If you’re anything like me, when you hear the answer to what this post is all about, you’ll roll your eyes and say, “Oh gosh, I’ve heard this before.”
Let me reassure you, that I’m going to go far more in-depth and completely and utterly desolate your thinking the way it is now.
How can I be so incredibly confident?
Because it happened to me.
I knew the answer…I think most of us do, but do we really take the time to LISTEN, to really hear the answer, to really IMPLEMENT the answer?
I know I didn’t. Yep, count me as guilty!
After really, really thinking about this idea and implementing it in new and creative ideas, it has made my website BLOW UP with traffic. I kid you not.
If you only read ONE post in full this entire YEAR, this is the one you don’t want to miss!!!! Because if you miss it, you’re missing a goldmine for generating traffic. I truly believe that.
How to Instantly Increase Your Traffic Today for Free
So, what is this secret key?
Get your eyeballs ready to roll….it’s simply interlinking within your posts.
I know, I know. You rolled your eyes. I told you that you would! But, go with me here for a minute, it’s one of the best hacks!
Let’s say that you have 500,000 unique visitors that come to your site every month. Each of them reads your posts and clicks off. They leave and your bounce rate is in the 70-80% and you don’t know why. Let me explain…
One late evening, I was playing around with my analytics, which I LOVE to do regularly, and I started thinking to myself, what if I could get all my unique visitors to click just ONE MORE link than they ALREADY are….
That would, in essence, double my page views, right. What a boost!!
I began looking around for answers, but didn’t really see anything.
What I DID notice was that a few bloggers were spamming the poop out of links. In every paragraph there were 2-5 links and I thought to myself, “My goodness, they are crazy. I bet their readers hate that!”
Fast forward later to a conviction that I’m sure was from the Lord. I just had this idea that the reason my readers weren’t clicking on my links was because I wasn’t linking enough.
“What the what?” you say.
Here’s the thing…I felt like, in my heart, the only time I link in my site is when I vaguely remember a post of mine that hits the nail right on the head, so I link it. Other than that, really the only time I interlink is for affiliates.
Shaking my head at myself, I humbly admit, I was just focused on putting in the work for linking up it was monetarily worth it to me. *Shamed*
Every email I’d get asking for help, I’d only add link in there if the links were affiliates. Every post, it was the same. It was what I had become. I’ll work if you pay me. I’ll link it, make your life easier if you pay me. Oh, I’m so ashamed to admit that, but in order for YOU to grow, you need to see the error of MY ways!
It dawned on me that I didn’t have my readers trust. That, they KNEW the only time I was linking to something was when I was getting something for it. And I justified it all, thinking to myself that there’s always so much to do in the blogging world. I want to focus on what makes me money. I want to focus on a good ROI (return on investment). In this case, the investment of time.
I tell you plainly, I have not been MORE wrong about something than this in a LONG time.
It really goes back to your philosophy of WHY you blog.
Do you blog to help people or do you blog for the money? Because if you’re answer is the latter, it’s WAY harder, nearly impossible to make good money. As a blogger, it’s OUR responsibility to serve others. To teach, to reach out to our readers, to love them enough to HELP THEM even when it takes us a little bit backwards.
So, I changed my habits.
I started linking to everything I possibly could, even other bloggers (yes; I’ll argue that that’s a GOOD thing!) every chance I get, every couple paragraphs or wherever and how much ever I can. What I usually do is write the post. Then, I go back and edit the post. Then, I go back a third time and specifically put in all the links I can, to helpful and very relevant information as well as affiliate links. I didn’t start doing this to make more money. I did this to just simply gain my readers trust. That they know MY articles are going to be well written and FULL of great, dare I say FANTASTIC relevant and helpful information. I’m going to go to that batter’s box, expecting to hit a home run or I’m NOT going to post. And, in doing that, I HAVE had to stop posting every single day on my blog, but I feel the information is worth it. The posts are longer, beefier, and hopefully full of genuinely helpful information.
What I’m seeing as a result of this is nothing short of miraculous. I feel like I DO have my readers trust now, which means a lot to me. I stopped accepting sponsored posts, except for VERY rare times (like nearly never), to build trust as well.
Why? Because I pick my readers over money. Period. The end. I’m not saying you have to do the same, I’m not saying sponsored posts are bad, but one of the quickest ways to lose the trust of a reader, in my opinion, is sponsored posts. There’s nothing wrong with them. WE know we’re being 100% genuine, but they come off like they are not genuine because they are paid for. It’s just the way it is.
The other thing that I’m seeing is a LOT more pageviews. And whereas I thought those bloggers were crazy in the beginning, I now think they are smart! They are NOT spamming their readers. They are producing good quality, helpful, and relevant content. Content that their readers can trust. Content that is truly helpful to the person reading it. Even though I’m linking more to other blogs, and a lot more blogs are seeing the massive dividends of that (YAY!) my traffic is NOT decreasing. It’s increasing!
Here are some guidelines for linking up that you should be sure to implement:
Open in a New Window
When you are linking on your site, always be SURE, you are checkmarking the box to “open in a new browser.” This helps YOUR site stay on their computer or phone as they are browsing, so you’re not lost as much. This is KEY!
