In February this year, my blog traffic was about 500 visits
per month. I wasn’t bothered by this because, although I wanted to
reach out and have a positive influence on people, I’d never put in a sustained
effort to make it happen.
Six months later, this site now
receives over 1700 visits per month, and growing. This is mostly the result of just 5 simple changes I made.
1. Settled on a theme
I started this blog on New Years Day, 2010. In the beginning, my
readers were mostly friends, or people I’d met online.
The visitors trickled in while I spent the next three years dithering over how to develop it into some kind of theme that
incorporated all the things I was passionate about – wellness, spirituality,
business, self-development...
Sometimes I posted, sometimes I didn’t – it was all very
vague and relaxed.
It wasn’t until late last year, in a moment of inspiration,
the words “Be Extraordinary” flashed before my eyes and I knew I’d finally found
a “theme” for my site.
I redesigned the entire site myself, including the header.
Being technically-challenged, it involved several months, and a lot of trial
and error, before I was happy with it. In February, it was finally ready and I
began my next phase of growing my blog…
2. Set a Posting
Schedule
I set myself a schedule of posting new articles twice a week
– Tues and Friday. I stuck with that for months until my personal situation
meant I had to take care of other priorities for a while.
When I re-launched (unofficially) this site back in
February (after I'd redesigned the "look" to my satisfaction), I only had a handful of articles fully written and ready to post. In
hindsight, I should have had a lot more so that I always had a selection of
back-up articles ready, if my circumstances became difficult or I was busy with
other things.
You live and learn, hey?!
3. Changed "Most
Popular Posts" to "Most Popular This Month"
On the sidebar of this blog, I had a section titled “All
Time Favorite Posts”. These were the ten most viewed articles on the site.
These rarely changed and I saw no problem with that, after all, I wanted new
visitors to be exposed to the articles which others found the most interesting.
Until I heard Tim Ferriss point out
that doing this offers nothing new and interesting to keep first-time visitors
coming back again.
I decided to try changing the “All-time Favorites” to “Most
Popular This Month”. When using the blogger platform, this is as simple as
going into the widget and simply checking a different box.
The sidebar now changes every few days as newer posts
surpass others, but some of the all-time popular ones still make the list, too.
4. Started doing my own
links to “Related Posts” rather than leaving it to a plug-in.
Long time readers may remember that I used to have a section
at the end of each post called “Related Posts”, complete with little thumbnail
images. This was done using a 3rd party plugin.
I was never really happy with the links which were used by
the plugin. To me, they seemed random and often didn’t have anything to do with
the article they were attached to! So I deleted the plugin and began choosing
the articles myself and adding the links manually.
Sure, it takes up an extra 5 minutes of my time, but it
makes the site more relevant to readers and people are likely to stay on the
site for longer.
5. Started a dedicated Facebook page and posted to it regularly
The Be Extraordinary facebook page doesn’t have a lot of
followers, but they’re a caring, supportive bunch! I try to update the page
at least once per day. If I’ve just posted a new article on the site, I’ll
share a link to that, or if not, I’ll post a thought or a quote.
I find that Facebook
allows a more personal connection with readers than, say, Twitter. I have
more than double the amount of Twitter followers, yet rarely do they click on links
back to my site, whereas Facebook is consistently one of the top referrers to
this blog.
I recently began using Pinterest but, since I'm still learning how
to use it properly, I can't say how effective it will prove to be.
The thing that keeps me motivated is not the fact that my blog traffic is growing. What really excites me is that I have an opportunity to touch more people's lives and inspire them to live to their full potential.
PS. If you are new to blogging and want to learn from a pro (he has several sites, which receive over 100,000 hits per month, each) I highly recommend Problogger's 31 Days To A Better Blog
PS. If you are new to blogging and want to learn from a pro (he has several sites, which receive over 100,000 hits per month, each) I highly recommend Problogger's 31 Days To A Better Blog
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1 comment:
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