One of the most important aspects of blogging is funneling traffic, good traffic to your site, because you can also have bad traffic which will do nothing but bug you down. Also you have to work on keeping them coming with proper engagement.
WHY do you desire traffic?
1. Traffic translates to more views
2 More views if well managed leads to more revenue.
Web traffic can be split into four main types, mainly:
1. Direct Traffic
These comes from people that are already aware about your brand and visit your site directly by typing your site name into their web browser
2. Referral Traffic
This is the traffic that comes to your site through external links from other web pages.
3. Organic Traffic
These come to you through online searches which is aided through Search engine optimization.
4. Social Traffic
People visiting your site through links on social media like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and others.
5.Paid Traffic
These are made up of AdWords, Remarketing and others.
So how do you now drive traffic to your site? Well, we'll be looking at a combination of factors working together to bring about the desired result.
1. Attention Grabbing Topic That Pulls Traffic
Why do some topics appeal to you more than others. You are going through a page and suddenly you pause and hover above a title or topic and you click on it to find out more. Most likely it caught your attention because it was catchy and inviting. This is how topics should be. You should also make sure it captures what is in demand and people are actually searching for. Google Trends is particularly useful in this regard which brings us to our second point.
2. Analyzing Your Headline
"On average, 5 times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. When you've written your headline, you've spent eighty cents out of you dollar" -David Ogilvy
Very true. When you enter a search term into a search engine and the results are displayed, you scan through the headings looking for something that is alluring or perhaps outstanding before reading anything else.
This is where a headline analyzer comes in. Coschedule is a good choice, fast and very effective. It does a complete analysis of your headline offers you some tips for improvement.
Here's an example below
ENTER YOUR TEXT TO BEGIN HEADLINE ANALYSIS:
Or consolidate your entire marketing strategy AND write killer headlines with CoSchedule
Fourteen Practical Steps On How To Gain Massive Traffic
HEADLINE SCORE
Word Balance
How to, List and questions are particularly good and should be exploited. Emotional and power words are also important if you want to ignite the fire in your headline.
3. Meticulous Keywords Research
It is important that you research the keywords that are appropriate for your posts. This is essential if having visitors flood your site is important to you. If no one is searching for the words you have used in your post then you are not going to be getting much traffic to your site. Your post has to be littered with them but not impair the readability and fluidity of your post. Doing this will only turn your readers off. It has to be done just right. Tools that you can use for this include Google keywords tool and similarweb .
Things you would be looking at include :
- How many people are actually searching for the said term?
- Will it draw the right Kind of audience?
-Will you be able to rank as well or better than your competitors?
4. Cornerstone Content
These are the most important articles on your site. They Showcase What your site is all about, and is the foundation around which everything else is organized. Cornerstone Content is also sometimes referred to as evergreen Content. This kind of Content should be written around and about keywords that you desire to rank for in search engines, and should be contained within the first few pages of your website. Your Cornerstone articles need to be detailed and exhaustive capturing every aspect of the topic. Subsequent articles you write related to your Cornerstone articles Should also overtime, be linked to these all-inclusive articles.
5. Stunning Images
Yes, and i mean stunning. Images, photos and pictures all make your article more visually appealing. We humans have a short attention span online and so you need something that will immediately capture their attention and want them to find out more. Images are gradually becoming the universal language and you need to tap in to this. It has also been found that articles with images get 95% more total Views than others. However make sure to give appropriate credits for images used or Search for and use royalty-free images so you don't run the risk of violating Copyright laws.
6. Page Loading Time
Google considers a lot of factors in ranking websites and page loading time is one of them. If your site takes too long to load, you lose traffic.
Ways to reduce loading time:
# Remove unwanted plugins
We sometimes install too many plugins on our sites which gobbles up our server resources and makes our site sluggish. To avoid this you should
- Disable or uninstall unwanted plugins
- Instead of using several plugins
for various functions, use an all in-one plugin such as the
jetpack plugin.
# Optimize your images
Using images from various sources as found can significantly affect the loading time of the site. You can compress images using Smush.it to load images conditionally when the readers Scrolls to the bottom of the page.
# Use a CDN
This stands for content delivery network and is a network of Servers situated across various countries and help to deliver web content more efficiently. What it does is help a browser fetch data from a closer Source thereby making it load faster.
# Reduce the number of post on homepage
You can use a tool like Pingdom to analyze your blog page load speed. Example:
The more posts that you have displayed on your homepage the slower it will load- of course it makes sense. Limit the number of posts that can be displayed under settings on your page.
7. Email Campaign
Statistics Show that emails convert up to three times more than social media does. Email campaign is a worthy effort to put into your blog. All you need do is make sure you feature relevant posts or group related posts and send it as an email newsletter. Getting email Sign ups might prove difficult but you can use these proven techniques -
> Make subscription forms available
> Build your email list
> Select the type of campaign that you want - Newsletter,
offer, Announcement e.t.c.
> Create your campaign
> Measure your result
8. Get on online forums
Forums where questions are asked and answered is a very good place to hang out and establish a presence. Watch out for topics and queries that your posts are relevant to and soon you will build a legitimate following.
Sites like Quora and Reddit can give you immediate exposure to over 1 million monthly visitors. Provide links back to your blog posts in the answers you provide on the forum and watch your audience grow.
9. Make use of SlideShare
Slideshare is useful in complimenting your blog content and pulling traffic, a lot of it. If done right, your slideshare can even go on to be more popular than the blog post itself. Make sure you provide a link back to your blog in the presentation.
10. Frequency and length of post
The more often you post articles the more traffic you're likely to get and we are not talking of just any post-quality well researched articles. If you feel you cannot keep up with the pace by yourself, you can engage writers on sites like freelancer, Guru or upwork to make up.
Longer content not less than a thousand words usually get a better ranking in search engines than shorter ones. They are also often shared more and linked to so increase your number of post and give them extra length.
11. Make use of content curation sites.
If you are sure of the quality of your articles, you can submit them to these sites that are constantly looking for good content to give their readership and expect some good traffic.
Sites that you can submit to include -
-> Blog Engage
-> Tribber
-> BizSugar
12. Ease of Sharing
The presence of social media sharing buttons of your page or better still on your posts is a most. It makes it easy for readers to quickly share and spread your posts. Facebook, LinkedIn. Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and others are all useful.
13. Guest Post
Featuring on other blogs that point to your target audience will help to gain readership and awareness about your brand, so to speak. You are able to take advantage of the goodwill of others and get traffic back to your blog. Make sure you provide a link back to your blog and ensure your posts are stellar. You get backlinks and the more you get, the more you're likely to rank higher in Search engine results. The guest site will also benefit from this because they will be getting fresh and unique content from a different point of view. New life you might say. It's a win- win situation.
14. Links
Linking to another site's page from your posts, referred to as outbound links helps Google to rank you higher. What's more the site you link to may be also link back to you. Outbound links provide your readers with extra resources and material to help them in their search for answers and information.
You can also link from one post to another post within your blog, referred to as internal links. Backlinks has already been mentioned above.
My Take
The issue of traffic- getting it, Keeping it and growing it has become a focal point on which every aspiring, serious and result oriented blogger cannot afford not to take seriously. After all, the main purpose for blogging or any other online activity at that, is centered around the Numbers.
What's the use of writing a good post that people don't get to see or read. It is only when our audience grows, we get positive feedback mentions and shares that we will be encouraged to produce better post, and don't forget the revenue that might accrue from all the traffic.
