Whether you blog for your business, or your blog is your business, there will always be a drive to get more traffic and to get more readers.
The more people that are hitting the site, the more that you could turn into potential customers, followers, and supporters.
The content that you write needs to be of a good quality in order for people to want to come and visit the post in the first place. However, it does take some real work to build up an audience. One post could naturally resonate with a lot of people and it really takes off, but your next post could only get a tenth of that traffic. It can be easy to get a little frustrated with it all, but there are many benefits to blogging.
Having a blog for your business, or as mentioned above, if a blog is your business, then you will know how important it is to get traffic to your website, and help yourself to build up an audience. But what are some of the best ways to do that, other than just churning out some great content? Here are some things that you can do to boost your readership and help to boost the traffic that comes to your blog.
Write more
There have been studies that have found that the more often that someone updates their blog, the more traffic that it will receive. Google loves fresh content, and does give higher priority to any blogs and sites that have fresh content. So that is one thing that you can focus on. Of course, think about what is going to work for you. If once a day is too much, think about every other day, for example. Whatever you choose, just make sure that you are consistent and that you post often. Even updating it twice a week can be enough to help you to get found by search engines.
Promote with social media
Social media and blogging are things that go hand in hand. If you share on your social channels, then it can attract a new audience to your blog that you hadn’t shared with before. Make sure that you share to sites like LinkedIn, as well as to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and even Instagram (if you have the 10k swipe up feature for your stories then it really does make a difference). If you spend some time cultivating your networks, as well as sharing some great content, then social media sites can easily be one of the ways that you get the most traffic.
Write better titles
The titles that you use for your blog post are sometimes even more important than the content that you share itself. The reason being is that your blog post titles are what will draw the reader in, and it will help them to decide if they even want to bother with what you have written. Think about a problem that your new post solves, as that can be a good way to entice people, especially if they are dealing with that particular problem.
Blog post titles also play a really important part in how well your post is found online in a search engine search. A lot of what a search engine does is look at certain keywords or phrases, and if someone searches for that particular keyword, then your post is likely to come up, but only if you’ve used it in the title.
The titles really do make a difference. SEO is a whole other topic, and could be talked about for a while, so if you are struggling with your search engine optimization, then you could outsource it to someone else. A site online has analyzed hundreds of SEO companies to see which are the best at the moment, so that could be something worth looking at. SEO does play a part in boosting your traffic, as it is all about search engines, so it shouldn’t be forgotten about for your blog.
Know your niche
When it comes to blogging, being too general and covering a lot of topics can actually be detrimental. Although you may have a passion for food and cooking, it will be confusing for people if you started sharing recipes on your interiors and decor blog, for example. The same goes for a blog relating to your business; it should be related content otherwise people will become disinterested if the content that you share doesn’t have a clear theme. One of the best things to do for this is to think about who your target audience is, and what they would be interested in hearing. Then you can create content around that, and around the kinds of problems or questions that they might have.
Include photos
When a blog post includes photos, as well as video, it really helps to boost the traffic to it, as well as the general readership of the site. Photos make the post look good, but they can also play a part in the keywords that you use, as you can use alt text for images. So this can work wonders for your SEO, as briefly mentioned above. Think about where you get your images from, though, as you can’t just use any old photo that you find online. There are stock image sites that allow you to use their images for free, however, having your own images can make a big difference.
Incorporate keywords
When you think about keywords, they are really the main aspect of SEO. They are a simple way to help your blog get more traffic. You just need to ensure that there are relevant keywords on each page, otherwise it will all be wasted and people will quickly click off the site if they find that it isn’t what they were looking for. For all of the new blog posts that you write, think about one keyword or phrase that readers would look to use, in order to find that post. The next thing that you can do is to then use that keyword or phrase in the title of the post (yes, titles are important, remember), as well as used several times throughout the post itself. Add it to an image, and also have it as part of the link to the post. This will all help Google and other search engines, to know what your post is all about, and that will then help your posts to get seen.
Incorporate links
If you talk about other brands or businesses in your blog posts, then it is a good idea to link to it. Not only does this help search engines to see that there are outbound links on your blog, but the brand or business that you have linked to could also notice and share a link back to you, or share the post with their readers, for example. Readers also like to have reference points too. So if you recommend an article or refer to a study in your post, then having the link for them to click really helps. This can also help generate an income, if you use affiliate links for product recommendations.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to boosting traffic to your blog. But as you can see, they aren’t difficult things to do, they can just take some time and effort to get in place, and then you can see the results start to roll in.