So you’ve got your blog, but how do you get the traffic?
There’s afamous quote from the old movie, Field of Dreams – “If you build it, they will come”. It’s been quoted so many times and used in so many situations, but on the internet and particularly when blogging, it’s completely wrong! Just because you can build a blog, doesn’t mean it will draw in the followers you need to justify the setup.
So, first of all, you have to make sure that what you are blogging about has appeal, that is, has a market! If you get that then you’re halfway there, so the next thing you need is traffic, footfall, subscribers, readers, or clicks.
Whatever buzzword you want to use… they all translate to the same end goal, money and support!
What you want is traffic flowing through your blog, high traffic means more opportunities for advertising, marketing and selling. Traffic is the life blood of your site. So over the next few pages, I’m going to give you some of the best tips and tricks that you can use to boost the traffic on your blog!
Everything I’m going to tell you can be grouped under five simple sections, these are the different limbs of your blogging site and when properly combined together, they are the essential componentsthat form a successful
BLOG:
01) Blog Site Architecture
02) Interesting Posts
03) Social Media Integration
04) Marketing
05) Monetization
01) Blog Site Architecture
You may well think that your blogs architecture is unimportant, one is much like another after all; merely a mechanism for holding your posts and making them visible to be seen or read and commented on.
But the reality is so much more, if you look beneath the surface there are as many different architectures for blogging sites as there are cars on the market. Imagine you want a red estate and someone appears and points – “It is right over there, a green SUV? No problem, you can find it just around the corner. A blue sports car? Sure thing just over just past the convertibles.”
Exactly the same is true with blogging software packages, make it simple for yourself, get help from someone who knows and find the right fit for your blogging content, depending on your skill set. I’m sure you’ve all heard of WordPress, it’s probably one of the biggest (if not the biggest blogging architecture) out there. For probably 90% of the blogging sites out there it’s perfect, then there’s Wix, Tumblr, Blogger, Yola and Weebly, to name just a handful.
So which do you choose?
I cannot give you a recommendation, I have used a lot of them on different projects over time, so you need to review what your competitors are doing and using, and pick the platform that best suits your area of expertise, partly because if you’ve in a particular niche your visitors will be expecting it, and also you stand a better chance of being ranked well by the search engine algorithms.If they can match your blog with similar content (and evaluate yours against it)they will determine a ranking position based on that evidence.
02) Interesting Posts
This is really a no-brainer, if your content is boring, visitors won’t look at it.
If you aren’t getting views, you aren’t getting traffic.
If you don’t get traffic, you do not get positive ranking.
If you don’t get a good ranking, prospective visitors won’t even see your page, it’ll get lost in the bowels of the search results, don’t believe me? Who here looks past the 3rd or 4th page of results provided by a Google search? Assuming you even scroll to the bottom of the first page of results before “tweaking” your search terms.
So, most importantly, you want interesting posts.These should be well written posts because nowadays, the search bot algorithms are so good, that a well written post does in fact get a better ranking than a badly written one.
Also make it easy for your visitors to like, comment or share your posts, there are many “bookmarking” website methodologies, dig.com, Facebook likes, etc. Give your readers the ability to connect to your blog and your posts using the platform they wish to, not by trying to force them to set up yet another account with some other site just to share your post with a friend or colleague.
03) Social Media Integration
OK, now we’re getting to the “good stuff”, I’m sure you all know something about Social Media, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, Myspace, Google+, etc…
Social Media is synonymous with Internet Marketing these days; there are companies that exist for the sole purpose of managing your social media presence. But also don’t forget the original social media platforms.
Get out there, talk to people, advertise in the real world, in magazines, in your local coffee shop. Or even better, in all of the ten of them that are now dominating your home high street!
Don’t try and hard sell these people to get them to go to your site, you don’t want to push, bully or spam people. Soft sell your content; give them excerpts of what they could find on your blog, show them you’re an expert, show them you’re interesting and fun, and they will come based on that.
If you engage people in this way, they will want to visit your blog, they’ll want to learn more about who you are and what you’re about. And while they are reading that, you can draw them into visiting your website or interest them in one of your offers.
Then on the social media sites, you do the same thing, you don’t try and hard sell, you don’t want to force people onto your blog, you want them to come to you!So, in your social media accounts, post interesting and humorous snippets…be fun! Give them something they can share or answer to get involved in the conversation. Facebook etc.is full of posts trying to force you to click on something, but which ones do you actually click on and which ones do you ignore?
If you are like me, you click on the fun and interesting ones and ignore the ones that are trying to ram something down your throat.
04) Marketing& SEO
Of course, it had to be in here somewhere.You aren’t magically going to get traffic, you have to market your blog as well, and you have to use some simple SEO to help the Search Engines get to your content as efficiently as possible.The easier it is for the Search Engine providers to get and examine your content, the better your ranking will be.
But you cannot confine yourself to just SEO, SEO is more passive;it suggests you build your frame and wait for the indexers to do the work for you. Well, that’s not what we want exactly. We want to be active, we want active marketing techniques that are always working for you… pulling traffic to your posts, to your pages and to your website!
In the blogging world, one of the best ways to achieve active marketing is to collaborate with your colleagues and peers.If you are an expert in your field, you want to build a networking community with each other, so that together you ALL get more traffic, but by bouncing off each other, rather than trying to make it alone.
Comment on your colleagues’ blogs too!You have an opportunity there to direct interested parties to you, by providing links that you might have to your own content.Something that might compliment your colleagues aims or merely offer a different opinion. You want to be positive and informal, phrase those comments even as a question – people love answering your questions, it makes them feel like an expert.Share their post, make interesting comments and maybe even “invite” them to review something similar you have posted that you’d like them to offer their opinion on.
05) Monetization
OK, the final step for you is to ask this question –
“What’s your blog doing for you?”
If, at the end of the day, you’re after sales, your blog is part of your sales strategy. So you’ll be using it ultimately to get traffic to your website or your affiliates’ websites to get those sales.
To do this successfully, you will be using your blog to build rapport with your visitors; they need to feel comfortable with you and your expertise.
You want to get the sale?
Then you want your visitors to be congruent with your content, you want them to be reading your posts and saying the whole time, “Yes, he’s right… this is what I need. I believe this too. He (or she) gets me!”
In this way, your visitors will begin respecting your site, your posts and your viewpoint, trusting you is the first step to any long term business relationship, and they are far more likely to click the buy button, if they feel this naturally from simply agreeing with you!
No convincing is needed, if you guys are on the same page.
Conclusion
So what have we learnt? What the formula to get traffic on your blog?
Well, like anything, it’s no one simple thing but an intricate web that forms the complete picture.Each component works in harmony perfectly with the others. In blogging terms, it’s not about trying to hard sell, or force an opinion or viewpoint, it’s all about building rapport; building trust and respect (and quality!)that generates the higher traffic, because as a trusted expert, you get more visitors looking to your blog and to you for information.
The more people value you, your blog, and its’ resources, the higher the traffic.
It really is as straight-forward as that…
