How to get more page views for your blog
This is a guest post by Kristina Chang, Evan Moore, Tony Xu, and Omer Rabin; students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
“What makes a blog popular? What drives page views?” These are the questions that we’ve been trying to answer over the last few weeks. We were on a mission to dig into the data and analyze the strongest parameters that influence the flow of visitors to WordPress.com blogs.
Out of the 30+ million blogs on WordPress.com, we randomly selected a sample of almost 100,000 blogs to perform a regression analysis. Here are our findings, together with a few recommendations. We hope that this provides some new information, and kudos to you in case you’ve already incorporated these tips into your blog – the data suggests that you’re on the right track. Keep it up!
Make your blog easy to follow – It almost sounds obvious, but the simplest way to build more awareness is to make it easier to do so. Make sure that you have the follow widget as visible as possible. If your readers receive a notification every time you post, or see your post in their reader, there is a much higher chance that they will revisit your blog.
Comments, Comments, Comments – The most successful blogs, we found, created and encouraged a dialogue with their readers. The best way to make people more engaged with your writing is for you to engage back and start a conversation. In your posts, encourage people to comment. Also, make sure that you reply to people’s comments and continue the dialogue. This back and forth conversation is a significant driver of page views; holding all else equal, every additional comment can potentially drive up to 18 incremental page views! You can start by simply asking follow-up questions at the end of each post: “have you ever done X?”; “do you think Y is acceptable?”. You can read some more thoughts on how to build your audience and how to get more comments.
Post Frequently and Regularly – Your readers want to know that you are there for them and that you are “on it”. If you post frequently and regularly and have enabled the follow feature as we mentioned above, checking your blog could become a daily routine for your readers. Even if it’s a short post, write something new as frequently as possible, and at regular intervals. (The Daily Post can help with ideas, as can the advice on how to get more traffic)
While these three tips were shown to be the most important drivers of page views in our analysis, you might consider other parameters, which we found as having a partially significant effect: syndicating your post to Twitter and Facebook (using Publicize), for example, could lead to additional page views.
Happy blogging!
- April 17, 2012
- HowTo
About how long do you find a typical blog to become ‘successful?’ I am a newer blogger and seeking more readers and I am trying to find ways to increase traffic. Thanks for the post, any other ideas for a blogger baby?
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I’m a sucker for an interesting post title 😉
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Great to see an actual statistical analysis as to what works. Thanks for the tips!
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I really have to work on posting more, as well as comments on other blogs!
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I am new to blogging………….this might help me
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Reblogged this on Instructional Support at Wright.
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Thanks for the tips! Hopefully it will fuel more people to check out my blog and website that is associated with it!
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Thanks for the tips!
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Good things to know. I’ve implemented most of this to a certain degree, but will set a goal for myself to increase my practices. 🙂 Good stuff; thanks for posting this. BTW, do you have “how to” info. regarding ghost writing?
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Liked the Comments part, i have been reading and ignoring the comments, and never thought of replying to the comments and engage the user again in visiting the blog..great article..
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Great tips! I also enjoy doing a reader Search for topics I like, then from there, when I find posts I like, I ALWAYS like & comment & like you mentioned, hope to begin a conversation that will lead to the fellow blogger checking out my page as well:)
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you’re amazing! thanks!
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Thanks for your post. I read it a few days ago but I had to come back and read it again. Very helpful.
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Sweet, Pete – love the simplicity!
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Simple but effective. I find being consistent in both content and amount of posts is most important. You begin to create a “return-customer” foundation, if you will.
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I appreciate the spam filter, and the protection it gives from solicitors and other junk mail. It gives me a feeling of confidence when I’m posting.
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That’s really good advice to me , I’ll try to refer to this article to improve my new born blog. Seem to be an hard work ! How about frequency. Is there an experimented indication about how much and how frequently I should post ?Thank you for any suggestion Pete ! By the way .. I’m from SDA Bocconi !
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Thanks for the tips. Hopefully i’ll get more views.
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That is so true. People want to feel connected. They want to know the other end truly cares about what they say or share in their blog. Sincerity and honesty matters a lot too. Of course being yourself and bringing your unique world gets a lots of points. People loves photos and words that moves them. After all we’re all human, with feelings and all….Thanks for sharing this post. Pro or beginner, we all need to read this.
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Thanks for the great ideas. I also found that having topical issues helps people find you through the google search as well.
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Thanks for the advice!
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How do pictures factor in… I feel that I am more attracted to blogs that are less wordy and have more pictures (even if they are just regenerated from the internet) kind of like a line break. Charts, diagrams, photography, sketches it dose not matter. What do others feel?
