on each other’s websites
- Doing a joint webinar or podcast episode
- Promoting each other’s content
- Sending them free products or software in exchange for an honest review
There are many benefits to collaborating with influencers. Not only will you be able to reach a new audience, but if done well, you can build relationships with high-profile social figures.
7. Guest post on top blogs
If you want to attract qualified traffic to your blog, one of the best things you can do is guest post on top blogs in your industry.
When you guest post on a popular blog, you’re tapping into another audience and demonstrating your expertise.
Not to mention the fact that most guest bloggers will allow you to insert a link back to your site, boosting your authority (and rankings) in Google’s eyes.
If your content is helpful and your audiences intersect enough, you may even be able to siphon off some of those users onto your own site or email list.
Outreaching for guest blogging deserves a post all its own, but for now, check out this handy guide to guest blog outreach.
8. Network on related or similar blogs
When you’re trying to attract qualified traffic to your blog, it’s important to network with other bloggers who are in a similar or related industry.
By networking with other bloggers, you’ll be able to reach a new audience and build relationships with other experts in your field.
This can be done by commenting on other blogs, participating in interviews or roundups, and guest posting on other blogs. Again, when you network with other bloggers, make sure that you’re promoting high-quality content that will be of value to your audience.
9. Create an eBook or guide
Another way to attract qualified traffic to your blog is to create an eBook or guide (especially if it’s backed by original data or statistics). This is a great way to show off your expertise and attract new readers.
Once you’ve compiled your content, you need to present it in an aesthetically-pleasing way.
If you are doing it yourself, places like Venngage and Amazon can take you through the ropes of creating an eBook or guide for free.
You can use free tools like Canva to create an engaging cover image and visuals or hire talent on sites like Upwork and Fiverr to design it for you.
If you’re looking to outsource the actual writing of the content, you can hire a freelancer for that, too.
Guides with lots of industry data are also great “link magnets” for attracting backlinks, especially if the stats are often referenced in other blog posts across your industry.
10. Offer a free trial
This tactic is pretty focused on software providers but can also work for a certain variety of product-based businesses.
Offering a free trial is one of the single best ways to build traffic, attract backlinks, and hook in prospective customers.
Don’t immediately rule this tactic out if you’re not a software provider — you can be creative. For instance, you can offer a free trial of a course, membership site, or sample of a physical product.
Take Intuit, for example. While they’re an established brand with significant sway in the marketplace, they still have an impressive 300 backlinks and nearly 3,000 monthly visitors going to their free trial landing page.
11. Use email sequences
Creating email sequences is a great way to get more eyeballs on your content and nurture leads down the funnel.
Email sequences are automated marketing emails sent out by a platform like Mailchimp to customers and prospects. These emails are either time-based or trigger-based and can have multiple branching paths.
For example, you may send out a time-based sequence of ten emails to new subscribers. Each email highlights a relevant piece of top-of-funnel content, but when the user engages with the content, their clicks trigger a new sequence of emails.
This trigger-based sequence now sends them middle and bottom-of-funnel content — all of which is hosted on your blog.
While it takes some time to set up, these sequences can be a powerful way to automate qualified traffic to your blog.
12. Send out newsletters
Regular newsletters can extend your reach, and they’re a great way to keep people updated on your latest blog posts.
You can use a service like MailChimp or AWeber to create and send roundups of helpful resources. And the best part is that you don’t need to only feature your own content. You can play the role of the curator and share anything and everything that your audience would find valuable.
As you plan your newsletter strategy, study up on the greats like The Daily Carnage, Quartz Daily Brief, and the Morning Brew.
13. Use strategic calls-to-action to increase user dwell time on your blog
No blog post should ever end with the reader saying, “Okay… now what?”
Always feature some form of call-to-action in your content. And you don’t need to always feature it at the end of the post either. Especially in larger posts, you can break up the copy and put the CTA in the middle as well.
Examples of great CTAs include:
- A downloadable resource like an infographic
- A newsletter opt-in
- Another relevant blog post
- A free trial
- A live demo
14. Share blog posts on social media
Sharing your blog post on social media is a free way to give newly-published content a traffic boost.
However, you’ll want to play by the rules of whatever channel you’re posting on. Don’t go posting long-form content on Instagram. Further, social media is about community and starting a conversation. If your content comes off too salesy, it likely won’t perform well.
