How to attract more traffic to your knitting or crochet craft blog

Do you have a blog or website about knitting or crochet and would like to attract more traffic to it?

Read on to find out my top tip for attracting people to your blog or website.

The lonely blog

New blogs and websites can sit for months not being viewed by anyone. This can be quite disheartening, after all you have spent hours writing, editing, planning, and perhaps making things so that you have a great subject matter.

It takes around 3-6 months for search engines like Google to start pushing listings up far enough that internet surfers will see your posts when they are searching for something.

Sometimes, your knitting or crochet blog will be, for a long while, a sad and lonely place.

How to use social media to boost your blog readership

Social media is the way forward if you want to get more people to read your knitting or crochet blog.

Open a Twitter account too, get tweeting about all your new posts and about what you are making, and planning.

Search for other craft blogs. Like their posts, leave comments, send them messages saying how great their blog is and ask if you can guest blog or if the author will mention you in one of their posts.

Instagram is also very important for promoting your blog. Make sure you add your website address under the BIO area, and hashtag all of your photos to popular themes, for example #knitting #crochet #babybooties.

Pinterest is also wonderful. Use a graphics software service such as Pic Monkey or Canva to make awesome Pinterest graphics and get sharing your work.

Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter are all essential for promoting blogs and websites 

The best social media method to attract traffic to your knitting or craft blog

In my experience, the best way by far to promote blogs about knitting or crochet is by publishing free patterns on Ravelry.  I have had hundreds of visits to one of my craft blogs within ten minutes after publishing a free knitting pattern.

If you sell knitting or crochet patterns, you can publish one or two of them for free to encourage Ravelry readers to take a look at patterns that you have for sale, too.

How to publish patterns on Ravelry

You need a Ravelry account, and you need to email Ravelry and ask them to give permission for pattern publishing. When you have permission, you need to click on 'my notebook', then 'contributions', then add a pattern. Ravelry will guide you through the rest of the process.

It only takes around ten minutes, and the Ravelry free pattern search receives thousands of internet visits every day.

I would recommend designing a few patterns of your own, if you haven't already, and publishing them on Ravelry, as it is a great way to attract traffic to your craft blog.

How to easily design your own knitting or crochet pattern

It isn't difficult to design a pattern if you are an experienced knitter or crocheter. Choose a hat, for example, that you know by heart how to make. Add something to it to make it unique. Maybe a flower, some stripes, a few rows in the middle with garter stitch instead of stocking stitch, for example.

Use a nice stitch, such as a cable, to make your knitting design look stylish and  interesting.

Knit one or two of the hats, and write down, row by row, how you made it. Make sure the pattern works.

A scarf would be easily to design and write out a pattern for, and people are always interested to get new ideas for making such staple accessories as scarves and will click on your advertisement, which will lead them to your blog.

Take some lovely, bright, photos of your self designed and made item, and publish the pattern on your blog, and then advertise it on Ravelry.

Be patient 

If your blog or website has interesting content, that is useful to readers, it will appear higher up in search engine results as time goes by. It is never fast to receive lots of traffic, as there are thousands of new blogs and websites being started all the time.

However, using social media, and publishing free patterns, will help to attract traffic in those early days, and may motivate you and prevent you from feeling disheartened.