Use these quick and easy blogging shortcuts to generate more traffic than a Manhattan street.
Blogging is an essential part of every long-term inbound marketing strategy. Maintaining a regular blog tells contacts about your brand, nurtures a relationship with your consumers and can help turn anyone who shares a post into an ambassador for your company. But without enough eyes on your content, you might as well be talking to yourself.
You know the scenario. You post in your blog regularly, but only witness momentary spikes in traffic. Every once in a while, someone shares a post or offers a ‘like,’ but your list of subscribers barely wavers and you’re not even sure if users searching for your keywords are finding your posts.
What if you could triple your monthly blog traffic, get 10 times more subscribers and substantially more social media shares simply by altering something on your existing blog? These blogging tips are easy shortcuts for businesses that already have a blog and would like to increase the traffic their blog generates without revamping your entire concept. Here are some fast, easy blog tweaks that work:
Use Long-Tail Keywords
You’re probably already incorporating keywords into your blog posts, but a single word keyword is going to be highly competitive when it comes to search engine rankings. Trying to rank at the top of the search results for a keyword like “blog” is a little like playing the lottery. Getting a high ranking for a long-tail keyword like “how to increase blogging traffic” or “blogging tips,” on the other hand, is much easier.
To figure out the right long-tail keywords to incorporate into your blog posts, use Google Webmaster Tools to find the list of search queries, or keywords that send you traffic. Then, type one of the keywords listed into Google. See your blog post right there at the top? Didn’t think so. Scroll down to the long-tail keywords listed under “related searches.” Use a handful of these in a natural way throughout your blog and wait for your web traffic to grow.
Graph information provided by serpIQ
Write Longer Posts
As much as everybody loves to praise bite-size information, research shows time and time again that longer blog posts are more successful than shorter ones. Among the evidence is this data collected by serpIQ, which found that longer blog posts are consistently ranked higher than shorter ones. For instance, a post of 2000 words will rank higher than a post of 1000 words.
When it comes to social sharing, size also matters. Users are more likely to share a longer, in-depth blog post on social media than a shorter one. So don’t be afraid to beef up your word counts with more examples, more thorough discussion and better statistics. A word to the wise: Make sure your content isn’t fluff. For readers to go for it, it has to offer a wealth of valuable information.
Optimize Your Layout
Different blog layouts all have different advantages, and if you want to optimize yours, you’ll need to consider what you’re going for.
- A 3-column layout can be distracting, with a sidebar on either side of the main content, but you can also keep readers on the page for longer since they’ll have more related content to read.
- A 2-column layout is less distracting, but still offers readers other options for getting in touch with your brand besides the main content. With one sidebar, you can include an opt-in form for email subscriptions, promote products, or link to your social media profiles.
- A single column layout is the least distracting and allows readers to focus all of their attention on your blog content.
The right layout matters whether your aim is to dazzle readers with a plethora of reading options to increase your click rates or encourage them to focus solely on your blog.
Opt-In Forms Here, There and Everywhere
Opt-in forms are great, but if you stick with only one, your readers can easily breeze past it. Many tools allow you to design your own opt-in forms and include them as header, footer, sidebar, pop-up or slide-in. Choose a couple locations to ensure your readers always have a chance to subscribe to your blog.
Conclusion
Keeping a quality blog is difficult, but you don’t need to revamp your blogging strategy entirely to boost your web traffic. Using a handful of quick and easy tweaks, you can adjust your existing blog to optimize your blog length, layout, searchability and more. Blogging isn’t rocket science, but it does require prioritizing the user experience. With these blogging tips in mind, you can grow your web traffic without investing more time than you’ve bargained for.
What tricks do you use to optimize your blog for more web traffic? Join the discussion in the comments below!
