Traffic Dos and Don’ts: A Checklist
One of the main reasons bloggers stop blogging is lack of traffic: at some point, they get tired of being the proverbial tree in the forest, making sounds nobody hears.
We’re here to help. No list of advice can guarantee your blog’s success, but it’s important to be aware of the most critical elements at play. Five dos, five don’ts: give them a try.
Dos
- Write regularly. Producing fresh content on a regular basis is essential. First, it makes your blog more appealing to search engines, which means new readers are more likely to find you. Just as important, it creates a sense of loyalty among the readers you already have, who know you won’t be stranding them for weeks at a time.
- Write well. What makes a post engaging, moving, or entertaining is clearly a matter of opinion. What’s not a matter of opinion? Correct spelling. Reasonable grammar. Sentences and paragraphs of manageable length. Go over your post, spellcheck, and edit — above all — for clarity. (A strong title never hurts, either.)
- Keep your blog easy on the eyes. While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, unattractive blogs are surprisingly easy to spot. Some minimal care can pay great dividends, even if you don’t have time to think of every possible detail. Choose a theme that suits your needs and your content. Make your homepage attractive with striking images or easy customizations, and make sure your content is easy to read.
- Use your existing network. As a beginning blogger, you should rely on friends and family to visit your blog and share your posts on their own social networks (use common sense to decide how often and how insistently you ask them). Keep them informed by publicizing your posts, and keep them interested by addressing, at least at first, topics you know they’ll enjoy.
- Create new networks. The blogging community is immense. The best way to find your own niche within it is through meaningful reciprocity. Follow and leave thoughtful comments on others’ blogs, and take the time to respond to feedback left on your own site. Use widgets to make it easy to follow and syndicate your own blog. Participate in events, or attend a blogging conference to make new friends and learn new tips.
![Image by Justin Scott Campbell (CC BY-ND 2.0)](https://en-blog.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/lonely-traffic.jpg?w=720)
Image by Justin Scott Campbell (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Don’ts
- Don’t forget to tag. Unless you’re already a famous entity offline, readers won’t search specifically for your blog. That’s why smart tagging is so important: add a healthy mix of general and specific terms related to your post, and your potential audience will find you, either through search engines or on the WordPress.com Reader.
- Don’t spam. Community members and search engines alike are quite savvy in telling thoughtful content from fluff. One-word comments? A blog full of pingbacks and reblogs with very little original content? There is no surer method of pushing your audience away, even if your intentions are good.
- Don’t be afraid of the Publish button. The only post guaranteed to attract zero traffic is an unpublished one. Don’t worry too much about posts that ended up different from your initial vision. At worst, you can edit and update them later. At best, their shortcomings, if any, can be part of the conversation you start with your readers. Either way, what could you possibly lose?
- Don’t stop reading. Writing that exists in a vacuum will be less appealing to readers who don’t already know you. Whether it’s a new bestseller, other blogs and sites around the web, or the great content we feature daily on Discover, staying part of existing conversations keeps your content relevant, and will engage a wider audience than an entirely impenetrable musing.
- Don’t lose sight of why you blog. Even if you’re doing everything right, it might still take a while before your blog gains traction. It’s a good idea to remind yourself why you decided to start a blog to begin with. Whether it’s to express your opinions, record memories, or any other reason, you’re the most important member of your audience, and should enjoy the experience. Fun tends to be contagious: a writer who enjoys blogging regardless of traffic is, paradoxically, more likely to attract it.
- Bonus tip: our Writing Challenges and Community Pool are great places to meet new bloggers looking to expand their WordPress.com network.
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Good tops and encouragement. Thanks for helping keep us all blogging. Patience, easy to read, and interesting are things we all need to keep in mind.
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Thank you for offering these tips! They are helpful for those of us who are new to blogging. I’m glad I can say I am already doing most of the DOs, though I wonder if there is a way I can improve the look of my blog (without signing up for the pro package).
