How to Increase Blog Traffic

Part 1 of 2: Optimizing Your Content

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   Choose a catchy and descriptive title. The title of your blog is one of the first things that readers will see and one of the factors that search engines use to determine what your blog is about. The title of your blog should let readers know right away what your blog is about. It should be easy to remember, not too long, and not too similar to another website's name.
   • Keep this in mind when selecting a domain name as well. Oddly spelt words will throw people off, and make it more difficult for your blog to become memorable.
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   Focus on your design. The first thing people notice when they visit your blog, is the way it looks. And although the old adage goes that one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, the same isn’t always true for a blog. If you want people to stay on your blog, you’ve got to hook them with an eye catching design; once they’re interested in the appearance, they’ll start reading to see what you’re all about.
   • Create a title/header that matches the theme and content of your blog. A clean, well designed header will tell readers a lot about your blog, and hopefully have them sticking around.
   • Keep your color scheme to a maximum of three hues. Too many colors can appear overwhelming, and distract readers from content. Choose at least one or two neutral colors, and one or two bright/bolder colors.
   • Create a small logo or image to represent your blog, if applicable. Having a ‘brand’ will make your blog memorable, and help others to recognize it when they see the logo around the internet.
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   Organize your content. If you have a great design and content, you have to be sure to have great organization to match. If readers can’t find what they’re looking for easily, they’ll be much less likely to visit again in the future or to recommend your blog to others. Create a navigation bar at the top of the page or in a column, with links to common articles. Furthermore, set up a ‘tag’ system in which you can tag articles with keywords or phrases that will make it easier for readers to search.
   • If you’re coding-savvy enough, add a search bar to your blog. This will allow your readers to search from within your blog content without scrolling through pages of titles or links they’re not interested in.
   • Create general categories/links for your nav bar, with more specific sub-categories for each general link. This will make searching your blog easier.
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   Focus on your target audience. Although you likely want anyone and everyone to start reading your blog, typically only a specific target audience will make up the primary readership. Look at popular blogs that are similar to yours or how you want your to be, and emulate the ways in which they hook their audience on content. By creating specific, detailed content rather than general, vague content, your target audience will be more likely to become repeat readers, and to share your blog on a regular basis.
   • If you’re creating a fashion/beauty blog, make sure that the general appearance and content of your blog easily shows this.
   • If you’re covering a broad subject, consider writing multiple posts in order to get more detailed content about each part you’ll be discussing.
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   Add interesting images. People are visual, and they’re more likely to read an article or blog post if there are images to accompany it. If you’re a photographer or graphic designer, use your creative know-how to prepare images that fit the content of each individual blog post you create. If you’re not so artsy, use images from the web (with permission/linked sources) interspersed throughout your writing.
   • If you add your own images, add a small watermark with your blog’s name or URL on the bottom. That way, if your images get circulated around the web, people will see that they came from you and make a stop by your blog.
   • Write a small disclaimer on your blog that notes that people can share your images as much as they want, so long as they source them back to your article/home page.
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   Enhance your writing. So now people are hooked on the appearance of your blog, but now you’ve got to provide stellar content to keep them around. In general, blogs should be written with a light-hearted tone and easy to understand vocabulary (unless it’s an academic or otherwise specific blog). Get your blog optimized for search engines (SEO optimized) by using common search queries throughout your writing. This will move your blog closer to the top of search engine result pages, and make people more likely to read your posts.
   • Always check your writing for proper grammar and spelling.
   • Avoid writing long paragraphs with no breaks. People have a hard time keeping their place on the page when reading block text, so break your writing into small sections, phrases, and short paragraphs.
   • Use a recognizable tone when you’re writing; readers gravitate towards someone whose writing is memorable and creative.
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   Avoid overwhelming your readers. When you’re full of inspiration or you have a lot to say, it can be easy to create blog posts, designs, images, and content that are overwhelming to viewers. Try to keep each individual post relatively short, breaking up broad topics into multiple, concise articles. Additionally, avoid having tons of contrasting ads, images, and links spread around the borders of your page.
   • Keep in mind that the longer it takes for your page to load, the lower on the search results page it will appear. Therefore, it is in your best interest to keep your posts relatively brief.
   • The old saying ‘less is more’ certainly applies to writing blogs.
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   Choose content that will last for a while. This can be difficult depending on the style of your blog, but if you focus on writing articles that aren’t ‘trendy’, you’ll likely have many more readers in the long run. If you’re writing about a fad, insert it into an article that will likely stay popular for more than a few months. In this way, you can almost guarantee future readership, especially if your page gets plenty of hits to start. Writing about things that are popular in the moment may give you a short burst of readers, but after a few weeks the number will likely dwindle significantly.
   • ’What’s hot now’ articles are certainly appropriate in moderation, but if you want to have regular, consistent blog traffic, try to keep them to a minimum.
   • Writing for the future pertains mainly to blogs which are covering current trends, such as fashion, beauty, technology, and pop culture.
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   Link to yourself. If you have a stockpile of blog posts you’ve already published, don’t hesitate to give them a shout-out in your new posts! Readers will be drawn deeper into your blog with each link, and be more likely to stick around and explore a bit if you provide plenty of links to your other posts. Insert them inconspicuously into your writing by turning words or phrases in a sentence into colored hyperlinks that don’t detract/distract from the rest of your content.^[1]
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    Post regularly. If you have great content but only post once a month, even the most loyal followers will eventually get burnt out on waiting for an update from you. Try to set up a regular blogging schedule, so that you’re posting at least once a week. Keep in mind, the more you post, the more chances you have to get readers.
    • Avoid the pitfall of posting even when you don’t have quality content. It’s ok to go a little extra time between posts if it means building up for writing that is more meaningful.

