8 great tips to get your blog's first 100,000 readers including free tools to help you work smarter.

1. mat t hewwoodward.co.uk http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/get-more-blog-readers/
Rizvan Ullah
8 Tips To Get Your First 100,000 Blog Readers
Building momentum to your blog is probably the most dif f icult thing to do if you just started your blog.
Making money online through blogging can only be achieved if you have the right combination of high quality
content and targeted traf f ic.
For example, if your blog is about “af f iliate marketing” and the traf f ic you generate is looking f or content on
“automobiles” than this crowd won’t be interested in your content and the products you’re promoting.
What I’ve learned is that sometimes building a successf ul blog is not about working harder but working smarter.
I’ve decided to put together my top 8 blogging tips that will help you get your f irst 100,000 blog readers.
What You Will Learn
How to get your f irst 100,000 blog visitors
How to work smarter, not harder
Free tools to grow your blog
8 awesome actionable tips
#1 – The (MWR) Principle
Every successf ul blogger will tell you that knowing your audience is as important as writing high quality content.
What’s the point of blogging if you don’t know anything about your readers, right?
A great way to f igure out your audience is to know what to expect f rom them when they visit your blog also
known as the – Most Wanted Response.
Even though MWR in not an actual traf f ic strategy, it’s important to include it because you’ll only begin to build
momentum once you know the purpose of your blog. You’ll have a better idea who to target going f orward.
I consider it the ground work f or any blog getting started because you need to determine what you’re trying to
achieve when visitors land on your blog.
With MWR you’re prioritizing what your readers will do on your blog and how you’re going to convert these
readers into prof its.
Many times I’ve seen bloggers f ocus on the wrong things, adding banners & links to their content driving the
reader away f rom the main purpose of their blog.
The goal is to make your visitors take a specif ic action which converts into a conversion.
This can be achieved in several ways through the f ollowing-
List Building
Very ef f ective because you’re getting the visitor to opt-in using their email address and over a series of

2. f ollow-up emails you can convert the subscriber into loyal readers.
Promoting Affiliate Offers
These can be anything f rom CPA to actual niche related products that your visitor will f ind usef ul.
My strategy when selling af f iliate of f ers is to write a product review outlining how this product or service can
benef it their business.
Coaching & Consulting
If you’re an expert in your niche then you can of f er coaching to new bloggers.
Many experienced bloggers who have made a name f or themselves provide consultation because they know
the industry well and can provide guidance to a beginner.
Build a Community
Focuses more on f orums which provide real-time help f or visitors.
The success of f orums depends on how many people are members. This model works when members
communicate with each other like a question and answer session.
How to find your MWR
Start by asking yourself : what you are trying to achieve in the long-run?
Make sure bef ore your blog goes live that you have a clear vision of the response you would like f rom your
visitors. Once you have a clear cut plan you can start f ocusing on growing your blog.
#2 – Build Alliances with Power Bloggers
One of the most ef f ective strategies in driving targeted traf f ic to your blog is to build alliances with other
people in your niche.
I underestimated the power of this method and it cost me a lot of ef f ort because I could have grown my
blogger much f aster if I utilized this strategy.
There are two ef f ective ways to build alliances with other bloggers-
Round Up Posts
First, do a quick search in Google f or the top bloggers in your industry. If you have a handf ul of blogs you
already f ollow then use them f or this assignment.
Write each one an email asking them f or their opinion & f eedback on a topic, f or example, you can ask them
what their f avorite link building tools are?
I use this exact strategy and contacted 20 top bloggers in my niche and ask them what they think is the most
ef f ective link building technique.
I was surprised when I received an answer f rom 14 of them which I then grouped into a single blog post and in
exchange I of f ered to place a link back to their blogs f or their help.

3. You can read my blog post here: 14 Expert Bloggers Discuss Their Most Ef f ective Link Building Techniques
Guest Posting
Another way to build alliances is by guest posting. Top bloggers as their site begins to grow can use f resh new
content f rom others to keep the inf ormation f lowing.
Visit the blogs you f ollow and you’ll be able to f ind inf ormation on guest posting opportunities.
It’s important to f ollow the guidelines and create unique content that will be appealing to their readers.
If you get published, the traf f ic generated through a single guest post can be enormous because you’re
potential audience can be in the thousands.
A simple link to your blog within the guest post is a great way to get your brand noticed!
Here’s a quick way to perf orm a search f or guest posting opportunities in Google:

4. In this example, we used “money” as our search term. You can also check out Matt’s guest post automation
tutorial.
# 3 – Writing MVP (Massive-Value-Posts)
High quality content is King! Without writing content that provides value to your readers you’ll f ail as a blogger.
Google overtime has made the shif t f rom giving priority to high quality content instead of back-links.
I believe two f actors matter the most to achieve domination: Length & Social Shares.
If you’re going to set a word limit f or your content then you’ve already f ailed because you’ll be f ocusing on
word count instead of quality content.
When I write content I tell myself that my post should be as long as it has to in order to get my point across.

