5 Proven Strategies to Boost Your Artist Blog Traffic

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase by clicking on an affiliate link, Nevue Fine Art Marketing may earn an affiliate commission at no additional cost to you. Affiliate relationships include, but are not limited to, Bluehost, Tailwind, Skimlinks, SareASale and StudioPress. To learn more visit Affiliate Link Disclosure Policy

Art Blog Strategies

There is no questioning that blogging is an essential tool for building a successful online art business.

Per Hubspot, 72% of marketers say relevant content creation was the most effective SEO tactic.

Blogging is the most valuable tool for any online business. However, there are blogging strategies you will want to learn so your blogging can be beneficial for your art business and help you to achieve your business goals.

There is a lot that is involved with writing blog posts that drive traffic to a website. We will help get you started with these five proven strategies to boost your blog traffic.

5 Proven Strategies To Traffic

Five tactics to boost blog traffic:

Evergreen Blog Articles
Long-tail Keywords
Create Viral Content
Email Marketing
Guest Posting

Evergreen

Evergreen posts are a proven strategy for increasing organic blog traffic.

The Balance describes Evergreen Content as:

“Evergreen Content is content that is always relevant – much like the way evergreen trees retain their leaves all year round. Interesting and relevant content that does not become dated is necessary to be found online search engines.”

Chris Fielden wrote an excellent article for Moz called An Evergreen Content Case Study.

In his article, he explains in full detail about creating timeless or evergreen blog articles and the results that will be generated.

Chris summarizes the article:

“So far, this experiment has proved that investing time in creating content that is updated regularly can bring excellent results. In 2013, the page attracted between 6,000 and 9,000 visits a month, 22% of which return to the page time and again.”

How happy would you be if you wrote a post that generates up to 9,000 visitors a month?

You can write evergreen content that will drive traffic to your artist website for years to come, but there are some strategies you will want to implement.

Here are a few examples of posts NFAM published that continues to drive a tremendous amount of traffic to my artist website:

Do you struggle with writing?

Do you feel that you could never write a blog post that would drive thousands of people to your artist’s website?

If you find it challenging to write, you might want to consider reading Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content.

The best thing about writing blog posts is you can revise your posts as many times as you wish.

Revising old blog posts will allow you to add value to the blog posts and keep the content updated.

Your art business will continue to grow and change over time. Revising your art marketing plan will help you to sell more art and updating older content will increase traffic to your art blog because the content will be valuable to the reader.

Selling art online is a numbers game. The more people who see your art, the better your odds are to sell more art. Revising and updating older art blog posts should be included in your art marketing plan.

Chris has proven that evergreen blog articles can generate a ton of traffic to your art blog.

The question is, how do you write evergreen content?

Think Timeless

It is impossible to generate a significant amount of traffic to an artist blog by posting only new artwork for sale posts.

Of course, artists will want to publish articles that showcase their artwork, but they will need more to do more if they want people to visit their artist’s website.

The objective of spending time writing posts is to reach a broader audience. The more people that visit your site, the better your chances are of landing a sale. Selling art online is a number game, and you want to work hard to get the numbers in your favor.

Are you having a difficult time deciding what you should write about?

Ask yourself these questions:

What are you an expert in?
What comes naturally to you but is difficult for others?
What can you share to help people solve a problem?

Take some time to decide what topics you will write about. Make sure that the topics you choose relate to your artwork and art business. It is essential to only focus on writing art blog posts that will attract your target audience.

Your target audience is the people who are searching for artists who sell art like yours.

An art collector searching to buy an original horse painting will not be searching for the best apple pie recipe.

They will type in keywords like:

Horse paintings for sale
Horse paintings for sale near me
Original horse paintings
Equine paintings
Equine artists

The articles you write about should only include topics your unique audience is searching for online. Search engines will not understand what your site is about if you publish posts that do not relate to your artwork or the services you provide.