Let a social post be part of your blog promotion checklist (something we’ll touch on later in this post).
If you have a YouTube channel (technically, YouTube is a social network), be sure to include a link to your blog in the description of each video. Similarly, you can embed YouTube videos on similar topics within your blog content, both enriching the content and helping Google understand the topical connection.
15. Comment on other blogs
One of the most effective ways to get people to notice your blog is to comment on other blogs in your industry.
When you leave a comment, be sure to include a link back to your blog so people can check it out. Just make sure that the comments you’re leaving are relevant and not spammy.
This also doubles as an effective way to network with other like-minded content creators.
16. Include your blog link in your email signature
While a link to your blog in your email signature isn’t the most scalable form of promotion, every visit counts, right?
You never know who in your network might be helped by your content, and one visit from a particularly influential contact could open new opportunities for your business.
Here’s a quick template for an email signature:
- Your name
- Your title
- Your company’s name
- A link to your website or blog
- Your contact information (phone number, email, etc.)
17. Speak at events
Aside from writing a book, the best way to establish your authority in a particular niche or vertical is to speak at an industry event. We naturally want to trust folks on a stage, especially when they’re sharing useful or compelling information.
If you’ve got a knack for public speaking, this is one of the best ways to get fresh eyeballs on your blog.
18. Optimize your visuals to rank in Google Image Search
A largely neglected form of blog promotion is tagging your images to rank in Google image search. If you’ve got engaging, original graphics in your blog content, make sure you name them and give them a descriptive alt tag.
Any Google image searches that contain those keywords will likely return your graphics and potentially redirect searchers back to your blog.
19. Utilized paid search channels like Google Ads
Google AdWords is a service that allows you to place ads on relevant Google searches. These ads can appear above or below search results on Google Search.
Many believe that paid search channels should be reserved for driving traffic to product or “money” pages.
But if you’re looking for quick traffic to test your newly-crafted funnel or your blog content funnel is generating revenue, it may be a savvy business decision to create ads for some of your more informational content.
Fortunately, several online tutorials, classes, and books can teach you how to use Google Ads effectively. Online learning sites like Udemy and LinkedIn charge a small fee to get Google Ads certification, but with Google Skillshop, certification is completely free.
20. Try social media advertising
In social media advertising, you create ads that target a specific audience and then pay to have them displayed on the selected social media platform.
Social media advertising is a great way to reach a large and highly targeted audience. Some of the most popular social media platforms for advertising include Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Although, some larger brands have even begun advertising on TikTok in the wake of its burgeoning popularity.
21. Host a webinar or online event
Webinars are live online events that allow participants to see and hear the presenter deliver content in real-time. They’re a great way to build relationships with potential and current customers by providing valuable content and answering questions.
And as an added bonus, webinars can also be a great way to generate leads. For example, you can offer attendees the chance to sign up for your email list or download a white paper or eBook in exchange for their contact information.
22. Submit press releases
Press releases are a great way to get the word out about your blog and its latest news. They’re also a great way to generate traffic and links back to your site.
There are several ways to submit press releases. You can use services like PRWeb or Sendwire or submit them yourself to online directories like PRLog or MyPR.co.uk.
Bonus: Try Help a Reporter Out (HARO)
As a blogger, you can offer value to reporters by becoming a source for their stories. And one of the best ways to do this is by signing up for HARO (Help A Reporter Out).
HARO is a free service that connects reporters with sources for their stories. Sources can be anything from experts in a particular field to everyday people with a great story to tell.
When you sign up for HARO, you’ll receive an email three times a day with requests for sources from reporters looking for experts for their stories. If you see a request that matches your expertise, reach out to the reporter and offer your help. You never know—you may just end up quoted in a story.
And it’s not just small-time bloggers that need help, but massive publications like Forbes, Business Insider, and Huffington Post. That means highly authoritative backlinks pointing back to your site if you manage to score a citation.
More tips for blog promotion
The following are some best practices to keep in mind as you utilize the aforementioned blog promotion tactics.
1. Use UTM links to understand your best channels (and double down on them)
A UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) link is a special type of URL that allows you to track the performance of your marketing campaigns in Google Analytics. They’re snippets of text appended to URLs that track the source of your web traffic.
More to the point, they’re very useful for understanding which of your promotion methods are working and which aren’t.
