Here we go...
When you started
blogging, you probably plunked your butt down in a chair, rifled out some
thoughts on your trusty keyboard, and punched “Publish,” right?
After all, that’s what blogging is
about. It’s the place where you write, and the world gathers to listen.
It’s supposed to be simple. It’s
supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be fun. But is it?
For most of us, it’s weeks or even
months later that we discover the deception:
Anyone
can start a blog, but the real test is getting readers
As anyone who’s been blogging for
more than a few months knows, getting readers is complicated. Getting readers
is hard. And for the first few months at least, getting readers is certainly not
fun.
Most people get fed up and quit.
Others, like you, scour the web for answers.
Either way, it’s frustrating,
because you can’t figure out what to do first.
So, for our very first post here at
Boost Blog Traffic, that’s what I decided to talk about. Let’s start with some
of the most common mistakes.
#1: Wasting time and money on SEO
Makes sense, right?
If no one can find your blog, you
need to focus on increasing your search engine rankings. After all, that’s
where people go to look for information.
So, you buy some tools to tell you which
keywords you need to target. You stuff those keywords into your headlines. You
improve the keyword density of your posts. If you’re really sophisticated, you
might even change your content architecture to give greater weight to certain
pages.
And then you sit back, waiting for Google to send you the traffic.
Only nothing happens. Sure, maybe
you rank for a few uncompetitive terms, but for the terms that really matter,
you’re still stuck on page 14 where no one can find you.
Why?
Because you misunderstand how SEO
works.
Nobody knows for sure how the Google
algorithm decides your rankings, but any bona fide SEO expert will tell you
keywords are only a tiny part of it. The biggest, most important factor is the
number of links from trusted sources.
You can optimize your site
perfectly, but if you’re not getting any links from the authorities
in your niche, nothing you can do will raise your ranking. Yes, you
can follow black hat strategies to cheat the system, but for the most part,
those strategies fail to work after a few months, causing your traffic to
vanish, and in many cases, they can even get you banned from Google forever.
#2:
Thinking valuable content is enough
The idea is simple:
Just focus on delivering value.
Write articles with valuable information, genuinely try to help people, and be
patient. Sooner or later, everyone will discover how awesome you are.
In other words, “Build it and they
will come,” the phrase immortalized by the 1989 film Field of Dreams. It
sounds great, but there’s only one problem:
It doesn’t work.
Yes, you should write greate content. Yes, you should try to help people. But if that’s all you do, you’ll
have the greatest site no one has ever heard of.
The web is so active these days that
valuable information goes unnoticed all the time. It’s like sitting in a
stadium full of people and whispering the secret of life. You could be the
first person on planet Earth to figure it out, but if no one can hear you, it
doesn’t matter.
You also have to ask yourself:
If people could hear you, would they
really care?
As any parent with a teenager knows,
sometimes nobody cares how wise you are. What’s valuable to you looks like
foolishness to them, and so really you’re just wasting your breath.
The bottom line:
Delivering value sounds nice, but
it’s overly simplistic. Don’t get caught in the trap.
#3:
Telling stories about your life
You would think this one would work
too.
People love stories. Just
look at how popular movies and books and television are. The stories they tell
captivate millions.
Surely, it should work on your blog
too. No, you don’t have a movie or book or television show about your life, but
you can start a blog and start talking about what’s happened to you and what
you’ve learned.
Well, you can, but that
doesn’t mean anyone will read it.
The harsh truth is that most of us
overestimate how interesting our lives are. Yes, you have a story, but it
doesn’t mean it’s a good story.
A good rule of thumb?
If it involves near-death
experiences, explosions, naked people, or making millions of dollars, it’s got
a shot at being a good story. If it doesn’t, probably not.
Also, storytelling is a skill, and
it takes years to master.
Even if you do have a good
story, chances are you will suck at telling it. Yes, you should work at getting
better at storytelling, but don’t count on it lifting your blog out of
obscurity. At least, not at first.
#4:
Wasting time redesigning your blog
“So… how is my design?”
Here’s what’s probably going through
your mind:
Someone stumbles across your blog.
They take one look at your blog design, decide you’re a fool with no idea what
you’re talking about, and decide to leave.
So, until you improve your design,
publishing new content is a waste of time. You need to find a great designer to
create a custom WordPress theme for you, and then you can get back to business.
Is that about right?
For the most part, readers are
oblivious to your design. If your content is impossible to read, then sure,
that’s bad, but as long as they can find the navigation, and your content is
legible, they’ll stick around and give you a chance.
Great design is really more
important when it comes to converting visitors to subscribers, but if you’re
waiting until you can get a custom WordPress theme to launch your blog, then
you’re just procrastinating.
#5:
Writing every day
This strategy irritates more than
all the rest combined. What’s worse, it’s evangelized by some of the biggest
bloggers on the web who are unintentionally leading beginners astray.
In a popular blogger’s mind, it
works like this:
They get more traffic by writing
more often, so therefore you should get more traffic by writing more often.
It’s the whole philosophy of modeling the masters.
The problem is, popular bloggers and
beginning bloggers are in fundamentally different situations. Let’s do some
simple math, and I’ll show you what I mean:
A popular blogger might have 50,000
subscribers. Out of those 50,000 subscribers, let’s say 10,000 read any given
post. If you’re writing once per week, you get 10,000 visitors per week, not
counting social sharing. If you write twice per week, you get 20,000 visitors
per week.
It’s a big increase, and so for
popular bloggers, writing more often makes sense. Beginning
bloggers have totally different numbers though.
Let’s say you have 100 subscribers.
Out of those 100 subscribers, 20 read any given post. If you’re writing once
per week, you get 20 visitors, not counting social sharing. If you write twice
per week, you get 40 visitors.
Yes, you’re doubling the traffic,
but it’s only 20 freaking visitors! It’s nothing. At that rate, you’ll be like
840 years old before your blog is popular.
If you want your blog to grow fast,
you need to expand your readership exponentially, and posting more often isn’t
going to do it for you. The math doesn’t work.
So,
what may work?
Well, It’s not jumping headfirst
into your blog and hoping things turn out all right. It’s not exhausting
yourself by pumping out pages after pages of content no one reads. It’s not
wearing a necklace made from chicken bones, smearing yourself with Chinese
herbs, and jumping up and down on one leg underneath a full moon.
In fact, it’s not about doing anything
at all.
It’s about listening, The primary reason blogs
fail isn’t because their content is bad or their keywords are poorly optimized
or popular bloggers are ignoring them. It’s because they are publishing what
they want to say and not thinking for a moment about what anyone wants to read.
If you’re writing about a topic lots
of people want to know more about, you can do almost everything wrong, and your
blog will grow anyway. The opposite is also true. If you’re the only person in
the world who cares about your topic, then you can do everything right, and
your blog will stagnate and die.
If you don’t have any readers yet,
go outside your blog. Read the comments on popular blogs in your niche. Listen
to what people are saying on Twitter..
And then look for patterns. Almost
always, you’ll find one or two questions everyone is asking over and over
again, and it never seems to stop.
That’s what you need to be writing
about. You don’t have to guess. If you listen, your audience will tell you
every single time.
If you’re smart, you’ll never stop
listening.