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Just made a WordPress Blog. Even if no one ever reads, I don’t care I will continue blogging. Persistence is a skill that gets you places.
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Fantastic information here; as a newer blogger I am picking up all the tips and tricks that I can to encourage people to visit my lonely blog.
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Ben:
Thanks for the article. I have just started blogging this week so the question of traffic do’s and don’t has been on my mind.
One thing that I learned in digging around is that my old website also produces statistics. I vaguely remember seeing the stats a year or two ago but had no idea what to do with them.
An important motivation for my blogging is to consolidate my email distribution lists into a single resource. I would be curious what your thoughts are about educating email recipients in the fine art of following a blog. Up to this point, simple explanation does not seem to generate much by way of subscribers.
Stephen
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Hi Stephen – congrats on starting your blog!
If you’d like to get some ideas about ways to use your blog’s stats, we published a series of posts on that very topic recently.
As for your second question, if I understand it correctly, one thing you could consider is to keep some of your content exclusive to your blog, and only to include an excerpt or a summary in the emails (with a link to your blog), thus making recipients more likely visit your site. You’d also want to make sure that the Follow Blog Widget is displayed somewhere prominent on your blog, to make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your blog’s email list. I hope this helps!
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This is some timeless advice and it is certainly helpful to new bloggers like myself! Thanks so much for the info:)
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Great article and I do find it hard to find people interested in my blog. Only a few friends and no family has interest. I suppose it could only grow from near-zero! Seems many people express the same and thanks for sharing.
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I did find this article very useful. However, my big question is….is there a method (s) to link building or some technical way to draw more traffic in a short amount of time? awaiting your response?
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Another member of our team addressed this question in a recent post here. The short answer: it’s not impossible, but usually the results of these methods are short-lived, and don’t really substitute for the kind of organic growth you get through good, consistent content.
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Keeping my blog easy on the eyes is definitely one of my goals. I believe one way to fulfill this is to use less words per blog entry without compromising the meaning. It’s a great opportunity to practice using a succinct writing approach. Less words, more meaning. \m/
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Spot on. Bloggers also should stick on the topics they know about and choose their niche.
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This is quite simply super! I feel as though I know nothing, about anything quite frankly! This helps make sense of a new world. Thank you.
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Ben:
Thanks for the feedback. I never thought of moving the follow widget–that is something new for me.
Your suggestion about split up articles is a good one. I started to do that earlier with my website, but I was not sensitive to monitoring the follow up. I will have to think about that. One of my tasks today is to rollover another mailing list…
Thanks again.
Stephen
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Also a newbie here. I love this post. Great tips, and thank you for the encouragement!
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Even on the road its easy to get side track from being consistent in editing, writing and posting. I really enjoyed the advice and tips.
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to Shirleyford929 -only 2 of my family members follow my blog, and I use a pseudonym so that I don’t advertise it to my friends, but I am satisfied with the numbers (15 – 40 hits a day) I’ve built by writing about what interests me. Even getting those modest numbers took a while and I sometimes don’t get at the blogs I follow as often as I would like, but the suggestions given above do work.
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Thanks for the great advice! I definitely need to get back to doing more of Tip #1!
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I am new to blogging and I really enjoyed this article. The don’t #5 is my favorite one, make sure that I do not lose sight of why I blog. Awesome read.
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Yikes! I reblogged two posts I thought would be great to share on my blog. I think maybe I should removed them and keep repost strictly for my twitter account. This way my blog is just all my original content. Thank you for posting a check list. Always good to hear thoughts from someone else. Makes you take a step back to see what you might be doing wrong.
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I need to print this list and keep it on my wall-pinboard…
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Great subject, thanks for the valuable information. Yes it is important to be consistant in blogging.
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I loved your Don’t Be Afraid of the Publish Button tip. Sometimes I have a post written and it sits there forever as the topic is somewhat a ‘little off topic’ to the main content of my blog. Your post gave me the encouragement to hit the Publish button and wait to see what happens.