When you create a UTM link, you’ll want to make sure that the campaign name is something that will make sense to you. For example, if you’re running a contest, use “contest” as your campaign name.
You can also use UTM links for blog posts, so be sure to include them in your social media posts, email campaigns, and more.
The real benefit of UTM links is aggregating all the sources of traffic in one place (influencer marketing, particular social channels, posts, email links, etc.) and then analyzing that data in Google Analytics to determine which channels produce the best results.
You can then eliminate the lagging tactics and reallocate those resources to more productive channels.
2. Use a social media scheduling tool
You can automate your blog promotion on social media by using a social media scheduling tool. Nobody has time to be monitoring social media all day and remembering to post things at certain times. These automation tools allow you to batch schedule your posts ahead of time.
Then, all that’s left is to monitor post replies and comments once or twice a day.
3. Leverage heat maps & A/B testing to see what’s working
A heatmap is a graphical depiction of data that uses colors to represent various user behaviors. This can be very useful for understanding which areas of your blog are getting the most attention and where people are clicking the most.
For example, if you’re finding that folks who come from your email list read your content from top to bottom with high levels of engagement, you can prioritize that channel.
Whereas, if you notice that traffic from Twitter barely gets halfway down the page, that can signal a mismatch in intent or a lack of purchasing ability.
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a method of comparing two versions of a blog post to see which one performs better.
This can be very useful for understanding what type of content your audience responds to best. It’s also essential for conversion rate optimization (CRO). You can use tools like Google Analytics and Crazy Egg to do heat maps and A/B testing.
4. Make a blog promotion checklist
One of the best things you can do to save yourself hours and lots of headaches is to create a blog promotion checklist.
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel every time you write a new piece of content. Essential tasks are bound to fall through the cracks and you won’t get the most out of your blog content.
It can be challenging to conceptualize all the many tasks involved in blog promotion without actually doing it.
So our best advice is to simply go through your typical content creation workflow, but notate everything you’re doing from the time you hit publish to the time you check the project off your to-do list.
You’ll soon realize a lot more goes into blog post creation/promotion than meets the eye. If you need a jumpstart, here are some must-haves:
- The content is free from grammatical errors and typos.
- The content is targeting the ideal keyword for SEO, reflected in the title tag, H1, and URL.
- The content is formatted for the web with proper spacing every few sentences.
- The content contains properly-sized, compressed images throughout.
- All images are properly tagged for indexability in Google image search.
- The content has an appropriate call to action.
- The content is scheduled to be posted on social media.
- The content is queued up to the email list.
- The content is posted to all relevant forums or message boards (Quora, Reddit, etc.).
- The content has a compelling lead magnet to encourage email list sign-ups.
- The content has been repurposed into multiple formats (social, video, audio, etc.).
FAQs About Blog Promotion
What’s Wrong with Only Using Paid Advertising?
Paid advertising is a great way to get traffic to your blog in the short term. However, it’s not a sustainable long-term solution. Once you stop paying for ads, your traffic will disappear.
In addition, paid advertising can be expensive. If you’re on a tight budget, you may not be able to afford it, especially in the beginning.
Organic traffic is long-term, sustainable traffic that sticks around long after the ad budget dries up. It’s harder to attain but usually reaps much better rewards.
Why Not Use a Digital Marketing Agency?
If you don’t have the time or skills to promote your blog yourself, you could hire a digital marketing agency. However, most agencies are expensive, and their methods are not guaranteed to bring results.
If you’re short on time and have the cash to spend, a digital agency may be the way to go. But if you’re a small business owner with a tight budget, building a groundswell of organic traffic yourself may be the most viable option.
What’s Next?
In the case of promoting your blog effectively, you’ll soon begin attracting the qualified traffic you want, which will convert to a noticeable sales increase for your eCommerce blog.
Well, not knowing what to do in the face of all that revenue is a nice problem to have, but it is still a problem. First, you’ll want to keep up what you are doing correctly that’s driving qualified traffic to your blog.
If you are a product-based business, you’ll want to look into an inventory management system for eCommerce like SkuVault.
SkuVault will take the hassle out of inventory management and keep your products updated on what is selling and what you need to order more of.
To learn more about how the SkuVault team can help, you can dive deeper into our list of features or reach out to our team for a live demo today.