Blogging about your artwork and other topics that could help a potential buyer is a great way to be seen as an authority and turn potential art buyers into loyal art collectors.

Maybe you are an expert in decorating homes and home decor.

There will be a ton of evergreen topics you could write about that would help people.

Maybe you specialize in painting animals.

You could generate many articles for all the animal lovers in the world.

It would be easy for you to talk about your work within the articles you write because you create art with animals.

Take some time and think about what you have a passion for and how you can help others.

John Deere is an excellent example of writing evergreen content.

The Furrow started in 1895 when the company was under the direction of John Deere’s son Charles.

He understood how important it was to provide an accurate, unbiased source of information for farmers.

If you go back to the magazine’s entire history, you would be lucky to see the name John Deere more than twenty times.

The company knew that farmers needed valuable information that would help them solve their problems.

John Deere became an expert in their field because of the quality of content they provided, not by marketing their name.

The efforts they put into writing evergreen content has made them a household name for over one hundred years.

Write for Beginners

“How to” articles work well for evergreen content.

Most people search online for articles that will help them to solve a problem.

Everyone is a beginner when they learn a new skill.

Writing about the steps you have learned to get to where you are today will help people just starting.

This type of content will build authority for your site and be searchable for as long as people are trying to learn what you covered.

Let’s look at some evergreen content about choosing the best colors for small rooms.

I typed into Google’s search, “What colors work best for small rooms?“

Below are the top three search results:

The number one post on the list was published on April 24, 2008.

The article is over ten years old, and they are still number one in the search results.

The author of that post probably never imagined how much traffic that post would generate.

Moz did a study on how many clicks posts get on page one and so on.

You can see by the image courtesy of Moz, links that are ranked number one get a significant amount more traffic than the other posts. It receives over 50% more clicks than the post ranking number two.

Therefore, it is crucial to focus on SEO, keywords, and writing evergreen content to rank higher in search results.

Let’s look a bit deeper into the number one ranking for “What are the Best Colors for Small Rooms?”

The top-ranked post is a slideshow.

Many people get confused about evergreen content.

They think evergreen content must be a short novel.

The slideshow above tells us, it is all about the quality of information, not how many words a post has.

This example shows us posts that rank higher are the posts with the best content.

You can see with this example. It is all about the quality of the information. The writer did not need to add fluff to increase the word count.

The author provided a beautiful slide show with helpful tips. That is evergreen content. The information will not be outdated and will help many people solve a problem they have.

Some studies show posts with more text will receive more shares and rank higher in search results.

This image courtesy of SerpIQ tells us that posts with over 2,400 words rank in the top two of search results.

Providing quality information that provides a detailed solution is key to writing evergreen content that will resonate with your audience.

Be Specific

Many bloggers feel that evergreen content must appeal to a broader audience.

That is not the case. Think about how you search online. If you have a problem, you will type in the specific problem you have.

If you wanted to learn the best way to clean your oil painting brushes, what link would you click on?

More than likely, you would click on the link that says How to clean oil painting brushes.

It wouldn’t make sense to click on the link for acrylic brushes, and the link that says cleaning artist brushes is too broad.

Narrowing down your topic as much as possible will make your posts more beneficial.

Support Your Thoughts

One way to show authority is by showing other people’s views on the topic you are covering.

The references you provide can complement or contradict your view. Both types of references will do well if they are complimenting the point you are trying to make with your post.

This post, for example, provides references to key points I am trying to make.

You will trust my opinion more if I provide examples and other expert’s views over me just pointing out what I think.

When you’re using views or statistics to support your thoughts, make sure they are relevant.

Statistics change, it is essential to update older posts with the new statistics.

Keeping your posts updated will make your articles even more valuable, and Google will reward you by ranking your post higher in search.

Think of Wikipedia. The posts are being continuously revised. That is why if you search for Abraham Lincoln, for example, you will find Wikipedia’s article ranking number one.

The article started with just a few thousand words and now has over ten thousand words. The amount of detail that has been added to the post is what makes it rank number one in the search.

