Inside: How to increase pageviews on a blog to make more money each month.
I have been blogging since 2014 and it now brings in a monthly income that has meant I haven’t had to return to teaching. There are many ways to make money from an online brand but a blog has so much potential. The more page views you have on your blog each month, the more you can charge for brand collaborations and the more money you can make from advertising companies.
Increasing page views is key to making more money each month. There are lots of posts out there telling you how you can increase views but so many of these methods are outdated or down to luck more than judgement. There is one way to guarantee more page views and it isn’t as difficult as it seems. Everything else is a bonus.
In this post I will walk you through the process of how you can increase the page views on your blog and therefore increase your pulling power with advertisers and brands.
Why increase your pageviews?
The greater your pageview number, the more attractive you become as a brand. A page view is not the same as a unique user but the two will go hand in hand in terms of how well you will be viewed by those that want to pay you money.
Every time someone lands on your site, they become a unique user. Every time they return or click around several pages, they become a pageview. One person could account for 10 page views if you manage to keep them engaged enough. So if you can increase the number of users and keep each of them clicking around, you will increase your pageviews too.
Your blog is valuable real estate to companies. If your audience matches their target audience then they will pay big money to gain access through your site.
Brands will want to know what your pageviews are, so they can get a good idea as to how engaged your users are and how likely a post will be seen, if they work with you to promote a product or service. If you have high pageviews they will know that your posts do well enough to draw in an audience and so their product is more likely to be found via your blog.
Advertising companies will also want to work with you if you have high page views. If they can see that you get regular traffic to your site then they will place ads within your content that will hopefully result in click-throughs to the product or service being shown.
Another revenue stream comes in the form of affiliate links. If you can recommend products and link to them as an affiliate then you will receive money each time someone buys through your link. The more pageviews you get, the more chance those views will result in clicks through to the products you recommend in your posts.
How to increase your pageviews
There are different elements to increasing your pageviews; search engine traffic, social media traffic, reader retention and community. Let’s take a look at each of them in turn…
Reader retention
You can have the best content in the world but if the user experience leaves your reader feeling frustrated then you’ll lose them pretty quickly and that won’t bode well for future views.
Website theme. You want your website to have a good design – one that is easy to navigate and that pleases the eye. A plain white background with simple clean lines works best and looks most professional. Busy themes will distract readers and they won’t be able to focus on the words. WordPress has lots of great themes – I personally use Trellis by Mediavine and love it.
Text size and font. Time and time again I see people using fancy script that is too difficult to decipher. Stick to plain fonts and at a size that makes it easy for anyone to read – 20 is a great size to stick to. And break up long paragraphs – nobody likes to be hit with a wall of text.
Page speed. There’s nothing worse than wanting to read an article but the page takes forever and a day to load. We are so used to fast speeds now that if your site is slow, people won’t have the patience to hang around. Check your speed at https://pagespeed.web.dev/ and follow the recommendations to get the best speed possible.
Content. This should go without saying but you need to write good content to keep your readers reading. Quality content will always win over quick-wins like click bait articles that leave readers feeling frustrated. If you can write long-form content, really answering a question that people have been asking then you will please the people and please Google.
Internal links and related articles. A part of being useful to your readers is being able to direct them to further useful articles to expand their learning. That can come in the form of internal links to other posts on your blog but also to external sites if they support the original piece.
So, making sure you write helpful content, include helpful links and have a site that makes people want to hang around will all combine together to improve your bounce rate (how quickly people leave your site) and show Google that you are a great source of information.
Community
There are two elements to community but for the purpose of this point I am meaning the blogging community.
Guest posts. A great way to get your name out there is to guest post on other people’s blogs. You can share your expertise with their audience and hopefully drive traffic back to your own blog as a result. Plus, having a link from their site to yours will help boost you in the rankings with an increased DA.
Mutual sharing. Having friends within the same niche can be so beneficial – you scratch their back and they scratch yours. As both your audiences grow, the more your posts will be seen when they are shared. Social media shares on Twitter, Facebook or via IG stories can be so powerful and can drive
I belong to the most wonderful blogging community and I owe them so much. My income has doubled since joining and I would 100% recommend signing up to be part of the membership too. To find out more, head over to the Hobby to Heyday site.
Social media traffic
Social media can be a great driver to your blog and can help get new readers interested in your content and you as a brand, building up a community as you go.
You can build an audience on social media platforms (Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and other social media channels as they pop up – TikTok being a great example of how people can utilise new platforms) but it is important to choose the platform that feels right for you and for the audience you are trying to reach.
