6 Proven Ways to Grow Your Blog's Pageviews

You've worked hard to set your blog up and it looks great. You've written wonderful posts with beautiful photography. Your content is amazing! But your audience? Crickets. You want readers to be able to find your awesome content, but how?

Increasing your blog pageviews and getting seen takes time but there are some proven ways to do it. These simple tips will work on any platform. And best of all, they're all free or very cheap to do!

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. For full disclosure, go here.

1. Post Consistently

Great content builds great blogs, so post new content regularly. Seems simple enough, right? This is actually one of my biggest weaknesses and an area I'm working on improving.

2. Create gallery type pages of your work/posts

Once visitors come to your blog, you want them to stay for a while and be able find posts that they are interested in. Making your site easy to navigate is crucial. And creating a gallery is a wonderful way to show them all of your posts on a specific topic. Fortunately, it's very simple to create one.

For creating galleries, I use and recommend Inlinkz. It only takes a few minutes to set one up and a few more to add your posts. As of this writing, it's $2.99 per month but is well worth it. This is how it looks:

Give your linkup, or gallery, a name such as projects, tutorials, recipes, or whatever you want the grouping to be about. You can change the size of the photos and various other options as you scroll down the setup page.

Click "add links"

Add the url of your post and then choose the photo you want to show up.

Add a description then click "done" and it will be added to your gallery

After you've added all the links you want to the gallery, click the "get script" tab, copy the code, and paste it into the page you want it to appear. You'll want to be in HTML mode when you do this. Click "preview" to see how it looks.

You can edit or add new links to each gallery by going to the link-up tool dashboard page.

3. Link to other related postsAlong the same lines as a gallery, linking to related posts shows visitors similar content, except it's displayed within and at the bottom of each post. You should have links to at least 2 or 3 similar posts at the bottom of each post. One easy way to do this is by adding a photo from a couple of similar posts with a link to them below each photo. Another simple way is by having a "you might also like" plugin or widget below each post. If your template or theme doesn't have this in the design, you can very easily do this by using a widget like linkwithin. It's free and easy to use.

My theme included a "related posts" widget and it looks like this, very similar to how the linkwithin widget looks:

You'll need to label your similar posts with the same label (in edit mode) so they'll show up as related posts.Linking to your other posts also helps with your SEO. So that's another perk.

4. Share your posts across your social media channels, pinterest, and other sites

You should have social media accounts set up for your blog and not use your personal ones. You also need to offer various ways for your readers to follow your social media pages by having "follow" buttons on your page.

Here are some free resources for social media follow buttons and also for share buttons that can be added so your readers can share your content:

PINTEREST: Did you know that 150 million people per month use pinterest when they're searching for something? Holy cow! What this means for you is that you need a presence on pinterest. Here's a quick list of what you should be doing:

PIN IT BUTTON - Be sure you have a "pin it" option for all of your visitors to easily pin your content to their boards. Pinterest's instructions for creating one for your site are found here.

RICH PINS - You also want to make sure your site is set up for Rich Pins so they'll be seen more. You can see how to set it all up here.

PINNABLE GRAPHICS - Create pinnable graphics.Vertical is the way to go, and a ratio of 2:3, or 600 x 900, is the most successful. The easiest way to create graphics if you've never done it before is with picmonkey. It's free for many options, but also has a pro version for $3.99 per month that has even more capabilities. That's less than a tall skinny vanilla latte at Starbucks.

SCHEDULED PINS - Use scheduled pinning services to maximize your pinterest following. Tailwind is highly effective and even more so if you join "tribes". For a $30 credit and free trial click here Free 30 day Tailwind Trial

I'm working on a full post dedicated to utilizing pinterest to it's fullest capacity. Be sure to join our email list below so you won't miss it.

Other sites to submit your content to be shared, depending on your niche. Here are just a few:

Apartment Therapy

Dwelling Gawker

Craft Gawker

Food Gawker

Hometalk

Addicted to Decor

KnockoffDecor

Looksisquare

5. Grow your email subscriber list

Offer your readers the convenience of getting automatic updates sent directly to them. Unlike social media, email is the best way for them to know when you have new content. They only have to check their email box to know that you have something new and exciting for them to read.

Adding a popup box or subscription bar is a great way to get readers to join your subscriber list. If you use a popup box, be sure to have it set to popup on a delay, or after the visitor has been on your site for at least 5 to 10 seconds. Google implemented a policy recently where sites are penalized if there is anything covering the content that your visitors have to close to see what they came for. Setting it on a delayed popup should take care of it, or set it to appear in a bottom corner.

Here are some great tools you can use to collect subscribers' addresses:

Getsitecontrol- I have the "plus" version from here which allows me to choose all of the settings for my popup subscription box. They also have a free version.

Once you start collecting email addresses, you need to send them updates. I use and recommend Mad Mimi for sending emails or newsletters to your readers. They have templates you can use for newsletters or simple updates and it's free for the first 100 subscribers. And is minimal after that (I pay $16 per month).

If you already have a list of email subscribers built up, it can be easily transferred to Mad Mimi. Their customer service is excellent and can help you with any questions you might have.

6. Optimize your posts

Here's where your eyes will start to glaze over because I'm going to mention

S E O

What is it? Search Engine Optimization...It's like a secret, encrypted language that only google understands but it makes your posts show up better in google searches. It involves using keywords and labeling pictures and using good titles and descriptions for your post.

Why does it matter? When people are searching for something, they usually use pinterest or google. (We'll talk about pinterest in another post.) Working on your SEO helps your content show up on google's search engines. For example, if you've written a post sharing a recipe for your favorite lasagna, you want people to be able to find it near the top of the results list when they type "lasagna recipe" in the search box on google.

There are volumes written about how to rank higher on google, but I highly recommend this book by the queen of SEO, Kim Six. She's the expert on this topic. It's more than worth the price ($29) if you're serious about getting more visitors to your site.

It's written based on her experience with mastering SEO on the blogger platform, but most of it can be applied to any platform. She really does know her stuff.

After you have your blog set up and have started growing an email list, it's time to start thinking about making an income. Many people blog for fun and not for income, and that's great! But if you want to begin making money, you'll want to read this post:

All are very interesting. Great content brings me back even if the blogger is not a regular poster. I am definitely not a regular poster, but I will always check in with those blogs that I like and matches my interest. I will never have a ton of readers by not posting regularly:) The only one in the list as a reader of blogs that makes me disappear is the pop up to subscribe. That sends me running. It is probably my computer, but many of those delay leaving even after you click the x. I usually give up and move on.I always check in with you even when I don't comment. I am trying to be better about leaving comments:)

Welcome! I'm Angie and my hope is to inspire you by sharing beautiful places and spaces, good food, and anything that makes life easier. Click the photo to learn my story. Or reach out to me at angie@postcardsfromtheridge.com.