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Love this!! These comments are wonderful, but I would add that your blog needs to look amazing too.
Make sure you’re including photographs that are well taken and lovely (and properly sourced and linked!!!) that apply to your topic. A good picture is worth at least 10,000 words.
A well designed blog says a lot about how much you care about your blog (and how much your readers should care!) I’m a graphic designer and artist, so I know this is my life, but it does apply to ever. single. blog. Food, cars, babies… if you’re pouring your time and energy into it make sure it looks amazing!
There are many ways to customize a wordpress.com blog. Do it!! Hire a graphic designer if you need to. It will pay off, I promise!
Emily
http://www.EmilyJeffords.com
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Great tips thank you!
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goooooooooooooood
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Thank you for the tips! Those are the three reasons why I never get views or comments… because I don’t do them!
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I am new to this but I love the idea of blogs, I guess its one of those things you need to get used to and use regularly in order for it to be beneficial
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Thanks for the suggestions, I’m really new to blogging so this is really helpful. I’ll have to implement some of these suggestions and see where it gets me!
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Thank you for the wonderful tips!
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Great tips. I am a relatively new blogger. It seems like my followers and traffic are increasing slowly but surely. I try to post daily and usually keep it to approx 200 words. Cheers!
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good job
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thanks for giving these valuable tips…i really want some tips as i am new here…if there are more valuable tips then please share them with me….
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Love the tips! I don’t like to comment on others blogs though, it feels so false and I never know what to write, except for now 😛
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Thanks so much. This has increased my optimism.God bless you.
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Hey thanks for the tips, I am new on WordPress and I’m enjoying.
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These are some very helpful suggestions. I have been struggling with trying to understand how blogs work and especially how to make them work for me and this will help. Thank you.
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Thanks for the good advice. Is there any other data on the optimum number of tags and categories to drive traffic?
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These are useful suggestions and are the basic essentials. Going beyond is just as important,such as breaking up text with inserts (photos, illustrations, hyperlinks). Apologies if I didn’t catch it, but I activated the Zemanta widget and that has helped generate more interest and traffic. Assigning tags and categories is a major help as well.
I think the best advice is to visit other bloggers of like interest and get an ongoing dialogue going. Building community is the backbone of blogging. Hey, sounds like a bumpersticker or a t-shirt.
Happy Pages,
CricketMuse
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Indeed great points. Some of us are artists of all kinds but we love to express via written form by default. It would be close to a utopian experience if you had a community of like minds, example; musicians, painters, sculptors, authors, and any soul who feel spiritually connected. Imagine if we supported each other on Face book ,Twitter, Linkedin or anywhere we gather. A two way street of dialogue and not a one way monologue. Keeping it real. A dimension where we are subscribing and following beyond just “likes” and follows. But because we want to be there. How electrifying and beneficial it would be to the “community”. Peace, love and magnificent light.
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I’m currently getting more blog comments on my facebook then on wordpress, but that’s ok. I believe it’s all about just getting the conversation happening! I think it’ll flip over to wordpress more later on.
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Good suggestions for a new blogger! Makes sense…lets hope they work!
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Started tweaking how I set up my blog and then started following those ideas and it appears to be helping – or maybe it’s coincidental. Or not. Time will tell.
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Reblogged this on Awesome Blog.
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Okay, started my lifestyle blog last night and will definitely be following these tips! P.S I’m a BIG fan of giving people 3 tips. It just sticks better..
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Good idea,i’m very sure that if it is followed good result will be the outcome.
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Reblogged this on freelancesociety.
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Another tip is to check out the sites of fellow bloggers who comment in posts like these.
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THANK YOU SO MUCH!
These are very useful tips and I have seen an increase in traffic on my BLOG, thanks again!
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Thank you very much for the tips!
I agree, by simply asking ‘have you done x?’ or ‘how do you feel about y’?, the blog material is made much more relatable!
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thank you so much for this man! I just get started! lol.. and I’m not that sure if I could post regularly… but I’ll try. thanks a lot.
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True.
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Thanks for this!
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I so seriously need to market, market MARKET myself and my blog…anyone want to buy or sell property in Central Florida? Come see me…
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I should try these tips on my blog.
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sadly, i barely have time to blog. i was so excited when i created my blog last january but because of travel and work I only got to post new articles today. I’ll follow your advice and post new articles more regularly no matter how short. I also loved your suggestion of proactively encouraging the readers to ask us questions. I just edited my article to reflect that. Thanks!
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Reblogged this on technowizards and commented:
Perfect tips for newbies like me
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