Building momentum to your blog is probably the most difficult thing to do if you just started your blog.
Making money online through blogging can only be achieved if you have the right combination of high quality content and targeted traffic.
For example, if your blog is about “affiliate marketing” and the traffic you generate is looking for content on “automobiles” than this crowd won’t be interested in your content and the products you’re promoting.
What I’ve learned is that sometimes building a successful blog is not about working harder but working smarter.
I’ve decided to put together my top 8 blogging tips that will help you get your first 100,000 blog readers.

What You Will Learn

• How to get your first 100,000 blog visitors
• How to work smarter, not harder
• Free tools to grow your blog
• 8 awesome actionable tips

#1 – The (MWR) Principle

Every successful blogger will tell you that knowing your audience is as important as writing high quality content. What’s the point of blogging if you don’t know anything about your readers, right?
A great way to figure out your audience is to know what to expect from them when they visit your blog also known as the – Most Wanted Response.
Even though MWR in not an actual traffic strategy, it’s important to include it because you’ll only begin to build momentum once you know the purpose of your blog. You’ll have a better idea who to target going forward.
I consider it the ground work for any blog getting started because you need to determine what you’re trying to achieve when visitors land on your blog.
With MWR you’re prioritizing what your readers will do on your blog and how you’re going to convert these readers into profits.
Many times I’ve seen bloggers focus on the wrong things, adding banners & links to their content driving the reader away from the main purpose of their blog.
The goal is to make your visitors take a specific action which converts into a conversion.
This can be achieved in several ways through the following-

List Building

Very effective because you’re getting the visitor to opt-in using their email address and over a series of follow-up emails you can convert the subscriber into loyal readers.

Promoting Affiliate Offers

These can be anything from CPA to actual niche related products that your visitor will find useful.
My strategy when selling affiliate offers is to write a product review outlining how this product or service can benefit their business.

Coaching & Consulting

If you’re an expert in your niche then you can offer coaching to new bloggers.
Many experienced bloggers who have made a name for themselves provide consultation because they know the industry well and can provide guidance to a beginner.

Build a Community

Focuses more on forums which provide real-time help for visitors.
The success of forums depends on how many people are members. This model works when members communicate with each other like a question and answer session.

How to find your MWR

Start by asking yourself: what you are trying to achieve in the long-run?
Make sure before your blog goes live that you have a clear vision of the response you would like from your visitors. Once you have a clear cut plan you can start focusing on growing your blog.

#2 – Build Alliances with Power Bloggers

One of the most effective strategies in driving targeted traffic to your blog is to build alliances with other people in your niche.
I underestimated the power of this method and it cost me a lot of effort because I could have grown my blogger much faster if I utilized this strategy.
There are two effective ways to build alliances with other bloggers-

Round Up Posts

First, do a quick search in Google for the top bloggers in your industry. If you have a handful of blogs you already follow then use them for this assignment.
Write each one an email asking them for their opinion & feedback on a topic, for example, you can ask them what their favorite link building tools are?
I use this exact strategy and contacted 20 top bloggers in my niche and ask them what they think is the most effective link building technique.
I was surprised when I received an answer from 14 of them which I then grouped into a single blog post and in exchange I offered to place a link back to their blogs for their help.

Guest Posting

Another way to build alliances is by guest posting. Top bloggers as their site begins to grow can use fresh new content from others to keep the information flowing.
Visit the blogs you follow and you’ll be able to find information on guest posting opportunities.
It’s important to follow the guidelines and create unique content that will be appealing to their readers.
If you get published, the traffic generated through a single guest post can be enormous because you’re potential audience can be in the thousands.
A simple link to your blog within the guest post is a great way to get your brand noticed!
Here’s a quick way to perform a search for guest posting opportunities in Google:

# 3 – Writing MVP (Massive-Value-Posts)

High quality content is King! Without writing content that provides value to your readers you’ll fail as a blogger.
Google overtime has made the shift from giving priority to high quality content instead of back-links.
I believe two factors matter the most to achieve domination: Length & Social Shares.
If you’re going to set a word limit for your content then you’ve already failed because you’ll be focusing on word count instead of quality content.
When I write content I tell myself that my post should be as long as it has to in order to get my point across.
I have to write the best piece of content (better then my competitors) and cover everything about the topic in details. My post should be the only one my visitor needs to read to find a solution to their problem.
In the illustration you’ll notice that the top 10 results for any search term within Google have a word count over 2,000.


