How to Increase Blog Traffic
Let’s face it. Blogging is hard work.
It takes time to continuously publish quality blog posts to keep your blog up and running. However, it is much more important that your content brings more traffic, sparks interaction and increases conversions.
Every day, around 175,000 new blogs are created. Isn’t it important that you stand out from the rest of the crowd?
In this post, our new blogger Jamie shares some really useful tips on how to fine-tune your blog posts for more traffic, conversions and engagement.
Write Powerful Headlines for More Traffic
The headline of your blog post is arguably its most important part.
It creates interest, sparks curiosity, encourages clicks and social media shares, and drives more traffic to your blog.
There are many different techniques to write powerful headlines. Ideally, it should at least contain the following qualities:
- It should have a promise for the readers.
- It must be focused around a benefit for your readers.
- It should be able to raise curiosity – just enough to make the readers click on your post.
- The headline should be actionable and pragmatic.
- It should be well-directed to your specific target audience and business prospects.
Always Use At Least One Image In Your Post
In today’s blogging world, images are absolutely crucial.
According to a research, blog posts that have images get 94% more views. Moreover, images are not only profound and meaningful, but they also break up paragraphs of texts to make the post more readable and easy-to-understand.
Mobile-Friendly Design and Layout
Do you know that now, on average, 25% of total blog posts are read on mobile devices?
In other words, if you don’t fine-tune your blog posts for mobile devices – smartphones and tablets – you lose out on approximately 1/4th of your total traffic.
So not only your must your blog have a responsive design, but the layout of your blog post should also be mobile friendly.
Simplify Your Writing
In terms of writing blog posts, this may be the most important point.
You see, people like “simple” things. They read your blog because they want to understand and learn something. Moreover, they also want to be connected with a real personality. It is, therefore, your responsibility to simplify your writing as much as possible, while making it look like a conversation.
A few good ideas for achieving that are:
- Use simpler and shorter words wherever possible.
- Use active sentences whenever you can. Avoid passive sentences.
- Create shorter paragraphs to keep your readers interested.
- Let your own personality, flair and unique voice shine in your writing.
- It is also a good idea to directly address your reader.
- Write blog posts as if you are talking to the reader. It should feel like a conversation.
- Ask questions to keep them interested and to encourage two-way conversations.
Don’t Forget the Calls-to-Action
Every blog post has a purpose.
It always has a goal, even if you don’t realise it. Calls-to-action help you achieve that goal.
Ideally, every blog post should have a very specific call-to-action. It can be anything, e.g. asking your readers to subscribe to your e-mail list, sharing your post on different social media websites, buying a product, requesting more information about your business, or encouraging the readers to comment on your post.
The purpose does not matter.
The important thing is that you do include a call-to-action – even if it seems understood or obvious. You have to specifically mention what you want your readers to do.
For instance, do you know when you specifically ask your Facebook fans to “share” a post, it increases the sharing ratio by 70%? This is the power of a specific call-to-action that you must utilise by explicitly mentioning it.
Conclusion
So these are the 5 tips that you can use to fine-tune your blog posts.
Most of the time, it does not matter how many blog posts you publish. The quality of your content and the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy are more important.
Always remember that your goal should not be to achieve a certain number of published blog posts. Instead, the number of targeted visitors, business prospects, social media engagement and increased conversions you achieve from each blog post should be your main focus.
To learn how to optimise your blog posts for SEO – click here
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