5. I have to write the best piece of content (better then my competitors) and cover everything about the topic in
details. My post should be the only one my visitor needs to read to f ind a solution to their problem.
In the illustration you’ll notice that the top 10 results f or any search term within Google have a word count over
2,000.
Image Provided by SERPIQ
In order to achieve the same results f ocus on creating “Massive Value Posts” which provides a solution within
your niche. Take a look at Matt’s Top 100 blog tutorial f or a great example of that.
The best way to do this is by research and f inding common questions that people keep asking. Group all the
questions together and write a step by step guide solving the problem.
Here are a f ew things to keep in mind:
Make it easy to scan
Add multimedia
Provide examples where needed
Add quotations f or encouragement
Recently I gathered data f rom the top blog posts I read over a course of two weeks and f ound a common
trend in each post. Read my post on 13 Content Writing Tips That Will Crush Your Competition.
#4 – Tools for Blog Growth
Much of the traf f ic you generate will be f rom people who share your content with others.
Let’s try something….imagine you get 300 people who read your content & 20% of them share it on their social
network.

6. That’s a potential 60 more people who will see your content and if 50% click-through that’s 30 people who
landed on your page.
This may not seem like a lot but these people can potentially share your content on their social network as
well.
I love social networks because there like a chain ef f ect which once started can’t be stopped generating
enormous traf f ic f or you.
In order to encourage people to share with their network you need to write high quality content that is value f or
your readers.
Secondly, make it easy f or them to share by adding plugins to your blog that handles everything f or you.
Digg Digg
An all-in-one plugin which adds social sharing buttons to your post, page and anywhere else that you place the
code.
Very easy to conf igure and of f ers several awesome f eatures.
All-in-One SEO
The most complete SEO plugin that exist today and basically streamlines the whole optimization process f or
you.
Very important f or driving organic traf f ic to your blog and with this plugin you can optimize content, image
titles, meta-description, etc.
Pretty Link
A simple plugin used to shorten links you share. Very important since many social sharing sites limit the number
of characters you can type into the box.
This plugin will allow you to describe your content in greater detail when sharing without limiting the characters
because of a long URL.
W3 Total Cache
Improve the speed at which your page loads. Very important since many of your visitors are located all over the
world where connection speeds is an issue.
Having these people wait while your page loads will drive visitors away f rom your website. When people are
searching inf ormation online they need it right away so a slow loading website is a deterrent.
Website speed is amazing f or indexing purposes as well because the f aster you’re pages load the f aster it can
be crawled by Google bots.
Learn how to improve site speed along with the benef its of content delivery network.
Evergreen Post Tweeter
Keeping your old posts alive is very important and quality content always provides value to readers.
This plugin will auto-tweet old posts which you’ve selected through the back-end.
#5 – The Broken Back-link Method (Awesome)
This method takes a bit of work and is def initely worth it because you can get loads of FREE targeted traf f ic.

7. You’re visiting relevant blogs in your niche f inding links that are pointing to a page which is NO longer active.
You can then write better content and notif y the blog owner about the broken-link they are pointing to which is
no longer active while providing your post URL as a replacement.
How To Find Broken Links
Use the HREF (Check My Links) Chrome extension to f ind broken links.
Browse over to any page on a blog and run the extension which will do the rest of the work. An active link will
be highlighted in green and dead link in red.
If my blog is about “content marketing” I would search the internet f or other content marketing blogs which have
been around f or several years.
I’ve noticed the longer a blog has been around the more chance they will be linking to a website which is no
longer active. This is the right time f or you to jump in contacting the owner about the broken external link they
have on their blog.
Here’s a great way to do this…
First, do a quick Google search f inding relevant blogs in your niche. I would take a f ew days browsing pages
using the extension gathering a bunch of broken URL’s they have on their site.
If you f ind relevant content on a f ew blogs, group the URL’s so you can write one single piece of content which
you can send to all of the blog owners.
Create your content and write something which will blow the roof of f your competition. Make the content
appealing to the blog owner who you want to ask f or the replacement f rom.
Now you can just email them about the broken link and provide your content as a replacement.
Craf t a nice email showing them you want to genuinely help them.
My Email Template
Feel f ree to use my template as a guide-
Hi (site owner name),
I have been a huge follower of your blog for some time and want to thank you for your awesome content. While I
was browsing around I found a few links that are not working…
URL1
I have a great piece of content that you are more than welcome to use as a replacement. I have it published on
my blog and this will help me out as well.
Here is the link (URL), let me know what you think and I hope you do enjoy it!
Either way, just wanted to let you know and keep up the great work you are doing.
Thanks,

