How I Drove 28% More Traffic to My WordPress Blog in Just 48 Days

How I Drove 28% More Traffic to My WordPress Blog in Just 48 Days

Growing a successful WordPress blog takes time, effort, and learning from both mistakes and wins. In this post, I'll walk you through the growth hacking strategies and site improvements I made over 48 days that helped me increase my WordPress blog traffic by 28%.

Why Targeted Traffic Matters

When evaluating your blog's growth, it's not enough to simply track visit numbers in Google Analytics. The traffic needs to be targeted - meaning the visitors actually have an interest in what you offer. Untargeted traffic results in high bounce rates and low conversion rates.

By focusing my efforts on attracting visitors genuinely interested in my niche, I ensured more readers would actually benefit from my content instead of clicking away. This resulted in lower bounce rates, more returning visitors, higher pages per session, and increased newsletter sign ups.

My Initial Situation: Neglecting Old Content

I'll be the first to admit - I was overly focused on churning out new content and neglecting older posts. But search engine traffic and visitors who land on older content still make up a significant portion of any site's visits.

Older content often continues delivering value and ranks well in search engines due to accumulating backlinks and engagement over time. By not optimizing these posts, I left easy traffic opportunities on the table.

How I Turned Things Around in 48 Days

Through a combination of growth hacking strategies and site improvements, I gave my older content new life and made my blog more discoverable both for visitors and search engine crawlers.

Here is a summary of the high-impact actions I took:

Moved Non-Relevant Content to a Separate Site

I launched my blog originally as a general tech site before settling into my current niche. This meant I had 50+ quality tech articles that, while useful, no longer fit my blog's focus.

Rather than simply deleting them, I:

• Used the Archive Remote Images plugin to easily port images when republishing content elsewhere
• Removed the posts from this site and requested removal from Google's index via Search Console
• 301 redirected each URL to the republished version on my other site
• Published the imported articles on my tech site to retain their value

Removing good but non-relevant posts strengthened my site's focus without sacrificing that content. And the 301 redirects ensured existing site links and search engine juice got passed to the new location.

Optimized Target Pages for Keyword Rankings

I used the SEO tool SEMRush to identify underperforming pages around valuable keywords. By enhancing the content and structure for keywords I wanted to rank for, I made it easier for search engines to correctly index and value those pages.

For example, after 4 days of on-page optimization, my "popular post" on ways to drive blog traffic jumped from #15 to #6 for its main keyword.

Repurposed Posts into Slideshares

Creating visual presentations from my content accomplished two goals:

1. Drove additional visitors from Slideshare
2. Further enhanced my site's branding and author image

I hired freelancers on Upwork (formerly oDesk) to handle the design work. This let me reuse content more broadly with minimal effort on my end.

While I'm still gathering data, Slideshare has already brought in new site visitors - and I know the value will grow over time as each asset continues working for me.

Upgraded to a Responsive Theme

My old blog theme was not mobile responsive. With Google's mobile-first indexing and the general shift to mobile browsing, continuing with a desktop-only site was leaving opportunities on the table.

I migrated to the responsive Astra theme for WordPress. Combined with improvements like browser caching and minified CSS/JS, my page load times dropped by over 300%. Faster load times reduce visitor bounce rates and help pages rank better in search engines.

I also enabled Astra's settings for mobile-specific layouts. This further enhanced the user experience for smartphone visitors.

Enhanced Related Posts

I used to rely on a simple plugin that automatically displayed loosely related posts at the bottom of articles. The recommendations were OK but not great.

I had my developer team implement a robust related posts section I can manually curate for each piece of content. Now I carefully select 3-5 closely relevant articles to link at the bottom of every post.

The related posts upgrade will take more time, but by only linking contextually relevant content I know it will reduce bounce rates and keep readers engaged on my site.

Removed Broken Links & Irrelevant Links

Finally, I used the handy (and free) LinkWhisper plugin to identify any broken links on my site. I fixed or removed each broken URL in my posts and menus.

I also took the time to comb through old links and remove any that were no longer relevant or added value for readers.

Eliminating broken links and link rot is critical for site health and search engine rankings. While not the most exciting project, this site maintenance delivered huge benefits with minimal effort.

Results: How My Traffic Improved

Within just 48 days of focusing on site upgrades and better content promotion, my blog traffic increased by 28% compared to the previous period.

Here is a snapshot of how impactful my changes were:

{insert image of positive traffic graph over 48 days}

These compounding benefits will only continue over time as assets like Slideshare presentations continue attracting new traffic and my optimized pages climb search rankings.

I also noticed secondary improvements thanks to higher quality traffic, like:

• Lower bounce rate (down 2.1%)
• More pages per session (up 3.2%)
• Increased email list sign ups (17% boost)

Key Takeaways for Your Own Blog

The strategies I implemented took consistency and effort, but clearly paid off through increased blog traffic and better site metrics across the board.

Here are my main learnings to help drive similar wins for your blog:

Continuously improve ALL website content - Put focus on enhancing both new and older posts since search engines continue directing traffic to what already works.

Repurpose top content whenever possible - Find creative ways like slide decks to reuse what performs well. This multiplier effect is incredibly powerful.

Focus on genuine audience value first - Search engines reward sites that actually help visitors. Optimize for real users' needs before algorithms.

Fix technical issues immediately - Broken links and a poor mobile experience hurt conversions. Nip these in the bud.

Try "growth hacking" experiments - Unconventional, low-cost tests like my Slideshare integration unlock big upside at little risk.

Track detailed analytics for insights - Knowing precise traffic drivers, engagement metrics and user behavior is key for smarter decisions.

With some strategic planning and commitment to continuous improvement, you can achieve similar success growing your own blog. No matter your current traffic numbers, there are always opportunities right now to start increasing your reach.

I hope walking through my process gives you specific ideas to implement or provides that nudge of motivation to try something new. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions!