. Add excellent navigation

 

1. Build your email list

Email marketing is a subtle yet effective strategy. By contacting readers regularly, you’re building rapport with them. You’re also giving them an easy way to share your content with others.

Whether your site is big or small, getting started with email marketing is easy. It’s also relatively cheap, with a likely high return on your investment – so if you’re wondering how to grow your blog, this is the logical first step.

You can even find free email marketing services that let you get started at no cost.

2. Involve your audience

Engaging your audience can be tricky, but it’s also effective. Likes, comments, and especially shares can be an easy way to organically spread the word about your blog.

Try to increase these metrics by including a call to action (CTA) at the end of your content. Check out this example from our article on hiding the WordPress admin bar:

Even simple questions like these can encourage more engagement. Nevertheless, try to limit yourself to a single CTA per post, to avoid overwhelming readers.

3 Make good use of internal links

Internal links are the most direct way to provide access to more content. If a reader comes upon an article casually, they can use these URLs to explore. This can lead to them learning more about your blog and becoming active users.

For maximum effect, you’ll want to make these internal links as natural and relevant as possible. This strategy can also help boost your SEO.

4. Add excellent navigation

Nobody likes a site that’s hard to get around. A bad interface may even scare away users who could otherwise become loyal fans. Thus, if you want to know how to grow your blog, try starting with top-notch navigation.

If you’re looking for a template, the official WordPress site offers a simple but effective example:

If you have a large blog, try to keep the category hierarchies as clear as possible. Additionally, blogs of any size can benefit from making sure no URL is more than three clicks away from the home page.