May 9, 2011 / Traffic & Growth

Do you want more traffic?

We here at WordPress.com think about traffic often. We try to make WordPress easy to use in all the right ways, so it’s easy to find ideas, write well, post quickly and get traffic to your posts and your site.

There are two core features you should be using if Traffic interests you. They are:

  1. Publicize: easily notify your twitter and facebook friends of your posts.
  2. Sharing: Allow your readers to forward your post to twitter, facebook and other services.

But we’re always open to ideas – what else can we do to help you get more traffic for your posts? How can we make Publicize and Sharing better? How can we help you get more attention to your hard work?

Of course since everyone wants traffic, there is no magic solution. But if there are things we can provide, or make easier, we want to know about them. Please leave a comment. Thanks.

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  1. You could enable WordPress.com users to add Java widgets, so we can put Google Friend Connect in our pages. In Brazil it’s how most people follow blogs…

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  2. Right now (as far as I know) when you set your blog to automatically tweet your new posts, it didn’t allow you to customize the tweet before it gets tweeted. I know very little about SEO but the more I’m reading, the more I’m thinking it would be great to be able to add a few words to a tweet (aside from the title of the post and the link) before it goes up on Twitter.

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    1. Before you click Publish look above where it says Publicize (mine says Twitter next to it) and you should see the word Edit. Click this and a box opens that lets you edit the actual Tweet before you Publish your post.

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  4. I spent almost all yesterday and the day before reading up on this very topic. I’ve come away with a few tips that I’m trying to implement:
    Tag content to Technorati
    Pay more attention to title tags
    Participate in related forums
    Invite guest bloggers

    Will start working on these this week.
    Thanks,
    Marcia

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  5. I strongly agree that we need the ability on free wordpress to use java widgets. Blogger blogs get tons more traffic thanks to google reader, bloglovin tools, google friend connect, google ad sense, etc, which we are unable to use unless self-hosted 😦

    P.S. I understand the reason for no java is that often it carries security threats, but maybe wordpress could have pre-approved java widgets, like the google ones, which could be options on the main widgets page provided through wordpress.

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  6. Many of my readers connect through my Facebook fan page. The automatic publishing to Facebook is great, except that it will only allow you to publish to your personal profile page (at least as far as I could find). I am not sure whether this is a Facebook decision or a WordPress decision, but it would be awesome to have the option to automatically publish to a Facebook fan page.

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    1. That is a really good idea! GREAT!
      But I think, it won’t work.
      I have no fb-account, so I asked one of my followers to post a link to my blog on a fanpage. She made a screenshot – great – but indeed the link never appears. nobody can find it on the fanpage. 😦

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      1. wildes, it is fairly simple to set up an account with Facebook. Just go to http://www.facebook.com and fill in your info where it says “Sign Up”. You can choose how to set your privacy settings to control how easy or how difficult it is for people to connect with you, how much of your info they can see, etcetera. From there, it just takes a few moments to synchronize your WordPress blog from your account here with FB. You might consider looking into it. 🙂

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  7. I personally find it interesting to browse popular tags (i.e. topics or cetrgories). I’m sure other folks do too. So, for example, I’m often browsing and reading posts from the “movies” tag or the “postaweek” or “writing” tags. We can access the list of popular tags by clicking the link at the bottom of the WordPress home page. Maybe if you made that link somehow more visible, it would encourage others to browse tags of interest. That might result in more traffic to WordPress blogs from people browsing topics/tags. Just an idea.

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  8. I really like the sharing buttons that appear at the end of posts. I am still waiting for someone to use mine though 😉 I am assuming that the box (with the number in) next to the tweet button lets you know how many people have shared the post on Twitter. Could someone confirm this?

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    1. Stickinsect: I just tweeted your post about your top 10 British sitcoms. I’m not sure, but I suppose a “1” will show up in your post’s tweet count for you soon. 🙂

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      1. Wow thanks. You are right, a ‘1’ now shows up next to the tweet button. clicking on the number takes me to a page that lists all the people that have tweeted about that post.

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  10. Perhaps make one of the daily topics be long the lines of “Write an advertisement for a fellow blogger’s site that you really enjoy/appreciate/etc.” – and then encourage readers to check out that site (as a way to both share some love and drive some incremental traffic).

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  12. People should write in detail about research-based factual topics, if they want to get organic search traffic. The posts should be useful to others who are reading them – those posts generally get more traffic – instead of the usual ‘what will i do after one week’, etc.

    Don’t be abstract with the title of the post – be as direct as possible, it helps a lot for SEO.

    WP needs to look at image optimization – The images are not properly indexed by Google. I have a travel related website in WP where I post a lot of photos, but only a few of them get indexed!

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  14. I’ve been telling some friends to check out my blog, and twice I’ve had friends tell me that they already follow my blog, but my blog shows no followers. I’d be nice if WordPress and Blogger could put aside differences and communicate enough to list people who follow my WordPress blog from their blogger profile or elsewhere.
    I’ve set it to automatically post my WordPress blog updates on my Facebook page almost since I started my blog at the beginning of the year. I have over 150 facebook friends but my blog shows no followers and I only average about 4-5 views a day for my blog. I would like some ideas on how to get more traffic. I feel like I’m being a pest and annoying people if I advertize much though.

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  15. Maybe a tool to apply for a specific post to be reviewed by the editor for Freshly Pressed? Plus creating an entirely different blog completely based on Freshly Pressed where there’ll be more than just a couple of freshly pressed posts. Like there’ll be categories under which you’ll feature the best post of the week.

