Yes, the design does matter. Writing is an art. To put it as a blog and wanting to see good traffic, you must get smart. Keep the heading of your blog posts catchy and informative.

a. Get a topic which is the trendiest and most searched by the audience. Be yourself. Be simple and informative. Instead of showcasing your vocabulary and knowledge of language try to present the essence of the topic in simple yet attractive manner. Remember, your fans, friends want to read and understand what you want to say, not give you marks for your vocabulary. Keep the content light without compromising the quality. Read other blogs on the same topic to get an idea what actually works. Again, be unique! Casting the same layout of another blogger isn’t a great idea. You must have something unique of your own to offer to your readers.

b. Add a few visual treats to compliment your writing. Today reading is mostly skimmed, not many would like to go through the entire blog. Hence, keep yourself restricted to 1500 -2000 words (although there are some benefits of writing long blogs i.e. 2000+ words too as said by Neil Patel). You may also insert up to 4 visuals to give your words a better connectivity with your audiences. Insertions of infographics and slide shares too are great ways to increase the blog traffic, although it is time and effort taking.

c. Make a smart move of increasing your followers by following few bloggers wherein you may comment, suggest and make a move towards strengthening the bond. When you write a blog and link out other bloggers to compliment your post, the other bloggers not only get happy but also return the favor in future. Your purpose of increasing traffic has just begun. Hold on!! How will you reach them, well, it is a small world? Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, emails are the best platforms to get in touch with them and believe it or not they too are overwhelmed with this kind of gesture and recognition.

Now, it’s time to work smart. Write what your audience understands. It is interesting to know that even from comments generated through the posts, you may get to know the preferences and taste of your audiences. Get hold of every comment and work towards it. Ubersuggest will help you generating ideas. Likewise, use a small watermark or images to protect your blog being replicated and readers will have a constant sight of it, which will remind the blogger’s name and work.

A blog is said to be evergreen when it has a continued and a sustainable success. Consequently, choose a topic which has the least competition. What better way to go but Google.com. It will show you the number of relevant blogs under the same single heading. If the number shown is several, opt out a different topic. You may also register yourself to many threads, read them and make your secret findings to create a new blog.

The patient audience is an ideal audience but difficult to get too. On an average people can wait more than 3 seconds to load a website. Thus, it is unlikely that a reader would wait for more than cutoff time if the site takes a lot of time to load. Tools like LoadImpact and PageSpeed Insights by Google will help you get an idea how well your pages can save time on loading and give a clearer picture of how well your blog traffic can be enhanced. Avoid many images, advertisement, links which may take the time to load.

This is one of the best ways to increase your blog traffic. Despite various social sites, the email list is a list that will stay for a longer time. It is a great idea to send out emails with your updated posts to your readers. It makes it easy for the readers to go through your posts. Just ensure you have an option to collect their email addresses by asking them to fill subscription form for the newsletters. This will remind your existing readers of your updates and they will check your blog out on every new update.

The millennial generation is most active in social media. The world is connected through various social sites, and so does blog needs its space. Be more visible on such sites, promoting your links for your readers. Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, Reddit, are just a few to name. The more you are on these platforms the better you can promote your blog. It is a two-way affair. Participating in other blogs and communities is again a proven way of reaching out your readers. You must read other blogs and give your comments and feedbacks. Link your blog for others to go through it. Read others’ blogs frequently to enhance the scope of connecting with your audience. Your comments and likes will encourage the other bloggers to create long-term professional bonding soon.

There are tools available to enhance your traffic blog. Google Trends tool is used to show a graph of the interest on a topic – whether it has added up or lessened. BuzzSumo or Quora tool can help you know the most popular topics in the social media. SEMrush lets you know the right keywords that you can use to attract blog traffic.

It is a phenomenal idea to increase your blog traffic. The idea is to make connections with influential people, bloggers. Just writing for such influential people will help you build connections and in return, they too help grow your blog by giving them their precious comments and platform where millions of visitors are available.

No, you aren’t’ a businessman, but you got to push your efforts a little to get your desired results. A little effort such as publishing a free video (how to make a toddler learn phonics) or free report on any of the latest news (keep tuned for ballot results) are some of the tactics to invite audiences. Try making short blogs. If your topic is vast, give a link to follow it that can direct the reader to a complete blog in another page. Reading long blogs is time-consuming and needs patience too, although it often goes viral depending upon the topic and other factors. Add bullet points and subtitles to attract your readers and give them a scannable content. Besides, interlinking of your other blogs will also increase traffic and keep the visitors engaged in your blog for longer. Cross promotion may also be done where you can mention a blogger of a similar niche in your blog and vice versa. This will enhance the blog traffic for sure.

When readers get used to you, they want to hear from you more frequently. Keep consistency in posting blogs. Try posting a blog per week. This will keep your audience engaged and connected too. You may also cite few celebrity or social influencers to your content. People love to read about them. This will also give you new topics and most engaging pieces that keep your readers also happy and engaged. Do not break this rhythm and consistency ever as it also impacts your search engine ranking. But beware, never write for search engines to improve your ranking! Write for people it will automatically improve your ranking if well accepted by your readers.

Readers get inspiration from reading real life stories. People are more interested to know about those people who succeed in their life and profession. How they do it what were the milestone, challenges and how they overcame it all. These are some of the aspects everyone wants to know about for those who are successful.  If you have an interesting story of people, you may reach out to websites such as IdeaMensch to get inspiration from and stories to cover. Look for such opportunities.

Audiences love bloggers who hear and understand them. So primarily have a friendly approach and a great sense of humor. If you have your article in your twitter bio, ask for retweets. If you mention any person or entity, send them the link and invite to like and share your blog. The idea is more you get to share, it increases your blog traffic. Share your articles as much as you can. Be present on Pinterest, Vine, Storify Quora, Stumbleupon, the options are many to share your blog.