In order to achieve the same results focus on creating “Massive Value Posts” which provides a solution within your niche. Take a look at Matt’s Top 100 blog tutorial for a great example of that.
The best way to do this is by research and finding common questions that people keep asking. Group all the questions together and write a step by step guide solving the problem.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Make it easy to scan
• Add multimedia
• Provide examples where needed
• Add quotations for encouragement

Recently I gathered data from the top blog posts I read over a course of two weeks and found a common trend in each post.

#4 – Tools for Blog Growth

Much of the traffic you generate will be from people who share your content with others.
Let’s try something….imagine you get 300 people who read your content & 20% of them share it on their social network.
That’s a potential 60 more people who will see your content and if 50% click-through that’s 30 people who landed on your page.
This may not seem like a lot but these people can potentially share your content on their social network as well.

I love social networks because there like a chain effect which once started can’t be stopped generating enormous traffic for you.
In order to encourage people to share with their network you need to write high quality content that is value for your readers.
Secondly, make it easy for them to share by adding plugins to your blog that handles everything for you.

Digg Digg
An all-in-one plugin which adds social sharing buttons to your post, page and anywhere else that you place the code.
Very easy to configure and offers several awesome features.

All-in-One SEO
The most complete SEO plugin that exist today and basically streamlines the whole optimization process for you.
Very important for driving organic traffic to your blog and with this plugin you can optimize content, image titles, meta-description, etc.

Pretty Link
A simple plugin used to shorten links you share. Very important since many social sharing sites limit the number of characters you can type into the box.
This plugin will allow you to describe your content in greater detail when sharing without limiting the characters because of a long URL.

W3 Total Cache
Improve the speed at which your page loads. Very important since many of your visitors are located all over the world where connection speeds is an issue.
Having these people wait while your page loads will drive visitors away from your website. When people are searching information online they need it right away so a slow loading website is a deterrent.
Website speed is amazing for indexing purposes as well because the faster you’re pages load the faster it can be crawled by Google bots.

Learn how to improve site speed along with the benefits of content delivery network.

Evergreen Post Tweeter
Keeping your old posts alive is very important and quality content always provides value to readers.
This plugin will auto-tweet old posts which you’ve selected through the back-end.

#5 – The Broken Back-link Method (Awesome)

This method takes a bit of work and is definitely worth it because you can get loads of FREE targeted traffic.
You’re visiting relevant blogs in your niche finding links that are pointing to a page which is NO longer active.
You can then write better content and notify the blog owner about the broken-link they are pointing to which is no longer active while providing your post URL as a replacement.

How To Find Broken Links

Use the HREF Chrome extension to find broken links.
Browse over to any page on a blog and run the extension which will do the rest of the work. An active link will be highlighted in green and dead link in red.
If my blog is about “content marketing” I would search the internet for other content marketing blogs which have been around for several years.
I’ve noticed the longer a blog has been around the more chance they will be linking to a website which is no longer active. This is the right time for you to jump in contacting the owner about the broken external link they have on their blog.

Here’s a great way to do this…
First, do a quick Google search finding relevant blogs in your niche. I would take a few days browsing pages using the extension gathering a bunch of broken URL’s they have on their site.
If you find relevant content on a few blogs, group the URL’s so you can write one single piece of content which you can send to all of the blog owners.
Create your content and write something which will blow the roof off your competition. Make the content appealing to the blog owner who you want to ask for the replacement from.
Now you can just email them about the broken link and provide your content as a replacement.
Craft a nice email showing them you want to genuinely help them.

My Email Template

Feel free to use my template as a guide-
Hi (site owner name),
I have been a huge follower of your blog for some time and want to thank you for your awesome content. While I was browsing around I found a few links that are not working…
URL1

I have a great piece of content that you are more than welcome to use as a replacement. I have it published on my blog and this will help me out as well.
Here is the link (URL), let me know what you think and I hope you do enjoy it!
Either way, just wanted to let you know and keep up the great work you are doing.
Thanks,
(Your Name)

# 6 – Always Interlink Your Content

The best way to keep users on your blog is to provide them with relevant content by interlinking to posts that add value to each other. Interlinking relevant posts has two major benefits:

Organic Traffic

Google works very hard to give people the best search experience which is only achieved by them emphasizing the importance of a clean website with structure.
When relevant pages are linked together, the site is much easier to crawl and Google creates a pyramid of your website. How does a pyramid structure help?
If 5 relevant pages are linked together and one has a higher PR then the others, the link-juice will trickle down to the relevant pages.
This will give all the pages a quick boost in the SERP’s.

