How To Increase Blog Traffic for Online Course Creators (And Get More Sales)

Despite the fact that there are over 600 million blogs in the world today, blogging is still a great way to promote your business and drive visitors to your website.

Learn all the benefits of starting a blog: Why You Should Start a Blog to Promote Your Online Course Business

With such high competition, it can be hard to stand out and actually populate your blog with visitors. If you want to increase traffic to your blog and attract targeted customers to your articles, keep reading below!

Today we will share our tips and strategies to increase blog traffic, get more website visitors from your articles and write blog posts that stand out and attract new leads for your business.

Before we dive into this, there are a few things you should be aware of.

#1. It takes time. If you start blogging today, you can expect to see the first results maybe in 6 months' time - assuming you are putting out quality content.

Many bloggers say that it takes between 3 to 6 months before seeing a significant increase in their blog's traffic. The time it will take you to rank higher on search engine results depends on many factors: how often you are publishing new content, which keywords you are targeting and whether or not you are producing long-form, qualitative articles.

So before you get frustrated with your current blog traffic, consider that it takes a lot of time for a post to be indexed by Google and start ranking.

#2: You need to be consistent. One of the keys to increasing your blog traffic is to post new article consistently and frequently.

Studies show that businesses that publish 16 or more blog posts a month get 3.5 times more traffic than those that publish less than four posts. This means that these companies are writing and publishing at least 4 new blog posts a week!

Big companies usually have a whole team dedicated to growing their blog, so don't feel bad if you cannot keep up their standards. The important thing is that you are consistent, so try starting with 1 or 2 blog posts a week and keep this up.

If you are an independent creator and you are also running a business, you probably don't have a lot of time to focus on your blog. This is why your strategy should be different if you want to compete with bigger companies that have teams of bloggers at their disposal.

Here are a few ways to produce more content more quickly:

• Allow guest posting on your blog: this is where other bloggers contribute to your blog by writing an article, typically in exchange for a backlink
• Repurpose other content into blog posts: if you have a YouTube channel or podcast, you could turn videos and episodes into blog posts easily.
• Hire a virtual assistant: you could also outsource your writing to an assistant, so you have time to focus on your business

Here are more ways to increase your efficiency with content creation: 4 Easy Tips to Boost Content Creation and Promote an Online Course

Our tips below will show you how you can increase your blog traffic without becoming a full-time writer. But before we get into it, there is one last thing:

#3: High traffic is not your priority: yes, this article is titled "how to increase your blog traffic". However, if you are running a business, the goal of your blog should not be to get thousands of visitors to read your posts and leave your site just for the sake of higher traffic numbers.

Your goal should be to get in front of the eyes of your potential customers. This means crafting your posts to reach a smaller, but more targeted audience who is interested in what you are selling.

It doesn't matter if you get thousands of readers in your blog if none of them end up buying anything!

So even if you get only a few hundred visitors, but a few of them turn out to become your paying customers, that is much more profitable than any other marketing strategy - because blogging is free!

Now that we are clean on what it takes to build a successful blog let's see our tips to grow your traffic and gain more targeted customers visiting your site:

Do Keyword Research

The goal of your blog posts should be to gain new customers, right?

To do that, you need to write content that resonates with your ideal customers and will get their attention. Many creators make the mistake of writing about topics that interest them but are not necessarily relevant to their audience and don't help their customers solve any problems.

So before you write any new piece of content, ask yourself: what are my ideal clients struggling with? What questions do they have? What do they search for on Google?

Thankfully, this is not just a guessing game.

There are many apps and tools out there that can help you with keyword research and finding the most popular queries around your topic.

Tools you can use tools like Ubersuggest, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, MarketMuse (and many more) can help you research new keywords, understand what people are searching for on Google, analyze your competitors and more.

Once you have identified which keywords and phrases you should target for your next blog post, make sure to actually incorporate those keywords in your article.

The goal of search engines is to showcase the most relevant content for each search: by using the right keywords in your blog posts, you are assigning importance to those words, and letting Google know what your content is about.

So make sure that you are using the right keywords in your text, headlines, titles, meta description and URL.

Target Small, Niche Keywords

As we previously mentioned, there are millions of blog posts on the internet. A way you can stand out from the crowd is by niching down in your content and covering topics (within your area of focus) that are not too popular or broad.

For example, let's say that you are selling online courses on weight loss. if you Google the term "how to lose weight", you will see hundreds of thousands of articles on this topic. The first page of search results is covered with Ads and articles from big companies that have a stronger authority for this keyword.

Ranking high for such a general keyword is close to impossible if you are just starting out with your blog. What you can do instead is narrow down your focus and look for more detailed, more targeted keywords that apply to your business.

Examples of more targeted phrases in the same space can be "how to lose weight after pregnancy" or "how to lose weight for seniors" or "how to lose weight without avoiding carbs" and so on...

The more targeted and closer to the language of your ideal customers you can be, the easier it will be for you to rank higher with your blog posts.

Be Better Than the Competition

Search engines like Google always try to prioritize the most helpful, comprehensive and qualitative pieces of content. There are many factors that can indicate to Google that an article is worth showing to its users (and we don't know the whole story of how the Google algorithm works).

We can assume that the length of a post, the number of keywords, how long visitors stay on this page and how many other articles cite it, are all factors that contribute to the ranking of a blog post.

To be on the safe side, you should always strive to offer more informative and qualitative content than your competition. So before you write a new article, type its title on Google and check out other similar posts that rank on the first page of search results: these are the ones to beat.

If the top article for that keyword has 2000 words of content, you should aim to write 2200. If they offer 10 tips, you should offer 11. Check also what kind of topics they cover: this might give you ideas on other things to include in your posts, or even write another article.

Always add a CTA

Blog posts are a great way to showcase your expertise and convince your visitors to buy whatever it is that you are selling. This is why it is important to offer a clear way for your readers to take the next step and learn more about your business or purchase your product or services.

Your blog posts should be valuable and answer all the questions your customers might have, but they should also "push" your readers to take the next step.

So for example, let's say you are selling online courses about gardening. In your blog posts, you offer tips and advice on how people can grow their own garden at home. At the bottom of each article, you can add a section where you talk about your online course, and how it offers more detailed advice for aspiring gardeners.

So if readers found your article valuable, but they still need more assistance or want to learn more about the topic, now they have a way to do so.

Promote Your Blog Posts

If you want to speed up the SEO process and gain more visitors to your blog, try promoting your articles to your current audience.

Share new blog posts on social media, send an email newsletter to your list once you publish a new article, look for online communities in your niche and share your content with them, do guest posting, influencer marketing, and so on.

If you wish to learn more about different ways to promote your business (or blog) both for free or with paid advertising, check out this article: A Complete Guide on How to Promote Your Online Course and Boost Sales

How to Start a Blog to Promote Your Online Course on Heights Platform

If you are an online course creator, your main priority is to sell online courses, right?

Normally to start a blog you need to find a hosting platform and pay another monthly fee just for that.

Or you can find a platform that lets you both sell online courses and handle your blog without hassle. Heights Platform does exactly this, and so much more.

At Heights, we have created a built-in blog available for all our creators.

With our blog feature, you can easily publish blog articles from the same platform where you build your online course: there is no added cost, all you have to do is write the articles!

This way have all the features you need to grow a successful blog and promote your online course at the same time. If you are not one of our creators already, now is the time to start an online knowledge business!