Five upgrades to boost WordPress blog traffic in 2021

There are a total of 2 billion websites on the internet. While the number is staggering, it also highlights the momentous challenge one faces to build a successful website. Competing with so many websites for traffic takes a lot. This is especially true if you are a lone blogger competing against websites with greater resources and capital.

The start of 2021 is a great time for bloggers to take significant steps towards enhancing traffic. The following sections cover some of the upgrades bloggers should make to their WordPress blogs to give their traffic a boost.

#1 - Build an app for your blog

Desktops are slowly getting usurped by smartphones in usage numbers alone. The wide-ranging functionality of modern smartphones is slowly restricting laptops and desktop computers into becoming enterprise solutions.

The best way to enhance presence amongst a generation obsessed with smartphones is creating a mobile app. The natural obstacle here is app development. It is both tedious and expensive to make a good mobile app.

Online app makers are a great solution to the challenges of app development. Tools like AppMySite help users build an app without coding in a matter of minutes. These automated app making solutions have come a long way in helping users build quality native apps that stand up to custom-made apps in terms of pure performance and quality.

AppMySite even helps users simply ecommerce app development by helping users create WooCommerce Android & iOS apps. This again highlights the wide-range of mobile apps users can build with no-code app makers.

Building an app for your blog will help grow your mobile presence. You can reach a completely new audience that would otherwise be difficult with a lone WordPress blog. Here’s a video explaining how you can create a mobile app for your WordPress blog.

Watch: How to create a mobile app without coding?

#2 - Rethink social media

Let’s paint a scenario. You write a blog post and share its link on your social media handles. You keep doing this while getting no real engagement on your posts. Then, you naturally wonder how other bloggers get so many likes and comments on their posts while you get nothing.

This is unfortunately a fairly common social media marketing mistake. Bloggers keep sharing their posts on social media even if they don’t get any noticeable engagement for it. What is the point of sharing these posts regularly if your blog won’t get any traffic?

Bad engagement doesn’t mean you need to abandon your social media efforts entirely. There is however a need to rethink your approach to social media.

Let’s continue with the scenario discussed earlier. If you’re not getting engagement from sharing blog posts directly, it is better to think of another strategy. One alternative idea is to break down your blog post into five digestible points. These points can then be spread across five slides and posted on social media.

Why is this approach better? Firstly, you’re offering people on social media an actual insight into what your blog post is talking about. If you provide value, you will earn the attention of your audience. Secondly, the people who like your content can then proceed to visiting your blog for more.

This is not dissimilar to movie studios releasing trailers before a movie comes out. If people like the trailer, they go ahead and watch the film. You can make every social media post a trailer for your blog.

#3 - Diversify content strategy to include podcasts and videos

Text is not the sole medium people use to consume content. Video content has always been better at communicating messages to a large audience. The arrival of podcasts in the last few years only underlines the many mediums people consume content in besides text.

2021 is a great time to start a new podcast or YouTube channel. There is still relatively less competition in these spaces, especially podcasts.

There are many natural advantages to leveraging these mediums. Podcasts and videos can help you discover an entirely new audience you were previously unable to reach with long-form content. These new mediums can also offer your existing visitors a new channel to engage with your content on.

Success in these mediums lies in originality. Your first and obvious instinct would be to rehash some of your old blogs into podcasts and Youtube videos. A better way to approach these mediums is recognizing original topics that you find difficult to cover in long-form textual content.

Only plug your blog posts as additional resources. Good engagement on podcasts and videos will not just increase your blog traffic, but open up opportunities for monetization and branding.

#4 - Collaborate with fellow bloggers

As mentioned previously, bloggers don’t just have to compete with one another. There are bigger websites with seemingly endless resources and capital.

Collaborating with other bloggers is thus a logical step. The advantages you gain from pure collaboration are endless. First, you get to promote your blog to the audience of another blogger. Second, you can work out link building partnerships to give your blog’s domain authority a significant push.

The nature of collaboration with other bloggers is entirely your decision. You can invite other bloggers over for podcasts and video collaborations or open up a channel for regular guest posting.

It is however important to collaborate with bloggers who fit within your niche. For instance, there is no point for a tech blogger to collaborate with a blogger publishing food recipes. Make sure the people you collaborate with actually have some stake in your own niche. Otherwise, the entire effort to collaborate will appear jarring to your audience.

#5 - Stop writing derivative content

What is derivative content?

Let’s assume you search ‘how to start a WordPress blog’ on Google. You will most likely find a number of websites that explain the process of starting a WordPress blog comprehensively. There is nothing you can add to the literature that already exists.

To then write a blog on the same topic and covering the same points again makes no sense. Google already recognizes other websites that explain the process fairly well. In writing this type of content, you’re essentially creating derivative content.

The alternative is to research and look for unique topics no other blog is covering. This basically ensures you attract people with content that is truly unique. Google also prefers to rank content that takes on a unique approach instead of sticking to old cliched formats and templates.

Taking this approach will naturally mean sacrificing your frequency of blog posting. This will be worth it in the end if you manage to find unique topics and perspectives to regularly write on.

In conclusion

All bloggers love to see a rising graph when checking their traffic on an analytics dashboard. Not many however are lucky enough to bring such growth to their blog.

This article seeks to close this knowledge gap and educate bloggers on some upgrades to boost their blog traffic. From creating a WordPress app for Android and iOS to rethinking social media and moving beyond derivative content, the list here brings bloggers on the right track to boost blog traffic.