Facebook groups. People love to be part of a community, so giving them a dedicated group to be in where they can share a common interest or goal is great! You can create a group of your own or hang out in other people’s groups and when appropriate you can share any relevant posts with the people in the group. Just pay attention to group rules and don’t appear spammy – share content to be genuinely helpful.
Forums. One of the best places to share content is within forums. People will ask questions in the hopes that people will be able to give them good advice. If you can find relevant questions then you can give a snippet of advice with the offer of reading more if they are interested. Then – and only then – you can share the link to a post. Again, pay attention to rules and focus on being helpful rather than trying to spam the forums.
Email list. You don’t own your social media channels so if Mark Zuckerberg decides to change the algorithm or shut everything down then you could lose your community. The best way to communicate with your audience is to have their email address and be able to contact them direct. You can email them your latest posts and know that they’ve chosen to hear those updates.
Share buttons. Make sure you place social media share buttons at the bottom of every blog post so that people can share great content when they find it.
The best way to increase pageviews on a blog
All the ways mentioned above are great for increasing and improving your pageviews. But of all the sources of traffic out there, there is one way that beats the rest… write content that will rank highly in search engines. Of course, if you don’t have a user friendly blog site then great content won’t matter. But it is the content that will get people to your blog in the first place.
Don’t forget Pinterest. Did you know Pinterest is a search engine? Each time someone searches for something in one of the main search engines they will pull in results from Pinterest too. So make sure to create a Pinterest account and add in an image for each post you write.
Writing content for search engines
When people ask questions on Google, Bing or any of the other search engines, millions of articles will try to show them the answer. If you can be the source of answers on a particular subject then you can get traffic to your blog.
And the way to do this is through search engine optimisation (SEO) and having a great content strategy.
Check Google Analytics. What posts of yours are doing well? Can you write more posts around that topic, going into greater detail and answering questions that crop up time and time again. The more you write about a topic, the more search engines will see you as an expert.
Practice SEO. Optimising posts for search engines can seem overwhelming but once you know the process it is just a case of rinse and repeat for each post you write moving forwards.
- Keyword research. What will people be searching for? What phrases might they type into the search bar on Google? There are lots of Keyword research tools out there to help you as mentioned below.
- Use your keyword phrase in your title, within the first sentence and in the first sub-heading of your post.
- Use related keywords throughout your post.
- Use the keyword within image alt text.
- Include the keyword phrase within the permalink and meta description. (You can use a wordpress plugin such as Rank Math or Yoast to help change these)
- Link to relevant posts on your site as well as to relevant posts from other useful sites where necessary.
The process can be quite lengthy, especially the keyword research but there is one tool that I absolutely swear by that takes all of the guesswork out of the content creation process: RankIQ.*
RankIQ is an SEO tool that helps you to find low competition keywords to work with and then gives you everything you need to create the best title and post content to rank quickly for that keyword.
Every post that I have written (or updated) using RankIQ* has ranked in the top 3 posts in search results within one to three months and increased my organic traffic significantly. The dedicated Facebook group has also taught me so much. It is absolutely worth its weight in gold and is the best tool I have tried (and I’ve tried them all!).
You could always try it for a month and see how you get on – I am sure you’ll love it as much as I do!
* affiliate link.
Planning your content
What is your niche? Who is your target reader? What do you know that can help others?
When planning out your content you need to make sure that your posts are educational, inspiring or entertaining in some way. This will all depend on your niche but there should always be a reason for your blog posts. If it won’t serve people in some way then it is not worth writing.
The posts that work best are often the educational posts because people always turn to Google to find answers to questions. If you can answer that question using your knowledge and expertise then you will draw in more blog traffic.
The reason niching down is important is so that you can show search engines that you know a lot about a particular topic rather than knowing a little about many topics. The more you can write around one subject, the more Google will begin to rank you higher within searches for that niche.
This is where using internal links between relevant posts is crucial as you are opening showing Google which posts are related as well as helping readers hop from post to post within a topic that they have searched for.
If someone lands on your blog through post A, clicks through to post B and then again to post C, the better you will appear to Google and the higher you will rank in future. And of course, the longer they stay on your blog the more you’ll earn in ad revenue as they scroll through each post. Great content = more revenue.
Reaching the right people
Using seo, building a community of fellow bloggers as well as an engaged audience through social media can ensure you are able to get your content seen by the right people.
Having a great website design, useful content and an internal linking structure will ensure that those people will stay on your blog for as long as possible.
This all adds up to one thing: more blog views. And more pageviews means more ad revenue and more pulling power when it comes to working with brands and PR companies.
In the early days you may feel disheartened if your monthly pageviews are low but keep plugging away. It is so worth it and all of your hard work will pay off in the long run.
Good luck!