Introduction to the Blog page
In this Topic, we are going to learn about the Blog page. Long back you had only a few categories of writers who created content- novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, short-story writers, columnists, and academic writers. With the advent of the web, more people began to enter the fray- and they came to be called bloggers.
Thanks to free platforms such as blogger.com, just about anyone could create a blog page and start writing on anything under the sun. Reportedly, there were successful bloggers who made their first million within a year but most didn’t reach anywhere. These days businesses also have blogs to drive traffic and promote business – a key element of inbound marketing strategy.
Tumblr.com, WordPress.com are popular platforms to start building your business blog page.
Top 10 Tips to Drive More Traffic
Here are ten tips to drive more traffic and generate more business for your blog page:
1. Choose a topic relevant to the industry
If you are in the IT industry, household appliances, e-learning, financial services, health and fitness, automobiles, banking, accounting services, agri-business or any other business category, it is better to topics that are relevant to your business or industry. An IT services company should be writing on topics related to IT industry and not consumer products, movies, personal finance or food recipes however popular the topics may be.
Your customers are better served if the topics are very relevant to them, address a problem they face or help them use your services better. Nobody reads a blog page just for the sake of reading or to find an amazing piece of literature as in a novel or short story. The two most important question to address when writing a blog page is: how unique is the topic and how will it help my target audience.
A stockbroking firm can have blogs that help their clients to understand the techniques of trading, top companies to watch, new regulations regarding trading and how it impacts them. If some writers have already written on a topic, we must try to find out something new to add or give a new unique angle to the topic or debate.
A well-written blog page will be worthless it doesn’t address the concerns, pain points or needs of the consumers.
2. Importance of Length, Headline, Intro Grammar, spelling, and typography
Earlier it was believed that content length didn’t matter on the web, but recent research has shown that the longer the content length, the more traffic it will attract, and the probability of being shared or talked about his higher. Typical content length for blog page would be 1800 to 3000 words.
Pay special attention to grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Poorly constructed sentences, grammatical errors can harm the reputation of your business. It is very important to have someone proofread your blog post and a content editor to edit them for clarity and typographical errors.
There is so much content out there on the web trying to grab the attention of readers and hence give importance to headlines- an attractive headline can pull a reader into your story and that is the first thing they see in a search result. According to analysts, eighty percent of readers read the headlines and only 20% read the body text.
Questions, numbers, adjectives, how to are all attention-grabbing. Forex. How to reduce the debt burden on credit cards, How to increase monthly income without earning more? How to reduce energy costs at home? Some interesting adjectives that can be used are- free, fun, incredible, essential, painstaking, strange. Another success formula for headlines is a combination of adjective, keyword, and promise- Eg. Effortlessly reduce 8 kilos in two weeks, Ten secrets to attaining more returns on mutual funds, Five principles of successful stock market investing.
Keep sentences short and small. Avoid flamboyant words that require the reader to check the dictionary for its meaning. After the headline, the most important part of the article/blog article is the intro. It should be interesting, engaging and create curiosity in the reader to read more. A big article should have bulleted texts for easier reading. There should be subheadings that differentiate different themes from the blog articles to enable easier reading. Bold letters, italics should be used where ever relevant to make the text scannable and appealing.
3. Pay attention to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
In a library, books and topics are indexed on the basis of authors, topics, and keywords so that members can find out if a book is available and if so in which shelf. Likewise, when millions of websites and blog articles provide content on a variety of topics, search engines index them on the basis of topics, keywords.
With rapid changes in algorithms in past few years, it is no longer easy to follow a particular strategy and expect results. Google no longer looks at the frequency of keywords appearing in an article but whether it has more information related to the keywords. This shows that keyword stuffing may not help at all. Yet providing tags, keywords to your story is of great help for Google to crawl your blog tips and search for relevant content to index. There is no harm in looking at Google Keyword Planner or Keywordtool.io to find the higher ranking keywords but ultimately keywords should be used as guideposts for search engines to find out what the blog tips or article is all about.
4. Pay attention to the quality of the article
You may have the best headline, identified the top ranking keywords to use in the article as per SEO guidelines and has a great intro, grammar and punctuation are perfect but still, you may not attract readers if the content quality is poor. The blog articles shouldn’t be too subjective just blurting out what you feel on a particular issue or topic. It should have data, statistics or some techniques that can help the reader.
