{ How To Gain Genuine Page & Site Views // Blogging 101 }

The ugly truth of the world is that a lot of things come down to numbers. Now, if you’re blogging for fun and because you enjoy it (and if you are – good for you!) then it doesn’t have to be. However, if you want to make a bit of cash out of your blog . . .

Well, you need to start looking at numbers. And so, today’s post is about how to gain genuine page and site views.

If you’re not up to date with your Blogging 101 posts, here’s what we have so far:

• Blogging Networks for Brand Collaboration and Sponsorship Opportunities
• How To Earn Money Through Blogging For Big, Small and New Blogs
• Blogging Habits For Better Blog Growth
• How I Used Amazon To Earn My First Cheque
• 15 Easy Things You Can Do To Improve And Perfect Your Blog
• How To Slay Your Blog Design And Branding – Even On WordPress

I can’t believe that before a few weeks ago the last Blogging 101 post I did was in January. I have been a terrible blogger, and I apologise. I’m back and . . . trying to be better than ever. Anyways, let’s get to the part you’ve been waiting for:

How To Get (Lots Of!) Real Page Views

1. Make your content shareable. This is the thing I really haven’t been doing recently (and I apologise for it) – but making your content shareable with things like Pinnable Images is a massive part of gaining views. The thing is your content could be amazing, but if it’s not easy to share the chances are that people aren’t going to share it. So make it easy – give them an image to Pin, a button to press, an enticing title to be intrigued by.
2. Make shareable content. It’s important to give people the means to do something, but you have to give them the desire to as well. Don’t worry, I do this too, but general “empties” and “what’s in my handbag” posts aren’t going to inspire people to share your posts – they’re great for existing followers (which is just as important) but the key to hitting the big numbers is to create shareable content. Shareable content is helpful, or unique, or sometimes even shocking or just timely (if everyone’s debating a topic and you weigh in, you’re likely to find a few views); it’s content that people will read and think “someone else might benefit from/want to read this” or “I want to come back to this later” on. You know, like a great tips post that you have to save to your Blogging Pinterest board for when you need to revisit it and brush up on your technique. Hint, hint.
3. Don’t focus every post on views. Okay, so my Blogging 101 posts actually aren’t geared at getting views – I mean, they’re blogging tips from an obscure blogger trying to swim in an oversaturated market. For every one of my posts, there are 400 on the same subject written by people older, more experienced and with bigger followings than me. This isn’t a bad thing and it doesn’t stop me writing them, but it’s realistic. These posts really are for my followers and to help them with their blogs, so I’m not going to sit here worrying over the SEO or be disappointed if it only reaches a couple of hundred of views. Likewise, “empties” posts aren’t going to be geared at raking in the page views.  And it’s important to keep your posts authentic and flowing and not focus all your posts on views, because that’s how you’ll keep your recurring traffic. (And if that’s not encouraging enough, it increases your Search Engine page rank)
4. Write posts specifically for views. My tips to you are to write posts that you want to and enjoy writing – with a few view grabbers dashed in. Now, I know that is far easier said than done, but I’ll provide you with some pretty easy suggestions:
   – How To posts
   – Seasonal posts (eg: Summer Recipe ideas, DIY Christmas gift ideas)
   – Things you want to read (so, think about things you find yourself Googling and reading and re-pinning)
   Okay, I’m going to take this point a bit deeper in my next one.
   
5. Use search engines. Search engines, my dearest chickens, are your best friends. Or they should be. I have over a million and a half site views and over half of those are brought in through posts of mine that cater to people’s search engine requests. An example of this is a gift guide I wrote last year – it was very specifically targeted, so it didn’t get as many likes as my usual posts did, but because it was for such a specific group come Christmas the page views flew in. Result. By this, I mean if you wrote a gift guide for, say, women over 40 a majority of your followers wouldn’t care because it’s such a specific demographic – but a lot of people search for gift ideas for women over 40.
   (Here are a few things you might want to know before you rely on search engines, though:
   – As a general rule, subdomians like .wordpress.com aren’t quite as strong – however, once you build up on other things (like existing views, link backs etc) you seem to overcome that. I only upgraded to a .com last week and I racked up 1.651 million views on a subdomain – so it can be done. However, a domain is naturally stronger.
   – Posts should be over 300 words to be indexed
   – The older your blog, the higher search engines rank it
   If you guys want a complete post about SEO and tips, let me know!)
   There are actually a lot of tools out there to help you check your keywords and whether it’s actually worth writing a post (because if you’re a little blogger with a lot of keyword competition, chances are you’ll be listed on page 10) like: TheKeyWordTool.io. That one is my favourite – and it’s free! The goldmine is high search volume with low competition.
6. Aim for traffic from different areas. You want to pull in traffic from as many places as possible for quite a few reasons. One, it just means more traffic, but two: more link backs to your blog make your content seem more valuable (I’m paraphrasing search engine algorithms here, by the way) which boosts your page rank within Search Engines. But it’s also to get traffic from areas where people aren’t going to use a search engine. For example, fashion bloggers can receive a lot of traffic through Instagram that you probably wouldn’t use Google for. Personally, for every say 20,000 views my blog gets I receive 8,000 of those from Pinterest and 12,000 from search engines.
7. Paid advertisement. This is something I’m just exploring (mainly because I don’t have much shareable content on my blog that isn’t already being shared) but you can actually pay to have your content advertised. The one I’m currently exploring is actually for my Etsy store, LuckyCatTreasures, and one post of mine from here and that’s Pinterest. If you have a business account (it’s free and changes literally nothing, you just have the option to monitor the pins from your website) you can get your Pins advertised – and you only pay if people click through. It’s really effective – and cheap. For only £3, I’ve directed over 400 people to my site – and I only pay for click-throughs for the length of my campaign (a week, I chose) so all the repins and what not will still attract traffic after my campaign has finished.
   You can pay for adverts through Facebook (although I never use Facebook as you can tell from my barren page, so there’s really not much point) and other sites like Instagram and Twitter – as well as advertising through other people’s blogs themselves.

Okay, guys, well that pretty much sums up my tips on racking up page views! I hope you all enjoyed this addition to Blogging 101 and, as always, feel free to ask any questions or leave post requests in the comments. What ways do you think you guys will try?

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