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  16. Leaving comments on other peoples blogs. That’s where I’ve picked up most of my traffic. Those bloggers often look then at my blog and if they like what they see, they subscribe or return.

    I also agree that being able to use Google Friends Connect could increase our traffic.

    I receive a lot of hits from my Facebook page. I have a personal page to which
    each post is automatically published. Then I publish each post individually to my fan page. I like that this is not automatic, because I can then chose an image and a comment, the post and the comment are then publicized on Twitter.

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    1. sarsm, you have a point about the benefits of not having automatic posting to the fan page. I like to choose the image, too–I had not even considered that was an option because of manually doing the “work”! 🙂

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  17. I for one would welcome more visitors to my blog Some days I will get only TWO , yes TWO. The most I have ever had was 99.
    so anything that would help increase my viewers I would welcome.
    I already have connections to Twitter and Facebook

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  18. Yes, please, to all the people asking for plugins like Google Friend Connect! What better way to get more people to follow you than to reassure them that others think you’re worth following?

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  19. Being Freshly Pressed a little while ago certainly lifted my hits for a while. It was great. I’m trying to make my posts interesting so it will happen again. Thanks for the FP.

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  20. I recently started using my twitter account- not to connect to friends and family who are mostly in facebook already. Rather, I wanted to use it to meet new “friends” and get better exposure of my blog. True enough, I started following people who talk about my interests and started getting some following. Soon enough, I seem to get more page views and unique visits from people as they tend to look at my profile and find there my link.
    Also, I’ve discovered there are a lot of network blog sites – by topic, by status or by interest that are there- you just have to look for the ones that are most popular. I’ve maintained a “passive” stream of visits with these!

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  22. I think more freshly pressed would be good, either make the tiles smaller on the home page, or make it more frequent than twice a day. Also, commenting on other blogs is a good way to increase traffic, as well as clever tagging and blogging about relevant topics

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  23. I’ve seldom see my blog on some of the specific tag pages such as post a day, weekly photo challenge, etc, even though I use those tags. Are you only selecting certain blogs to appear on specific tag pages?

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  24. Hello, I like it to leave a nice comment regarding what the person wrote about. But sometimes I want to show the person that I’ve read the post, but don’t want to comment. And then perhaps I don’t feel like pressing the “like” butten. Isn’t there possibly a way that there can be an extra butten, something like “Hello, I’ve visited your blog” ???

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  25. I would love more traffic to my site. However, commenters are more important because they mean I have “connected.” Traffic for the sake of traffic, eg. spam traffic, doesn’t impress me.

    I have discovered connections are neat. My post “Killed Strangely: The post CORNELL KILLED STRANGELY: A NEW ENGLAND MURDER STORY has generated the most connections over time. Descendants of the Cornell family (Portsmouth, R. I.) meet at this post, and share their stories photographs.

    The most meaningful connection was the January 19th comments that connected me with full-sister my mother released for adoption in 1953 ( Adoptee Finds Biological Family: Mine ). A post My Mother’s Secret: An Adoption Story generated some interesting traffic.

    I would love more traffic to my site, even though I don’t have Facebook or Twitter accounts.

    However, commenters are more important because they mean I have “connected.” Traffic for the sake of traffic, eg. spam traffic, doesn’t impress me.

    I have discovered connections are neat. My post “Killed Strangely: The post CORNELL KILLED STRANGELY: A NEW ENGLAND MURDER STORY has generated the most connections over time. Descendants of the Cornell family (Portsmouth, R. I.) meet at this post, and share their stories photographs.

    The most meaningful connection was the January 19th comments that connected me with a full-sister my mother released for adoption in 1953 ( Adoptee Finds Biological Family: Mine ). A post My Mother’s Secret: An Adoption Story generated some interesting traffic.

    So yes, I would like more traffic to my site—but even more importantly, I want to connect with my readers!

    Carolyn Cornell Holland

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  26. Claro que sempre quero mais tráfego no meu blog, mas eu não consigo entender o por que as pessoas visitam o blog, mas não fazem comentários que são tão importantes, sinto falta deles. Adoro os meus leitores, mas o contato é pouco o que é uma lástima.
    Abraços a todos!
    Mina!

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  27. I find that the more you comment on other peoples blogs, the more visits you get.
    If people visit your page once and like it, they will return 🙂

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  28. I agree with misspinkles but let me go one step further. You know how some social forums have member profile pictures with stars under them (e.g. 1 star for a newbie and 5 stars for a veteran), well maybe we could have a similar ‘star-system’ on wordpress. Every time you comment on an article you accumulate 1 point per comment. There could be a range e.g. 20 coments = 1 star, 40 comments = 2 stars, etc. And the final picture:

    e.g. Jollof: 21 points 1 star (not exactly the picture but you get the idea, I hope) 😀

    I believe if bloggers have an added incentive to leave comments on articles they would be keen to do so and thereby increase traffic in the long term.

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  30. Awesome – Tanks a million Scott Berkun for creating a great blog “Do you want more traffic?”.
    I was studying the course on “Introduction to Creating WordPress Web Sites by John Agress ” at http://www.ed2go.com/accc (Online classes – 6 week long – Most classes are only $99).
    They offer SEO Course “Achieving Top Search Engine Positions for $99 ” need of some of us (Kat Richter, sizingdowndiva & MYSELF ++).
    Rachel mentioned about Self-Hosting to use java widgets to incease Google +++ traffic (What is cost of per mth, if we want to pay to resolve self hosting issue).
    Another Awesome advice from you – We should always be open to ideas “what else can be done to help us, get more traffic for our posts? ”
    Almost every blog participant has given me ideas to increase traffic & I will thank them individually.

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