For what it's worth - here are my top 10 tips for developing your blog and increasing visitor numbers. I get between 300 and 400 visitors each day, which, after a year is ok, not brilliant. If you've got any additional tips, then please add a comment.
1. Know where you're starting from and where you want to be. To do this you need a visitor monitor. I use Statcounter, which I first read about at LibertyLondonGirl more than a year ago. I also have Google Analytics monitoring my site. They both present information in slightly different ways, so worth uploading a couple of different gadgets for this mighty task.
2. Tweet. Sometimes I feel very brave and tweet a lot. Then I have days when I feel like a shrinking violet and can't tweet at all. However you're feeling, Twitter is a great resource, and is there to be used.
3. Submit your RSS feed to Google. No, I don't understand what it means either. Just Google the phrase and follow the steps. I've got London MakeUp Girl to thank for this tip. Take the time to do it (now).
4. Everybody says it. I'm just repeating it. Get involved in your community. Comment on other people's blogs. Consider writing responses to posts you've read elsewhere. Link to other bloggers. Update your 'blogroll' so it reflects which sites you're actually reading rather than what you think you should be reading.
5. Develop a weekly running order. This isn't something that I do myself (yet) but I think I might put one in place. For instance, I love the Lazy Friday Poll at Now Smell This. This is a tip that I saw in a Design Sponge video recently (which I can't find now otherwise I would link to it).
6. Don't over-estimate the success of other sites. Although it's only a rough guide, Alexa can give you a general idea of how any website is doing. I search my own blog on Alexa, which currently ranks at about 2.7 million (I know) then compare it with other sites. Sometimes Alexa can yield some surprising results.
7. Use a book like "Search Engine Optimization An Hour a Day" to understand how to make your blog appealing to bots. Even if you implement just one element of the advice, it's going to pay off.
8. Consider the title of your blog. If your name includes a highly searched word, then it's really going to help. For instance Peter (from Peter's Paris) mentioned to me that anybody searching for "Paris" in any context would eventually stumble across his blog. This, clearly, isn't the only reason for the success of this intriguing photoblog, but it has certainly helped. I've just checked on Alexa and the ranking for Peter's Paris is 643,250, which for a personal blog is phenomenal.
8. Consider the title of your blog. If your name includes a highly searched word, then it's really going to help. For instance Peter (from Peter's Paris) mentioned to me that anybody searching for "Paris" in any context would eventually stumble across his blog. This, clearly, isn't the only reason for the success of this intriguing photoblog, but it has certainly helped. I've just checked on Alexa and the ranking for Peter's Paris is 643,250, which for a personal blog is phenomenal.
9. Be controversial. Last month Brian at I Smell Therefore I Am wrote this entertaining and somewhat controversial post. There are 57 comments, and counting. Some people agreed (me), some people got upset, but whatever Brian's intentions, it sure got a lot of readers. And that, after all, is what it's all about.
10. Include photos. I love photos, and as a result of blogging I take a lot more of them, which has been really positive for me personally. I now have a lot more photos of my children.
I would love to hear what you've done to increase visitor numbers to your blog. Please do leave a comment.
13 Lovely comments:
This is very helpful, thank you! Some of these things I am doing, some not. I recently scanned a whole bunch of my personal photos I've taken to use on my blog. I don't know if people will respond to them, but I think it pretties the place up a bit. Maybe if I implement a few changes, I can be ranked at 2.7 million one day too. :)
Seriously, though, I've got a long way to go. I know what you mean about feeling brave enough to do social media one day, but not the next. Sometimes I feel I've oversaturated, etc. What helps more than ANYTHING is encouraging and/or kind words from others, or just words, even. That little boost in confidence is sometimes what pushes out the next blog.
Great post, MPL. Here's to even better numbers in 2011!
Nice post MPL and thanks for the tips. If I can add just one more - if one is including photos from the net, be careful of copyright infringement, as I found out myself recently! I usually try to credit the image and am careful of which pics I choose, but one can get lazy or even innocently use a picture that one thought was free but wasn't.
Regards
Michael
Very helpful post! I didn´t know about Alexa, so thank you! I am just starting out, so I cannot provide anything that you don´t already know. But I feel what really helps is getting involved in the community, bonding with like-minded people is something that always pays off, in real life just as much as on the internet.
Hey :) I don't know the minutiae of what that RSS thingy does either, but I basically understand it helps you come higher up in google searches.
Engage with other blogs - I quite often have a look to see if the people who I chat with (on Twitter, through my blog comments or email) have a blog themselves.
The other tip I'd add is make your blog work-IT-system-friendly. A lot of people browse blogs at work in their lunch hour etc, and if your blog has a lot of whizzy gadgets and moving ads, it takes up bandwidth and counts as lots of pageviews in someone's internet log history. Generally try to make sure your blog doesn't take an age to load too - some blogs have added so many moving galleries etc, if their broadband isn't super fast a lot of people might just give up.
Hi Carrie - thanks for commenting - I completely agree that "kind words from others, or just words" keeps you going. Any kind of feedback is good.
Hi Amelia - thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Hi Michael, that's a good point. I use nearly all my own photos simply becuase I find it easier.
Hi Olfactoria - you're right - it's all about meeting new people and having something in common.
Hi Grace - good point about thinking how your blog appears to make it work-friendly. I hadn't considered that. Thanks for commenting!
Hello! I thought you might find this gentleman's blog helpful to increase traffic to your site.
http://www.incomediary.com/category/blogging/
Also merely reading and commenting on related blogs (with a link to yours of course!) seems to work wonders! Good luck!
Great post! I've submitted my RSS feed now. Not sure quite how it works but I was interested to see I have lots of RSS subscribers that I didn't know about!
I thought Grace's point about being work friendly was very interesting. I think submitting your blog to Wikio rankings is another possible way to increase traffic. They recently introduced a beauty category. I've definitely seen traffic coming from there to my blog.
I'm going to take a look at Alexa too. I know that some people get terrible caught up in getting lots of followers through Google Friends Connect but I have noticed that lots of "followers" doesn't necessarily mean lots of traffic. I try to remind myself of this every now and again when I get stressed at the popularity of other blogs!!
Thanks for the tips,
Jane x
Thanks, i hope it's useful for me. Since blogging from 2 years ago my blog visitors are less than 20 visitor/day :P
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