Social Sharing

Linking relevant content together increases the chances of your content being shared on social networks.
For example, if you have written content on “link building” emphasizing the importance of “article directories” you can link to content which provides the reader with “80 FREE article directories”.
In this example, the reader will share both pieces of content since they add value to each other and will help anyone trying to learn about link building.

Whenever you write content your objective should be to make it go viral because this creates a “chain effect” which can generate enormous traffic.
Some people who share content on social networks have 20k+ loyal followers who are more than happy to “re-tweet” valuable content.
If you need help streamlining the linking process, use these awesome WordPress plugins-

SEO Smart Links
Awesome for linking common posts & pages. Once you install the plugin, configure the keywords only once and each time the keyword is entered in your content it will automatically create a link to the URL you setup.

InLinks
Simple tool when configured will help you link specific keywords within your content to other URL’s throughout your blog. Another benefit is that once you’ve setup a interlink for the first time you can specify if you want the plugin to use the same interlink each time that keyword is used within your content.

Cross-Linker
Automatically links selected words to defined URL’s throughout your blog. This plugin is awesome for linking words within comments so each time a comment is left by a reader this tool will link to relevant content which was pre-defined through the setup menu.

#7 – Keep Updating & Re-Tweet

Content on your blog needs to be updated continuously or you’ll lose credibility with your readers.
People browsing the web are looking for reliable information and outdated content will cause you to lose credibility and loyal followers if they find an alternative source of information.
Updating content also drives organic traffic to your website since Google does use a freshness algorithm to give websites who update frequently priority in the SERP’s.
There are many factors that determine how to rank the freshness of the website, let’s take a look at one which focuses on updating content.

Here is an example from Moz.com, the full article can be viewed here
Freshness Rule # 3 – “The Rate of Document Change (How Often) Impacts Freshness”


“For example, a document whose content is edited often may be scored differently than a document whose content remains static over time. Also, a document having a relatively large amount of its content updated over time might be scored differently than a document having a relatively small amount of its content updated over time.”

A Real World Example

Blog content ideas is a hot topic since bloggers are always looking for new content to add to their blog.
This topic will keep growing overtime since people are always finding new things to write about.
If you’ve written content outlining “10 Blog Content Ideas” then continuing to update this post every 2 weeks will rank higher then content updated once every 2-3 months.

Finding Content That Needs To Be Updated

Start by typing in your topic within Google search and skim through the results.
Try and find things that you can add to your content to improve it making it better than your competitor.
Take a few weeks skimming through content gathering data before adding it to your content.

Drip Feeding Post Updates

If you have gathered 100 blog content ideas through brainstorming, write them on a piece of paper and keep adding them to your content over time.
Writing a blog post outlining “100 blog content ideas” does take a long time and by the time you publish it may be a few months.
You’re better off spreading it into intervals of “10” and keep updating overtime taking advantage of the freshness effect.

Going Viral

The next step is to share the content so it continues to go viral.
If you’re providing valuable content which genuinely helps solve a problem, they will be more than happy to continue sharing it with their followers.
A great way is to email your subscribers who have already shared this content before. If they enjoyed it the first time around than you know the second time won’t be any different.
Getting those social shares from your followers is important because not only does it help generate traffic but you can gain loyal blog readers in the long run.
Don’t forget you can also use the Evergreen Post Tweeter plugin to automate part of the process.

#8 – Focus on What Works

Don’t waste your time writing content which does not resonate with your readers.
Your effort can be used in different ways utilizing what you know will attract visitors to your website.
Once you’re blog has been active for several months, you’re going to get a better idea of what content you should focus more on. It’s important to have a reliable way to track statistics on your website.
Google Analytics (GA) is the most used tracking tool on the web. GA will provide you with all the data you need to understand your audience.
The interface is very easy to use and adding Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) to the mix creates an ultimate tracking package.

