Getting More Views and Traffic
One of the most frequent questions our community members ask us — and themselves — is how to get more people to visit their site. There’s no magic formula, but there are ways to increase your website traffic with a few WordPress.com tools and best practices.
- Help Search Engines Find Your Site
- Blog Regularly
- Use Keywords on your Site
- Use Appropriate Tags
- Connect to the Community & Spread the Word
- Read and Comment on Other Blogs
- Link to Other Blogs
- Share on Social Media
- Bug Your Real-life Friends
- Let People Know About your Posts
- Relax! It Takes Time
- Additional Resources
- Frequently Asked Questions
Help Search Engines Find Your Site
If you want your content to be indexed by search engines such as Google and Bing, set your privacy settings to make your site visible to all search engines.
While we take care of a lot of the Search Engine Optimization for you, you can also verify your site through several search engines and platforms, including Google, Bing, and Facebook. Visit Site Verification Services for more.
Blog Regularly
The internet is full of theories as to how you can raise your post’s visibility in search rankings. None will contest that original, high-quality content with a few well-chosen tags is the best way to get started.
Blogs that have more frequent and regular posting schedules tend to develop an audience quicker.
Blogging isn’t just for hobbyists. Businesses, organizations, and professionals can blog to boost their site’s traffic and get noticed. In fact, blogging regularly is still the single most important thing you can do to increase your site’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
People with a plugin-enabled site can also use advanced SEO tools to customize the meta description with a summary that does a better job at captivating readers and potentially increasing the post’s search page ranking.
Even if you have a website with mostly static content, add a “Blog” or “News” section that you regularly update so search engines can see that your site is active. All the SEO strategies in the world won’t help if you’re not adding content, so get to writing!
Use Keywords on your Site
Make sure your site is well-indexed by search engines by using keywords in your site’s tagline, in your website content, and in tags. Keywords are terms that your target audience might use when searching for your site. To figure out what keywords to include on your site, think about what you would search for if you were trying to find that information. If you sell toys and games to play with toddlers, for example, it would be a good idea to use the term “games for toddlers” in your pages and blog posts.
Be careful about using too many keywords, though! If you repeat the same keywords multiple times, your content will read awkwardly — and worse, search engines like Google will consider that “keyword stuffing,” so doing this can actually hurt your site’s ranking.
Use Appropriate Tags
Attach appropriate categories and tags to your posts so people can find them in the WordPress.com Reader. But be careful not to use too many tags — fewer than 15 tags (or categories or both) is a good number. The more tags you use, the less likely your post will be featured in the Reader. Read more on tagging.
Connect to the Community & Spread the Word
Build your traffic in smart ways. SEO and traffic go hand-in-hand: the more people who visit your site, the higher your site will rank in search results. Luckily, WordPress.com is a community in addition to a website-building platform, so we have lots of ways to increase your readership.
Read and Comment on Other Blogs
Check out Discover to find great blogs and websites on your interests. Then, subscribe to these sites and get to know them a bit. When you read a post that moves you in some way, leave a comment.
Link to Other Blogs
Blogging is all about engaging with others and interacting in online discussions. When you link to a blog post, the blogger will likely find your blog through their stats or a pingback, and come to see what you had to say. They may even subscribe to your site and leave a comment, as we suggested you do above!
Share on Social Media
Use features like Publicize to alert your various social networks to your new content. Set it up to automatically share your new blog posts to Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, so your current customers and fans never miss an update.
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Further reading: The Best Time to Post a Blog or Social Media Update.
Bug Your Real-life Friends
Encourage friends and family to read your blog: send them reminder emails when you update and talk to them about it when you meet in person. Better still, encourage them to sign up for updates using the Subscribe block. Having a small audience of people you care about is better than having a million visitors and not knowing any of them.
Let People Know About your Posts
If you’ve written a post with someone in mind, drop them a short email with a link to it. This approach works if used very sparingly, maybe once a month per blogger. You don’t want to annoy anyone or seem like a spammer.
Relax! It Takes Time
Even if you do all of the above, you won’t develop a huge following overnight. Building a sizable audience of engaged and loyal readers takes time. Many of the bloggers you admire have likely been at it for years. Stick with it, and don’t get discouraged by a slow start.
Additional Resources
- Webinar: How to Find and Grow an Audience for your Website (YouTube link)
- Monetizing your site.
Join Our Free SEO Course
Understanding search engine optimization (SEO) is valuable for anyone looking to improve their site or blog for both search engines and humans. The course will give you a solid foundation of what you can do to ensure people have the best chance to find your content when they search online.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I pay for more traffic?
Paying someone to push more traffic to your site or blog is risky. Unless you’re paying for ad space (like the sponsored options you see on different popular sites and search engines), you may be paying someone to use bots to increase your site traffic. Bots are programs designed to emulate human behavior and artificially increase site traffic. Increased bot traffic can get you penalized in search engines and advertising programs.
What plan do I need to increase traffic to my site?
Different plans will unlock additional tools you can use to optimize your site and drive more traffic to it. For example, with the Pro plan, you can re-share content that has previously been posted. The plugin-enabled plans will also give you the ability to use Search Engine Optimization plugins to optimize your pages and posts. But, just buying a plan will not guarantee more traffic to your website.
Still confused?
Help us improve:
We're always looking to improve our documentation. If this page didn't answer your question or left you wanting more, let us know! We love hearing your feedback. For support, please use the forums or contact support form. Thanks!