8. (Your Name)
# 6 – Always Interlink Your Content
The best way to keep users on your blog is to provide them with relevant content by interlinking to posts that
add value to each other. Interlinking relevant posts has two major benef its:
Organic Traffic
Google works very hard to give people the best search experience which is only achieved by them emphasizing
the importance of a clean website with structure.
When relevant pages are linked together, the site is much easier to crawl and Google creates a pyramid of your
website. How does a pyramid structure help?
If 5 relevant pages are linked together and one has a higher PR then the others, the link-juice will trickle down
to the relevant pages.
This will give all the pages a quick boost in the SERP’s.
Social Sharing
Linking relevant content together increases the chances of your content being shared on social networks.
For example, if you have written content on “link building” emphasizing the importance of “article directories”
you can link to content which provides the reader with “80 FREE article directories”.
In this example, the reader will share both pieces of content since they add value to each other and will help
anyone trying to learn about link building.
Whenever you write content your objective should be to make it go viral because this creates a “chain ef f ect”
which can generate enormous traf f ic.
Some people who share content on social networks have 20k+ loyal f ollowers who are more than happy to “re-
tweet” valuable content.
If you need help streamlining the linking process, use these awesome WordPress plugins-
SEO Smart Links
Awesome f or linking common posts & pages. Once you install the plugin, conf igure the keywords only once
and each time the keyword is entered in your content it will automatically create a link to the URL you setup.
InLinks
Simple tool when conf igured will help you link specif ic keywords within your content to other URL’s throughout
your blog. Another benef it is that once you’ve setup a interlink f or the f irst time you can specif y if you want the
plugin to use the same interlink each time that keyword is used within your content.
Cross-Linker
Automatically links selected words to def ined URL’s throughout your blog. This plugin is awesome f or linking
words within comments so each time a comment is lef t by a reader this tool will link to relevant content which
was pre-def ined through the setup menu.
#7 – Keep Updating & Re-Tweet

9. Content on your blog needs to be updated continuously or you’ll lose credibility with your readers.
People browsing the web are looking f or reliable inf ormation and outdated content will cause you to lose
credibility and loyal f ollowers if they f ind an alternative source of inf ormation.
Updating content also drives organic traf f ic to your website since Google does use a freshness algorithm to
give websites who update f requently priority in the SERP’s.
There are many f actors that determine how to rank the f reshness of the website, let’s take a look at one
which f ocuses on updating content.
Here is an example f rom Moz.com, the f ull article can be viewed here
Freshness Rule # 3 – “The Rate of Document Change (How Often) Impacts Freshness”
“For example, a document whose content is edited often may be scored differently than a document whose
content remains static over time. Also, a document having a relatively large amount of its content updated over
time might be scored differently than a document having a relatively small amount of its content updated over
time.”
A Real World Example
Blog content ideas is a hot topic since bloggers are always looking f or new content to add to their blog.
This topic will keep growing overtime since people are always f inding new things to write about.
If you’ve written content outlining “10 Blog Content Ideas” then continuing to update this post every 2 weeks
will rank higher then content updated once every 2-3 months.
Finding Content That Needs To Be Updated

10. Start by typing in your topic within Google search and skim through the results.
Try and f ind things that you can add to your content to improve it making it better than your competitor.
Take a f ew weeks skimming through content gathering data bef ore adding it to your content.
Drip Feeding Post Updates
If you have gathered 100 blog content ideas through brainstorming, write them on a piece of paper and keep
adding them to your content over time.
Writing a blog post outlining “100 blog content ideas” does take a long time and by the time you publish it may
be a f ew months.
You’re better of f spreading it into intervals of “10” and keep updating overtime taking advantage of the
f reshness ef f ect.
Going Viral
The next step is to share the content so it continues to go viral.
If you’re providing valuable content which genuinely helps solve a problem, they will be more than happy to
continue sharing it with their f ollowers.
A great way is to email your subscribers who have already shared this content bef ore. If they enjoyed it the
f irst time around than you know the second time won’t be any dif f erent.
Getting those social shares f rom your f ollowers is important because not only does it help generate traf f ic but
you can gain loyal blog readers in the long run.
Don’t f orget you can also use the Evergreen Post Tweeter plugin to automate part of the process.
#8 – Focus on What Works
Don’t waste your time writing content which does not resonate with your readers.
Your ef f ort can be used in dif f erent ways utilizing what you know will attract visitors to your website.
Once you’re blog has been active f or several months, you’re going to get a better idea of what content you
should f ocus more on. It’s important to have a reliable way to track statistics on your website.
Google Analytics (GA) is the most used tracking tool on the web. GA will provide you with all the data you need
to understand your audience.
The interf ace is very easy to use and adding Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) to the mix creates an ultimate
tracking package.
Setting Up Google Webmaster Tools
Let’s get started conf iguring Google Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics because this way you can view all
the data f rom within your Analytics account instead of bouncing back and f orth f rom GWT-GA.
Head over to Google Webmaster Tools and Login….

