As bloggers, traffic is incredibly important. I don’t know any bloggers that would say they couldn’t use an uptick in their traffic or subscribers.
So, you want more eyeballs on your posts. Of course you do! You spent all that time crafting a really great blog post… now you want some people to read it and get something out of it.
How do you do that? There’s a mind-bogglingly large amount of things you have to pay attention to, but today’s infographic sums it up pretty nicely.
1. Keywords. Think of keywords as reverse google-fu. What words would you type into google that would lead people to your blog post? Use those keywords in your blog’s headline, in the URL, the meta description (make sure you have Yoast’s SEO Plugin), and a few times in the body of your blog post (but not more than 3% of all the words–it can have the opposite effect if you ‘keyword stuff’).
2. Craft an enticing headline. A good headline will draw the reader in. You can either tease them, or you can tell them what it’s all about, but we know that headlines that indicate the post is a numbered list (apparently 10 is the magic number) are quite popular. Basically, we love listsicles.
3. Images. Images are so important! They draw the eye in, and they make your blog post more shareable on Facebook and especially Pinterest. Take care to create great visuals for your post, using tools like Canva or PicMonkey. Learn to take better photos if you are a lifestyle blogger. Make sure you edit your photos so they aren’t huge files. The longer they take to load, the more people you’ll lose.
4. Length. I try to keep my blog posts to about 500 words, but according to this infographic, longer posts get more love. Who knew!
5. Links. Blogging is all about creating that circle of links. So link to other websites and blogs outside of yours, and link back to other blog posts on your blog, as well.
6. Play on people’s emotions. Your post will be shared more if it incites people’s emotions. If you make them laugh, make them angry, or make them cry, they will want to share you post.
7. Calls to Action. Make it easy for people to socially share your post (by installing social share buttons) and then ask them to do so, or ask them to subscribe to your blog, or newsletter. I also love the YARP plugin, which automatically directs the reader to another related post on my blog.
8. Timing. When’s the best time to publish? Tuedays through Thursdays get the most views, as less people are at work on Mondays and Fridays. I find publishing just before work (at 9 am is a good time), and then I usually socially share around 1 pm.
For more information about how to write the perfect blog post, study today’s infographic:
I’m surprised about the lenth item on the infographic. I always read the rule of thumb for posts is 500-1000 words or people get bored. I know I skim large sections of text and am not likely to make it to the end of a 2000+ word post.
Me, too! I always try to keep my posts in the 500-1000 word count.
As a consumer of blogs, there are some good suggestions in that graphic. It drives me crazy when a blogger doesn’t have a basic “About Me” link or info. A lot of blogs I follow have to do with genealogy, and a lot of genealogy is about weighing and evaluating evidence and information. Knowing more about the author allows me to better evaluate the information they’re providing in their post and helps me decide whether it’s information worth accepting or researching further. It is also useful on the legal blogs I follow. The other thing you note that I can vouch for is the need for the blogger to make it easy to share the post.
I also found the suggestion that longer is better to be interesting. Generally, I like posts to be shorter, especially when I have a lot of new content in my RSS reader. The only time it annoys me that a post is not longer is when the headline suggests that the post will be a detailed or in-depth discussion of a topic I want to know more about. When those types of headlines link to articles that are only a couple of paragraphs and contain but one or two useful bits of info, I feel like I wasted my time clicking the link.
(And 12 year old me adds: Heh heh heh you said “listicle”.)
Oh, and another pet peeve of mine: bloggers who don’t set up their blog with an RSS feed. Maybe I’m too old school, but I’d rather follow a blog through my RSS reader. I just went to add a couple of cool new blogs to my reader, but one doesn’t seem to have an RSS feed. Buh bye, blog I won’t be following, or tweeting about, or facebooking.
I think blog post of 1500 or more words tend to receive more shares 🙂
Rebecca, what about a tweetable content? It’s a good way to distribute your content. People like to share on twitter, especially with quotes. How to make your content tweetable I wrote in my last post http://omnipapers.com/how-to-write-a-blog-post
I hope it will be helpful and interesting for you! 🙂
Oh, yes, Emily. I use a plugin called “Click to Tweet” for that.