There must be references to customer testimonials, quotes by experts, research data, quotes of influencers and your own opinion which should be clearly mentioned as such and not passed off as fact. Similarly, if the article is based on your own research or survey data, its popularity on the searches will improve.
If the content is stuffed with keywords but has only a little content relevant to it, search engines may not index them for it and therefore lose out on page rankings related to that topic.
For eg. for keyword productivity in the office, Google may not consider an article that has productivity in the office repeated any number of times, but look at the length of the content succeeding or preceding it to gauge the relevance of the keyword to that article.
5. Make your blog page pictorial
It is said a picture is more than a thousand words and infographics or video much, much more. A photo, illustration, table, charts or anything visually appealing adds value to an article and more likely to be read. The picture should be accompanied by a good caption, if there is more than one picture it should be numbered Pic-1, 1.1 etc for ease of reference in the article. When using pictures it is better not to use copyrighted images or just random images available on Google search but royalty-free images are available from sites such as FreeDigitalPhotos.com, Pixabay, Shutterstock. However, if your own original images are used they will appear more visible in searches. If you are publishing an original photo, you can attach a copyright symbol and indicate that the use of the photo by bloggers or websites should be acknowledged by a link back to the site.
6. Share on social media
Your blog articles are more likely to be noticed if they are shared on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google + among others. There should be social media share buttons for the social media platforms for readers to share.
With more people spending time on social media, more and more publications are using that platform to get noticed by readers. Before launching the corporate blog page, have the information posted on the social media platforms and website of the company.
Also, the blog tips can be submitted to relevant blog listing sites. A press release can also be sent to media sites and email announcements have to be made. Apart from social media, the blog page can be popularized through online communities such as Scoop.it and Storify.
It has been found that organic search and reach through Facebook and Google have come down rapidly in recent times and therefore it makes sense to run AdWords in Google and boost or advertisement options in Facebook and Twitter.
7. The frequency of blog posts and editorial calendar
If the frequency of blog posts is low, ranking in search engines and recall by readers about your blog maybe decline. However, too many irrelevant posts will not add value to your offerings. It is better to have an editorial calendar and identify the list of topics that will be covered by various writers or contributors to the blog page.
Once you have a clear idea of the audience, the industry you are related to, identify a list of 20-40 topics and estimate the time required to complete them. Then allocate them for the coming months and the writers who will write it. Examine the website and blog content to see whether a particular type of content is more engaging on particular days of the week. Have calendar apps such as CoSchedule and Trello or Google Sheets to create the editorial calendar.
8.The blog page must have a central point or theme
It is better to have a central theme for the article rather than try to cover too many areas and lose focus. It gives readers a point to focus on and share it with others. There must be a proper structure with the introduction, the key topic of the article and its accompanying data, visuals, and a conclusion. If the article is an open-source platform for big data, it should focus on the relevance of the open source for such a technology and the advantages thereof. If the website has related content the reader can be linked to it and get engaged.
9. Each blog page should have a proper Call-to-Action
The purpose of a blog does not end with reading the blog post and just forgetting about it. The blog articles should conclude with a call-to-action which could be for registering, downloading an e-book, registering or subscribing to a service or directing to another related article on the site.
10. Don’t make it corporate-speak
Your blog page should not end up as a direct marketing effort – with production promotions, company information, and achievements. The blog articles should establish your credibility, competence, and authority in the industry by giving quality content that is relevant to the target audience. It is vital for establishing a relationship with the reader. Stories, experiences, case studies are all good formats for the blog rather than presenting facts alone. Stories capture reader’s attention and some studies show it can influence the reader to read the whole article.
Conclusion
It is indeed an effective platform to build your brand and reputation in your industry. However, it is not an easy job and requires certain skill, patience, and consistency to make an impact on the target audience. There is no substitute for quality content and too much emphasis on keyword targeting. Apart from your own blog tips, you could as well be a guest blogger on other sites as well. Sometimes humor and satire can also help build your audience.
As in any other activity, the best way to learn is to have a look at the better-performing blogs and how they structure content and market them. Avoid copying or rephrasing content without adding value to it. Proper attributions for data or quotes used in the blog will enhance your credibility.
Each industry may require a different strategy to get across its audience and there is no one size fits all formula that can work always. Moreover, search engine and social media dynamics are changing frequently which necessitates close monitoring of readership metrics.
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