Growing a blog is much like growing a tree. It can be done for free; all you need is regular watering, perhaps adding some compost and occasionally look into weed management. All of it is free as the nature already provides everything; all you need is some effort and hard work from your end.
Similarly, a blog requires regular content, some basic link building, sharing and promoting of content on the social media and networking with other bloggers. Much of this process is free and if regular effort is made by a blogger, traffic and audience will surely grow in time.
Here, in this article, we are going to cover some basic and free ways in which one can grow their blog.
1. Add regular content: Adding blog content is a hard work as it takes several hours of time to craft a really good article. Once the content is ready, it will require another few hours of image creation, content formatting and scheduling after which it can be posted on your blog.
However, apart from your time, it won’t cost you anything else. If you are able to give content creation a few hours of your days time then slowly, in time, your blog will grow and gain plenty of readers, subscribers and regular traffic.
2. Allow Guest Posting: If you are looking to get some free content for your blog without compromising on the quality then opening up your blog for accepting guest posts is a great idea. Surely, one needs to be choosy when it comes to allowing guest posters, else the content quality will suffer and along with that, all posts need to be thoroughly proof-read before posting. Yet, it is an easy way to get good content.
3. Publish Interviews and Roundups: Content formats like Interviews and Roundups are both easy to write and has a lot more impact than regular content. Since both these content formats require outreach which is time taking, so here too, the biggest investment will be your time.
4. Do Blog Commenting: When it comes to growing a blog, commenting on other blogs has proven to be a successful method. The backlink value of comments might not be much, but it is a good way to get connected with other bloggers. The benefits of such connection are huge. From social media shares to mentions and links on future articles, everything can be gained by networking via. blog commenting.
5. Share content on Social Media: Posting regular content on your blog is only half the work. Make sure to share all of your blog posts on as many social media sites as possible. Share other people’s content too, this will keep your social followers busy and you will see a lot of bloggers share your content in return.
6. Do Keyword Research: Keyword research and finding new long-tail keywords is an ongoing process. If you are able to invest some of your free time in keyword research, you will soon have a huge list of potential blog titles to write your future content. When such content will go live, it will be targeted towards a specific keyword that is means to rank and get traffic.
7. Schedule and Automate Content: Social media is here to stay, it is up to you to adapt and make changes so that you can get the maximum out of social media. One such method of utilizing social media is scheduling content so that every few hours, your content gets automatically socialized.
8. Optimize Old Content: Old content is your asset, whether that asset is bringing you money or it is simply sitting around is another thing. If you want to make your old articles rank for keywords then it is time to edit those articles and add your long tail keywords in it. Editing old content is easier than creating fresh content and the benefit is usually much more with older content as it ranks easily after basic tweaking.
9. Link to others and Outreach: Out linking to other bloggers is perhaps one of the easiest ways to get someone’s attention. Even if the blogger you are linking to is running a popular blog, they will still respond warmly as links are powerful digital assets and helps in ranking on the search engines. However linking is only half the work, make sure to outreach and let them know that you have linked.
10. Connect with Influencers: Social media influencers have a lot of followers and when they share content, it makes a huge impact. While this step is totally free, it requires a lot of hard work and effort before you can get any benefit from an influencer. One needs to share, link, comment and repeat for a very long time before the influencer starts to notice them.
11. Review Products: Testing and reviewing products is a good way to get more content for the blog section. After posting the review, make sure to let the product owners know that you have reviewed their product. In return, you will find that the owners of the product will always share your review and chances are that they will link to it as well.
12. Collaborate with Other Bloggers: Bloggers are mostly good people who like to connect and collaborate. If you find good bloggers on your niche, look for opportunities of collaboration.
13. Guest Post on other Blogs: Just like opening up your blog for guest posting, one can do it the other way round by finding other blogs that allow guest posting and post on them. One can build links by guest posting, get more traffic and audience, get subscribers and boost readership.
The guest posting process is fairly simple. As bloggers you already create a lot of content for your blog, in the same way you need to create content for other people’s blog and send them the article for publishing it on their blogs.
There are many ways in which a blog can be grown over time. If you are able to give your blog a few hours of dedicated time where you can work on content as well as promotions then in time your blog will grow and it won’t cost you anything in the process.