Increase traffic on your blog
Being a blogger, I can very well feel that every serious blogger would want to increase the reader base and bring traffic on his website. You would want your views and readings to be read and appreciated. After all, the purpose of writing blog is not to create a diary for self-reference later! A blog is like unleashing your feelings, intent and views to the whole world. You would want more and more people to notice it unless you have any other hidden agenda.
It is easier to say but difficult to do. How would you want to make sure more and more readers read your blog? In order to do this, more people should first reach your blog and then they should find it relevant to read your blog.
Here are few of the things which you should do to ensure high readership and getting more traffic.
- Simple website design: Since blogs give lot of information, most of the time serious readers are expected here. They would expect a simple design which can easily guide them through menus and look for information easily. A very confusing website design with lot of cluttered menus can spoil the reader experience. Hence the website design should be simply and handy.
- Easily readable fonts: The fonts of the blog should be easily readable. Sometimes the readers of the blog may be from old age that would prefer a bigger font size. In any case the font size should not put strain on eyes.
- Write Regularly: A blog is not about writing today and then forgetting for a month and then again waking for few days to write something. People who like a blog would want to come back to it often and would want to find some new content. If you are very irregular with your blog post, you may not be able to develop a long list of followers. If your content gets updated regularly, then search engines also develop a good habit of crawling it regularly.
- Posts usually of more than 600 words: The whole world is writing on various subjects just for the sake of better SEO results on search engines. This results in too much of useless content getting oriented for better search engine results. But SEO guys are more concerned on getting quick results and payments with lowest possible effort and generally write post of 300-500 words. If you are really serious about your blog and want to focus more on quality and information, chances are that you would not want to save time to forgo quality. Hence your post will have more informational content. Generally, your post will start crossing 600 words mark. It will be even better if your post contains 1000-1500 words. This word limit generally is good enough for a good research based informational content. Besides, it shows your seriousness about the subject you write. But don’t go overboard and try to stay within 2000 words unless it is absolutely necessary or you are just trying to attract only extremely serious readers.
- Useful content: In order for readers to appreciate your blog, it should have informative or good content. A blog is not a right place to put a promotional content since it would keep the readers away. The readers feel satisfied if they get useful information.
- Humorous content: In order to engage the readers it will be good if you give some humorous postings to lighten the mood. Such posting usually elicit good response and may result in instant forwards and Facebook likes.
- Thought provoking or controversial content: It may be good if your blog contains lot of thought provoking or controversial content. But it should be just good enough for a reader to put comment. Readers usually come back to see if someone has replied on their comment. But do not cross limit on controversy to get qualified as gross.
- Write as per current taste or events: it will be good to write on a subject which is as per the current mood of the public. This is more likely to get the attention of people as well as press attention. As an example, if there is oil crisis or abrupt price rise of oil by government, a blog on how to reduce the petrol consumption would evoke larger attention.
- Use of pictures: Pictures in blog increase the readership and click through rates. It is always a good practice to make use of them in an appropriate manner. It helps in providing an instant impact to reader.
- Show your social media likes: it is a good practice to show how many facebook or Google plus likes you have. This increase the confidence of reader while checking your website.
- Place for sharing your content: You must give an easy way for readers to share your post on social media. This can increase the coverage of your blog thereby increasing traffic. It will be good to give them various options like facebook, Google +, Twitter or LinkedIn etc. Anyone sharing this content will go to his entire list of friends which can increase your audience in just once second.
- Maintain a theme based series on blog: While blog can cover various aspects and topics but it is a good idea to create a series on a particular topic and try to write a killer and a unique content around it. Over a period of time, your following for that subject may develop. But it should not be for a promotional item.
- Share your blog with friends and on social media: You must share your blog on social media or in your friend circles and ask them to give an opinion. This would increase the coverage of your blog.
- Give outbound links at appropriate place: if you contain a content which contains a reference to a celebrity or some particular event. Try to give outbound link from this word to Wikipedia or other website of repute. This would be generally considered that you know your topic very well and have read through various places before forming your opinion.
- Naturally try for links from other blogs: -You must try for links from other websites on your blog. Most of the blogs do not have any link and close to 90% of blogs have less than 15 links since it is very difficult for blogger to focus on everything and a large population writes just for the sake of writing. I have covered this topic also in detail on my blog post on Entrepreneur SEO Series Chapter 7 (Link Building). You can get lot of information over there.
- Indexation on search engines and Site Map: Make sure that you blog is submitted to all major search engines. You must ensure that you have a sitemap on your blog to let search engines easily crawl it and index it on regular basis.
- Write with conviction: You must show some conviction in your posts and give some opinion with reasons (even though with disclaimers). This would add authority to what you say. There are people who are looking for final decision that just wayward opinion covering the case for and case against of everything.
- Integrate with some business website: if your blog writes about some online business websites, tell them to give a reference about your blog on their website. It is beneficial to both of you. They get more business because they get good opinion from you. At the same time you may get traffic from the customer from their website.
- Target Phone and Tablet users – it will be a good idea to create an app which contains your blog. This would give you some instant hits if users are looking for that info.
- Avoid too much of advertising: The best way to kill reader interest is to let all advertisements flying across your blog webpage. Readers will very easily get to know that such blog is nothing but a way to make money. This takes away the respect. Hence, they would prefer a blog which focus more on content and less on advertising and reader do not get clicks giving pop up all across. Besides, too much advertising can impact the Google Page Rank of the blog.
- Google+ Authorship: Just ensure that you have an authorship validation done on your blog on Google +. This will introduce credibility in your blog and your photograph will show along with your blog in search results. This can increase the clicks on your blog. Besides, it is likely that Google will introduce the author rank along with page rank for the purpose of placement of your blog on search engine results. As a blogger, you cannot ignore your profile and post updates on Google +, so you must get active on it.
- News: Try if you can get some news coverage on your blog by way of writing for newspapers and also mentioning your details and website you are writing for. This can help.
- Invite guest bloggers : It will be good if you invite some guest bloggers for your post. They would want to improve their online profile and will bring further audience. But you must make sure that quality of blog should not get sacrificed with useless promotional posts. Also avoid giving them too much of outbound links.
- Write for other reputed bloggers : After you have developed good amount of content on your blog you can offer to write for other bloggers as a guest post and try to get some links from them. This would help in getting some extra traffic from the readers of those blogs. But you must try to ensure that you write for blogs which have good authority or page rank.
- Promote your Blog: There is no harm in promoting your blog on facebook or other social media. After all, we all need attention. A blogger is no different. If that means spending some money, do it if you can. This can help you get the initial readers; from thereon the message can spread. This may be relevant even if you do not want to make money from your blog.
All said and done, you must be passionate about what you write. Your writing should not give a feeling of writing just for the sake of earning extra money. It is the people who will read your blog, if they gain nothing, you gain nothing.