9 Best Ways To Get Traction For Your Blog
Most of us, who have been a part of the blogosphere, have a few tricks up our sleeve that have always worked when it comes to making our blog popular. It is commonly said that gaining traction often depends on quality work and the time you give to your blog. But these are things that we all know. Hard work and time given to anything will result in success. So, what are the special tricks that work when it comes to gaining traction for your blog? Explore these 9 best ways to get traction for your blog to ensure your blog content gets the traffic and exposure it deserves.
1. The Title of Your Blog and Blog posts
If you were to dissect a good blog, and look closely from start to finish, then the first thing you will notice in every popular blog is the creative set of words that form the title. There is a punch in most of the blog titles that we end up reading. Think of these really popular blog-sites: ‘TechCrunch’ and ‘LifeHacker’; both have magnetic titles ~ titles that promise great content. ‘Girl with A One Track Mind’ or ‘Last Message Received’ are two other popular blogs that have long titles but are catchy enough for people to go ahead and explore them. This is exactly how you set up a level of excitement in your readers when they check your blog title.
Once you have an exciting blog title, the next thing you must focus on is good headings for your blog posts. ‘ManRepeller’ is a popular blog on fashion and life, and its popularity lies in innovative blog post headings. ‘Teeth marks in the Cheese, Or: Why I Love Being Single’ is one blog post that gained a lot of popularity on this blog-site. The ingenious title somehow aroused the curiosity of the reader to check the post. This is how you achieve traction. A punchy blog title and creative blog post headings can go a long way in building traction.
2. Concentrate On Giving Your Readers Exceptional Content
Every time we hear about great content, we want to check the blog and see how it measures up. The quality of your blog can make or break your popularity. Readers want to read something deep, something meaningful that they can relate to. A lot of blogs make common occurrences simply outstanding while many crush brilliant ideas because of the writing.
Make your content informative. Readers like to read a post from which they can gain knowledge or insight.
3. Add Visual Appeal To Your Blog
Your audience will always love to see some great images that complement your blog post’s content. Statistics tell us that blogs with images end up getting 94% more views than those without one. Optimising your blog images and adding them strategically to ensure that your readers get a good dose of your post and can enjoy all the images as well, will ensure that your blog gets popular quickly. Blogger and professional photographer, Georginna Lane, has a wonderful blog full of vivid images.
There are several other blogs, especially food blogs, like ‘Serious Eats’ that use stunning images with great content to propel their blog’s popularity.
4. Create A Keyword List That You Can Rely On
Bloggers have a list of keywords that improve their rankings on search engines ~ this way more people will see your content if you target the right keywords. You must make sure that you create your list of keywords and remember to add these keywords to your post to improve its visibility. If you do not already have a list of keywords then you must ensure that you spend some time creating a list before you write your next post.
5. Write Frequently
The frequency of your blog posts also plays a role in its popularity. Blogs like ‘Mashable’ have one post in almost every hour. While you may not be able to reach this target early, making sure that you post at least three times a week will help you improve your blog’s popularity.
Since search engines also prefer blogs that post frequently, ensure that you post frequently and that the content you post is of great quality.
6. Tag Your Posts And Make Them Relevant
Tagging your posts will help your readers and search engines find the post easily. You will also be able to target the right people with tags. This is why it is so important that your tags are relevant. Make sure you tag carefully so that your readers reach your blog to find content that they were really looking for. Wrong tags will only lead to lower traction.
7. Socialise Online To Promote Your Blog
There are a lot of social media platforms that you can leverage when it comes to sharing your blog posts and increasing the visibility and popularity of your blog. Blogger, Anne Sage, decided to write a book called Sage Living, which made her blog even more popular as people began to share her book online and talk about her anecdotes in it.
Make your blog more visible by commenting on everyone else’s blogs, participating in Facebook questions that target your audience, answering questions on Quora, etc. You will find that people will be able to trace you through these social conversations.
8. Make It Easy For Your Audience To Share Your Posts
Your audience will share your post if they find the sharing buttons easily located. Give them the ability to share your blog on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or any of the social media platforms that include your target audience. You will find sharing services and tools online that can help your audience share your content, and you will even be able to track the posts that have been shared. Find out which ones are great for you. Martha Stewart’s personal blog ‘The Martha Blog’, relies on ShareThis to share her posts through more than 80 different sharing channels.
Don’t limit your blog posts to just the people who find them. Allow them to share it with others and you will be able to build a larger audience and gain traction more quickly.
9. Be A Part Of Various Blog Communities
Take out time to list your blog on various blog communities. You will be able to gain more followers since your content will be available in more places for people to view and you will also be able to benefit from the strong SEO of these blog communities. BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog, Blogged, and NetworkedBlogs are some communities that you wouldn’t want to miss. You will find some very popular bloggers in these communities too.
To conclude: Blogging is easy but making your blog visible in a vast ocean of blogs can be a challenging task. Use these 9 best ways to get traction for your blog and improve the visibility of your posts. It will take time, but remember to maintain consistency in your efforts to gain traction for your blog.
Do you have any other helpful tips and tricks that would help improve traction for one’s blog? I’d love to hear them in the comments below.