“Increase Blog Traffic right now- Tips from experts”
I was recently fortunate enough to be invited to join a group of talented Singapore bloggers on a trip to Yojyakarta, Indonesia, flight and accommodations sponsored by AirAsia. In our group we had food, travel, lifestyle, family and a mega Singapore review site owner.
Even though the trip was pretty rush, there were weird noises on the roof at midnight, mysterious stains appearing in the lavatory and we had to wake up at 5am for the departure flight, I’ve learnt a lot from these marvellous bloggers by being utterly shameless in asking them “how?”.
This group was hand-picked purely because of their amazing traffic statistics in Singapore, with some blogs getting more than 100,000 unique views a month. So what makes these blogs so successful? I’m here to share the goodies.
1. Use Good Photos
Humans are extremely visual creatures, and every body loves pictures to words. It’s no exaggeration that some of the highest traffic lifestyle blogs achieved that status purely with streams of breathtaking pictures scatterd throughout. Every professional blogger was armed with some sort of DSLR and snapped away furiously, while here I was fiddling with my iPhone 5. My saving grace however, is that I’m pretty decent with post-editing photos. And yes, all the images here were taken with my glorious iPhone 5 iOS 6.
2. Have Excellent Content
The other critical factor to success, is to write good content. Good stories, good sales copy, it’s all about your writing ability that drives readership and thus traffic. You don’t necessarily have to possess bombastic vocabulary, in fact, having simple, clear language will get you more traffic when people actual comprehend what they’re reading.
Also, you need a certain quantity of content to appeal to a larger audience and to keep existing readers interested. Content alone however is useless if you don’t promote your content.
3. Write what people want
Another content strategy used by one of the bloggers, is to write exactly what people want. If people want to read about Obama, you write about Obama. If people want to read about polka dot pink elephants, you better go find one and write a damn good report on it.
Asking your readers what they are interested in, or doing some basic google keyword searches will reveal what you need to write about
4. Be a Topic Expert
The other seemingly paradoxical tip, is to be a subject expert. Be the resident coffee know-it-all if you fancy. After writing hundreds of posts on java beans, the public will start to recognize you as the ‘coffee king’.
Being a topic expert however, still depends on knowing how many people are actually interested and searching your specific topic (which is back to write what people want). No point writing about ‘1000 ways to peel a potato’ if no one else has the same passion for spuds.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
More users will read your blog if they can actually find it first. You need to appear in Google searches with some form of SEO. Part of the beauty of writing specific topics is that it also aids in search engine results by utilizing specific long search terms called ‘Long-tail keywords’.
People are more likely to hit your website with these longer term keyword searches than say the single word ‘coffee’ itself, which is a highly competitive keyword used by many others. Optimize your title tags, H1, meta-descriptions to contain these long keywords. Find out what keyword you should be using that has high search volume, yet low competition.
Google keyword planner can provide some insight on keyword ideas with some trial and error. SEO is a big topic and I’m not covering all of that today. For my site example, search “Superstar K restaurant food review” and I’m going to appear on the first page.
Also, there are backlink juices that you need to create, basically other reputable sites linking into your site will also increase your search rank.
6. Blog Structure
Be reader friendly and easy to share with friends. A simple, easy to navigate, yet rich in content blog is what you want to go for. There is a debate though, that the messier the website, the longer readers stay inside because they try to navigate their way out of this maze.
This is only true if there is a super attractive gem hidden somewhere in your site (like Kim Kadarshian’s nudes or something), and readers are absolutely compelled to find it. If not, this is a maze with exit doors at every turn and people can get out any time they want.
7. Jump into Multiple Platforms
The thing with social media is that the winds of fashion can flip any time. You never know what the next big thing is and it is prudent to get your feet wet in all the upcoming platforms, like pinterest.com or tumblr.com, both of which are not that big in Asia at the moment unlike Instagram.com for example.
Strategic bloggers have already registered their usernames in every platform and can jump in any time the wind stokes the fire.
8. Join a Community
It is much easier to establish a following if you joined an existing one first. If you are a food blogger, take part in food forum discussions like makansutra.com, an Asian food blogging site. For me, my articles are featured on Singapore Business Review or business2community.com.
Consider joining omy.sg also, as they can hook you up with some good sponsorship deals too provided you have decent traffic. Find a blog directory and get yourself listed as well, and you can get readers faster than organic growth.
9. Setup the Right Domain Name from the start
And finally, my –personal- tip: register a professional domain name right from the start. Before you even write a single word or put in any efforts in SEO, get proper domain hosting. A cheap shared hosting site like bluehost.com will set you back around $6.95 USD a month, a very affordable price even as a hobby. It’s really not as expensive as you think.
And when you are ready to take it professional, it’s going to save you a lot of trouble with maintaining your website traffic. Traffic typically halves, the minute you change your domain name, so lets save ourselves all the pain by doing it right from the start. Oh, and don’t use wordpress.com – It’s easy to use, but not versatile enough if you want to build a decent audience. Get a custom host + domain, and install wordpress.org instead.
Click below to register for a domain now cheap and easily!
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P.S Kudos to the Singapore bloggers below
edunloaded.com | mumseword.com | camemberu.com | thesmartlocal.com | darrensim.com | melicacy.com | thecambelles.com
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