How Long Will A Blog Take To Get Traffic? (6 Effective Strategies To Start)

If you’re wondering how long will a blog take to get traffic, you’re not alone. It’s easy to get frustrated while waiting for your blog to get hits on the internet. However, please don’t give up because it’s about playing a long game. But here’s a question that you won’t have to wait long to get the answer to, “How long will a blog take to get traffic?”

A new blog will take 3 to 6 months to get traffic, given that you regularly produce high-quality content and continuously build backlinks that lead to your website.

It takes a while for a new blog to get traction because of “The Google Sandbox.” It’s a filtration system that prevents the spamming of new blogs to earn rankings by using prominent keywords for a quick profit.

All new websites go through The Google Sandbox regardless of how consistently you publish great content. But as soon as your blog is out of the pit, you can ensure that it flows through an abundant surge of traffic by working on your search engine optimization or SEO.

Effective SEO Strategies for A Blog to Get Traffic

Now that you have a timeline on how soon your blog can get traffic, you should use this time to focus on building your content and SEO strategies.

Don’t waste time by stressing about not getting traffic in the first few months of putting up your site. It will work out for the best if you stay focused on establishing a good SEO strategy that will increase your blog’s traffic and rankings consistently month after month. But first things first, what is SEO?

SEO is an effective digital marketing technique that will boost your website’s traffic consistently and organically. The method accomplishes this feat by ensuring that your content appears among top search engine results.

Like a toolbox, SEO has many devices to choose from that you can apply to your blog. The good thing is you won’t have to rummage through the many possibilities because we’ve already prepared a simple SEO toolkit for you to focus on:

• Publish quality content
• Write about trending topics
• Use long tail keywords 
• Build effective backlinks
• Regularly update existing posts

These are basic but robust SEO strategies you must already have for your blog before exploring other possibilities. But even with just these five simple techniques, it will generate significant traffic results to your blog if executed correctly and consistently.

Publish Quality Content

The articles you publish are the foundation of your blog. It’s the main reason people will visit your site, so you have to ensure that you offer them valuable and insightful content when they do. Aside from establishing your brand, creating quality content implies that your blog is a reliable source of information about your publishing topics.

In order to ensure that you publish quality content that improves your blog’s SEO, you should write thorough and concise posts. The posts should be at least 2,100 words, according to HubSpot. This data was based on their 50 top-hit blogs from 2019.

But that doesn’t mean you have to cut your word count there. Posts with a word count between 2,250 and 2,500 have also earned the most organic traffic and shares on social media.

You can also enhance the quality of your content by using data, research, and relevant examples to support your articles. Another way to improve your content is by adding various forms of media like images, videos, and gifs, which makes it more fun and engaging for readers. 

An example of using forms of media to boost your blog’s engagement is Upworthy. According to Neil Patel, featuring short emotional videos on Upworthy‘s posts has made searchers read more on their blog. 

Write About Trending Topics

Now that you have a benchmark to complete your articles, the next thing to focus on is the topics you write about on your blog. To increase your blog’s SEO, you should publish relevant and trending content to your target audience.

The key word here is “target audience.” You don’t have to rely on what’s viral for the general audience, like trending news or celebrity gossip. To create content, when your blog publishes articles about a specific topic or industry, you should focus on the subject, not trends and viral content.

Simply discover what kind of information your target audience is currently searching for and start there. A proven strategy for finding out what topics appeal to your target audience is checking online communities, comments, and reviews. 

Good websites for online communities are Quora and Reddit. Quora is a question-and-answer website where you can find the most asked questions about topics you might be interested in writing. Meanwhile, Reddit has many communities for different issues that you can join to see what will pique the interest of your target audience.

If your blog has not received any comments or reviews yet, don’t worry because you can always find them on similar sites. You can get better topic insights from comments and reviews posted on established blogs. You can get these insights because their readers will likely be professionals who constantly browse through their content. 

Use Long Tail Keywords 

After discovering what topics are relevant and trending to your target audience, you must hook them to your blog with long-tail keywords.

You may have already spotted significant keywords for your content from browsing through online community posts and comments. But before mixing up a bunch of words, make sure you’re using a long tail form.

Long tail keywords are specific phrases used by searchers with intent or purpose for the information they are looking for on search engines.

70% of monthly searches use long tail keywords. It’s better for your blog to use long-tail keywords in the long run. It’s better because searchers who use this form already have an intent to buy, which will contribute to your conversion rate aside from your blog’s traffic performance.

If, for example, you’re posting about coffee and brewing methods, avoid using generic keywords like “best-brewed coffee.” Go for something specific like “Best Coffee Roast Level for A French Press.” 

A great example of using long-tail keywords is Bean Ground. Their posts are as specific as “Best Coffee Beans For The French Press” and “How To Make Cold Brew Coffee In A French Press.” 

Suppose you’re still unsure whether you’ve created the perfect mix of keywords to make a long tail form specific enough for your target audience. In that case, you can also use SEO keyword tools like Moz’s Keyword Explorer and Google Keyword Planner to refine your choice of keywords further.

Build Effective Backlinks

Another thing to consider while polishing the quality of your content and long tail keywords is building backlinks to your blog. What exactly are backlinks?

Backlinks are links on websites that lead to another post on a different website. They are also known as “inbound links” or “one way links.”

Total backlinks are among the top 6 factors influencing a website’s search rankings. Getting other websites to backlink your blog will boost your search rankings and increase your traffic. The increase will be proportional to the level of professionalism and the quality of the sites. Google will recognize your blog as highly reliable and credible.

But how can you become a credible source of content that websites will backlink to from their websites? According to Dejan Marketing‘s research, here are some of the top reasons for linking to a website:

• To share examples and case studies
• To give readers additional material
• To reference images and data
• To share something interesting
• To build credibility by citing reliable sources
• To build SEO topical relevance

When creating posts for your blog, keep an eye out for opportunities to create content that your readers can use in any of the reasons for linking. To maximize your backlinking potential, you can ensure that at least 3 of the top reasons for linking apply to your posts.

Regularly Update Existing Posts

The most common way of keeping your blog fresh is by regularly publishing new content. It’s a way to keep up with changing trends, which ensures that your blog is picked up by every new search query, leading to great traffic results.

Another way to keep your blog fresh, which is just as effective as publishing new content, is by regularly updating your existing posts. It is a simple strategy that Style Factory practices to increase blog traffic.

But this doesn’t mean you have to update every single post on your blog. Some topics might not have enough new material to update your posts. You can refer to what Google’s indexing system picks up as fresh content:

• Recent events or hot topics
• Regularly recurring events
• Frequent information updates

Regularly updating your blog posts also improves the quality of your content. It does this by developing them into long forms with regular new additions of data and different media forms, which has earned the most organic traffic.

Frequently Asked Questions While Waiting For Blog Traffic