And you’re probably right. After all, there are already millions of blogs covering every topic imaginable. So you’ll have to work hard if you want your blog to stand out among all the noise. Your readers will probably only spend a few seconds on your blog before moving on to something they find more exciting or worthwhile. This means that you need to hook them immediately and convince them not just once but several times to keep coming back for more if you want to build a successful blog.
1. Create Unique Content
The first and most important thing you need to do is create truly unique content. This can be challenging if you want to write about common topics already saturated with articles. But you can add a unique spin to an otherwise overdone topic by:
Finding an interesting angle that other blogs haven’t covered Including personal experiences or anecdotes that add a new layer of meaning Going more in-depth than other articles Studying the vocabulary and style of successful bloggers in your niche and trying to emulate their style Hiring a copywriting service to help you write content that connects with your readers
When readers come across your blog for the first time, they need to be able to identify what your blog is all about quickly. If they don’t know what they’ll find on your blog, they’ll likely move on to one of your competitors. If they don’t know what your blog is about, they won’t stick around long enough to find out. You’ll need to grab their attention with your blog title and article titles. Ensure your content is original and provides real value for your readers. You can’t expect people to come back repeatedly if you’re not giving them anything new or helpful each time.
2. Develop a Strong Audience Base
While you don’t want to make everything on your blog focused on marketing or self-promotion, you want to look for ways to build your audience and engagement. This will help you create a community of people who are interested in your blog topic and may also be interested in your business.
Try including polls, quizzes, and surveys in your blog posts. You might also want to ask readers to send in questions or requests that you can address in your future blog posts. You can also encourage your readers to leave comments on your posts. Make sure that you respond to each one. You can use tools like Disly for Pro for Facebook or social media platforms where you can interact with your readers the same way as you would on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Turn your blog into an interactive experience with games, quizzes, and contests. You can also reward your readers with badges, trophies, subscriptions to exclusive content, or even prizes for interacting with your blog.
The more ways that your readers can engage with your blog, the more likely they are to come back again and again.
3. Make Your Blog Search Engine Friendly
First and foremost, you need to make sure that you’re optimizing your blog for search engines. Here is a list of the most common and easy ways to get started.
Add alt text to your images and ensure that your blog posts are correctly formatted with heading and subheading tags. Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to ensure you follow all of the latest SEO best practices. You can even outrank some of the biggest websites in your industry by following a few simple SEO tips. Optimize the title of your blog posts. Include your keywords in the title but make sure it isn’t overly spammy. Make sure your article is well-written, engaging, and has a solid call to action. Make sure that your blog posts are optimized for length. While long-form content generates interest and engagement, it’s not great for search engines. Make sure that each of your blog posts is between 500 and 2000 words. You’ll get the best results if you break up your longer articles into smaller, more easily digestible chunks.
4. Use Keywords Effectively
While using your keywords throughout your blog posts, you must also ensure that they don’t sound stilted and unnatural. You don’t want your readers to notice your keywords and instantly feel turned off. Instead, you want them to read your blog post and only realize later that they were reading about the topic you were targeting.
Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to find the keywords that your readers are searching for. Use tools like Buzzsumo to see which topics are currently trending and what kind of content is getting the most shares. Look at your most popular blog posts to see what keywords they’re targeting. To increase your blog traffic, you need to target high-volume keywords that are easy to rank.
5. Grow Your Email List
In order to start getting real, consistent traffic to your site, you need to start collecting emails. You can do this by taking the following actions
Add an email sign-up form on your sidebar or at the end of every blog post. Create a lead magnet that your readers can exchange their email address for to join your list. It’s important to note that you don’t want to bombard your subscribers with too many emails. You should aim to send one email per week and give your readers the opportunity to unsubscribe at any time. Include a call to action in every email that you send out and encourage your readers to visit your blog regularly. Use email marketing software like Autopilot to create email sequences that can help you to convert readers into paying customers.
6. Add Sidebars and Widgets
You can also improve your blog traffic by adding sidebars and widgets to your blog posts. You can use these widgets for a variety of tasks:
Promote your products or services, link to related content, or even ask for feedback from your readers. Provide more value to your readers with a glossary of terms or answer common questions that they might have about the topic you’re covering. Conduct polls or surveys within your sidebar and then report the results in a future blog post. Widgets can help you to bring in more traffic and encourage more engagement on your blog. There are plenty of different widgets that you can use to increase your blog traffic.
7. Offer More Tools for Visitors to Stay Engaged
You can keep your readers engaged with your blog by offering them more tools to stay connected with your blog even when they’re not visiting it.
Create an email course that takes your readers through each step of your blog post and provides them with more resources related to the topic. Publish an audiobook version of one of your most popular blog posts. Audiobooks can be a great way to reach a wider audience and keep your name in the public eye even when you’re not blogging. Create transcripts for your audiobooks so that readers who can’t listen can still get the most out of your content.
Wrapping up
The internet is filled with blogs and websites from every niche imaginable. It’s almost impossible to find any topic that hasn’t been blogged about a million times before. Your readers will probably only spend a few seconds on your blog before moving on to something they find more interesting or useful. This means that you need to hook them immediately and convince them not just once but several times to keep coming back for more if you want to build a successful blog. Now that you know how to increase your blog traffic, you have to put in the hard work to make it happen. How will you use these tips to boost your blog traffic? This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional. © 2022 Brad Ligamitus