Here’s how to do it…
Step 1: Click the link button in your kitchen sink in the draft section of the post (where your bold, italic, underlined options are)
Step 2: There will be a popup…click the gear icon.
Step 3: Be sure to manually checkmark the box “Open link in a new tab.”
Ratio is KEY
My ratio of affiliate links used to be 80-100% in a post. Now, they are more like 3-5 OTHER links to 1 affiliate link. I make sure that I’m bent toward great content and helpful links, rather than bent toward more affiliate links. My goal is always 5 OTHER links to 1 affiliate link within a post and I always try to link as much as humanly possible. Even if it means 5 links in one paragraph. Doesn’t matter. As long as what I’m linking to is GOOD.
When you start having a lot of posts of your own, you can link to yourself more often, which of course, helps your own totals more.
Interlinking is NOT just for posts
This is so monumental! This REALLY changed everything for me. I started thinking in terms of linking EVERYWHERE, not JUST in posts.
Again, I mentioned earlier about linking in emails. Be sure you’re doing that. But there are so many other places to link up too, that we often forget. A couple of my favorites are:
Your Drip Campaign
That first email or freebie that your readers get…go through your drip campaign and add 5-10 links in a bulleted list. My readers really LOVE bulleted link lists. Not sure if that’s for everyone, but you can try it at least to see!
Your Newsletters
Every email that you send out to your newsletter list from now on, commit a goal of adding in 5-10 links. That may mean your newsletters have to be longer, that’s okay. It’s worth it in the long run!
For me personally, I find that my subscribers are more apt to clicking on a link within my text, rather than the posts at the bottom of the newsletter. Run your own tests and see what your audience in particular likes best.
Your About Me Page / New to My Site Page
Put links in your about me page and your new to my site page! Again, you just want to make things SUPER SIMPLE for your readers. List your 10 most popular posts in there. Give your readers a complete picture of who you are, what you will teach them, and what they can expect from your site.
Don’t have one of those pages? Make one. It is one of the main areas that I saw a dramatic increase in traffic…when I created those pages. People DO click on them! They want to know what your site is all about and if you are qualified to teach them what they want to learn!
Your Best Content
This is HUGE guys! You have to go through your top 50 posts AGAIN and add links to them like crazy. Even if you start with just the top 10 most popular posts on your site, you will notice a HUGE increase. On my most popular post on my site, I added 7 more links to it of my own content in a list form and depending on the day and week, it has gone up 5-10% in traffic to those list links!
That’s about 70-143 clicks a DAY for that ONE post. Doesn’t sound impressive? Think about it in terms of this:
143 more clicks a day is 4,290 clicks a month or 51,480 clicks a year. Even 4,000 clicks isn’t going to make you FLY, BUT…if you do this with ALL your popular posts, let’s say you have 60 popular posts and you take 4,290 x 60. That’s TWO HUNDRED FIFTY SEVEN THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED clicks a month!!!!! Get that?
It’s 257,400/month MORE just by simply updating your most popular posts. While that’s all hypothetical, I CAN say that I’ve seen this grow my own site within 1-2 months in a HUGE and massive way. It is what brought my site up to the big leagues at a million pageviews per month. Yep, I’m there (and beyond now; last month, I hit 1.7 million in traffic!) And this is the #1 thing that brought me off my last most-annoying plateau!
I cannot say it enough, you have to interlink. This is absolutely huge! My bounce rate has gone DOWN, people are staying longer, which means they are connecting with me more, meaning they are signing up for that newsletter, building trust, connecting with me on my private Facebook group, etc. It’s quality readership I’m building, not quick clicks, get in, get out clicks. This is lasting, real, solid relationships and traffic. The kind of people that I live to serve. The kind of women that I absolutely adore! My comments are going up, engagement has increased, and it’s all because of this interlinking strategy.
If you want to be a top blogger, you have to stop thinking of short wins. You have to start thinking long term. Building your brand, building your site, building your readers as long term. That means that EVERY single person who comes to your site, you should be blowing the socks off of them. If you’re not, YOU’RE not only missing out, but THEY are missing out as well. No one wins. Don’t do that to them. Don’t do that to yourself!
Link up. Link like crazy. It’s NOT spamming your readers if it’s good, solid content that helps them.
Don’t Link Where You Shouldn’t
One of the bad things I used to do (and am still going through old posts to take out) is linking pictures. WordPress is automatically set up, where when you insert a picture in your post, if the reader clicks on it, it’ll take them to your media page of that picture.
How annoying is that?!
Short term, it may be getting you more pageviews, but it only loses the trust of your readers to the point where they do not want to click your links. They think it’s going to waste their time. Your technician can fix that for you. They can have it set up, where all your new pictures you insert into posts won’t be automatically linked to the media page. It makes the pictures unclickable, but you can still manually add in a link if you ever want to on that picture.
Long term, this will create more trust and less frustration for your readers and they will click your links more, so be sure to make that change RIGHT AWAY!
Do you have any tips and tricks to increase your blog traffic fast?
