Day 8: How to Get Blog Traffic (Start a Blog in 9 Days)
A simple breakdown of blog traffic sources.
Welcome to Day 8 of the Start a Blog in 9 Days Challenge.
How’s it going so far?
In case you missed the steps before:
Today we dive into blog traffic.
Getting blog traffic takes time, especially when you’re just starting out. But that period is also important for how much you will earn some time from now as it allows you to get to know your audience, test all traffic and monetization strategies, find the ones that work best for your blog and concentrate solely on them.
Here are the different types of traffic:
1. Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the traffic your site receives from search engines and it’s probably the most natural way to get people on your site. Any time a person types a keyword or a whole sentence in Google, for example, they see a list of web pages. If yours is closer to the top and your title grabs their attention, they will click and check out your content.
You can bring a ton of traffic organically by writing long-form and well-optimized blog posts and linking them effectively. That means a constant flow of visitors to your web pages, which in turn tells Google people like your site and it ranks you even higher.
2. Referral Traffic
Referral traffic is all about visitors who land on your blog by clicking a link on another website—not from search engines or social media. So, if someone clicks a link to your blog from another site, that counts as referral traffic. (Social media traffic is its own thing, so we won’t mix it here.)
Want more referral traffic? Try these tricks:
Write guest posts for blogs in your niche and add a link back to your site.
Answer questions on forums or Q&A sites, dropping a link to your blog for extra info.
Create YouTube videos and link your blog in the description.
Share your content on platforms like Medium or LinkedIn.
Pay for backlinks on reputable sites (careful with this one).
Swap links with other bloggers—mention them, and they mention you.
Get interviewed on blogs or podcasts, which usually include links back to your site.
3. Social Media
The next way to bring traffic to your blog is something we’re all familiar with - social media.
Here’s how to pull people from social media to your blog:
Post eye-catching visuals that tease your blog content. People stop scrolling for good images!
Write short, punchy captions that make folks curious and want to click.
Use stories and reels to share quick tips or sneak peeks, then drop your blog link.
Join groups or communities where your ideal readers hang out and share helpful content (not spammy links).
Pin your blog posts on Pinterest — it’s a goldmine for driving traffic over time.
Tag relevant people or brands when it makes sense to get more eyes on your posts.
Post consistently so people recognize your name and trust your content.
Social media is all about building relationships first — traffic will follow naturally.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing as a traffic source is the number of people who came to your site from the links you included in your newsletter (that they’ve subscribed to by choice).
That’s one of the most genuine ways to engage people and get traffic and it’s not related to any other audience, but your own.
Strategies to get traffic from your email list:
Start building your list as soon as possible;
Communicate with your readers by sending out an email at least once a week;
Get better at writing good emails;
Have an opt-in pop-up;
Know what your readers want and give them more of that;
Stay consistent with sending emails;
Connect to your subscribers on an emotional level with your subject line or the intro in your email;
Analyze the emails that have the highest click-through rate and repeat them;
Have clear Call to Actions;
Let them know when to expect emails.
5. Paid Search
Paid search (also knows as Search Engine Marketing, or SEM) is the traffic you get from search engines through paid advertising via Google AdWords or another paid search platform.
You might be paying each time one of your ads is clicked (which is pay-per-click advertising, or PPC) or when your ad is displayed (cost-per-impression, or CPI).
That’s not an investment you need to make. It requires some testing and a budget. With the many possibilities to drive traffic organically and from referrals and social media, I don’t think the blogging career you’re about to build requires paid advertising.
You might try it later on when you’re earning some money online already, but for now, just be familiar with what this traffic source means and that it’s another option.
6. Direct Traffic
The last traffic source you might hear about when reading more about this in the future is direct traffic. That’s when the referrer or source is unknown. It could be when a person directly types the URL of your site in their browser, instead of googling it and then clicking a link to your homepage, or coming from any other platforms where one of your web pages is mentioned and linked to.
What can you do to get direct traffic?
Build a great platform that gets attention all over the Web and become a big name in your niche.
Have a good-looking and optimized website.
Have all your brand elements in place.
Have a presence on social media.
Share your story and connect with people on a personal level.
Update your blog often so there’s always new content people can see when they land on your page.
Give them easy navigation and a good experience on mobile devices.
And these are the main types of blog traffic. It’s always good to create more than one traffic source.
Which one will you start with?
I’ll see you tomorrow for the final day of the Start a Blog Challenge. The topic will be monetization 💰. Are you joining us?
See you then,
Lidiya