Running a WordPress blog has been increasingly becoming a widely chosen profession for the millennial generation. Basically, everybody wants to be a blogger; and with over 2 million blog posts being written every day, it becomes very complicated for new blogs to filter the noise and stand out.
The competition is glaring because a successful blog performs well in terms of traffic as well as monetization. But, how can a blog accomplish the two? What are the tips that successful bloggers follow to drive insane amount of traffic to their online resources?
How can inexperienced WordPress bloggers build more traffic and yield more profit from the blogs they are running? Let’s find out.
Increasing the blog traffic
Great Content over everything else
For most of the bloggers, the need to work on your WordPress blog’s traffic remains a constant issue. They keep looking for ways and means to multiply the traffic through technical fixes but fail to realize that putting up good content on the blog can solve more than half the problem.
A great blog’s content is all about providing such information to its visitors that they can deem as useful and something they can’t find somewhere else in the manner they best perceive. So, the key here is to publish well-researched, original and sound content that is worth the readers’ time.
Make sure that you break the posts into at least 5-6 paragraphs which are up to 5 lines each. Anything more than that can overwhelm the audience and they might end up abandoning your blog.
Make good use of visual components such as images and videos to make your blog posts engaging and visually attractive.
Consistent blogging schedule
If you have just started out as a blogger, you can choose to either blog daily or at regular intervals i.e. on certain days of the week, or once every week or the duration that works for you.
However, make sure that you put this out for you readers to know so that they are aware of the days they can expect to read a fresh blog post from you. That would create a compulsion for you to blog regularly in case you are a procrastinator. Consistent blogging ensures that your loyal blog readers make it a point to visit your blog everytime a new piece is put out.
Work for an enhanced search engine visibility
Working on your WordPress blog’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will ensure that your blog is able to communicate with the search engines for visibility purposes. Using the right keywords, Meta Description, Tags and Categories will help you optimize your blog’s content.
You can also use some great WordPress plugins that are meant to ease your blog’s SEO issues. Plugins such as the Yoast SEO and the All-in-One SEO pack will guide you throughout the draft creation process and provide insights to make any improvements that will help your post’s SEO score. And you need to secure your blog as well with various security measures like using WordPress security plugins, using strong passwords and using a VPN etc. There are various VPNs available in the market, you can check out Betternet review to understand it better.
Work on your blog’s loading speed
If your WordPress blog site is taking more than 2-3 seconds to load, you are losing a large amount of traffic on your blog. To speed up WordPress blog, you can install Caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache, WP Fastest Cache, and WP Rocket to reduce the page load time of your blog and increase the on-site duration of visitors.
Improve your blog’s User-Experience
Well, your blog will only be a visitor favorite one when it offers optimal User-experience. You can improve the following things on your blog to ensure the best User experience for your visitors.
- A responsive blog design and cross compatibility will make sure that your visitors are able to access your blog from all sorts of devices and browsers.
- Use a subtle color scheme for your blog so that your audience doesn’t feel overwhelmed by the selection of the wrong choice.
- Use Breadcrumbs to ease navigation for blog visitors.
- Break your content into simple and readable chunks.
- Implement a minimal web design for your WordPress blog as it’s trending and adored by blog readers.
- Make sure that you put out social sharing options visibly.
- Be smart and create a smart Call-to-Action strategy for your site visitors to accelerate conversions.
Choose a reliable web hosting service
A reliable web hosting service will ensure that your blog serves maximum uptime and is never down while your audience is trying to access it during their surfing times.
A great web hosting service will also ensure a safe existing environment for your WordPress blog along with the other blogs and sites which are being hosted on it. For enhancing the security of your blog, you can also add an SSL certificate to it.
Engage with other bloggers and their posts
Driving traffic to your own blog will always require you to be responsive, engaged and conversational with other relatable blogs existing on the Internet. If you choose to leave a comment, a feedback, or a positive criticism of other bloggers’ posts, you will definitely open up a conversation which can drive traffic to your own blog.
By developing a cordial professional relationships with other bloggers, you can always request them to engage with your blog and maybe recommend it to their readers who might be interested.
Initiate existing audience’s engagement
Your blog isn’t just going to work if you only use it to publish your posts and wait to see the traffic drop by. You are required to engage your blog’s audience by replying to their comments on your posts, emails they might be sending in, or any other feedback they have.
Engaging your blog audience can also be accomplished by providing them with more content once they drop by your blog just to read a certain post. You can put up Related posts below your pieces so that site visitors have more to go through. You can also share your popular old posts for the new audience to see.
Promote your blog posts through social media channels
It is imperative of a blog owner to promote their blog content by regularly sharing it through several social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr etc. for the new audience to discover.
Blog owners should also make these posts easy to share so that their audience can share it within their circles if they really end up liking the content.
Track your blog’s traffic
You can only begin to improve your blog’s performance when you are aware of whatever is actually happening with it. By carefully drawing insights with the help of Google Analytics tool, WordPress bloggers will be able to track their traffic and its origin while being able to figure out conversion issues, if any.
Blog profit yielding
Sponsored Posts
If your blog is popular and has a large number of followers, you can take a step further and turn your WordPress blog into a money-yielding online resource. You can start selling sponsored posts to brands that might be interested in getting their products/services featured.
This will only be possible with brands who are related to your industry of blog. Hence, you can notify your visitors that you are open to sponsored content. These sponsored posts can contain paid reviews, tutorials, promotional essays etc.
Google AdSense
You can setup a Google AdSense account for your blog to start earning with it. By opting for the account, Google will pay you for displaying Ads from certain advertisers. With its EPC (earnings per click) and CPC (cost per click) model, your blog will make money when visitors click on these ads.
Affiliate marketing
You can use your WordPress blog to promote some products/services from merchants and receive a commission everytime a purchase takes place through your affiliate link.
Premium blog content
This mode of monetization for your blog is only possible when your blog is well established and is known to its audience as a reputable content provider. Once there, you can choose to share some content with your certain set of audience which is ready to pay for accessing the premium blog posts.
Paid Digital downloads/Courses
Yet another way of making some good money with your blog is by offering paid digital download such as E-books, Newsletters, White Papers etc. Your blog can also sell online courses if the idea fits your expertise.
Conclusion:
Creating and efficiently running a WordPress blog that is both popular and money-making can quite be a challenge. Once you figure out the tactics and tricks to materialize the efforts required to run a blog successfully, you will be able to drive an insane amount of traffic to your online resource. Obviously, there is a waiting period but patience is good. With our guide above, we hope that you will be able to build more traffic and profit for your blog as you move ahead in your blogging journey.