So you started a blog. What's the secret to increasing its page views? This blog is tiny compared to many, but happily, it's going in an upward direction.
This blog bumped along until a year ago, when I made a concerted effort to post more consistently and increase my exposure. Here are five things I did that helped increase my page views and readership:
1. Add Internal Links to Improve Site Stickiness
When people land on a post, I want them to stay on my site and read other content, so I:
- Add related links to each post. I add links to 2 or 3 similar posts at the end of every article. Plug ins are available for Wordpress and Blogger that do this automatically (for example, nrelate), but I prefer to add relevant links manually.
- Link to my own content whenever possible. If I refer to a previous post, I link to it.
- Create permanent pages. Older posts get lost in the ether, even with the use of tags. To keep good content available, I create page tabs such as "Artist/Writer Info" and "Reviews" that are always visible under my banner.
When I did this in September 2011, my page views doubled, as people stuck around to explore other parts of the blog.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means organizing your site and writing your articles with search engines like Google in mind. Your goal is to have your site placed highly in search results (the top slots on the first page). I'm not an SEO expert, but I try to:
2. Improve SEO to Improve Search Results
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means organizing your site and writing your articles with search engines like Google in mind. Your goal is to have your site placed highly in search results (the top slots on the first page). I'm not an SEO expert, but I try to:
- Pay attention to SEO. Good content will generate good links and viewers, but writing titles and text with keywords in mind will improve SEO. Joel Friedlander's excellent article, "Best and Simple SEO Tips for Authors blogging to build their author platform" gives a good overview of this and other SEO tips.
- Make SEO friendly links. When I link to my Facebook page, Nava Concept, I link to the keywords instead of saying, check out my Facebook page here. (See what I did?)
- Switch the order of the blog title. Blogger posts show up in search results as Name of Blog | Name of Article, but a more SEO-friendly post would have the name of the article first. Here's how to optimize title tags for SEO in Blogger, Wordpress, and Tumblr. (And here's a tip on creating your own permalinks to optimize for SEO).
- Make images SEO friendly by renaming them. Search engines will crawl image file names, so it's better to save files as relevantkeyword.jpg than IMG_001589.jpg. This is particularly helpful if you are an artist or illustrator and would like your images to show up in searches.
- Tag photos with "title" and "alt" text. I take advantage of Blogger's "Properties" tags, which allow me to add additional text that is picked up by search engines. To get to the Properties box, click the Properties tag on the menu bar that shows up when you add an image:
Clicking on it will open this form, which I fill with SEO-friendly text:
3. Use Social Networks to Attract Readers
If you build it, they won't necessarily come. Here are two things I do to bring readers to my blog:
- Spread the word on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. When I publish a post that I think people would be interested in, I link to it on my other social media sites. I don't do it for every post, and I don't link to them ad nauseum, but Twitter and Facebook have turned into reliable sources of readers. Every once in awhile I repost older popular posts.
- Participate in Blog Carnivals. I've participated in Joel Friedlander's Self Publishing: Carnival of the Indies a few times. My post, "5 Nontraditional Publishing Models from Around the World" became one of my more popular posts as result. In a blog carnival, you submit an article on a specific topic and a moderator may decide to publish it. Blogcarnival.com provides a comprehensive list of ongoing blog carnivals.
4. Actively Connect With Others in Niche
- Participate in a comment challenge. In January, I joined Mother Reader's comment challenge, which asked participants to leave 5 comments on blogs each day for 20 days. All participants were children's book bloggers, so I met interesting people in my field. It did take time to read and comment on blogs, but I discovered some great blogs, and leaving comments led people back to my blog.
- Participate in the 12 x 12 x 12 challenge. The 12x12x12 challenge asks picture book writers to write one picture book manuscript a month in the year 2012. The 12x12x12 Facebook page turned into a very active, supportive community. The challenge also gave me the opportunity to write a guest post on avoiding procrastination on founder Julie Hedlund's excellent blog. Along these lines, I plan to take part in Picture Book Idea Month (PiBoIdMo), which starts in November, where participants come up with a picture book idea a day.
- Post to Illustration Friday. Illustration Friday is a weekly forum where illustrators create and post illustrations based on a prompt, and the illustrations link back to their blogs or websites.
- Network with other children's illustrators. I continue to stay in touch with children's illustrators I've met through conferences or classes like Mark Mitchell's excellent online children's illustration course.
- Be generous when networking. I
like interviewing and featuring other illustrators or artists, because
they have something valuable to share. The side effect of highlighting
others is that they bring their followers to the site when they share
the interview.
For example, when I blogged about #Storyappchat, a weekly Twitter chat about children's story apps (#storyappchat), many of those I linked to retweeted or brought readers to the story.
5. Create Useful Content, Keep it Interesting, and Post Regularly
My
most popular posts have been posts where I share Blogger tips. That
makes sense, as they are of broadest interest, and they provide concrete
tips that readers can immediately put to use (for example, how to add social icons to your blog).
The
posts that I most enjoy creating, however, are the ones where I share
my art or thoughts on life. The key for me is to keep myself interested
and motivated to blog. It's
great if I can find an audience that shares my interests, but even if I
don't, at least I haven't wasted my time doing something I don't enjoy.
I
also try to post at least once or twice a week, which brings back
repeat visitors. Last month, I posted more frequently as part of 30-day
art challenge (Sweet Squares), which resulted in an even greater increase in page views.
