Last week, I published the first part of this post, providing effective guidelines for increasing and improving traffic to your blog or website. Today we shall look at streamlined techniques to further analyze and improve your traffic and viewership.

EFFECTIVE DESIGN

The way your blog or website is designed affects your traffic and your viewership immensely. Readers want clean, crisp, and easy websites and blogs. Adding irrelevant, outdated, or excessive elements can make it overwhelming and distract from your purpose.

If your blog is about written ideas, then the focus should solely rest on texts with some images thrown in. If you have a visual product or service, then keep it minimal with imagery and very little to no text.

You don’t need to be an expert or a designer to have a website that attracts traffic. WordPress has several free options for bloggers and entrepreneurs to select from. This blog post about WordPress themes assists you in selecting and designing a theme that supports your niche and genre.

Your design should ultimately provide a complete and immersive user experience. Also, is your content optimized for mobile? Many bloggers and entrepreneurs make the mistake of creating content or images that look good only on laptops. It is absolutely vital that your content is optimized for all devices. A poorly designed layout or slow loading times can annoy consumers and readers and cause them to stop visiting your site or blog.

Utilize tools like PageSpeed Insights by Google to understand how to improve load times.

EMPLOY SOCIAL MEDIA

I don’t need to reiterate the power of social media but just to give you an idea, every time I share a link on Twitter or Instagram, I get 2x the viewers I would generally get without social media. That is a rough estimate. All blogs and websites have plugins or buttons available for you to display.

You can use visual plugins like Better Click To Tweet which makes it really easy and interesting to share your content with just a click. The idea is to involve the audience, engage them, and allow them to be an active performer in discussing and debating ideas.

DIRECT MARKETING

Bloggers tend to ignore organic sources and dismiss the data they have in hand for other flashier forms of marketing. Direct marketing is the best tool you can utilize for targeting content to specific readers and consumers. Give your audience a compelling reason to sign up for your list and make it really easy for them to sign up. Offer exclusive content, premium ideas, and discounts as a way of attracting traffic and improving the quality of readership.

Your emails or newsletters should have a SINGLE goal. Don’t dilute them with multiple ideas or messages. If you want them to buy your Christmas offer, then let that be the singular and repetitive message. Set an autoresponder to continue contacting your subscribers but for the important messages, craft an interesting proposal that ensures quality traffic and engaged viewers.

GUEST BLOGGING

A long-term strategy and one that requires investment on your behalf is guest blogging. It builds your online presence, cross connects you to another blogger and supports your authority. You can start off with small blogs, work your way up, and eventually find relatable bloggers and materials which you can use to support your blog and website.

Connect to other bloggers via social media platforms, comment on their materials or blog posts, and build relationships. Once trust has been established, offer to write a guest post or invite them to blog for you. The idea is for the blog and the pitch to be mutually beneficial. Provide helpful, informative guidance to other bloggers and offer support to their publications which indicates a willingness to engage and build a community. You will have to network and constantly socialize to enhance outreach and promote your blog/website.

GETTING TO WORK

Now that I have rounded up an exhaustive list of strategies and ideas to increase traffic, the next step is getting to work. It is extremely important that you try some or all of these tactics in combination and figure what works for you and your website. It will also depend on what your goals are. These strategies and techniques are an integral part of a long-term commitment and don’t expect magical results or an increase immediately. Just remember that effort and persistence pays off.