There are two aspects to blog writing. One is concerned with the writing part, and the other is about getting people to visit your WordPress site. One has to have patience and put in a lot of hard work to get traffic to your WordPress site. When you set up a WordPress site you can’t expect the view count to sky rocket immediately, the results will not come your way right from the onset.
WordPress is a wonderful way to start a new venture. It offers you to build a blog that offers you tons of features to build up a good and strong viewer base. There are many ways to get traffic to your website, but what matters is that you get a quality audience to your website. You need to attract views of your target audience.
Here we discuss a few ways to get more traffic to your WordPress sites:
REGULARITY
One of the most important aspects that help get traffic to your blog is regularity. If viewers turn up and find nothing new to read, the chances of them returning to the page are lowered. This does not mean you have to update the blog every hour. The best practice is to update the blog on a daily basis. If it’s still too much, you can update the blog weekly.
Fresh and regular content helps in building the audience base. The progress may be slow, but the visitors will be assured that fresh content will be coming their way.
CONTENT QUALITY
Now that we have spoken about content regularity, we talk about the importance of quality in your content. Content has a huge role to play in determining whether your blog will be successful or not. If you’re hiring someone to write for you, make sure the person is a decent writer.
Also, go through the content and make sure that it is readable and communicates the thought well enough. It really is no use in promoting your blog or updating it regularly if visitors don’t even want to visit it.
CONTENT HEADING
Quite simply, heading is the first thing from your blog that people will read. Needless to say, the title plays a crucial role in determining whether the viewer will continue reading ahead or not. For this purpose, make sure that the title is short, catchy, and appealing. If the title will catch the reader’s attention, they will most probably go on to read the whole thing.
Especially when sharing through social networking sites, where the readers will only come across the title and not the body, a catchy title will incline people towards opening the blog.
PUBLICIZE and SHARING must be ON
Publicize is a feature that WordPress offers you. What this does is, it automatically shares all your blog posts through social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook etc.
The moment you publish your blog, it notifies all. Thanks to this feature, you’ll be able to reach out to all the people you’re connected through various social networking sites. This will serve as an update that you’ve published a blog that they might wish to go through. Therefore, it is ideal to link your accounts with many people connected to you.
Publicize helps you share your content yourself, but what about the times when your visitors wish to share your content. This is where WordPress’ Share feature comes into play. When you turn on this feature, you’re basically allowing your viewers to share your content through various social networks. They will share it only if they find it intriguing enough. This can serve as a massive promotional tool and can help increase traffic to your website.
FORUM POSTING
This is a very effective technique, though it is not put to use by many bloggers. This technique can be tiring and requires the bloggers to put in a lot of hard work to make your posts grow popular. A host of people becomes a part of forums so that they can learn from people who share the same interests as themselves.
Here’s how this works, you find a forum pertaining to your field and become an active member. Comment and post on the forum, and share links to your website. Gradually, people who would be curious enough will follow the link and if they like the content, they will become regular viewers.
SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
Social Bookmarking websites are services that allow users to store and share internet bookmarks. They are rather fascinating and can help you generate traffic for your website. When you post a blog, you are to send it to one of these sites. The people from the bookmarking site will subscribe to you if they like your link.
One such website is Digg where the more people like your link, higher are your chances of making it to the front page and that immediately generates tons of traffic for your website.
PRESS RELEASES
A well written press release can help generate traffic. If it is written in such a way that it interests people and stands out, then surely it will attract people to visit your WordPress site. There are quite a few websites that will let you post a press release. And the capacity of a website to generate traffic depends on it’s popularity.
STAY AFOOT
Make sure that your posts stay afoot with the worldly happenings. If something of immense proportions is to happen, you would want to be posting about it. Let’s say that there is a big football match, or there are some radical changes in the government policies.
Writing about trending topics will lead a host of people to your website. Keep your posts interesting and full of trending topics.
ADD IMAGES
Just like many people like books that contain illustrations, many people prefer blogs that have images and photos. Adding a few pictures keeps your viewers interested.
ADD POLLS
Polls are a terrific way to make your viewers feel engaged with the website. It makes them feel more connected with you. What this does is that it increases the chances of viewers returning to check the results.
ENTERTAIN REQUESTS
While we are on the subject of engaging the viewers, another great way of doing so is by taking up post requests. It helps in making viewers feel connected to the website and makes sure we don’t lose them. You can openly tell the viewers to give you suggestions or ask if they have any particular topics that they want you to take up.
