The gurus make blog traffic sound so simple.

Post on social media, use keywords, and traffic starts appearing from the depths of the web, thirsting for your value.

The beginner takes months to learn and implement SEO correctly.

And you’re telling me my other best bet is to post to my followers and hope they share?

GTFO.

Here’s a list of “work smarter not harder” traffic generation methods that no one seems to be talking about.

Facebook Groups

You’re probably in some highly targeted Facebook groups for market research.

These groups provide inspiration on what to write about and what products and services to provide. But more to the point of this article–the groups make it incredibly easy to link drop your articles that answer the question at hand.

This is by far the most effective link-dropping method I’ve found. I have the highest new visitor click rate on this breed of social media interaction versus just sharing the links through my feeds to people who already follow me.

Now when a member asks that ever common question, give a short answer response and advise them to click and read your post for the long answer. That person and most others who are following the post will click the link to check out your blog.

This won’t be the end all of your traffic concerns, but it will set you off on a great foot and it only adds one more step to your normal traffic garnering routine.

It’s the easiest first step to more quality traffic.

Fix Up Your Headlines

If your articles are highly visible but you aren’t getting many clicks your headline game is weak my friend.

Headlines serve a very specific purpose that severely impacts your traffic: to get people to click and read the post.

Crap headlines alone will ruin your hit count.

I studied up on how to write click worthy headlines when I wrote for Lifehacker, and have since released a free checklist to help you out.

Some no opt-in pointers are:

•  Use adjectives. The more intense the better.
• Write the headline after you complete the post. This is to avoid clickbait headlines that make promises the post doesn’t actually fulfill.
• Use the curiosity gap every chance you get. If not in the headline, then appeal to it in your caption. “Number 10 is hilarious!”

Guest Blogging

Guest Blogging is one of the best ways to increase your traffic for free. It also has the added benefit of increasing your authority.

The terrible thing about it is that people think you already need authority or a following in order to gain admission. If you’re not that person skip the video below, but if you are under this impression watch me easily bust this myth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2h6dPMKuxY

People are more inclined to purchase from a Huffington Post contributor, or someone who has a swarm of endorsements even if none of them are major yet. People are also more likely to find you if you have links in well targeted areas all over the web — regardless of the latest SEO roadblock.

Compile a list of blogs and media outlets your target audience flocks to and start writing guest submissions. Use www.similarweb.com to rank the blogs by traffic and work your way up the list.

Several blogs don’t allow you to insert your backlinks directly in the post. That’s okay! Insert you backlinks in your author bio. The most enthused portion of the flock will still find you and be the most likely to purchase what you’re selling.

Influencer Blogging

Influencer blogging is just the acquisition of influencer input — a quote or interview — for your newest post. This makes the influencer more inclined to share the post and 2x, 5x, 10x your reach and traffic accordingly.

Influencer blogging is a solid way to increase your chances of getting a guest submission accepted as well (though you don’t necessarily need it).

I developed a pitch template that worked on 5 influencers at once. I walk you through the template here so you can do it for yourself, but if you want the short version there are 4 key things to remember:

1. Influencers want to be published in major influential outlets, so you’d do well asking them to participate in guest posts.
2. Lead with your ethos. This doesn’t have to be public authority (accomplishments, following). It can be experience, ideas, knowledge, etc.
3. Roundups are great. The more influencers involved the better, and then you can drop the other influencer names in the pitch.
4. Keep it short. Respect their time.

Use Facebook Ads For New Blog Traffic

If you’re ready to cut coffee and start spending $5/day on your business it’s time to start with Facebook Ads. Don’t just throw up some post boosts, though. Use the ads intelligently with the pixel and lookalike audiences.

Set up your Facebook Pixel by copy and pasting the code right before the tag in your website’s header.php (or equivalent) file.

Wait until the pixel records about 100 hits. Then create an ad that boosts your most popular post to new readers by showing it to a lookalike audience.

Facebook will optimize and show the post to people who are similar to those who were inspired to visit your blog, thereby intelligently acquiring you new traffic.

The Russel Brunson Method – Steal It

Russel Brunson, creator of ClickFunnels, uses a method that just makes sense.

It alleviates your pain of learning to target your audience with Facebook Ads. A lot of people are bad at that, so this might be your key to success.

1. Find out who your competitors are by typing whatever you’re selling or promoting in Google and seeing what other blogs and businesses pop up.
2. Create your free Pro account at www.SimilarWeb.com
3. Navigate to “referrers” to see where your competitor is getting their traffic from. Many of your top competitors will get referral traffic from ads on other sites. You’ll know if an ad is working if it’s been running for a while.
4. Go to display ads creative to see what the ads look like. If you don’t see them you may have to go to the website and click around for yourself to see when it will pop up.
5. When it does take a screenshot of it.
6. Contact the website that’s hosting the ad to inquire about when the ad space will be available and pricing.
7. Hand the screenshot in to 20dollarbanners.com and ask them to make an ad for your business that models off of your competitor. This ad should be unique but similar (if their headline is purple, make your headline purple, but don’t copy the text).
8. Once it’s up it will attract the same visitors your competitor was attracting from that website, which could easily be tens of thousands of people from a single source.

That’s It.

Now you have some additional solid methods of traffic generation in your arsenal. All of these methods are designed for you to attract quality leads, not just any old person who might stumble upon your blog out of curiosity.

If you still need to learn how to monetize this traffic read Jeremy’s guide now.

Good luck!