How to double the traffic to Interior Design blog in one month

I was analyzing my blog, trying to understand where I am standing, what I have achieved and what I need to do, when my eyes caught this article by Jon Morrow:

The 7 Dumbest Mistakes You Can Make When Launching a New Blog.

I think after reading it I looked somewhat like this:

…because out of 7 possible mistakes I managed to make 6:

1) Betting the bank on SEO (I thought that keywords are the most important part of SEO and SEO is the most important thing for Google ranking).

2) Thinking valuable content is enough (seriously, I really thought so).

3) Wasting time redesigning my blog (how many hours I spent choosing WordPress theme and learning CSS editing?!)

4) Writing every day (yes, I was writing my posts EVERY single day)

5) Splitting my focus between my blog and Twitter plus Facebook (instead of focusing on one platform I was putting my efforts in all possible social networks).

6) Waiting for my traffic to snowball (I was expecting my audience to grow geometrically with every new post that I publish).

The only mistake from Jon’s list which I managed to avoid was “Writing stories about my life” but at the same time I have some more sins to confess about:

7) Constantly checking my statistics (sometimes it looked like I was hypnotizing my laptop screen in order to make it grow). Very often I checked it almost every hour just pretending that I am doing an important analytical job. I wish I spent this time concentrating on other important things.

2) Submitting to the WRONG directories. This was advice which I got from one “blogging guru”. It sounded so easy to do: just submit my blog to as many free directories as possible and wait for traffic to grow like avalanche. No one told me at that time that this tactics can be actually harmful for the blog, as some of these directories are nothing but storage of junk websites and my brand new, stylish, interesting blog will be surrounded by those ugly neighbors. Google pays attention to authority of the sites that link to you: the higher it is, the higher rank you get. Thanks again to Jon who opened my eyes.

3) Thinking that getting re-blogged is always a good thing. When I just launched my blog I got so excited each time any of my articles got re-blogged. “I am really good if people want to publish my content on their websites” – that’s what I thought. Now I understand that this can be beneficial for me only in case the website linking to me has high Google rank otherwise getting back link from junk website with lots of spam can do more harm than good.

4) Thinking that amount of followers is the most important thing. When I started blogging I was so much concentrating on increasing amount of followers to my blog. Now I understand that actually it is not that essential: I can have thousands of followers but what if only 1 percent of them will actually open and read my posts?

Having analyzed all these points I worked out this strategy which I am going to implement over the following month. I will put it as an experiment and then share with you the results.

STRATEGY TO DOUBLE THE TRAFFIC TO MY BLOG IN 30 DAYS

Goal:

To DOUBLE the traffic to my blog in 30 days.

My statistics is the following:  I have got 4148 page views in March 2013 and 10320 hits since the launch of blog (during 7 months).

Therefore in April 2013 I should get 8296 page views, but to make the goal even more challenging I am going to aim for 10320 hits (the figure I made during all time that I was blogging).

HOW I AM GOING TO ACHIEVE THIS:

1) I will not check my statistics for the whole month. Seriously. It is distracting.

2) I will find out which content people WANT to read.

My idea is the following: It doesn’t matter that your biggest passion in life is to study behavior of Colorado beetles during breeding season and you want to write about it. If no one else is interested in it, your blog will hardly become popular.

In order to find out which information people are looking for in Interior Design blogs I will:

–  read relevant discussions on LinkedIn, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and see what people talk about and which questions they ask.

– look at authorities in my niche. Usually these guys know what is hot and I will learn it from them.

3) I will make a writing and publishing schedule. Self-discipline is essential for blogger plus my readers will know on which days to expect new posts.

4) I will try to get more back links by writing articles that people like to refer to. Among them: list of gurus in my niche, 101 list of (best products, best resources, best manufacturers), 10 easy tips, etc.

5) I will review all posts in my blog and give titles to all images as this is one thing which I often overlook. Compare yourself: image named “00001” or image titled “cabriole leg” – which one is more likely to appear in Google under the search term “cabriole leg”?

5) I will Focus on Reddit. Recently I discovered that Reddit can be powerful tool in driving traffic to my blog, in fact, VERY powerful. One day I got 300 views from there in just couple of hours. The only thing with Reddit that it is very strict: you will not go far if you will promote only your posts as you will be considered as spammer. What I am planning to do is to participate in discussions, leave comments, share content from other blogs and of course publish my every new post there.

6) I will Focus on Google +. Before I didn’t pay real attention to it, thinking that Facebook and Twitter are the most powerful networks for marketing. In fact, it looks like Google+ is becoming more and more influential. My tactics: to join all Interior Design communities, share posts within those communities and my circles, promote posts from other bloggers (by using +1 button ) and to add a lot of people to my circles.

7) I will discover StumbleUpon and Digg. So far I didn’t use these networks, this month I am going to find out what they are worth.

8) Answer questions about Interior Design in Yahoo answers in order to get more back links.

13) I will use more often SlideShare. This is the platform where you can upload and share videos and presentations. So far I published 3 presentations on my channel which brought me additional traffic to my blog.

14) I will increase my followers on  Twitter. I have found this amazing presentation made by Ana Hoffman from  Traffic Generation Cafe. It has some wonderful tips on how to get more followers on Twitter so I am going to try all of them:

[slideshare id=16409027&doc=howtogetmoretwitterfollowers-130207143208-phpapp02]

15) I will get more likes on my Facebook page. Another portion of great advice on how to get more likes on Facebook page from Ana Hoffman and I am going to follow it:

[slideshare id=17064148&doc=howtogetfacebookfans-130309095217-phpapp02]

Today is the 1st of April when I am posting this plan and I am going to share with you the results after one month.

As usually I am looking forward to hearing from you. Do you have the action plan for your blog as well?

Related articles

• Simple strategy to get more followers to your blog (essenziale-hd.com)
• Why blogging will be crucially important for Interior Designers in 2013? (essenziale-hd.com)
• 10 Effective Ways to Build Backlinks (backlinkbeast.wordpress.com)