We’ve all heard of all the great things that could help in increasing traffic and improving website traffic. But little has been said about how certain practices kill our blogs. So the next time your checking those numbers and come up short, here are a few things that you should consider when your stats are sliding down.
SEO Writing
Don’t get me wrong, SEO is an integral part of any successful blog. But when you start writing for search engines and spend less time writing better content then it’s bound to drag your readership down. SEO should be built around your content and not the other way around. People read blogs and SEO makes it easier for people to find your content. Striking a balance between SEO and quality content is your best bet that you’re addressing both concerns.
Quality is king has become a common cliché but we should never sacrifice our SEO strategies either. One technique that I find very effective is to write the entire article first and focus on creating a unique and informative piece. After I have written the complete article I then focus on incorporating the keywords into my content.
Wrong Keywords
Keywords are the building blocks of SEO. These play an important role in determining how pages are created, anchor texts, domain URL and of course your content just to mention a few. Keyword research should be done at the start of your SEO strategy and you have to get this right the first time, every time.
Sitemaps
Sitemaps helps search engines index our websites faster. Most of us assume that every nook and cranny of our blog is crawled by search engines. Submitting a sitemap leaves no room for second guessing. It makes sure that all your latest contests are available for search engines. This is just one of the little things that can give us that edge over our competitors. Sometimes it’s not the things that we do but what we fail to do that gets us into trouble.
Going Black Hat
Blat Hat SEO strategies provides us with instant results but when search engines catch us dipping into that cookie jar there might be dire consequences. Your content might be labeled as spam or worst get blocked by search engines. Black Hat SEO techniques to avoid include buying backlinks, duplicate content and hidden scripts.
Not Checking the Numbers
Website monitoring tools were created for a purpose and that’s to help us understand the health of our blogs. If we want to be successful bloggers, then spending a few minutes every day to learn the tricks of our trade could go a long way in helping us reach our target numbers. Numbers to look out for includes traffic and bounce rates.
Google analytics in particular is an excellent tool for monitoring your website’s health. Bounce rates for example give us a glimpse of how people think about the content. Good bounce rates mean that people are surfing through the blog.
Not Optimizing Posts
If there is any strategy that a blogger should master then it would be to optimize his posts for SEO. Blogging means constantly writing fresh content. And if you manage to place the right amount of keywords then you will surely give your blog in a better position at searches.
Areas that should be optimized are the title, content headings, tags, descriptions and of course the content. A great part of optimization means researching appropriate keywords and using them accordingly. Just imagine if you were able to produce an optimized post each day. This does not only provide your readers with a steady source of fresh content but a rich source of keywords that help you get ranked higher.
Ignoring the Social Side
Getting people to visit your blog is one thing but converting them into loyal followers is another thing altogether. Blogs are personal in nature. It has its own personality and if you don’t care of the social side of your blog then you’re bound to lose all the traffic you have gathered through the years. If you feel that this is a very tedious tasks, there is always the possibility of getting a social media intern to help you.
Interacting with your readers and listening to feedback makes this communication easier. It shows that there is a person behind the blog that they could relate to. It also helps in brand building and helps them associate the blog with you. This is particularly true if you are also running your online business. Ignoring the recent launch of Google pages for business for example, is something you should avoid not using.
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I know quite a few blogs that write for search engines more so than for readers. I don’t mind a few links to other posts in an article or advertisements, but some of them go a little overboard. When every post or every other post is about promoting some product or program I don’t usually stick around long. Nothing wrong with a little push and promotion, but too much can be annoying or bad too. A better balance would be nice at some sites. Guess it depends on what your goals might be.
Michael,
It seems to me that a lot of success boils down to honesty.
Being honest and avoiding black hat.
Being honest about your numbers and what you can do to amke them better
being honest on social media and really connecting
Being honest about whether your posts are optimized and SEO’d properly.
When it comes to being a success with traffic one thing a blogger can never afford is being dishonest, either with others or with himself(or herself).
You need to be able to look critically and make adjustments constantly. Chances are most blogs are not perfect. (I know mine isn’t) but when you are honest you will make adjustments that hopefully make it BETTER.
sam
Nice post,
Any blogger want to see much comment on their blog post. He/she thinks he/she did all thing right with his blog post but when not much comments coming on that then he/she should understand he/she did something wrong with his blog post.
From my point of view always one thing should be keep in mind we should do work with Honestly and originality.
Herbert
Agree with Sam, if a blogger misses that thing, blogging for that person would be a mess :/
Online Opportunities
Hi Michael,
Nice post, I think that the most usual mistake that most bloggers make is that they write for search engines and they forget that people are searching for informative articles and want to get answers to their questions.
As a result they may rank well for a short time but most visitors don’t stay for more than a few seconds, this is useless traffic that will only increase their bounce rate and in the long run they will get lower ranking on search engines…
Kostas | Opportunities Planet
Thanks for the reminder Michael. SEO Writing can really make or break your blogging success nowadays.
Darren
Google Analytics doesn’t seem that great to me at times. I wish it told me more information. Nice post, BTW!
William Moffitt
First off your blog title is awesome! Great read too.
SEO is important and I find writing around keywords better than writing for keywords. It gives better content and allows you to focus on the article itself. When it comes down to writing to promote a product, it should be relevent to your niche and your content should contain honest, helpful information (your reader should want to buy the product because it will truly benifit them). But too many product promotions will make your blog one big promotion and drive traffic away (we all hate spammers)
Extreme John
One of the most important things that I have learned in my blogging years is creating unique and quality content. A unique content is not necessarily and original content. For me, it’s just something that is written from the bottom of our hearts which reflects our character as a person and our passion as a blogger. And I believe that this attitude has helped me build a successful blog.
Satrap
Great points Michael. I agree with all and I believe going black hat is the lowest of the low. Not only it kills your blog, it will kill your brand and the trust people have in you.
Ricardus
This is definitely true. However there are many people still practicing this for the sake of monetary terms
Rob Benwell
Hi Michael,
You’re absolutely right about these.Blogging is about reaching out to people, communicating, having feedback and depending on others to share our content. So, these mistakes aren’t beneficial at all, either to the blog author or to the reader.I am still new at this, and so I’m learning more and more everyday. Thank you for sharing what you know. 😀
Allan Nkata
The seven deadly sins that every blogger should avoid indeed! I definitely agree with the fact that bloggers should write for their readers and not for the search engines. After all, it is the quality of information which will get you noticed and followed! Don’t just write articles which are full of keywords but hardly make sense to the reader. Thanks for sharing the tips Michael!
How to start blog
Well written post, when you are to look for way to drive traffic to a blog than you must also aware of ways not to adopt to get all those hard work being wasted. Nowadays Social media has become more personalized, more and more number of them are now started to engage with either their friends or business at such social networks. So I will ask such marketer to give second preference to social media after writing a good optimized content for search engines.
heatherbarranco.com
I just wanted to add to the idea about having the wrong keywords. Keyword research is important at the beginning of your SEO strategy, but should also be done every now and then because the best keywords that you should be targeting might change over time. Search volumes for terms will change as searchers find new ways to look for things online.