Starting a blog has never been easier. Anyone can write about their thoughts and experiences and there will certainly be people who will listen. But how do you reach even more audiences with your blog? Well, that’s the hard part – you need to invest some resources into promoting it. Worry not, this article offers some valuable tips and tricks on how to improve your blog and gain more traffic. Just read on to find out!
1. Improve the design
The first thing people will notice when landing on your blog won’t be the content, as odd as that sounds. Instead, they will first look at the design itself. The sad truth is that no visitor will read your content – no matter how good it might be – if it’s not placed within a nice design. In fact, according to a study done by Top Design Firms in 2021, 50% of consumers believe a website’s design is crucial when it comes to a brand.
Keeping that mind, you will need to put more focus on your blog’s actual design. Don’t worry though, you won’t have to become a web designer overnight. Instead, you can use a website builder that comes with any template you might need for your blog.
2. Research and plan your content
Before you start putting out content, you will need a solid battle plan. You can start this by doing some keyword research, as it will help you find specific keywords that your audience uses the most. So if you are writing content based on pure intuition, it’s time to switch up your strategy. A minimal keyword research will help you find out what people are actually looking for and will give you more ideas for better content.
On top of that, you will also get to know your competition better and see why their content works. Keyword research isn’t something hard to do – there are many tools available online, including Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner or SEMRush.
3. Make a calendar and stick to it
After you’ve dealt with the design and the keyword research, you’ll probably end up having lots of ideas for blog posts. Your first thought might be to just write as much as you can and put out this content as often as you can. We recommend you don’t do that, as the sheer volume of content will discourage you. Instead, try creating an editorial calendar that you can stick to. This will help you better organize your content and get a better picture of your overall strategy.
After creating an editorial calendar, make sure you’ll be consistent with this schedule. Erratic posting times will confuse both your audience and yourself after a certain point. We usually recommend starting with two or three articles a week and gradually increase the volume as you become more used to it.
4. Create evergreen content
Moving onto the content itself, we’re sure you already know that the quality has to be top-notch. But most importantly, you should always aim to make your content evergreen. It will help it stay relevant forever in the search results, generating more organic traffic as time passes. Evergreen content is always relevant and helpful to the audience, no matter what year was written in.
For example, a blog article about this year’s top music charts will become irrelevant by next year. However, one written about the greatest songs of all time will stay relevant over the years, making it evergreen.
5. Optimize your blog
When building your blog, make sure the pages will load as fast as possible. The truth is, no one is going to wait for your blog to load and if your visitors aren’t seeing content fast enough, they will immediately close the page and move on to one that loads faster. If you need to check your website loading speed, you can use Google’s Page Speed Insights free tool. Besides measuring the loading times, it will also give you some pointers about what needs to be improved.
And since we mentioned optimization, don’t forget that most of the web traffic nowadays is generated by mobile devices. So make sure people have access to your content from their smaller screens as well.
6. Make it visually attractive
Adding pictures, videos or graphs will not only make your blog more readable but it will also give it a nice visual appeal. Yes, written content is always better with some nice aesthetic elements attached so don’t be afraid to make good use of those. Images will help grab your visitors’ attention, infographics will give them short bursts of information and videos will raise engagement, along with the time they spend on your page.
Keep in mind that you won’t be able to use any visual resource you find on the internet. Most of the images and videos available are protected by copyright and using this material without permission can have bad consequences. Don’t worry though, you don’t always have to use your own material – there are many online resources available for royalty-free images and videos. Just make sure they’re related to your content.
Final Thoughts
All of these tips and tricks have been proven to work. However, they won’t show results overnight so try to be consistent. Stick to what you learned and you will eventually see an increase in traffic and engagement on your blog. The most important thing – and we can’t stress this enough – is quality. We like to think that a good mix between quality and quantity will keep you on top.
And most importantly, never stop learning. As your blog grows, you will need to come up with new ways to keep it relevant and monetize it so make sure you’re always updated with the latest trends, technologies and marketing strategies. If you found this article useful, you can go ahead and give it a like and share – you never know who around you needs help growing their blog.