11. Next, click on the red button labelled “Add Site”. Add your domain and f ollow the directions to verif y domain
usually done through your domain registrar.
Once your domain has been added you’ll notice a button on the right labelled “Manage Site” and when you hold
down this button you’ll see an option f or “Google Analytics Property”.
You can now select what site to link to your GWT account. If you don’t see your website listed it’s because you
haven’t added it within GA.
You need to go back and install the script f rom GA on your website. You’ll then see your website listed and can
proceed to merge both accounts together.
Now that you’re, wait 2-3 days f or the data to be merged and displayed.
You can now start analyzing your website. When you login into Google Analytics, we want to f ocus on data
f rom “Search Queries” and “Landing Pages”.
Both these properties will be displayed in GA under the Acquisition>Search Engine Optimization.
Looking At Search Queries
This display’s which keywords are relevant to your website and there average position.
The data will display as: query, impressions, clicks, average position and CTR. Focus on keywords that have a

12. CTR of 25%-30% since these keywords have a decent position in the SERP’s.
Use this data to create more content based around those keywords that have a high CTR. I usually create
content relevant to those keywords and interlink the posts together.
It’s an ef f ective way to push traf f ic to new content.
Landing Pages
This data displays the actual URL that people are landing on when they click-through f rom the SERP’s.
A click-through is inf luenced by many f actors-
Headline of the post as displayed in the SERP’s
Description as displayed in the SERP’s
How important the visitor f inds the inf ormation
Position of keyword in SERP’s
The Landing Page data will display the impressions your pages are getting f rom highest>lowest. Your f ocus
should be on CTR- user click-through-rate.

13. There are two ways you can use this inf ormation to your advantage.
First, if you have a landing page getting a high CTR (25%-30%) then interlink relevant content to that page
building momentum.
You’ve just increased the chance a visitor will click-through to content which have been linked together. Any
content which adds value to the reader will have a higher chance of being shared on social networks
generating traf f ic.
Use the high CTR to gain subscribers by adding an opt-in f orm.
Let’s do some math…
3,000/mo impressions with 25% CTR = 750 visitors that land on that page.
You can of f er them a FREE eBook based around your niche if they opt-in to your list. You can send these
people updates to their inbox whenever new content is added to your blog increasing the chance they become
repeat visitors.
Use the data collected f rom “search queries” and “landing page” with the broken-link method discussed in tip
#5.
Research blogs in your niche and f ind inactive links relevant to your landing page. If you f ind a link, send the
owner of the blog and email and your link as a replacement.
Take advantage of blogs that have 30k-40k visitors a month because a link on these blogs can generate huge
targeted traf f ic f or you.
My Final Thoughts
Generating traf f ic f or your blog is dif f icult but those that don’t give up will succeed where others have f ailed.
Work hard at creating content that you know your readers need. Whenever I write content I always ask myself
these questions-
How can I help my readers through my blog?
Answer: I do research and f ind out what problems my audience are f acing. I gather common questions being

14. asked and write content based on those questions.
How can I make my content even better than it is now?
Answer: My content should be the only one that provides a complete solution. Once my readers leave my blog
they should be able to implement what they have learned right away. This builds loyalty and credibility.
What can I do to make sure they are clear about what to do?
Answer: Provide them with an action plan to f ollow so they know where to begin implementing my strategies.
Your Action Plan
Read over my article again making quick notes about the things you’ve learned.
Visit the content I’ve linked to because it provides awesome tips on how you can keep building traf f ic to your
blog.
Research 3-4 questions people are asking within your niche. Look through relevant f orums, blogs and Yahoo
Answers and write them down on a piece of paper.
It’s time to build alliances, contact 1-2 bloggers in your niche asking them f eedback on 1 question f rom your
list.
Don’t lose motivation if you don’t hear back right away. Some will af ter a f ew days and some won’t but you
need to keep pushing f orward and if you can’t collect enough data than resort to f inding “guest posting”
opportunities – ref er to tip #2.
It’s important to keep track of where your traf f ic is coming f rom at all times. Install Google Analytics on your
website and conf igure Google Webmaster Tools. These are both FREE tools so take advantage of what you
have because you’re competitors def initely are!
It’s important to stay consistent because if you don’t then in about two years you’re going to look back and be
more disappointed by the things you didn’t do then by the things you did do.
Thanks f or reading and please f eel f ree to check out my blog!