If someone would like to learn about Abraham Lincoln, they would visit Wikipedia’s post first.

Easy to Read

The last thing I would like to go over is having your post easy to read.

Many people search for things to read throughout the day when they have a few extra moments. They could be in line at the grocery store or wait for their child to finish their after-school activity.

The other thing you will want to consider when you are writing evergreen content, is most people are reading from their mobile devices.

Writing Tips:

Use easy to understand words
Make your articles scan-able
Keep your sentences short
Keep the paragraphs short
Use bold text to highlight key points
Use bullet points
Use numbers
Break text up with images

Long-tail Keywords

A well-designed keyword strategy will help you boost traffic.

Learning how to market your blog with long-tail keywords is an essential strategy you will want to focus on.

Online businesses have studied the value of using long-tail keywords for driving more massive amounts of traffic to their sites.

It will be easier for you to boost your blog’s traffic and dominate Google with the use of long-tail keywords.

What is a long-tail keyword?

HubSpot defines a long-tail keyword as:

“A keyword phrase that contains at least three words (though some say two or more is considered long-tail). Long-tail keywords are used to target niche demographics rather than mass audiences. In other words, they’re more specific and often less competitive than generic keyword terms.”

Search Engine Journal study shows that 78% of visitors from organic search and head terms drove 22% of visitors.

How do you identify long-tail keywords that will generate traffic to your blog posts?

You need to research and create quality content containing long-tail keywords.

Here are three tools I use to research for long-tail keywords:

Google Keyword Planner
Google Autosuggest
SEOBook

Google Keyword Planner

Type in the long-tailed keywords you want to rank for into the Google Keyword Planner.

A list of related keyword phrases will appear that you can use for your posts.

Google’s Keyword Planner will also show you the average monthly searches for the specified keywords, as well as how high the competition is.

It will be more difficult for you to rank high for keywords with high competition. You will see better results at first if you focused on keywords with lower competition.

Google Autosuggest

Start typing in the primary keywords you want to rank high for in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) into Google’s search.

Google will give you suggestions on autosuggest.

Here is an example of “How to clean oil paint brushes.”

Top queries for this niche are:

How to clean an oil painting
How to clean oil-based paint
How to clean oil diffuser
How to clean oil brushes

What can you do with this information?

Write a detailed post about the query that fits your brand.

Take some time to research the top three results and do some reverse engendering.

Ask these questions:

Why is this post ranking number 1?
How can I provide more value to the post?
How can I provide a better experience?

If you want to rank number 1 for the long-tail keywords you are focusing on, you must write a better post than the one that is already ranking at the top.

SEOBook

SEOBook is another free tool like Google’s Keyword Planner. Just type in the keywords you would like to rank for, and SEOBook will give you a list of suggestions.

The next step to take after deciding what keywords you will be focusing on is writing a rich, detailed, engaging, valuable post with at least 1,500 words optimized for the target keywords you are focusing on.

Don’t forget to include images and links to authority sites that back up your thoughts.

To learn more about keywords visit, How To Optimize Your Art Blog Posts With LSI Keywords.

Write Viral Articles

Everyone who writes blog posts wants every post to go viral.

Why wouldn’t they?

Content that goes viral reaches millions of people.

Wouldn’t you like to have millions of people reading your post?

Millions of people will learn about you and the art you create. The chance of you selling your art will increase drastically.

Writing viral articles is very difficult to do, and you might never see it happen, but why not try?

The time spent trying to create viral content will only help your business.

Even if your posts never go viral, you are forcing yourself to write the best you can.

Here are three common tactics I found when I was researching sites that successfully create viral articles.

Titles

The first thing you will want to focus on is writing great titles. Only two out of 10 people read the content after reading the title. You can increase these odds by writing a title that makes people want to click on the link.

The next step is to provide engaging, valuable articles that support the title.

There is nothing more frustrating to a reader than providing topics that has nothing to do with the title.

