Blogging offers an effective way to get your content in front of your target market. A regularly updated blog can increase brand awareness, drive sales and let you or your business engage with customers. However, it doesn’t always help you increase website traffic.
A blog doesn’t do you any good without traffic. It’s like giving a speech to an empty auditorium. The content could rival “I Have a Dream,” but if no one is there to hear it, it doesn’t matter.
A blog isn’t like Field of Dreams. Just because you build it doesn’t mean they – meaning traffic – will come. It takes work to get consistent traffic to your blog. If yours is struggling, here are three potential reasons:
Your SEO Needs Some Work
If you’ve been content marketing for any amount of time, you probably have at least an idea what SEO is, but you might not be aware of the depth of its complexities.
These days, good SEO requires more than finding a few popular keywords and stuffing your content with them. You need to find keywords with high search volume and low competition. You have to find the Goldilocks spot for keyword density. If it’s too low or too high, you’ll be penalized. You also need to be sure your headlines, meta tags and images are optimized.
All that can be a lot to handle for a new or inexperienced blog owner. Fortunately, tools exist that can help you. Google’s keyword planner is a good place to start. It’s free and can help you find good keywords to target in your blog content.
You Aren’t Promoting Your Content on Social Networks
If you aren’t using social media to promote your blog, you’re missing a huge opportunity to increase website traffic. Most online users don’t sit around searching for blogs to read. Instead, they click on content their friends share on social networks.
In particular, you should be sharing your content on Facebook as much as possible. Seven out of 10 U.S. adults use the social network, and of that number, more than 75 percent check their Facebook feeds daily.
Make your blog content catchy enough and promote it on Facebook, and it could go viral. In short order, you could increase website traffic and have your blog become a household name.
Your Headlines Aren’t Drawing People In
There’s a reason you used to see so many blog headlines like this: “A Woman Gave a Dollar to a Homeless Man. You’ll Never Believe What Happened Next.”
Annoying as they may be, those headlines draw people in because readers want to know what happened next.
That said, Facebook and search engines now classify blatantly “click bait” headlines as such, and they penalize blogs that use them. But that doesn’t mean your headlines should be boring.
For instance, if your blog is about credit repair, the difference in a headline such as, “Advice on Raising Your Credit Score,” and one such as “6 Creative Steps You Can Take to Boost Your Credit Score Fast” is huge.
The second one isn’t click bait, and Facebook and search engines won’t penalize it. But for anyone who sees it and has bad credit, your blog headline jumps out at them and gives them a specific reason to click it.
It takes work and dedication to increase website traffic but with quality content and a good strategy in place, you can do it.
If you need help crafting interesting and engaging content, Crowd Content can help! Our talented writers are ready to help you increase website traffic by writing interesting and engaging content for your blog. Call us or fill out our contact form to learn more about our services.
