So you’ve decided to write a blog or you’ve already begun one. The trouble is, no one seems to be visiting your blog, not an uncommon experience for the beginning and sometimes even the seasoned blogger. Though writing down your thoughts is typically a mentally healthy exercise, it’s even better if other people notice what you’re writing. There are many ways that you can increase blog traffic and design a blog that will have people hopefully visiting, commenting, and visiting your sponsors.
If you haven’t yet begun your blog, it’s a good idea to think about topics. In general, unless you have an inside source on popular topics like movies, music or the entertainment industry, you’ll want to avoid these. Occasionally your opinions are so great you’ll get noticed, but usually you’ll find yourself in extreme competition with other blogs and there are thousands of them on these industries. It’s extremely difficult to increase blog traffic to websites of this type.
Instead, think about what you already know. What are your interests, your skills, and your special knowledge set? Having authority through training, experience or interest is likely to garner you more notice. If you’re someone who’s interested in therapy for instance, you might have enough to go on. If you’re a licensed counselor, even better, since you can write from a place of authority in your field. Try to do some searching on the Internet to see which topics aren’t revealing tons of search results, and look for a niche market, something specific that people might be looking for but aren’t really finding.
Next, craft your titles carefully. Titles should reflect the way in which people are likely to search for the information your blog provides. The more specific your title the more likely your blog titles will show up in higher rankings in search engines. Think of repeating key words about five to eight times in entries, since this also plays a factor in where you are ranked, and if you rank high, you’ll increase blog traffic.
One of the ways search engines rank pages is by the number of inlinks or backlinks to your blog. These are essentially the number of other web pages not owned by you that provide links to your site. The best way to get these links is by looking at blogs that are related to your topic. Sometimes these topics can be almost identical to your own, but other times, they may be related to your own. Start to leave comments on related blogs, and regularly work on building your own network of Internet friends. As you comment more, people will get to know your name, and are much more likely to provide you with links to your site. You may also want to offer reciprocal links.
Lastly, though search engines don’t assess quality of writing and content, other people will. If you want to increase blog traffic, you really need to work hard to maintain excellent writing in your work. If you’re not a terrific writer, there’s no time like the present to learn, and you should minimally strive for organized expression of thought, absence of grammatical errors, and no spelling errors. People who have successful blogs are much more likely to give you a link if you are a good writer, and good writing alone is a helpful way to increase blog traffic.
Studies also show that blogs with images, artwork and photographs, tend to be visited more regularly than do blogs without artwork. Sometimes this isn’t the case, but you may want to consider making your blog visually interesting. Even a picture or two per blog page may increase blog traffic and hopefully bring more readers to your site.
Once your blog is up and running, consider researching and submitting your site to a number of blog competitions. Winners and even people who receive honorable mention get more visitors. Another way to increase blog traffic is to submit your work, or have someone else do it, to blog review sites. Since these may be visited more often, a really well-crafted blog may quickly garner attention.