Once you have that pool of requests you can pick any one of them and make sure that you let them know that you have done so.
BLOG COMMENTS and RESPONSES
Everyone appreciates having comments about their blogs, and this in turn provides as a means of generating traffic. When commenting on others blogs, make sure that your comments are genuine and relevant. This will attract others to your blog to see what you have content is available on your blog. If someone finds your comment interesting and wants to check out your blog, they will need to have a link that can redirect them to it. So, always make sure that you clearly mention your name and your blog link in your comments.
This was with respect to commenting on others blogs, now we talk about responding to comments you receive on your blog. Commenters like to receive a response. It is exciting to hear something from the blogger about their comment. If not anything much, just appreciate the fact that they took out the time to read the blog and hope that they’ll come back again.
Some personal touches will make the commenter feel special. Responding to comments goes a long way in building good relations with your viewers.
PERSONALIZATION
WordPress offers you to personalize your website. Being artistic will help in catching viewer’s attention. There are tons of themes to choose from, they are both free and paid. A blog that looks nice manages to get more viewers.
HOST CONTESTS
Everybody loves to have a shot at winning something. That is the reason why, hosting contests help get a sudden influx of visitors.
But here’s the catch, once you have new visitors, you must make sure that you get the attention of the visitors to your content. You don’t want the new visitors to leave once the contest has ended.
GUEST POSTING
Another way to get traffic to your website if Guest Posting. Several blogs tend to allow guest posting, now they may be smaller blogs or big blogs.
Here’s how this works. First, you are to find a blog that is in the same field as yours. Now, if the blog you selected is a small blog, then it will approve your post fairly quickly. But the downside is, it won’t generate as much traffic as you’d like. In that case, you can come up with several blog posts a day and distribute them to many such small blog posts.
On the other hand, when you go for the big blogs, you have to put in a lot less effort, and the traffic generation is quite a lot. But here the obstacle you’ll come across is that there are already quite a few guest posters, therefore your posts will take quite some time to go live, and also it may get rejected in the process. When going for a big blog, you have to make sure your content is of very high quality.
BLOG LINKING
WordPress blogs and other blogs let you link up with other blogs. A sidebar is provided for links. This does not require a lot effort from your end and the whole thing is quite simple in itself. What you should do is try and aim to link your blog with at least one other blog on a daily basis. Over time you will notice that traffic will be generated through these links. The more blogs you’re linked to, the more traffic you’ll manage to generate.
EMAIL SUBSCRIPTION
WordPress allows you to add the subscription widget on your blog. What this does is, whenever you post something new it notifies the viewer through emails. Often people underestimate how effective email subscribers can be in generating traffic to your website.
YOUTUBE
In the modern day, YouTube is right up there among all the popular sites. People go as far as to say that people watch more YouTube as compared to television. If you’re a blogger then this can serve as the perfect means for you to promote your blog.
Though, this will require a bit of an edge of creativity from your side, but by mentioning your blog in the videos you can direct your YouTube viewers to your blog.
SEO
SEO refers to search engine optimization. When using WordPress, all you have to do is install the SEO plugin and the optimization will be done itself. The description, the title as well as the content will be optimized for you.
It makes your blog rank higher in search results by looking for target keywords.The SEOs significance is highlighted when users will search for the keyword and your blog will be shown in the result.
PAY for TRAFFIC
All the steps we have discussed are time consuming and need one to put in the efforts. But if you want a head start and are ready to shed some money, then you can also go ahead and pay for traffic. There are many means to do so.
Using StumbleUpon you can generate traffic at a rate as low as $0.05 per visitor. If you’re ready to pay for exposure, then Google Adwords serves as another fantastic means to get your blog in the viewer’s eyes.
PATIENCE
Blogs have been around forever and a popular blog serves as a means of earning decent amount of money. Do not expect that you’ll have tons of viewers right off the start. Attaining a popular blog is an uphill task. You will be faced with challenges and disappointments.
You have to be patient, keep the blog interesting and keep the visitors engaged and eventually popularity will catch up.
CONCLUSION
Having a popular blog is a process. It takes time and effort and energy from your end. These were just a few steps that you might undertake to bring viewers to your blog. These steps will help you generate a decent amount of traffic to your website.
The progress will be slow but if you hang in there long enough, you will surely see your blog rise. At the end of the day, it is not just about popularity, but about the love you have for your blog.
Author: Maggie Sawyer
Courtesy: info.webtoolhub.com
