Recently one of my friends asked me how to get his newly launched blog to next level. He asked for some strategies to get traffic to his blog. I answered him the best ways to get traffic to your blog is by commenting on other blogs, guest posting, engaging with other bloggers.

He then replied “I do those things regularly. I have a question in my mind. How do top bloggers get plenty of traffic. What do they do for that?”.

That question from my friend made me list down the names of some top bloggers and contact them directly asking for the strategies they use to get traffic. Out of 5, only 2 of them managed to reply to my Email.

I am very excited to share their replies with you all. Read on if you want to know their strategies.

Matt Smith (OnlineIncomeTeacher.com)

1) Matt, tell me something about you..

My name is Matt and I’m a pro blogger from the UK. I got into blogging after I had set up a few websites for friends and family. I’d always get questions from people about; how to set up a website? how do you become a blogger? how do you make money online? which is what inspired me to start OnlineIncomeTeacher.com

Away from blogging I’m a big Football fan (Man Utd supporter) and love watching movies.

2) What are your traffic strategies?

There are lots of different strategies that I use to drive traffic. You can’t rely on one single method, you need to build up as many traffic streams as you can.

The most obvious method that I use is social media. I’m on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, StumbleUpon and many others, which I use to promote my site and, more importantly, build up a community. For social media to work, you have to get involved with people and talk to them. People won’t want to ReTweet or share your posts if you aren’t prepared to do the same yourself. Blogging is a community, you need to get involved in order to get noticed.

SEO is another important strategy that I use to drive traffic to my site. Many bloggers overlook this, but it is probably the best way of getting traffic. It involves optimizing your posts, with targeted keywords, so that search engines can effectively work out what your articles are about. If they can do that, then they will be able to send you more traffic. All bloggers should learn about ‘On-Page SEO Techniques’ as soon as possible, as that will help them greatly in the long run.

Guest blogging is another good way to attract traffic. This involves you writing posts for other sites that link back to your blog. The key is to write helpful posts that people actually want to read. That way, when they see that you have written it, they will be encouraged to click on and visit your site. You also get the added benefit of getting a link to your blog, which is great for SEO.

There are some other methods that I use, but these are probably the 3 most effective. If people work on getting these 3 right, then they will find attracting traffic much easier.

Erik Emanuelli (freemakemoneyadvice.com)

1) Tell me something about you.

I am Erik, traveler, entrepreneur and passionate blogger.

I consider myself as a Citizen of the World : I traveled for business and pleasure in over 25 countries across four continents (and still counting).

I work in Import/Export Business and in free time I run “Free MAKE MONEY Advice” (together with some other niche websites).

2) What are your traffic strategies?

Of course organic traffic from search engines is the first one.
So be sure to optimize your content and build safe quality links.

Then I like social media and the relationships you can build joining the most popular networks.

Twitter is a nice social media, if used correctly.
There are so many online services linked to Twitter, that you can use to generate many connections in your market and receive traffic to your blogs!

“Triberr” is my favorite one : a fantastic community site where you can multiply your social media audience.
You can decide to connect not only Twitter, but also your LinkedIn and Facebook accounts.
The system automatically let your Triberr members share your new posts via their social media accounts : this amplifies the market reach of your content.
Just think that I have almost 50 million of reach and 3000 tribemates, which means each of my new posts may be shared to that number of audience. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

“JustRetweet” and “ViralContentBuzz” are two others tools that I use
sometimes to promote my new posts.

Basically you earn credits by sharing other user’s content and you can spend them submitting your links, which will be shared by other members in order to earn more credits.

READ: 7 Tactics To Get More Comments On Your Blogs

Both sites are connected to different social media networks, like Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and Pinterest.
If you do not use any of the tools I have just mentioned, I strongly recommend you to start right now, if you want to get your market reach amplified!

Neil Patel (KISSmetrics.com)

1) Neil! Tell me something about you.

My name is Neil Patel and I am a serial entrepreneur. I spend all of my time on KISSmetrics, which is a startup that focuses on customer analytics. My previous startup was CrazyEgg, which helps companies make their websites more usable.

And during my free time, I blog at Quick Sprout.

2) What are your traffic strategies?

I use a few different strategies. The main 2 are content marketing and social media marketing.

As for content marketing, my strategy is to write really in-depth content that contains tons of data and details. I’ve found that blog posts that are over 2000 words and contain great information tend to do well through the social web. So what I try to do is write detailed blog posts once to twice a week.

Secondly, I promote my content via the social web. By placing social media buttons on my blog posts and spreading my posts through my own social accounts, I am able to drive traffic to them. I’ve also tested out lightbox that covers your content and requires people to like your blog post or tweet it to read the rest of the content. This strategy has helped boost social engagement.

Conclusion

I have mailed more top bloggers asking for their traffic strategies. If they reply to my mail, then I would come up with the second part.

What do you think about their strategies? Are they similar to those that you use to get traffic? Share your thoughts on this through comments below.