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Very good information. I am a writer who loves to write but there are times that I would rather skip the blog and go to the beach instead. However, if I force myself to fulfill that commitment to my readers, those are the posts that attract heavy traffic. Go figure.
I offer encouragement to those who have GREAT content but struggle with attracting a big audience (and there are numerous fantastic WordPress blogs that fit that category). Keep writing, keep “churning them out”!! 🙂
A~N
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And make time to read, like, comment other blogs. Time consuming, but pays off big time.
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great motivational tips! i was feeling kind of like that – noone’s reading me anyway, so does writing regularly even matter? but i have noticed a slow increase in numbers and i know i’ve gotta work through some writer’s block and remember the reason i started! thanks a lot!
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Reblogged this on ME on Life Designs and commented:
I need to take some additional time to review this since I would really like to blog more consistency and build an online “following”.
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Thanks for the list of do’s and don’ts. I found them rather useful with this being my first attempt at blogging. Thanks again! jkh
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Good reminders, Ben! Favorite part of your post: “Don’t lose sight of why you blog.” We all start to blog for some reason, it’s important to keep that in mind!
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Thanks for the food for thought. Super helpful!
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I am still a journeyman to the world of blogging. Rumbling here and there and unsure what to write and what not to. Your piece of advice has come at a better time not only because it gives me courage to continue blogging, but to determined bloggers, its like a “do-whatever- it- takes” to keep blogging on end. Thank you.
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I will definitely incorporate this in my training classes!
and maybe heed a few pointers myself!
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Ben, nice post!! I swear the grammar and spelling point you make can’t be over stated. I read and re-read….and still I sometimes find errors….
Shirley! Don’t give up! We write our blog 5thPhotographyBlog.com and kept up on a recent trip, posting daily…and at the same time, our closest friends kept telling us they want to know how we are, what we are doing and see photos…it was all on the blog…lol! But I say, that’s why we build blog communities!
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So true. There’s always that fear of hitting the Publish button. Will definitely try blogging more often!
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Awesome tips. I find that engaging with like-minded people has helped me a lot in growing the reader base of my blog. Make yourself known in popular social sites such as twitter and you’ll gain more traffic than you expected.
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Some simple and very practical tips here. Passion, persistence and perseverance can work wonders
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Thank you for all your wonderful tips and for sharing!
First time blogger.
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This is a great and helpful piece, thanks for taking your time in educating us with this wonderful piece. God bless.
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Very helpful and useful information, thanks, I have always wondered how many tags ideally should be used and should the tags be on the broader topic or should they be laser focused on the topic at hand?
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Great piece. Was literally just having this conversation about talking to an audience where you feel the lights are off. Comforting to know I need to keep it up with the candles first, before electricity kicks in!
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Loved it. One thing that should be learned from this post is that you should be inspired, So be inspired. And of course we need inspiration daily b’coz inspiration is just like bathing none of them both last longer. That’s why we recommend it daily!!! 😉
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Nice tips! I think publishing something regularly is a must, it keeps your blog fresh and your readers attentive!
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These are great tips here, Ben. I’ve been blogging for a while, but it’s always good to get a refresher. Thanks so much!
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Thanks for sharing – these are great tips. Love the traffic photo!
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Thank you for this excellent and insightful tips.. i’m new here just signed up.. hope to impart and learn..thank you..!! will keep reading and expecting exciting reading..
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Thanks Ben good post, much of this advice I am already doing and this tells me I am on the right track. I know that I have to improve in some areas such as writing on a regular basis and I am working on that, I know that is one of the most critical. Thanks again.
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Simple but very inspiring, reading this article makes me want to write a fresh new post on my blog right away
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this was really helpful, we have to start a blog for a social media module in college and i am really struggling! thank you! 🙂
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Great informative post, thanks for sharing!
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