Part 2 of 2: Bringing in More Readers

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   Use social media platforms to promote your blog. Possibly the most effective way to promote readership outside your friends and family is to promote your blog on social media. Although it can be difficult to manage multiple accounts, if you’re able to juggle your presence between a few different sites, you’ll likely notice a significant increase in viewers. Consider using social media platforms such as:
   • Facebook
   • Twitter
   • Pinterest
   • Instagram
   • Reddit
   • LinkedIn
   • Google+
   • Tumblr
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   Participate in other blog communities. If you’re an avid reader of other blogs in your genre, you’ve probably noticed that people will comment with links to their own blogs at the end of popular posts. Commenting alone is a great way to get your name and ideas out in the world, but if you’re able to add a link to your blog as well, you’ll likely grab a few attentive readers. This is good, because the people who click through to your blog are likely some of the most loyal, possibly gaining you a solid following.
   • Add creative, insightful comments to blog posts. Writing meager, boring, or irrelevant comments and linking to your blog will drive people away.
   • Comment often and on a variety of different blogs. After a while, the authors of the blogs you comment on will begin to take notice and might contact you for collaborations.
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   Consider having a guest blogger. If you’re able to link up with a fellow blogger in your community, contact them to guest blog on your site. They’ll post the link to your site on theirs, bringing in a whole slew of new readers who otherwise might not have discovered you. Further, they might return the favor and ask you to guest blog for them. Before you decide to ask someone to be featured on your blog, create a rubric or set of questions you plan on asking them. Having a blog post outlined for them will make them much more likely to accept your offer.
   • If you’re good friends with another blogger, consider simply offering to do a guest post on their blog. They might happily give you free reign to create something for them.
   • Interview-style guest posts are typically the easiest, but if you’re clear about what you’re looking for, another blogger may be able to generate entirely new content for you.
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   Set up an alert system. You’ve probably done this yourself - found a blog you love, forget to write down the URL, and never visit again. Don’t allow this to happen to your readers! On your own blog, you can create an email newsletter or update system to let readers know when you’ve created a new post. Want an easier way to do it? Join a program like Bloglovin.com; this site allows other users to ‘follow’ you, and receive an alert every time you post something new.
   • Rather than creating a newsletter that is sent out with every blog post, think about having a monthly update to send to viewers who comment or subscribe. This way, you don’t bog your readers down with unwanted emails or messages.^[2]
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   Create an advertisement exchange. Many blogs create a column for ads solely from other bloggers in their genre. Start a space on your blog where other blogs can post an advertisement; they’ll likely link to your page as well. Do the opposite too; look for free or cheap monthly ad spaces through other blogs. In the end, you both end up with more readers, so it’s a win-win situation.
   • If you’ve never had ads on your blog before, consider having a ‘first month free!’ type deal in order to draw in other bloggers.
   • The more popular a blog is, the more it will cost to host an ad. Start small and work your way up to larger blogs as you gain popularity.
   • You can pay to have your blog advertised on other popular sites, but this can be very expensive and not the best option for beginning bloggers.
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   Write about other bloggers, and then tell them. Sometimes when you read other blogs, you’ll notice they give a shout-out to a blog post or blog author they admire. When this is done, the author being recognized will typically repost the original in which they were cited, as a sort of badge of honor. If you are truly inspired by a particular person or blog, link to it on your own blog, and send an email or comment to the author. They’ll be flattered you noticed them, and if nothing else you’ll have at least one new follower.
   • Consider compiling a list of your favorite blogs, and linking to them. This increases the chances of the authors mentioning you and your list on their own blog.
   • If you don’t feel comfortable publicly posting about a blog you like, try contacting the author and telling them privately. They’ll still appreciate your contact, and will probably start reading your blog too.
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   Post at the right time. If your target audience is adult males over the age of 50, it probably won’t be good to always post new content at midnight. Similarly, it’s not incredibly helpful if you post about how to make the perfect ‘New Year’s Eve’ decorations for a party, the day of/after New Year’s Eve. Keep your target audience and your content in mind when you choose a date and time to post an update.
   • Posts that relate to a specific date should be planned several weeks in advance. This will give readers plenty of time to stumble upon your post, before the date has arrived.
   • If you post on a regular basis, try to post at the same time each day. This way, followers of your blog will know around what time to expect an update from you, and can hop over to your blog without a reminder that you’ve updated it.^[3]
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Tips

• Target your "advertising." Try to promote your blog in places around the internet where people who would be interested in your blog are likely to be. If you write a post you think a friend of yours would particularly enjoy, let him or her know about it. You can even adapt you signature for different forums. If you blog about gardening and post on a forum about roses, put a link in your signature to a category or tag with all of your rose-related articles or a link to your best article about roses.
• Pick a topic to write about that really interests you. It can take a long time for a blog to develop strong regular traffic, so you'll want to pick a subject that you'll be happy to write about even when you aren't getting a lot of feedback. While selecting a popular search term as the basis for your blog can get you a lot of hits initially, traffic will quickly drop off if you don't know your subject and you'll be stuck with a blog with little to no traffic that you aren't interested in writing.
• Though not all bloggers choose to do it, buying your own domain name can make your blog easier to find and help to give it a more professional look. "Sitename.com" is easier to remember than "sitename.hostname.com," so a shorter URL could help you to get more traffic.
• Be aware of your "competition." Knowing what other blogs about similar subjects have to offer will help you to figure out what will make your blog unique.