Setting Up Google Webmaster Tools

Let’s get started configuring Google Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics because this way you can view all the data from within your Analytics account instead of bouncing back and forth from GWT-GA.
Head over to Google Webmaster Tools and Login….
Next, click on the red button labelled “Add Site”. Add your domain and follow the directions to verify domain usually done through your domain registrar.



Once your domain has been added you’ll notice a button on the right labelled “Manage Site” and when you hold down this button you’ll see an option for “Google Analytics Property”.
You can now select what site to link to your GWT account. If you don’t see your website listed it’s because you haven’t added it within GA.

You need to go back and install the script from GA on your website. You’ll then see your website listed and can proceed to merge both accounts together.



Now that you’re, wait 2-3 days for the data to be merged and displayed.
You can now start analyzing your website. When you login into Google Analytics, we want to focus on data from “Search Queries” and “Landing Pages”.
Both these properties will be displayed in GA under the Acquisition>Search Engine Optimization.

Looking At Search Queries

This display’s which keywords are relevant to your website and there average position.
The data will display as: query, impressions, clicks, average position and CTR. Focus on keywords that have a CTR of 25%-30% since these keywords have a decent position in the SERP’s.


Use this data to create more content based around those keywords that have a high CTR. I usually create content relevant to those keywords and interlink the posts together.
It’s an effective way to push traffic to new content.

Landing Pages

This data displays the actual URL that people are landing on when they click-through from the SERP’s.
A click-through is influenced by many factors-

• Headline of the post as displayed in the SERP’s
• Description as displayed in the SERP’s
• How important the visitor finds the information
• Position of keyword in SERP’s

The Landing Page data will display the impressions your pages are getting from highest>lowest. Your focus should be on CTR- user click-through-rate.


There are two ways you can use this information to your advantage.
First, if you have a landing page getting a high CTR (25%-30%) then interlink relevant content to that page building momentum.

You’ve just increased the chance a visitor will click-through to content which have been linked together. Any content which adds value to the reader will have a higher chance of being shared on social networks generating traffic.
Use the high CTR to gain subscribers by adding an opt-in form.

Let’s do some math…
3,000/mo impressions with 25% CTR = 750 visitors that land on that page.
You can offer them a FREE eBook based around your niche if they opt-in to your list. You can send these people updates to their inbox whenever new content is added to your blog increasing the chance they become repeat visitors.
Use the data collected from “search queries” and “landing page” with the broken-link method discussed in tip #5.

Research blogs in your niche and find inactive links relevant to your landing page. If you find a link, send the owner of the blog and email and your link as a replacement.
Take advantage of blogs that have 30k-40k visitors a month because a link on these blogs can generate huge targeted traffic for you.

My Final Thoughts

Generating traffic for your blog is difficult but those that don’t give up will succeed where others have failed.
Work hard at creating content that you know your readers need. Whenever I write content I always ask myself these questions-

How can I help my readers through my blog?
Answer: I do research and find out what problems my audience are facing. I gather common questions being asked and write content based on those questions.

How can I make my content even better than it is now?
Answer: My content should be the only one that provides a complete solution. Once my readers leave my blog they should be able to implement what they have learned right away. This builds loyalty and credibility.

What can I do to make sure they are clear about what to do?
Answer: Provide them with an action plan to follow so they know where to begin implementing my strategies.

Your Action Plan

Read over my article again making quick notes about the things you’ve learned.
Visit the content I’ve linked to because it provides awesome tips on how you can keep building traffic to your blog.

Research 3-4 questions people are asking within your niche. Look through relevant forums, blogs and Yahoo Answers and write them down on a piece of paper.
It’s time to build alliances, contact 1-2 bloggers in your niche asking them feedback on 1 question from your list.

Don’t lose motivation if you don’t hear back right away. Some will after a few days and some won’t but you need to keep pushing forward and if you can’t collect enough data than resort to finding “guest posting” opportunities – refer to tip #2.

It’s important to keep track of where your traffic is coming from at all times. Install Google Analytics on your website and configure Google Webmaster Tools. These are both FREE tools so take advantage of what you have because you’re competitors definitely are!

It’s important to stay consistent because if you don’t then in about two years you’re going to look back and be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do then by the things you did do.
Thanks for reading and please feel free to check out my blog!