To learn more about writing title visit, How To Write Great Titles That Generate Blog Traffic.

Length

Studies have shown that posts with over 2,400 words rank in the top three of Google’s search, and posts that are over 3,000 words are shared more on social media.

BuzzSumo analyzed 100 million articles and found that articles with 3000 – 10000 words were shared more on social media platforms.

Image Courtesy OKDork by Noah Kagan BuzzSumo

Three thousand words might seem like a lot of words, but if you are very detailed with your topic, you will notice writing over 3,000 words is not that difficult to do.

The last tip I would like to go over is to know what topics to write about.

The best way to write viral content is to learn what your audience’s interests are.

The easiest way to find out is to ask or provide a survey.

There are also tools available like BuzzSumo and Google Trends that will show you what is being shared and trending.

Take some time to read the comments from blog posts and social media. You can learn a lot from reading what people are saying.

To learn more about blog length visit Best Blog Length For Building Your Art Blog Following.

Email Marketing

So far, I have talked about Evergreen Content, Long-tail Keywords, and Create Viral Posts.

Now I would like to talk about how to increase traffic fast with email marketing.

One of the best ways to boost your blog traffic is to send a newsletter to your email group.

People have joined your email list because they enjoy your art and the content you are publishing.

Your email list will be the number one source of qualified traffic.

Not only will your list want to read your posts, but they will also be the people more willing to purchase from you.

They have already built a relationship with you and trust you, that is why they gave you their email address.

Now that you know that an email list will help you drive traffic to your blog and land more sales, how do you build your email list?

It all boils down to what your site offers.

People will not sign up for your email list if you only provide articles promoting your art for sale.

People do not like to be sold to.

You need to give them more than just a sales pitch.

Create consistent content that is interesting and provides a solution to your reader’s problems.

The next step is to make it easy for your readers to sign up for your newsletter.

Strategically place email opt-in forms throughout your site.

No matter how great your posts are, people will take the time to search for a way to give you their Email.

Make it easy for them.

To learn more about email marketing visit, Email Marketing Guide for Artists.

Guest Posting

Traffic will be slow when you first start.

Promoting your posts will help you get noticed, build brand awareness, and boost your traffic.

Besides posting your links on your social media sites, you might want to consider guest posting.

Writing articles for sites that already have traffic is an excellent way for you to generate traffic to your blog.

Most sites you write for will not pay you for your guest posts, but they will provide a bio and a link to your site.

When people read your article, they will notice your bio, and if they enjoyed what you posted, they would click on your link to learn more about you.

How to Find Sites to Write For

First, you will want to identify your niche.

The next step is to go to Google’s search and type in:

Target keywords + write for us
Target keywords + Guest Post Guidelines

A list of places for you to write will appear.

Take some time to research the site before you start to write for them. Make sure your posts will resonate well with their audience.

Final Thoughts On How Boost Traffic

All the tips we have talked about have been proving to boost website traffic.

The most successful bloggers use these tips.

More important, you will not see results if you are not consistent. Strategies will not work if you try it once and forget about it.

You will not see results overnight, but if you are consistent and work hard, you will attract new visitors to your site that will help to increase your art sale.

How To Write Art Blog Posts That Sell Art

It was easier for artists to have people visit their art websites in the early 2000s. The main reason is that there were not as many art websites on the internet. All an artist would have to do is write a keyword-rich art title for the listing … [Read more…]

7 Important Things Art Bloggers Need To Know

Blogging is the best platform for you to grow your art business and reach a broader audience but is often overlooked or put on the backburner for the selling artist. A well-written blog post can drive thousands of people to your artist website every month and if you publish posts … [Read more…]

What An Artist Blog Needs To Increase Art Sales

Would you like to increase your art sales? Are you trying to drive more traffic to your artist website? Marketing your products is significant to any artist’s success, and content marketing is the most powerful marketing tool available. Over time blogging will drive … [Read more…]